National Catholic Reporter Slams Catholic Bishops and Hierarchy

As a former Catholic, I pretty much gave up on any hope that the Roman Catholic Church would ever reform itself, cease its anti-gay jihad and, most importantly, sack those in the Church hierarchy who bore responsibility for enabling and/or protection predator priest who sexually abused children and youths. For the most part my pessimism and decision to "vote with my feet" has been proven totally justified. Nonetheless, it is nice on occasion to see some who have remained in the Church to verbally bitch slap the bishops and hierarchy as is so justly deserved. Not, of course, that such candor will have much chance of changing the Church's feudal governance structure. In its main editorial, the National Catholic Reporter laid into the New York bishops for their nastiness on the New York marriage equality vote as well as the utter collapse of the Church's moral authority in the wake of the handling of the sex abuse scandal. Here are some editorial highlights:
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The vote approving same-sex marriage in New York is the latest and most glaring confirmation of some gloomy news for the Catholic church in the United States, and it’s not that gays have achieved the right to marry. Rather, affirmed in the recent vote is the disturbing reality that the Catholic hierarchy has lost most of its credibility with the wider culture on matters of sexuality and personal morality, just as it has lost its authority within the Catholic community on the same issues.
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[T]here are reasons we think the bishops’ hyperbolic reaction to laws such as that enacted in New York are not only wrong-headed but counterproductive. First, even if bishops retained the stature they once had in the wider culture, it is evident in polls and politicians’ votes that neither most of the Catholic world nor the wider culture buys the church’s teaching that homosexuals are disordered and are thus relegated to sexless lives in order to remain in the Christian community.
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To parents of a gay child, the idea that a group of men can claim to know the mind of God so perfectly that they can proclaim with unyielding certainty that God deems a significant portion of creation “disordered” is absurd. The label is not only demeaning but to contemporary Christians has no resonance with the heart of the Gospel.
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Second, even if the bishops had a persuasive case to make and the legislative tools at their disposal, their public conduct in recent years -- wholesale excommunications, railing at politicians, denial of honorary degrees and speaking platforms at Catholic institutions, using the Eucharist as a political bludgeon, refusing to entertain any questions or dissenting opinions, and engaging in open warfare with the community’s thinkers as well as those, especially women, who have loyally served the church -- has resulted in a kind of episcopal caricature, the common scolds of the religion world, the caustic party of “no.”
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The larger problem for the hierarchy, of course,is not persuading the secular culture of its point of view on sacramental marriage, but persuading its own adherents, and particularly young Catholics who now tend to drift off in scores before adulthood, that staying attached to the church is a compelling good, that the church is in fact relevant and will draw them closer to Christ and thus the freedom and fullness of a life of faith.
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The bishops have little credibility in the wider culture and diminished authority within the church because in the case of sexual violence against young people by members of their clerical culture, they responded in ways that any reasonable and healthy segment of society would have considered disdainful.
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In reaction to the marriage vote, Dolan stretched to call up the specter of what remains of the Red menace. On his blog he wrote that in China and North Korea “government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values and natural law.” In those countries, he says, government dictates the size of families, who can live and die, and what defines marriage. “Please, not here!” he begs. The comparison, of course, is absurd on its face, a kind of hysteria that demands that someone listen when so few are.
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The vote in New York sends a strong message to Catholic leadership. The danger is not in the vote itself. The danger they face is far deeper -- a crisis of leadership and authority for which they have only themselves to blame.

Thursday Male Beauty

The Depressing Lack of LGBT Employment Protections

Click map to enlarge.

As the map above from Think Progress reveals, it is still dangerous to be an LGBT employee in the vast majority of states (the map doesn't reflect recent victories for transgender protections in Hawaii, Nevada, and just yesterday, Connecticut). What makes the issue so disturbing is that a vast majority of voters believe that LGBT employees enjoy non-discrimination protections when in fact we do not. Bishop Robinson sees supporting LGBT equality as a matter of Christian principle and has stated the following:

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The scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are filled with admonitions that we will be judged by the way we treat our most vulnerable members. For Christians and Jews, God is described as having a special concern for the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable. We are morally bound to take special care to protect those who are so marginalized. I believe that in our time, it is gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people who are the marginalized deserving of civil protections. Surely, in this great nation, we can at least do that much.

