The Unspoken Third Party

“I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.” - Barry Goldwater

Bill Pendergast writes regarding Michelle Bachman and the emergence of the Religious Right as a de-facto political organization.

    Over the past thirty years, the evangelical Christianity of the right has been organized into a discrete/particular political machine--and this fact has eluded the overwhelming majority of our professional political commentators. And the fact is that this machine (and its umbrella organization that directs it, the Council for National Policy) has successfully evaded regular media coverage of its operations. That has made this political machine incredibly powerful.

I think he's right in pointing out that it's been long, long overlooked as an effective third party. I think it's become much more dangerous since conservatism was left bereft of the wisdom of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr. But I note at the same time that this all does sound a little familiar.

H.L. Mencken writes (The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 13, 1925)

 The Book of Revelation has all the authority, in these theological uplands, of military orders in time of war. The people turn to it for light upon all their problems, spiritual and secular. If a text were found in it denouncing the Anti-Evolution law, then the Anti-Evolution law would become infamous overnight. But so far the exegetes who roar and snuffle in the town have found no such text. Instead they have found only blazing ratifications and reinforcements of Genesis. Darwin is the devil with seven tails and nine horns. Scopes, though he is disguised by flannel pantaloons and a Beta Theta Pi haircut, is the harlot of Babylon. Darrow is Beelzebub in person and Malone is the Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm.


I have hitherto hinted an Episcopalian down here in the coca-cola belt is regarded as an atheist. It sounds like one of the lies that journalists tell, but it is really an understatement of the facts. Even a Methodist, by Rhea county standards, is one a bit debauched by pride of intellect. It is the four Methodists on the jury who are expected to hold out for giving Scopes Christian burial after he is hanged. They all made it plain, when they were examined, that they were free-thinking and independent men, and not to be run amuck by the superstitions of the lowly. One actually confessed that he seldom read the Bible, though he hastened to add that he was familiar with its principles. The fellow had on a boiled shirt and a polka dot necktie. He sits somewhat apart. When Darrow withers to a cinder under the celestial blowpipe, this dubious Wesleyan, too, will lose a few hairs.

But others have been following these trends too. I've been a long time reader of Katherine Yurica,
 who has been warning about dominionist theology for years and years. I've written about Dominion (the idea that Christians should rule the nation, in order to conquer the world and bring forth a kingdom so that Jesus may return, the theology that is taught at the C-Street church
Heck, I've written about it a bit, most memorably and relevantly in The Spiders Behind Sara's Eyes. Now, that's not really a critique of their political goals as it is of their "will to power" from a viewpoint some would dismiss as "woo." Me, I think the word "evil" is a perfectly respectable word, and I take the utterly illliberal view that you will know it when you smell it.

Meanwhile, if there are people who's religious viewpoint makes it perfectly defensible to do anything whatsoever to gain power - lie, cheat, steal, foment war, manufacture consent, slander, steal elections - whatever it takes - then it's never a good idea to think of them as anything less dangerous than your own personal, direct, mortal enemy. Because... they are.

A Churchillian Fortitude

 

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Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in November 1942

William Rivers Pitt is having trouble finding a sense of measurable accomplishment after ten years of hard work in the front lines. I empathize and concur, to a degree. He starts out thus:

t r u t h o u t | Go:

"I've been writing about unbelievably bad news for more than a decade now, so when the New Year came around this time, I made up my mind to try and come up with something to write about that was optimistic, positive, more upbeat, or something."

But in the end he finally comes to this conclusion:

The Left has done some truly amazing things in the last ten years, things that took great effort, concentration, passion and will. The need for those qualities did not evaporate with the election of the "good guys." Indeed, those qualities are needed more than ever before.

In passing, he noted:

The Left has a reputation, partially deserved, for being a motley collection of scatterbrained, cause-of-the-week, ego junkies who never really get anything done. But I saw what the Left was able to do when confronted with the criminal ambitions of the Bush administration, and it didn't stop after the war got going. Groups sprung up in every corner of the country and kept the heat on until they made a difference. Whatever one may think about the Democratic Party today, there is no doubt the fortunes of that party were turned in 2006 and 2008 because of the tireless efforts of millions of people to push popular opinion and understanding away from the yawning precipice of national neoconservatism.

