The Civil War Within Islam

The American far right likes to paint Islam with a broad brush and equate all Muslims with violent and brutal Islamic extremists such as those who flew planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and more recently massacred innocents in Paris.  In fact, Islam is no more unified than the adherents of Christianity who range from Christian dominionists who want a Christian theocracy and advocate executing gays and others they view as non-believers to liberal Episcopalians and Lutherans.  To hold all Muslims responsible for the sins and horrible acts of the few is akin to holding modern day Lutherans and Episcopalians fully responsible the horrors done by the knuckle dragging evangelical fundamentalists.  Yes, the liberals of both faiths need to loudly condemn the hate and embrace of ignorance that defines the fundamentalist believers - something both groups of liberals and moderates fail to do sufficiently - but one must not miss the reality that a civil war is raging in Islam with large segments of the faithful opposing extremists.  The New York Times looks at what is happening in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation (I suspect that most American Bible thumpers do not even know that Indonesia is a Muslim nation).  Note the role of Saudi Arabia, America's false ally, in exporting extremist versions of Islam.   Here are article highlights:

The scene is horrifyingly familiar. Islamic State soldiers march a line of prisoners to a riverbank, shoot them one by one and dump their bodies over a blood-soaked dock into the water.

But instead of the celebratory music and words of praise expected in a jihadi video, the soundtrack features the former Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid, singing a Javanese mystical poem: “Many who memorize the Quran and Hadith love to condemn others as infidels while ignoring their own infidelity to God, their hearts and minds still mired in filth.”

That powerful scene is one of many in a 90-minute film that amounts to a relentless, religious repudiation of the Islamic State and the opening salvo in a global campaign by the world’s largest Muslim group to challenge its ideology head-on.

The challenge, perhaps surprisingly, comes from Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population but which lies thousands of miles away from the Islamic State’s base in the Middle East.

“The spread of a shallow understanding of Islam renders this situation critical, as highly vocal elements within the Muslim population at large — extremist groups — justify their harsh and often savage behavior by claiming to act in accord with God’s commands, although they are grievously mistaken,” said A. Mustofa Bisri, the spiritual leader of the group, Nahdlatul Ulama, an Indonesian Muslim organization that claims more than 50 million members.

“According to the Sunni view of Islam,” he said, “every aspect and expression of religion should be imbued with love and compassion, and foster the perfection of human nature.”

This message of tolerance is at the heart of the group’s campaign against jihadism, which will be carried out online, and in hotel conference rooms and convention centers from North America to Europe to Asia. The film was released Thursday at the start of a three-day congress by the organization’s youth wing in the Central Java city of Yogyakarta.

As world leaders call for Muslims to take the lead in the ideological battle against a growing and increasingly violent offshoot of their own religion, analysts say the group’s campaign is a welcome antidote to jihadism.

The campaign by Nahdlatul Ulama, known as N.U., for a liberal, pluralistic Islam also comes at a time when Islam is at war with itself over central theological questions of how the faith is defined in the modern era.

In a way, it should not be surprising that this message comes from Indonesia, the home of Islam Nusantara, widely seen as one of the most progressive Islamic movements in the world. The movement — its name is Indonesian for “East Indies Islam” — dates back more than 500 years and promotes a spiritual interpretation of Islam that stresses nonviolence, inclusiveness and acceptance of other religions.

Indonesian Islam blended with local religious beliefs and traditions, creating a pluralistic society despite having a Muslim majority.

Indonesia today has more than 190 million Muslims, but also has a secular government and influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities.

Such liberalism poses a counterargument to the Islamic State, analysts said.  “We are directly challenging the idea of ISIS, which wants Islam to be uniform, meaning that if there is any other idea of Islam that is not following their ideas, those people are infidels who must be killed,” said Yahya Cholil Staquf, general secretary to the N.U. supreme council. “We will show that is not the case with Islam.”

N.U. has established a nonprofit organization, Bayt ar-Rahmah, in Winston-Salem, N.C., which will be the hub for international activities including conferences and seminars to promote Indonesia’s tradition of nonviolent, pluralistic Islam, Mr. Yahya said.

N.U. is also working with the University of Vienna in Austria, which collects and analyzes ISIS propaganda, to prepare responses to those messages, which N.U. will disseminate online and at conferences.

A prevention center based in Indonesia, expected to be operational by the end of the year, will train male and female Arabic-speaking students to engage with jihadist ideology and messaging under the guidance of N.U. theologians who are consulting Western academia.

