Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

How the Knights of Columbus Bankrolls Extremism

For the record, I am a former member of the Knights of Columbus ("K of C") and once was a member of its 4th Degree (the highest level).  That all changed when I came out and left the anti-gay Roman Catholic Church.  But what clinched my exiting from the K of C was the organization's refusal to demand that members of the Church hierarchy who aid and abetted predatory priests and who threatened and intimidated victims and their families be disciplined.  Rather, the K of C leadership had its collective nose so far up the ample asses of the hierarchy, its a wonder they did not smother.  All of this is in stark contrast to the goals and motivations that were behind the K of C's founding: to aid widows and families and to provide a social organizations for immigrants facing discrimination. Now, the K of C has gone on to bankroll discrimination and other right wing causes as examined by a piece in Think Progress.  Here are some article highlights:

In 1882, a group of Catholic men gathered together by New Haven, CT pastor Father Michael J. McGivney incorporated an organization to provide for the families of its deceased members. More than 125 years later, the Knights of Columbus boasts of more than 1.8 million members and of “donating more than $167.5 million to charitable needs and projects” in 2012. Among its members: presidential 2016 hopeful Jeb Bush (R), Speaker of the House John Boehner (R), and Justice Samuel Alito.

But while much of the Knights’ charitable efforts in recent years have supported purely altruistic causes such as the Special Olympics and Habitat for Humanity, millions of their charitable dollars have funded a very socially conservative ideological agenda: opposing abortion, LGBT rights, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and pornography, while supporting public funding for religious organizations. 

The Knights also operate a legally-separate but affiliated charitable arm called the Knights of Columbus Charities Inc. That tax-exempt non-profit organization made about 57 percent of its annual grants in 2013 to efforts to “promote matters affective life family, marriage and similar priorities in building a culture of life.” More than $1 million of that went to support “Crisis Pregnancy Centers,” a network of facilities that dissuade women from choosing to terminate their pregnancies, often by sharing misinformation.

Beyond just the “culture of life” initiatives, the Knights of Columbus have also spent a large sum of money on other controversial political issues. 

With at least $250,000 in contributions since 2010, the Knights of Columbus are among the most generous donors to Morality in Media, likely the nation’s loudest voice against adult pornography, and its efforts to curb “the ravages of the pornography pandemic in America.”

And since 2010, the Knights of Columbus have given at least $100,000 in support of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies — the nation’s leading force for a more conservative judiciary . . . 

[T]he Knights of Columbus also sent more than $625,000 to another conservative legal group, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. . . . . In addition to its work against the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate and against LGBT rights, Becket has worked to erode the separation of church and state required by the First Amendment. This has included defending prayer at government functions, religious symbols in public spaces, and public funding for religious schools.

the group’s annual resolutions continue to endorse efforts to make sure governments at all levels embrace a “definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.”

And they followed their words with money. In 2012, the national organization sent $450,000 to the ballot committee pushing to block Maryland’s marriage equality legislation, $300,000 to block marriage equality in Washington, $100,000 to oppose same-sex marriage in Maine, and $250,000 to support a proposed constitutional ban in Minnesota. All four efforts were unsuccessful. The national group and local chapters also contributed more than $1.3 million in 2008 toward the passage of California’s Proposition 8, $100,000 to Arizona’s 2008 constitutional amendment, and $100,000 to Kansas’ 2005 amendment effort.

Although most Catholics in the United States support marriage equality,” it concluded, “the best known U. S. Catholic fraternal organization has used its considerable financial strength and its political connections to mount aggressive campaigns against legislation that would permit lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to be treated equally under the law.”

Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at People For the American Way who follows the organization, told ThinkProgress the group is not being transparent about its aims: “Many Catholic parishioners who support the Knights of Columbus might be surprised and dismayed to know that the money they gave at the pancake breakfast is being used to deny equality to their LGBT friends and family,” he observed. “The Knights of Columbus do a lot of good work. Unfortunately, they also contribute millions to culture war battles against LGBT equality and reproductive choice.”

I suspect that today's K of C is not exactly what its founder had in mind back in 1882.

Is Jim Webb The Real Threat to Hillary Clinton?