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Unfortunately, until special deference and privileges cease to be given to the most hate-filled and intolerant form of Christianity practiced by the modern day Pharisees of the Christian Right, what Robinson calls for will not happen. Certainly not in a hater's paradise like Virginia.

The Three Fundamentalisms of the American Far Right

A column in Salon follows the evolution of the far right in America from the post WWII years through today analyzes how we've come to such batshit craziness and irrationality which has now taken over the Republican Party for the most part. The irony in the piece is that it looks at the evolution - using a concept that much of the far right refuses to believe in despite scientific evidence to support evolution. But then, that's part and parcel with the fundamentalism that has replaced facts and reason. Just look at the GOP Congressional leadership to see how little objective facts and reasoning have evaporated from the scene in the GOP. Much of the drift to irrational insanity not surprisingly flows from the fundamentalism and ignorance by choice of the Christianist faction within the GOP which in my view is like a metastasizing cancer. Here are some highlights:
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In contradiction to the hostility to Darwinism shared by many of its constituents, the American right is evolving rapidly before our eyes. The project of creating an American version of Burkean conservatism has collapsed. What has replaced it is best described as triple fundamentalism -- a synthesis of Biblical fundamentalism, constitutional fundamentalism and market fundamentalism.
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Following World War II, the American right was a miscellany of marginal, embittered subcultures -- anti-New Dealers, isolationists, paranoid anticommunists, anti-semites and white supremacists. Russell Kirk and others associated with William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review sought to Americanize a version of high-toned British Burkean conservatism.
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The term "fundamentalism" originated in the early twentieth century as a description of reactionary evangelical Protestants in the U.S. who rejected liberal Protestantism and modern evolutionary science and insisted on the inerrancy of the Bible. . . . . once white Southerners captured the Republican party and the conservative movement, the High Church right that found Kirk and Buckley among its college of cardinals gave way to the political equivalent of the Foot-Washin’ Baptists.
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The increasingly-Southernized American Right has transferred the fundamentalist Protestant mentality from the sphere of religion to the spheres of law and the economy. Protestant fundamentalism is now joined by constitutional fundamentalism and market fundamentalism.
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In all three cases, the pattern is the same. There is the eternal Truth that never varies -- the will of God, the principles of the Founding Fathers, the so-called laws of the free market. There are the scriptures which explain the eternal truths -- the King James Bible, in the case of religious fundamentalism, the Constitution or the Federalist Papers, in the case of constitutional fundamentalism, and Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in the case of market fundamentalism . . .
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History, to the fundamentalist mind, is a story of original perfection, followed by betrayal and restoration. The early Christian church was perfect; it was corrupted and betrayed by medieval Catholicism; and it was restored to its original purity by radical Protestant reformers. In the same way, the American constitution was not a flawed compromise among rival states and factions, to be improved by later amendment, but a document of superhuman wisdom, created in a kind of secular Pentecost at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.
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Modern American market fundamentalism, too, is recognizably modeled on the fundamentalist Protestant version of church history . . . . the market fundamentalists pretend that the U.S. was governed by the laws of the market until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal replaced capitalism with socialism . . .
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Back when conservatism was orthodox and traditional, rather than fundamentalist and counter-revolutionary, conservatives could engage in friendly debates with liberals, and minds on both sides could now and then be changed. But if your sect alone understands the True Religion and the True Constitution and the Laws of the Market, then there is no point in debate. All those who disagree with you are heretics, to be defeated, whether or not they are converted.
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The era of triple fundamentalism on the American right is bound to come to an end. Sooner or later, dogmatism and reality will collide, and it is not reality that will crumple like tinfoil. The only question is how much damage will be done to the American polity before the revolution of the saints fizzles out.
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As I've noted often before, the extreme fundamentalism that we are seeing suggests to me severe emotional and psychological issues on the part of adherents who are absolutely terrified of (i) having to exercise independent thought and analysis and (ii) having their house of cards religious beliefs exposed as lies. This mental illness if you will makes members of the far right perfect victims for demagogues both in the pulpit and in Congress.