In scene after scene, they challenge and denounce the Islamic State’s interpretations of the Quran and the Hadith, the book of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings, as factually wrong and perverse.

The Islamic State’s theology, rooted in the fundamentalist Wahhabi movement, takes its cues from medieval Islamic jurisprudence, where slavery and execution of prisoners was accepted. The filmmakers accept the legitimacy of those positions for the time but argue that Islamic law needs to be updated to 21st-century norms.

“The problem with Middle East Islam is they have what I call religious racism,” said Azyumardi Azra, an Islamic scholar and former rector of the State Islamic University in Jakarta. “They feel that only the Arabs are real Muslims and the others are not.”

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the main source of financial support for Wahhabism worldwide, has had more success in imposing its interpretation and has even made inroads in Indonesia. Analysts say a steady flow of money from Persian Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, supports an active and growing Wahhabist movement here.

Hedieh Mirahmadi, president of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education, an organization based in Washington that works to combat extremism, said that, according to open source data, supporters of the Islamic State were sending an average of 2.8 million messages a day to their followers on Twitter.

“Who’s going to counter that?” she asked.  “It’s what they are doing in Indonesia, it’s what we are doing in the U.S., and in other places,” she said. “You flood the space, and you hope people get the right messages.”

Frankly, to me it is maddening that the United States doesn't have a very blunt conversation with the Saudi royals.  Either the export of extremism abroad stops or America needs to drastically rethink its support for the Saudi royals and make it clear that Saudi funds in American banks will be frozen and/or confiscated.  The Saudi regime can crack down on moderates and bloggers but turns a blind eye to the export of Wahhabism.   This is simply unacceptable.

As for Muslims in the USA, my Muslim clients are incredibly hard working and want nothing to do with extremism - they came to America to escape it and make a better life for themselves and their families.   Just like most of our ancestors did. 

Inside the GOP Evangelical Mind: Obsession with Gays and Loss of White Privilege

This blog is not kind to the evangelical Christian base of the Republican Party and, in my view, rightfully so.  These people simply put are not nice and selfishness and hypocrisy are their principal attributes.  They seem utterly incapable of seeing the common humanity of others who may have a different skin color, hold a different religious faith, speak a different language or a different sexual orientation.  It's the milder version of the mindset that over the centuries that set the stage for wars of religion and slaughter of men women and children.  Meanwhile, these people pat themselves on the back for their piety even as they disregard every Gospel directive to feed the hungry, cloth the naked and shelter the homeless.  Recently, a study was done utilizing focus groups to get into the minds of elements of the GOP base.  Here are the findings on the evangelical Christians:

Evangelicals are a third of the Republican base; they are the biggest and most intense group:

four in five are "strong” Republicans and straight ticket voters. Over three quarters are married and well over 90 percent are white. Their demographics white, married, religious and older sets up a feeling that they are losing. They talk about how the dominant politics and cultures have encroached on their small towns, schools, and churches. What troubles them when they talk with friends, family, and fellow believers is Obamacare, guns, government encroachment, gay marriage, and “culture rot.”

They sense they are “pretty white” and “didn’t go to Harvard”  and “we’re just not [Obama]”which means they are becoming a pretty “politically incorrect minority.” The so-called “tolerant” liberals just aren’t very tolerant when it comes to them.

It used to be different, as illustrated by several men in Roanoke when describing their own towns. 

It’s a little bubble. So everybody it’s like a Lake Wobegon. Everybody is above average. Everybody is happy. Everybody is white. Everybody is middle class, whether or not they really are. Everybody looks that way. Everybody goes to the same pool. Everybody goes – there’s one library, one post office. Very homogenous.  (Evangelical man, Roanoke)

And the point of departure for being a politically incorrect minority is what’s happening with the acceptance of homosexuality and the gay agenda.

Giving gay and lesbian citizens of the right to marry the person they love can seriously harm them, and seriously harm the children that they were raising. (Evangelical man, Roanoke).

They believe the dominant national culture promotes homosexuality and makes this “minority” culturally “normal.” There is a conspiracy to push “the gay agenda.”