While the Republican field of would be 2016 presidential nominees contains a plethora of clown car candidates (think Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, etc.), on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has few would be challengers.  Efforts to recruit Elizabeth Warren by the progressive wing of the Democrat Party continue to elicit statements that Warren is not running.  The only other would be contender is former Virginia Senator Jim Webb who, unlike Warren, has said he is contemplating a run for the presidential nomination.  A column in the New York Times maintains that Webb, not Warren, is the real threat to Hillary.  Here are column excerpts:

THE conventional wisdom is that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be almost impossible to dislodge from the Democratic presidential nomination and that even if she does encounter some hiccups, they will come from her left flank on economic policy. But if Mrs. Clinton runs, she may face a serious and very different threat: her own foreign policy record. While she can pretty much split the difference with any primary opponents on economic policy, the divisions over foreign affairs could be a lot harder to paper over for Mrs. Clinton, who has been tacking to the right on Iran, Syria and Russia in anticipation of Republican assaults during the general election.

This is why it isn’t really the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren who should worry the Clinton camp. It’s the former Virginia senator Jim Webb, a Vietnam War hero, former secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, novelist and opponent of endless wars in the Middle East. Late last month, Mr. Webb formed an exploratory committee.

[S]he would find him much more complex than dealing with liberals. He’s not a liberal, but a lot of what he says might appeal to liberals. He does not get carried away by humanitarian intervention.”

Mr. Webb’s attacks on free trade and economic elites, coupled with a call for America to come home again, might well prove a potent combination in the early primaries, attracting antiwar progressives as well as conservative-minded Southern white men whom he believes the party can win back. His credo is as simple as it is persuasive: Rather than squander its power and resources abroad, America should rebuild.

Unlike Mrs. Clinton, who continues to struggle to explain her vote for the Iraq war, Mr. Webb publicly attacked the George W. Bush administration in 2002, presciently asking, “Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years?” As a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees he also castigated the Obama administration for its intervention in Libya in 2011. He was right. It’s a move that has boomeranged, creating further instability and emboldening jihadists across the region.

In contrast to Mrs. Clinton, who has gotten into hot water for trying to retroactively amend her views and record, Mr. Webb did not arrive at these beliefs casually or opportunistically. As his recent memoir, “I Heard My Country Calling,” makes clear, his opposition to ventures abroad is as much viscerally emotional as intellectual. Growing up as a self-described military brat, he spent his formative years in Britain, where he saw firsthand the effects of loss of empire and the devastation wrought by World War II. “Britain was bled out and spent out,” he writes. “They understood the great price of the recent wars in a much more sobering way than did most Americans.”

Whether Mr. Webb will attempt to begin a successful maverick campaign is an open question. But he is an eloquent and forthright speaker whose foreign policy experience would make it difficult for Mrs. Clinton to paint him as an isolationist or a novice who will leave America open to attack, as she attempted to do to Mr. Obama during the 2008 primaries. On the contrary, it’s Mrs. Clinton whose interventionist foreign policy record leaves her politically vulnerable.

More Monday Male Beauty

UK Transgender RAF Pilot Talks of Prince William's Support

The British royal family isn't know for its progressive position on social views although Prince Harry and his brother, Prince William seem to be changing that staid, conservative image.  Perhaps it's part of their mother's legacy, but on issues involving gay rights, both princes seem to be light years ahead of the grand mother, Queen Elizabeth II who is becoming more gay friendly.  In a recent piece in The Daily Mail, Flight Lieutenant Ayla Holdom, Great Britain's first transgender military pilot (pictured above), talks about the support she received from prince William as she was transitioning.  Here are highlights:

Flt Lieut Holdom, 34, is a decorated RAF officer who is Britain’s first and only openly transgender military pilot. She has been, she says, ‘one of the boys as both a man and a woman’. 

Among the colleagues she told in a series of emotionally gruelling one-on-one meetings was Prince William, who was at the time a fellow co-pilot within the tight-knit team of 20 at RAF Valley.

He showed support and understanding. The Royal Wedding in 2011 was one of Flt Lieut Holdom’s first work-related outings after transition. She attended as a woman, accompanied by her wife Wren, a doctor with whom she now lives in a lesbian relationship.

‘All my RAF colleagues were brilliant,’ she says. ‘I think they were surprised because I was pretty adept at pretending to be a man. I walked macho, I sat macho, I worked out hard and I like a bit of banter.

‘But when I came back as a woman there was complete acceptance and empathy. Even old and bold warrant officers who had grown up in the days when people like me would have been taken behind the bike sheds for a kicking, came to congratulate me.