More Wednesday Male Beauty

Ninth Circuit Finally Halts DADT Enforcement

Better late than never as the saying goes. Today, the U. S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the stay that it had imposed to block the world wide injunction that was issued by U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States which blocked enforcement of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Frankly, the stay should never have been issued in my opinion. The immediate result is that the U. S. military must immediately cease enforcement of DADT while the wait continues for the Department of Defense and the White House to deliver the certifications needed to finally repeal DADT. The order lifting the stay can be found here. No doubt the Christo-fascists will have yet another conniption fit and whine about judicial tyranny. Metro Weekly has coverage on this development. Here are highlights:
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In an order issued by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips's judgment halting the worldwide enforcement of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as a result of her decision in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States has been put back in effect.
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DADT cannot be enforced, per the order, unless the government gets a stay of the order from either the full Ninth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court pending an appeal of today's decision.
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The three-judge panel -- Judges Alex Kozinski, Kim Wardlaw and Richard Paez -- decided to lift the appellate court's earlier stay of Phillips's order pending the appeal of the LCR case because, the judges write, "The circumstances and balance of hardships have changed, and appellants/cross-appellees can no longer satisfy the demanding standard for issuance of a stay."
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Among the circumstances cited by the court are the July 1 filing in Karen Golinski's federal case seeking health insurance benefits for her wife and the related earlier Feb. 23 letter from Attorney General Eric Holder declaring that he and President Barack Obama had decided that heightened scrutiny applies to classifications -- such as DADT.
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The judges also note that "the process of repealing Section 654 [-- the DADT law --] is well underway, and the preponderance of the armed forces are expected to have been trained by mid-summer." Smith echoed this fact, writing to Metro Weekly, "[I]mplementation of the DADT repeal voted by the Congress and signed in to law by the President last December is proceeding smoothly, is well underway, and certification is just weeks away."
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In addition to lifting the stay, the Ninth Circuit set arguments on the appeal of the merits of the LCR case itself -- as opposed to the stay of Phillips's order pending the appeal, which was what the judges altered today -- for the week of Aug. 29. White House and Justice Department spokespersons did not respond to requests for comment.

Michele and Marcus Bachmann - More and More Questions

The questions about Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and the extremist anti-gay views she shares with her husband, Marcus Bachmann, continue to multiply. Marcus Bachmann markets himself as a psychologist who provides "Christian counseling" at his practice, Bachmann & Associates. The Washington Post did a lengthy piece on July 6, 2011, on both Bachmann's history of anti-gay extremism and their joined at the hip mentality of opposing any and all civil rights for LGBT Americans. Pam Spaulding chimed into the mix a post raising serious ethical issues that seem to surround Marcus Bachmann's "Christian Counseling" practice in Lake Elmo and Burnsville, Minnesota. Adding even more fuel to the fire is Think Progress' story of Michelle Bachmann's 2004 endorsement of Focus on the Families utterly bogus and, in the view of the American Psychological Association's ("APA") view, unethical ex-gay ministry, Love Wins Out. While both Bachmann's are dodging questions on whether Bachmann & Associates offers ex-gay "reparative therapy" a lot of questions exist as to (1) the nature of Marcus Bachmann's credentials and (2) how he operates his practice without being licensed. A perusal of the Minnesota Revised Statutes reveals that state licensing is required for (1) psychologists, (2) marriage and family therapists, and (3) professional counselors. Yet, by all reports Marcus Bachmann holds no license. The obvious questions are how and why? Is this the type of "expert" Michele Bachmann would utilize were she to be elected to high office?