The fact that it is so prominent, that's day to day. Like...that stupid song on 96.1... It's on every five minutes. The “I can't change” song. It's on constantly. It's song promoting gay and lesbian rights and all that stuff. But it's so prominent. It's every 10 minutes.  (Evangelical woman, Colorado Springs)

So, we should not be surprised that the Evangelicals are not politically correct on immigration.  In this case their feeling of being invaded is literal, as when they discuss immigration in graphic terms, and point to language as what bothers them most :

“Don’t come here and make me speak your language. Don’t fly your flag. You’re on American soil. You’re American.”; You come to our country, you need to learn our language.  (Evangelical men, Roanoke)

There's much more, including findings on the Tea Party which is considered almost heroic by the evangelicals. 

How the GOP Lost Its Way

As a former GOP activist - I was on a local city committee for 8 years - I remember a time when one did not need to be either a religious fanatic, a thinly veiled white supremacist, or driven by greed and obsessed with lower taxes to be a Republican.  Sadly, those days are long gone and I and many others - including a number of LGBT bloggers I know - fled the GOP where after the Christofascist take over, we are deemed not even fully human and certainly not entitled to any civil rights.  As I've noted before, my entire extended family more or less has fled the insane asylum that has become today's GOP.   I blame most of the change in the GOP on the emergence Christian Right as the real puppet masters of the party.  In Virginia, the Republican Party of Virginia has become a de facto branch of The Family Foundation, a virulently anti-modernity affiliate of Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.  What I find especially chilling about the Christianist take over is that it has coincided with a level of selfishness and greed and intolerance that never used to be the principal hallmarks of the GOP.  A lengthy column in the Washington Post looks at this slide away form caring about the common good and the embracing of far right extremism.  Here are some excerpts: 

To secure his standing as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney has disowned every sliver of moderation in his record. He’s moved to the right on tax cuts and twisted himself into a pretzel over the health-care plan he championed in Massachusetts — because conservatives are no longer allowed to acknowledge that government can improve citizens’ lives.

Romney is simply following the lead of Republicans in Congress who have abandoned American conservatism’s most attractive features: prudence, caution and a sense that change should be gradual. But most important of all, conservatism used to care passionately about fostering community, and it no longer does. This commitment now lies buried beneath slogans that lift up the heroic and disconnected individual — or the “job creator” — with little concern for the rest.

Today’s conservatism is about low taxes, fewer regulations, less government — and little else. Anyone who dares to define it differently faces political extinction. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana was considered a solid conservative, until conservatives decided that anyone who seeks bipartisan consensus on anything is a sellout. Even Orrin Hatch of Utah, one of the longest-serving Republican senators, is facing a primary challenge. His flaw? He occasionally collaborated with the late Democratic senator Edward M. Kennedy on providing health insurance coverage for children and encouraging young Americans to join national service programs.

Conservatism today places individualism on a pedestal, but it originally arose in revolt against that idea.

The great American conservative William F. Buckley Jr. certainly understood this. In his book “Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country,” he quotes approvingly John Stuart Mill’s insistence that “everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.” With liberty comes responsibility to the community.

Before the Civil War, conservatives such as Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay believed in an active federal government that served the common good. This included a commitment to internal improvements (what we now, less elegantly, call infrastructure), public schooling, and the encouragement of manufacturing and science. Clay, an unapologetic supporter of national economic planning, called his program “the American System,” explicitly distinguishing his idea from the British laissez-faire system. (The Club for Growth would not have been pleased.)

Civil War pensions — the first great social insurance program and a central Republican cause — were supporting about 28 percent of men 65 and over by 1910. In 1894, the program’s most expensive year, the pensions accounted for 37 percent of federal spending. Sounds like a massive entitlement program, doesn’t it?

And the first American version of socialized medicine was signed into law in 1798 by that great conservative president, John Adams. The Marine Hospital Servicefunded hospitals across the country to treat sailors who were sick or got injured on the job. There is no record of a mass campaign to repeal AdamsCare.

Dwight Eisenhower created the interstate highway system and established the federal student loan program in the 1950s.   More recently, Ronald Reagan never tried to dismantle the New Deal and acknowledged, sometimes with wry humor, the need for tax increases. He was acutely alive to the communal side of conservatism.

In other words, until recently conservatives operated within America’s long consensus that accepted a market economy as well as a robust role for a government that served the common good. American politics is now roiled because this consensus is under the fiercest attack it has faced in more than 100 years.

Modern conservatism’s rejection of its communal roots is a relatively recent development. It can be traced to a simultaneous reaction against Bush’s failures and Barack Obama’s rise.