She joined RAF Valley in 2007 and was fully operational by the end of 2009, co-piloting a Sea King – the same role as Prince William – along with a pilot, a winchman and a radar operator. Today she works 24-hour shifts responding to calls from the coastguard, mountain rescue teams and the three emergency services.

 The process of transition is over now, although it took two years, three major operations and several other procedures to achieve.  ‘I did as little as possible because I wanted to stay operationally fit and healthy, to remain a fully functioning military pilot throughout, she says.

One has to wonder when the Christofascists will admit that they have lost their anti-gay jihad.  When the heir to the British throne displays support and acceptance and when former conservative bastions such as the Hampton Yacht Club and the James River Country Club accept same sex married couples as members, the culture wars are truly over but for (i) those who want to fleece the ignorant and gullible for a while longer and, of course, (ii) Republican politicians who happily prostitute themselves to the Christofascists in a manner that would embarrassed a tawdry whore. 

Prince William

Bill to Bar "Ex-Gay" Therapy Introduced in Virginia General Assembly

Legislation has been enacted in California, New Jersey and most recently, the District of Columbia which makes it illegal for licensed therapists to subject minors to "ex-gay" therapy - the voodoo/ witch doctor -like "therapy" lauded by Christofascists and charlatans - that claims the gays can become heterosexual.  As noted before on this blog, the "ex-gay" myth is a key component in the Christofascist agenda to deny LGBT citizens civil rights protections and serves as a talking point to support the lie that sexual orientation is a "choice" and, therefore, undeserving of legal protections.  The bill introduced by Delegate Hope would add a provision to Chapter 24 of Title54.1 of the Code of Virginia.  The proposed amendment reads as follows:

§ 54.1-2409.5. Sexual orientation change efforts prohibited.

No person licensed in accordance with the provisions of this subtitle shall engage in sexual orientation change efforts with any person under 18 years of age.  Any sexual orientation change efforts with a person under 18 years of age engaged in by a provider licensed in accordance with the  provisions of this subtitle shall constitute unprofessional conduct and shall constitute grounds for disciplinary action by the appropriate health regulatory board within the Department of Health  Professions.  For the purpose of this section, "sexual orientation change efforts" includes the provision of treatment,  interventions, counseling, or services intended to change a person's sexual orientation, gender  identity, or gender expressions.  "Sexual orientation change efforts" does not include treatment, interventions, counseling, or services provided to persons seeking to transition from one gender to another or that provide acceptance, social support, and identity exploration and development.

It goes without saying that Victoria Cobb and the hate merchants at The Family Foundation ("TFF") will oppose this bill with tooth and claw.  It also goes without saying that TFF will demand that its tawdry political whores in the Republican Party of Virginia vote against this bill.  The good news nonetheless is that the bill will help to generate media coverage as to the fraudulent nature of "ex-gay" therapy and its harmful effects.   it will also help expose Victoria Cobb and TFF for the foul liars that they are. 

Monday Morning Male Beauty

Religion’s Smart-People Problem

This blog has noted frequently that religion's best friend and most fertile ground is an ignorant, uneducated populous.  Hence why conservative Christianity's main growth area is the most backward regions of Africa.  The converse is that well-educated people are more likely to steer clear of religion all together.  A piece in Salon looks at religion's problem with smart people (or at least those not willing to use religion to enrich themselves financially or politically).  Here are excerpts:

Should you believe in a God? Not according to most academic philosophers. A comprehensive survey revealed that only about 14 percent of English speaking professional philosophers are theists.  As for what little religious belief remains among their colleagues, most professional philosophers regard it as a strange aberration among otherwise intelligent people. Among scientists the situation is much the same. Surveys of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, composed of the most prestigious scientists in the world, show that religious belief among them is practically nonexistent, about 7 percent.

Now nothing definitely follows about the truth of a belief from what the majority of philosophers or scientists think. But such facts might cause believers discomfort. There has been a dramatic change in the last few centuries in the proportion of believers among the highly educated in the Western world. In the European Middle Ages belief in a God was ubiquitous, while today it is rare among the intelligentsia. This change occurred primarily because of the rise of modern science and a consensus among philosophers that arguments for the existence of gods, souls, afterlife and the like were unconvincing. Still, despite the view of professional philosophers and world-class scientists, religious beliefs have a universal appeal. What explains this?

What mechanisms caused the mind to evolve toward religious beliefs and practices?