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But Bachmann's lack of a license to practice isn't the only irregularity surrounding Marcus Bachmann professional qualifications. He apparently prefers to be referred to as "Dr. Bachmann." Coincidentally, from my years of following "family values" organizations, affixing "Dr." in front a supposed "expert's" name is a favored tactic to add credibility. The Post story and others indicate that Bachmann received his PhD from Union Graduate Institute in Ohio. While it's an apparently legally created institution, it's doctoral program in Psychology is NOT accredited by the APA which means its degree holders cannot be licensed in a number of states. Moreover, it specializes in limited residence and distance learning programs. That's right, it is NOT a traditional university offering typical doctoral education program.
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Given these unanswered questions about Marcus Bachmann's practice and his unlicensed status, these thoughts raised in Pam Spaulding's post are most relevant:
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Someone should publicly ask him to provide a copy of the informed consent that he has patients seeking to undergo "ex-gay" therapy sign. Informed consent is a legal procedure to ensure that a patient or client knows all of the risks and costs involved in a treatment. The elements of informed consents include informing the client of the nature of the treatment, possible alternative treatments, and the potential risks and benefits of the treatment.
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For ex-gay therapy, the informed consent should tell a patient that "ex-gay" therapy is not proven, is considered "experimental", is not supported by research, that no medical or mental health association endorses it, that it could have harmful side effects including depression and suicidal ideation, and that change to heterosexuality is not likely. A good informed consent should also list alternative treatments and options, including learning to live life as a celibate homosexual or seeking gay affirmative therapy.
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A good informed consent would inform a potential client that she/he could spend years and tens of thousands of dollars seeking "change" but would most likely continue to experience homosexual attractions for the rest of his/her life.
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As for specifics of Michele and Marcus Bachmann's virulent anti-gay track records, here are highlights from the Washington Post story:
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Michele Bachmann has called gay marriage “probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, 30 years.” In 2005, she ran screaming from a bathroom at a constituent forum, claiming that a lesbian had attempted to keep her there against her will. (The woman said she was merely questioning Bachmann about her position on gay marriage.) As a state senator, she was seen crouching behind hedges to observe a gay rights rally. (She has explained that she was checking the turnout.) Dr. Bachmann’s views on homosexuality have likewise earned him the ire of gay activists and liberal critics.
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The Bachmann campaign declined to specifically address whether the couple’s clinic, set back amid serene ponds in an office park gauzy with floating dandelion seeds, engages in the practice of reparative therapy.
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Both Bachmanns have warned that a greater acceptance of homosexuality could have grave social consequences. . . . In Dr. Bachmann’s interview with Point of View talk radio in 2010, he said that parents and authority figures have a responsibility not to allow homosexual feelings “to move into action steps” and warned that the rate of homosexuality in public schools would increase if it became tolerated with “full, wide-open doors.” Both Bachmanns have been supportive of Janet Boynes, the author of “Called Out: A Former Lesbian’s Discovery of Freedom.”
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Think Progress adds this to the already disturbing picture of this frightening couple:
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In 2004, as ex-gay proponents “Love Won Out” prepared to hold their annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota for those “struggling with unwanted homosexuality,” Bachmann not only lent a quote for the group’s press release but also “opened the conference with a greeting and blessing.”
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Yes, criticism of Bachmann and her husband may rally the delusional elements of the GOP base to rally to he cause. However, it is critical that moderates and independents realize just how crazy and extreme Bachmann and her husband are in the beliefs and policy towards civil rights for all citizens.

Wednesday Male Beauty

Has the GOP Ceased to Be Normal?

The caption of this post is the question that David Brooks - hardly a flaming liberal by any definition - ask in a op-ed in the New York Times. Brooks takes a good look at the extremism and utter disregard for facts and/or the consequences of the fanaticism that are the hallmarks of a political party that once prided itself on reason and deliberative decision making. Many old school Republicans would be horrified to see what they party has become under the puppet strings of religious extremists, Tea Party demagogues and a leadership that doesn't give a damn about the good of the country. Yes, there are still a few sane voices to be heard, but I truly do not know how they can bring the party back to the world of the rational world where objective facts matter. Here are highlights from Brooks' column:
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If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.
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A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.
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This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers. But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no. The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities.
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The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor. The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name.
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Over the past week, Democrats have stopped making concessions. They are coming to the conclusion that if the Republicans are fanatics then they better be fanatics, too. The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.
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If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right.

Will Obama's Failure to Demand a Reckoning On the Part of Wall Street Doom His Re-election?