Bush’s unpopularity at the end of his term encouraged conservatives, including the fledgling tea party movement, to distance themselves from his legacy. They declared that Bush’s shortcomings stemmed from his embrace of “big government” and “big spending” — even if much of the spending was in Iraq and Afghanistan. They recoiled from his “compassionate conservatism,” deciding, as right-wing columnist Michelle Malkin put it, that “ ‘compassionate conservatism’ and fiscal conservatism were never compatible.”

 Obama, in the meantime, pitched communal themes from the moment he took office .  .  .   .   The more he emphasized a better balance between the individual and the community, the less interested conservatives became in anything that smacked of such equilibrium.

It’s why they cannot accept (as Romney and the Heritage Foundation once did) energetic efforts by the government to expand access to health insurance. It’s why, even after a catastrophic financial crisis, they continue to resist new rules aimed not at overturning capitalism but at making it more stable.

[W]hen we balance our individualism with a sense of communal obligation that we are most ourselves as Americans. The 20th century was built on this balance, and we will once again prove the prophets of U.S. decline wrong if we can refresh and build upon that tradition. But doing so will require conservatives to abandon untempered individualism, which betrays what conservatism has been and should be.

Republican Candidates Give Religion a Bad Name

I've often noted that the best argument for not being a Christian is the ranks of the "godly Christians" - folks like Tony Perkins (shown above with Rick Santorum), Tim Wildmon, Maggie Gallagher, and even Benedict XVI who focus more on hate, division, and condemning others than they do on the Golden Rule or following the Gospel dictates. Increasingly, the ranks of those who make Christianity look repulsive and surely the religion of hypocrites are Republican Party candidates at all levels, with the current crop of would be presidential candidates leading the way. A column in the Washington Post looks at the increasingly foul image of religion that these candidates are creating. Meanwhile, too many "good Christians" remain silent and fail to challenge these demagogues. Here are some column highlights:

Religion in the 2012 presidential election is the topic that will launch a thousand PhD theses. The pre-Vatican II Catholic candidate, Rick Santorum, has risen largely on the support of evangelicals, who, before the Second Vatican Council, often regarded the pope as the Antichrist. The former Mormon bishop, Mitt Romney, won Ohio and Michigan (and thus probably the nomination) arguably because of Catholic support. Meanwhile, a significant portion of the Republican electorate regards a president who has affirmed “the resurrection of our savior Jesus Christ” as a closet Muslim.

In light of these developments, Americans have every right to be confused. But they hold one conviction about the role of religion in politics with increasing clarity: There is too much of it. . . . Republican expressions of faith have been frequent and frequently crude. . . . It is difficult to imagine Bachmann or Perry in the same political universe as evangelical abolitionists and social reformers William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury.

The poll, for example, found that GOP voters who believe there is too much religion in politics are far more likely to support Romney. Consider this a moment. At least among Republicans, Romney’s Mormonism is viewed as a haven from an excessive emphasis on religion.

The Pew poll also serves as a reminder that the Democratic Party coalition remains diverse on religious issues. Concerns about excessive public religious expression are concentrated among Democrats.

So maybe the message of Americans on religion and politics isn’t that confusing after all. They don’t like sectarianism. But they also reject secularism. There is, fortunately, a distinctly American alternative: religious pluralism, humanized by tolerance.

Quote of the Day: Thomas Jefferson on the Intolerance of Christians

One would almost think that Thomas Jefferson was describing the folks at The Family Foundation in Richmond or Maggie Gallagher or Tony Perkins in his statement on the intolerance that Christians visit upon others. Rather than being defined by their love and allegiance to Christ's Gospel message, it is their contempt and mistreatment of others. Here's Jefferson's statement via Warren Throckmorton's blog:

In Thomas Jefferson’s Notes of Religion (Oct. 1776), Thomas Jefferson quotes John Locke on toleration of religious views.

He [Locke] sais ‘neither Pagan nor Mahomedan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.’ Shall we suffer a Pagan to deal with us and not suffer him to pray to his god? Why have Xns. [Christians] been distinguished above all people who have ever lived, for persecutions? Is it because it is the genius of their religion? No, it’s genius is the reverse. It is the refusing toleration to those of a different opn [opinion] which has produced all the bustles and wars on account of religion. It was the misfortune of mankind that during the darker centuries the Xn. [Christian] priests following their ambition and avarice combining with the magistrate to divide the spoils of the people, could establish the notion that schismatics might be ousted of their possessions & destroyed. This notion we have not yet cleared ourselves from. In this case no wonder the oppressed should rebel, & they will continue to rebel & raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them & all partial distinctions, exclusions & incapacitations removed. (Online Library of Liberty: The Works, vol. 2 (1771-1779).