Today there are two basic explanations offered. One says that religion evolved by natural selection—religion is an adaptation that provides an evolutionary advantage. For example religion may have evolved to enhance social cohesion and cooperation—it may have helped groups survive. The other explanation claims that religious beliefs and practices arose as byproducts of other adaptive traits. For example, intelligence is an adaptation that aids survival. Yet it also forms causal narratives for natural occurrences and postulates the existence of other minds.

In addition to the biological basis for religious belief, there are environmental explanations. It is self-evident from the fact that religions are predominant in certain geographical areas but not others, that birthplace strongly influences religious belief. This suggests that people’s religious beliefs are, in large part, accidents of birth. Besides cultural influences there is the family; the best predictor of people’s religious beliefs in individuals is the religiosity of their parents. There are also social factors effecting religious belief. For example, a significant body of scientific evidence suggests that popular religion results from social dysfunction. Religion may be a coping mechanism for the stress caused by the lack of a good social safety net—hence the vast disparity between religious belief in Western Europe and the United States.

There is also a strong correlation between religious belief and various measures of social dysfunction including homicides, the proportion of people incarcerated, infant mortality, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births, abortions, corruption, income inequality and more. While no causal relationship has been established, a United Nations list of the 20 best countries to live in shows the least religious nations generally at the top.

The simplest answer is that people believe what they want to, what they find comforting, not what the evidence supports: In general, people don’t want to know; they want to believe. This best summarizes why people tend to believe.

Why, then, do some highly educated people believe religious claims? First, smart persons are good at defending ideas that they originally believed for non-smart reasons. They want to believe something, say for emotional reasons, and they then become adept at defending those beliefs. No rational person would say there is more evidence for creation science than biological evolution, but the former satisfies some psychological need for many that the latter does not.  

Second, the proclamations of educated believers are not always to be taken at face value. Many don’t believe religious claims but think them useful. They fear that in their absence others will lose a basis for hope, morality or meaning.

Our sophisticated believers may be manipulating, using religion as a mechanism of social control, as Gibbon noted long ago: “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosophers as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” Consider the so-called religiosity of many contemporary politicians, whose actions belie the claim that they really believe the precepts of the religions to which they supposedly ascribe.

Although there are many educated religious believers, including some philosophers and scientists, religious belief declines with educational attainment, particularly with scientific education. Studies also show that religious belief declines among those with higher IQs. Hawking, Dennett and Dawkins are not outliers, and neither is Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.

If we combine reasonable explanations of the origin of religious beliefs and the small amount of belief among the intelligentsia with the problematic nature of beliefs in gods, souls, afterlives or supernatural phenomena generally, we can conclude that (supernatural) religious beliefs are probably false. And we should remember that the burden of proof is not on the disbeliever to demonstrate there are no gods, but on believers to demonstrate that there are.  . . . . If the believer can’t provide evidence for a god’s existence, then I have no reason to believe in gods.

Why is all this important? Because human beings need their childhood to end; they need to face life with all its bleakness and beauty, its lust and  its love, its war and its peace. They need to make the world better. No one else will.

Christians More Supportive of Torture

I've noted before how conservative Christians in America seem to have an agenda that is 180 degrees the opposite of the Gospel message. Besides seeking to amass their own riches rather than care for the poor and the hungry, seeking to deprive the least fortunate of health care coverage, a new study shows that they also support the use of torture more than non-religious Americans.  It would seem that it's time for them to drop the Christian label and perhaps "Kochists" or "Kochians" or some other  name that clearly shows the degree to which their agenda is the antithesis of the supposed message of Christ.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the support of torture among the "godly folks.'  Here are highlights:

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that Americans, by a 59-31% margin, believe that CIA “treatment of suspected terrorists” in detention was justified.

[T]he gap between torture supporters and opponents widens between voters who are Christian and those who are not religious. Just 39% of white evangelicals believe the CIA’s treatment of detainees amounted to torture, with 53% of white non-evangelical Protestants and 45% of white Catholics agreeing with that statement. Among the non-religious, though, 72% said the treatment amounted to torture.

Sixty nine percent of white evangelicals believe the CIA treatment was justified, compared to just 20% who said it was not. (Those numbers, incidentally, roughly mirror the breakdown of Republican versus Democratic voters among white evangelicals.) A full three-quarters (75%) of white non-evangelical Protestants outnumber the 22% of their brethren in saying CIA treatment was justified. White Catholics believe the treatment was justified by a 66-23% margin.