Since his departure, I've missed Frank Rich's column's in the New York Time. Now, in New York Magazine Rich has another must read column that takes Barack Obama to task for his refusal/failure to demand consequences from those who drove the USA into the Great Recessions through their greed and wanton carelessness: Wall Street and the financial industry. These interests have been largely bailed out at taxpayer expense, have shared little or nothing with homeowners and average Americans, and are among those reaping higher and higher incomes while the rest of us face income declines or outright unemployment. I agree with Rich's analysis. Sadly, I do not believe that Obama has the backbone to do what is needed and to properly use the pulpit of the presidency to take on the disingenuous GOP. Here are some highlights:

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What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they “are burnt and purged away.”
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As the indefatigable Matt Taibbi has tabulated, law enforcement on Obama’s watch rounded up 393,000 illegal immigrants last year and zero bankers. The Justice Department’s bally­hooed Operation Broken Trust has broken still more trust by chasing mainly low-echelon, one-off Madoff wannabes.
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Those in executive suites at the top of that chain have long since fled the scene with the proceeds, while bleeding shareholders, investors, homeowners, and ­cashiered employees were left with the bills. . . . . Rather than purge the crash’s crimes, Wall Street’s leaders are sticking to their alibi: Everyone was guilty of fomenting this “perfect storm,” and so no one is. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever, and ­Masters of the Universe swagger is back.
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As good times roar back for corporate America, it’s bad enough that CEOs are collectively sitting on some $1.9 trillion in cash—much of it parked out of the IRS’s reach overseas—instead of hiring. . . . But what’s most galling is how many of these executives are sore winners, crying all the way to Palm Beach while raking in record profits and paying some of the lowest tax rates over the past 50 years.
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Obama can win reelection without carrying 10021 or Greenwich in any case. The bigger political problem is that a far larger share of the American electorate views him as a tool of the very fat-cat elite that despises him. Given Obama’s humble background, his history as a mostly liberal Democrat, and his famous résumé as a community organizer, this would also seem a reach. But the president has no one to blame but himself for the caricature.
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He stocked his administration with brilliant personnel linked to the bubble: liberals, and especially Ivy League liberals. Nearly three years on, they have taken a toll both on the White House’s image and its policies. Obama arrives at his reelection campaign not merely with a weak performance on Wall Street crime enforcement and reform but also with a scattershot record (at best) of focusing on the main concern of Main Street: joblessness.
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His failure to push back against the financial sector, sparing it any responsibility for the economy it tanked, empowered it to roll over his agenda with its own. He has come across as favoring the financial elite over the stranded middle class even if, in his heart of hearts, he does not.
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By failing to address that populist anger, Obama gave his enemies the opening to co-opt it and turn it against him. Which the tea party did, dishonestly but brilliantly, misrepresenting Obama’s health-care-reform crusade as yet another attempt by the elites to screw the taxpayer. (The Democrats haplessly reinforced the charge with marathon behind-the-scenes negotiations with insurance and pharmaceutical-­industry operatives.)
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Obama is the chief executive. It’s his fault, no one else’s, that he seems diffident about the unemployed. Each time there’s a jolt in the jobless numbers, he and his surrogates compound that profile by farcically reshuffling the same clichés, from “stuck in a ditch” to “headwinds” (first used by Geithner in March 2009—retire it already!) to “bumps in the road.”
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There’s not much Obama can do to alter the economy by 2012, given the debt-ceiling fight, the long campaign, and nihilistic Capitol Hill antagonists opposed to any government spending that might create jobs and, by extension, help Obama keep his own. But the central question before the nation couldn’t be clearer: Who pays? The taxpayers bailed out the elite; now it’s the elite’s turn to return the favor. Massive cuts to the safety net combined with scant sacrifice from those at the top is wrong ethically and politically. It is, in the truest sense, un-American. . . . You have to wonder why he [Obama] isn’t seizing the moment to articulate and fight for the big picture instead of playing a lose-lose game of rope-a-dope with the Republicans on their budgetary turf.
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To differentiate himself from the discredited Establishment, he will have to mount the fight he has ducked for the past three years. The alternative is a failure of historic proportions. Those who gamed the economy to near devastation—so much so that the nation turned to an untried young leader in desperation and in hope—would once again inherit the Earth. Unless and until there’s a purging of the crimes that brought our president to his unlikely Inauguration Day, much more in America than the second term of his administration will be at stake.