Obviously, conservative Christians and the Catholic bishops have changed little over the last 235+ years. Things certainly have not changed for the better here in Virginia where the Christofascists are out of control

Why Can't the USA Approve Gay Marriage When Unlikely Nations Have??

A column in the New York Times looks at the issue of gay marriage around the world and the at first blush surprising passage of full same sex marriage laws in South Africa, Spain, Portugal and Argentina, three of which were once viewed as bastions of Catholicism. The author, Frank Bruni comes up the hypothesis that these surprising supporters of same sex marriage have one trait in common: a devotion of equality and civil rights born out of years of regressive and/or dictatorship rule. These nations value modernity and civil equality all the more because they have experienced the opposite alternative and recognize the importance of the rule of law and a secular society. Stated differently, these nations endured the type of government and repressive society that the Christian Taliban would seek to impose in the United States. Bruni also notes something that played a significant role in the passage of same sex marriage laws in Spain and Portugal - and I'd posit in Argentina as well where President Kirchner gave a moving speech before the Argentine Senate passed the legislation: Political leadership and political will on the party leading the effort for change. Under the Obama administration, we have neither. Here are some column highlights:

With minimal international attention, Portugal — tiny, overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Portugal — legalized same-sex marriage last year. Although the country is hardly seen as a Scandinavian-style bastion of social progressivism, it’s one of just 10 countries where such marriages can be performed nationwide, and in this regard it finds itself ahead of a majority of wealthier, more populous European countries, like France, Germany, Italy and Britain. In the United States, only six states and the District of Columbia allow gay marriage. How did that happen? And what wisdom do the answers offer frustrated supporters of same-sex marriage here and elsewhere around the globe?

The eight countries that later joined the club were a mix of largely foreseeable and less predictable additions. In the first category I’d put Canada, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. In the second: South Africa, Spain, Portugal and Argentina.


Why those four countries? People who have studied the issue note that that they have something interesting and relevant in common: each spent a significant period of the late 20th century governed by a dictatorship or brutally discriminatory government, and each emerged from that determined to exhibit a modernity and concern for human rights that put the past to rest.

“They’re countries where the commitment to democracy and equal protection under the law was denied, flouted and oppressed, and the societies have struggled to restore that,” said Evan Wolfson, the president of Freedom to Marry, a New York-based advocacy group, in a recent interview. That dynamic informed Spain’s legalization of same-sex marriage in 2005.

Politicians in Portugal and Argentina — two countries with their own large Catholic majorities, strong geographic or historical ties to Spain, and a palpable desire to keep pace with it — took note of the same-sex marriage legislation there. Spain set off an Iberian wave with trans-Atlantic reach: one of the countries considered most likely to approve same-sex marriage next is Uruguay, which already permits same-sex civil unions and allows gay men and lesbians to adopt.

The idea that Portugal should do no less than Spain came up repeatedly in my conversations with those who pushed for the Portugal measure, and so did the insistence that Portugal was much more cosmopolitan than many outsiders gave it credit for being. I was left with the strong impression that for many highly educated and young people in Portugal . . . . . same-sex marriage became a badge of sophistication, affirming their country as an enlightened place.

And once it became law, everyone for the most part moved on. Sócrates’s government was tripped up by economic matters, not same-sex marriage, support for which rose significantly in polls following its institution, as people saw that their society wasn’t crumbling as a result. “It was a good example of the pedagogical effect of law,” Vale de Almeida said.

San Francisco isn’t all of America, and the religious dynamics and political vitriol in this country are different from Portugal’s. But might it be possible for President Obama, so maddeningly hesitant to endorse same-sex marriage, to take a lead on the issue? And might he find, as Sócrates did, that it wouldn’t make or break him? “At the end of the day,” Sócrates told me, “what we had was the political will.”