But a majority of non-religious adults, 53%, believe the CIA actions were not justified, with 41% of the non-religious saying the treatment was justified.

[I]n all three of these Christian groups believed the torture “produced important information that could not have been obtained any other way,” even though the Senate report debunked that claim.

[I]t’s a striking look at the way religion (or lack thereof) informs people’s views on legal and moral questions.

The take away?  If you are seeking kindness and mercy, don't look to conservative Christians for it.  Hypocrisy in huge doses, yes, mercy and decency, no.  

Barack Obama - Operation Political Revenge

With the Christofascists/Tea Party loons still shrieking over Obamacare (which is successfully lowering the number of uninsured Americans), wailing over Obama's executive order on immigration and now traumatized by Obama's action on normalizing relations with Cuba, for a lame duck president, Barack Obama has certainly stirred the political pot and caused upheaval among his political enemies.  Frankly, it is fun to watch as the party of "No" ponders how to respond beyond merely stamping its collective feet and emitting plumes of spittle.  A piece in Politico looks at how Obama has turned the tables on his foes.  Here are excerpts:

It’s taken Obama – who spuriously predicted the 2012 election would break the “fever” of partisan gridlock – two miserable years to approach the level of presidential liberation he believes he earned that night. Yet there was always something slightly off about the idea that Obama would do better without a campaign in his future. The truth, according to current and former aides, is that the absence of a presidential election – the natural Obama habitat – actually contributed to the ennui and frustration that has hallmarked most of his second term.

Obama’s turnaround in recent weeks – he’s seized the offensive with a series of controversial executive actions and challenges to leaders in his own party on the budget — can be attributed to a fundamental change in his political mindset, according to current and former aides. He’s gone from thinking of himself as a sitting (lame) duck, they tell me, to a president diving headlong into what amounts to a final campaign – this one to preserve his legacy, add policy points to the scoreboard, and – last but definitely not least – to inflict the same kind of punishment on his newly empowered Republican enemies, who delighted in tormenting him when he was on top.

Obama, a political counterpuncher who often needs a slap in the face to wake up, got a gut-shot in November. The Democrats’ staggering loss in the midterms – like his disastrous performance in the first presidential debate against Mitt Romney in 2012 – seems to have jolted him to the realization that he’ll have to act boldly to preserve what he’d assumed was a settled legacy. (The Supreme Court’s decision to scrutinize the funding mechanism of the Affordable Care Act, in particular, has sent a shudder through the West Wing and provided an unexpected challenge from another hostile branch of government.)

[H]e can legitimately describe himself as an underdog. He feels at liberty to address any topic he chooses on his own terms — race, for instance — and, most importantly, he’s increasingly untethered from what he views as a petty, geriatric Democratic establishment he originally crusaded against as a presidential candidate in 2007.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says Obama’s newly aggressive stance – exemplified by his unilateral moves on immigration and Cuba – poses an early challenge to new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and to House Speaker John Boehner, who are trying to re-shape the GOP into a party that can actually run a government. “Mitch and Boehner have to deal with the fact that Obama is becoming bolder and more radical,” Gingrich told me a few days before Obama announced his move to normalize relations with Cuba.

Obama says he’s just taking action to deal with fundamental problems that a gridlocked, hopelessly partisan Congress won’t address. His executive action on immigration and his Cuba move this week represent only the highest-profile unilateral steps he’s taken this year. Under the direction of White House Counselor John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff who has spurred the president to use executive power, Obama has issued dozens of orders and lower-profile memoranda redefining U.S. policies on emissions and wilderness area protections, created a new class of retirement accounts for low-income workers, capped student loan payments and toughened some firearms background checks.

But the truth of the matter is that Obama’s very good 2014 could turn into a check-mated 2015. The House isn’t likely to pass anything significant – or veto-proof – on immigration, but Republicans can, and likely will, block his Cuba policy by upholding the embargo and refusing to fund line items like the cost of building and staffing an embassy in Havana. “Congress is going to be a very different place than it was during the last few weeks if this year — there are still a lot of things that are on the president’s list that has go through Congress,” says former Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. “The question for the White House is not ‘What?’ it’s ‘How?’ … There’s two lists: The list of things you have to convince others to do and the list of things you can do without other people. They are going through the last list first.”