The Times also has a map that looks at the range of treatment of gays in nations around the world. Gay acceptance is the lowest and gays are treated most harshly in countries where national levels of education are abysmally low - not surprisingly, Africa and a number of Muslim nations rank the lowest on education levels. Another parallel with gay oppression is the role of religion in the national government. Again, theocratic Muslim nations and African nations under the sway of virulent form of Christianity exported by American Christianists lead the way in oppression. In sum, ignorance (also the reason Christianity is growing in Africa) and religious extremism are the leading causes anti-gay bigotry.

Be Afraid, Virginia. Be Very afraid: Virginia Passes Strictest Abortion Regulations in the Nation

The other day I wrote asking where the "good Christians" were in North Carolina as the Christianists and their hate group organization, working with the political whores in the North Carolina Republican Party passed a measure that will put the recognition of same sex relations on the ballot on the day of the 2012 North Carolina GOP primary election. The answer, of course is that most were sitting on their asses since they did not believe the anti-gay measure impacted them. That belief is a fallacy as today's events in Virginia demonstrate. First the Christianists go after the gays as they did here in Virginia in 2006, next it's abortion, and next it will be contraception, religious freedom for non-Christianists and God knows what else. By sitting back until their rights are directly impacted, the "good Christians" and others are allowing the creeping extension of the Christianist version of Sharia law. They need to wake up to the true agenda of Christianists and Christian dominionists and not be fooled by their intentionally deceptive propaganda. The anti-abortion offense here in Virginia - and for the record, I am not a fan of abortion - was couched in terms of "safety" and "protecting women." The real goal, however, was to impose a de facto ban on abortion and stupidly far too many in the general public were played for fools by those who wrap themselves in the Bible even as they lie incessantly. The Virginian Pilot sadly does it usual lazy/sloppy reporting and largely parrots the propaganda of the Christian dominionists at The Family Foundation. Huffington Post has more accurate coverage. Here are highlights:

The Virginia Board of Health passed the most severe abortion clinic regulations in the nation on Thursday, which health advocates say could effectively close down all 22 abortion providers in the state.

The regulations, commissioned by the state legislature and written by the Virginia Department of Health, are largely unrelated to patient health and safety. They would treat abortion clinics as if they are hospitals if the clinics provide five or more first-trimester abortions a month and would enforce architectural design standards that will be almost impossible for most clinics to meet.

For instance, a clinic must have 5-foot-wide hallways, 8-foot-wide areas outside of procedure rooms, specific numbers of toilets and types of sinks and all of the latest requirements for air circulation flow and electrical wiring. Each clinic must also have a parking spot for every bed, despite the fact that first-trimester abortions don't require an overnight stay. Further, Department of Health employees will be allowed to enter an abortion facility at any time without notice or identification.

Virginia Board of Health member Jim Edmundson tried to introduce a number of amendments on Thursday that would lessen the severity of the clinic restrictions and give some facilities a chance to comply. However, all but one of the amendments were rejected without a vote.

The board is not even seconding proposed amendments being offered," said Patrick Hurd, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeast Virginia, who observed the comment and voting process in Richmond on Thursday. "They're so intimidated by the presence of the attorney general, they're not even allowing these things to come up for a vote."

Health advocates say they are worried that women in Virginia could lose all access to abortions as a result of the new rules, which are scheduled go into effect by Jan. 1.

Kansas passed slightly more lenient regulations earlier this year that would have shut down two out of three of the state's clinics, but they were challenged in court and promptly blocked by a judge.

One major unintended consequence of these regulations is that if Planned Parenthood clinics and other health clinics that provide abortions are forced to shut down, they will be taking all of their other services with them, such as affordable pap smears, breast exams and birth control for low-income men and women.

I understand the need for people to stand and fight the Christianists, but it becomes exhausting and increasingly, I'd like to simply leave this nasty backwater state.

Religion - The Sole Basis for Anti-Gay Animus

All of the shrieking and whining that's going on in the wake of Friday's historic vote legalizing same sex marriage in New York has made in more starkly obvious that religious based hate and bigotry are the sole basis for Christianist and Catholic Church opposition to same sex marriage. It comes down to these religious extremists wanted the special right to make all citizens live by their belief system. And in making their case, modern knowledge, science and the U. S. Constitution all get flushed down the toilet. It's ALL about them and to Hell with everyone else. To me, it also shows the weakness of their faith system which starts to crumble like a house of cards if others are allowed to live their lives in accordance with differing religious/spiritual beliefs. A column in Huffington Post looks at the arguments against same sex marriage stripped of all the smoke screen and disingenuous blather that opponents utilize to try to hide their theocratic agenda. Here are some highlights:
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Success has a thousand fathers, the old saw goes, but failure is an orphan. Not this time. There is one and only one big loser in the New York's long overdue decision to legalize gay marriage: old-time religion. Rather than retreat in shame the self-anointed defenders of God's law continue to snort and stamp their feet in indignation.
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But, while a new day has dawned in New York, the fight now moves to other states, so it's important to consider the arguments offered against gay marriage. Let's take a look.
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In their desperate effort to block marriage equality, they pulled out all the rhetorical stops. If gay marriage becomes legal, argued Upstate New York Republican pol Sam Trombley, "we are going to have an HIV epidemic." You got that? 'Cause no way gay guys would ever have unprotected sex outside the bounds of holy matrimony.
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In their long march against gay marriage, exponents of old-time religion have lobbed countless rhetorical grenades. They've used the "What next? Marriage with animals?" tactic. They've cried, "No special rights!" (As if legal equality were somehow 'special.') Yet, few outbursts have been as vile or absurd as Archbishop Dolan's frantic attempt to hold Republicans in New York State Senate fast to their opposition to justice. In his official blog Dolan suggested that to grant marriage equality would be to turn America into a totalitarian state
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History shows that every time some blowhard pounds the podium in defense of "natural law," he is in fact defending brute religious bigotry. "Natural law" has been the cry against the abolition of slavery, the end of aristocracy, and equal rights for women. So, welcome, Archbishop, to the wrong side of history.
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The reason for all the bluster should be made plain: old-time religion, be it Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, is authoritarian, and its authority derives from a simple claim: "We have God's Word, and we'll tell you exactly how to obey it, or else." To accept same-sex marriage is to reject that claim. It's not society that's undermined, but these ancient, authoritarian structures.

New Study: Teen Suicides Higher in Conservative Areas

A new study that has tracked teen suicides - both by gay teens and those not identified as LGBT - and has documented that suicide rates are higher in conservative areas with low levels of Democrats. So now, in addition to being tied to slow or dying state and local economies, political conservatism/"Christianist religious beliefs also correlate with a higher death rate by suicide among teens of all sexual orientations. Can it be because of the constant negative, hate oriented world view and mistreatment of others who are deemed "other" that mark both political conservatives and far right religious believers? Obviously, it would seem so. This is truly yet another indictment of the toxic nature of both social phenomenons. Once again conservatism is proven to not make for a welcoming society. Instead, judging and denigrating others is the norm. Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot on the study findings:
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Suicide attempts by gay teens - and even straight kids - are more common in politically conservative areas where schools don't have programs supporting gay rights, a study involving nearly 32,000 high school students found.
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Those factors raised the odds and were a substantial influence on suicide attempts even when known risk contributors like depression and being bullied were considered, said study author Mark Hatzenbuehler, a Columbia University psychologist and researcher.
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His study found a higher rate of suicide attempts even among kids who weren't bullied or depressed when they lived in counties less supportive of gays and with relatively few Democrats. A high proportion of Democrats was a measure used as a proxy for a more liberal environment.
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"Is it surprising? No. Is it important? Yes," said Dr. Robert Blum of Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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e="times new roman">The study relied on teens' self-reporting suicide attempts within the previous year. Roughly 20 percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had made an attempt, versus 4 percent of straight kids.
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The study's social index rated counties on five measures: prevalence of same-sex couples; registered Democratic voters; liberal views; schools with gay-straight alliances; schools with policies against bullying gay students; and schools with anti-discrimination policies that included sexual orientation.
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Gay, lesbian and bisexual teens living in counties with the lowest social index scores were 20 percent more likely to have attempted suicide than gays in counties with the highest index scores. Overall, about 25 percent of gay teens in low-scoring counties had attempted suicide, versus 20 percent of gay teens in high-scoring counties.
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Among straight teens, suicide attempts were 9 percent more common in low-scoring [conservative]counties
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So they next time you hear a far right conservative yammering about being a "loving Christian," know that such is probably not the case and that the individual may well have blood on his/her hands.

Southern Baptist Convention Still Has a Hard on For Gays

I really wonder about the emotional/mental health of Christianists like the SBC's Richard Land (pictured at left) who have an absolute obsession with LGBT citizens and seem Hell bent to deprive us of civil rights and benefits that other Americans receive. Perhaps Land - like a number of the hysterical homophobes of the Christian Right - needs to hire himself a hot male escort and satisfy his inner yearnings. Seriously, the man needs to get over the fact that God made some people gay. End of story. Land's latest screed against gays appears in the Baptist Press where he has his panties in a knot over gay couples receiving employee benefits like married heterosexuals. He ludicrously claims the provision of benefits discriminates against voluntarily unmarried heterosexuals while ignoring the fact that due to the efforts of bigots like himself, gays in most states do not have the luxury of deciding not to marry. Here are some highlights of SBC's whining:

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WASHINGTON (BP)--Same-sex domestic partners legislation forwarded to the U.S. House of Representatives undermines the federal protection of traditional marriage and promotes financial irresponsibility, critics say.
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The Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act would extend benefits now reserved for the spouses of federal employees to the same-sex, domestic partners of such workers. The bill, H.R. 2517, would bestow on homosexual partners of federal employees such benefits as health insurance, retirement and disability benefits, group life insurance, and family and medical leave.
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Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land criticized the proposal both before and after the committee's vote. "Most Southern Baptists believe that the only relationship that should be defined by its sexual nature and should have special benefits accrued to it is heterosexual marriage," said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Nov. 25. "Thus, we oppose granting domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples, as well as heterosexual couples who are living together outside of marriage. This bill discriminates against heterosexual couples living together outside of wedlock in that it only grants domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples. We have made it clear we are opposed to both."
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Under the bill, Land told Issa, "the federal government would in effect take a step toward implementing same-sex marriage nationwide." It "would also force taxpayers to fund relationships to which millions object based on deeply held religious convictions," Land said in the letter.
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Towns said, "Providing gay and lesbian federal workers with the same family benefits that their married co-workers receive will ensure that the federal government maintains its role as a model employer in the United States, and it will foster an inclusive workplace so that we can attract the best and brightest Americans to federal service."
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Land - like the majority of Christianists - just cannot grasps that we are talking about a civil government providing benefits for civil employees. Mr. Land' "deeply held religious beliefs" are irrelevant under the U.S. Constitution. Federal benefits should NOT be controlled by one set of bigoted religious beliefs.

Christianists vs. Islamic Fundamentalists

I have long maintained that the only difference between Christianists and Islamic fundamentalists is the degree to which they will use violence to achieve their goals. To date, the Christianists have not embraced terror and bombings, and the killing of innocent civilians, although the skinheads recently arrested in Tennessee for a plot against Barack Obama spoke of killing 100 innocent black citizens, so sadly that may be changing. Mirroring my thoughts is a column that appeared in the Daily Times, a newspaper in Pakistan, where the similarities of the Christianists and the Islamic fundamentalists were compared by the author. The reality is that BOTH groups are a clear and present danger to freedom and religious tolerance. Here are some column highlights:

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So what do the Republicans and Al Qaeda have in common? Divisiveness. It is the ‘with us or against us’ approach, the delineation of patriotic vs. non-patriotic parts of the country, the Red states vs. the Blue states, the black man vs. the white man that that strikes a chord with Al Qaeda, for they too have the same approach — if you are not with them, you are going to hell. It is the puritanical attitude that both groups share, the belief that all those who are different are to be shunned and that uniformity is the only way to achieve unity.

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And it is the use of fear as an operating mechanism that brings these two groups together. One side woos its voters by telling them the other candidate will take their money, turn their nation into a socialist state, coddle criminals and be an open target for the Russians and the Muslims. The other side recruits its followers by telling them that they will be enslaved by the immoral West, their wives will stop listening to them and there will be lewdness and orgies on the street.

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Both these groups cater to an uninformed audience. Both these groups preach intolerance. And both lure their followers by claims to “return to the core values” — a proposition which sounds good until you ask, what values? And more importantly, whose values?

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A great Sufi, Sheikh Ibn Arabi, once wrote, “Beware of confining yourself to one belief — for much good would elude you. Be in yourself a matter for all forms of belief, for God is too vast and tremendous to be restricted to one belief rather than another.” While the wisdom of this quote eludes both groups, they continue to shun a mindset that discourages inclusion and incorporation.

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For them, their agendas comes first — in the case of Al Qaeda, doing whatever they can to bring down the West and set up their own rule in the East, in the case of the Republican Right, setting the stage for the Rapture, or the second coming of Christ, which many right-wing Christians, including Bush, believe can only happen once certain events take place.