 Mr. Pitt, no movement of any sort has ever succeeded by internalizing the labels their enemies give them. I would say, further, that the spontanious, individually directed, cause-oriented and - yes - ego-driven activists, all loosely networked in spontainous communities, each understanding that such alliances are defined by the task at hand, and NOT definitive of some overarching "cause" they must ascribe to in order to be "permitted" the "privilidge" of joining a march, stuffing envelopes or writing a blog is precisely what has carried this day.

Sir, if you are a pessimist, I'm the greater one. And the fight has been longer and bloodier and more discouraging than you care to define. Personally, I mark the beginning of it with the election of Ronald Regan. And from that point, all that has happened has been pretty much what I expected, save not quite so immediately catastrophically as I had expected.

And this has been due to some very damn skillful guerrilla action, which would have certainly have been defeated had the counter-moves been expected.

Let us speak for a moment of the entire concept of asymmetrical warfare. The goal is not to "win" - it is to delay, to disrupt, to disaffect - to give the enemy time and space and conditions under which they will generate their own failure. It really is about "hearts and minds," folks. And the greatest part of the battle is getting the enemy to show their true selves, their genuine feelings and ultimate motivations.

It's been alleged that Ronald Regan was secretly a member of the John Birch Society. It's one of those easy allegations that is probably not in the least true - but it's also quite beside the point, because he certainly acted in ways and in collaboration with people who shared the core understandings and furthered the goals of the John Birch Society.

And we must also observe that there has been a concerted effort - from the eighties on - to place "stealth zealots" into public office, where they will vote and act in accordance to Dominionst Evangelical principles, without the slightest regard to the the goals they claim to be working toward. And we all know what this led to; the sort of preference for idiological purity over professional competence that gave us the Iraq war as it was and the aftermath of Katrina as it still is.

So, we have been fighting a guerrilla war against covert warriors - a covert mirror of the overt proxy wars fought in places such as Nicaragua and Columbia - where the real goal was not the liberation or freedom of the people, but who would control them in the name of what ideology. And gradually, one of the emergent prizes of the battle, a great and largely unrecognized victory, is that the "right" to control other people is not just something to be contensted, but is an idea that absolutely must be contested in it's own right. For when it's a fight between the left hand and the right hand, everyone in the middle gets screwed.

It's not just because the Right is wrong about having such a right - it's utterly wrong in asserting that it's even possible, and that the difference in outcome between what it's stated and sincerely held principles suggest and the outcomes that happen every time they are applied to a protesting population attests without exception - people do as they will, and at the very best, can be persuaded at great expense and pain to visibly conform in public, while quite likely doing something else in private that ultamately leads to far greater ills than those supposedly "cured" by whatever simplistic moralistic wild hair was induldged upon us.

I might easily cite Prohibition, a folly of the Left. Or arguably, the folly of The Great Society and the lunar landscapes and Stalinist Modern Projects left in it's wake. Oh, but their intentions were so noble!

Then there's the whole issue of Reproductive Choice, or the unanticipated fallout of "Abstinence Only" education, which has not affected teen pregnancy but has substantially contributed to the rise in sexually transmitted disease. 

But these bad outcomes are dismissed as being unimportant, the results of sins, an acceptable cost of upholding some nebulous and indefinable "principle."Apparently the Left in North America has learned it's lesson, that you can't force people to behave in ways they won't, even if it is for their own good - which it probably isn't.

The strength - or at least the great blessing - of the modern "Left" is that there IS no single defining ideology, and therefore the only thing that may unite "the left" is an agreement about particular circumstances, particular facts and particular problems that demand at the very least the cessation of old policies and perhaps some new, more pragmatic ones. The issue of Marajuana and the outcome of the whole Drug War is one conspicuous example illustrating some very strange bedfellows, from old and very Liberal hippies to Randian Libertarians to law enforcement professionals.

One thing is for sure, when you see old Communists putting aside their sectarian issues and marching together with Anarchists (their natural enemies) in concert with Liberal Christians, Union Activists, militant athiests, feminists, pro-choicers and environmental activists - people with extraordinarily divergent views and priorities - you can be reasonably certain that what they each see as being a problem from their various perspectives is INDEED a problem, and anyone who lumps them all together as "libtards" is not just ignorant of the issue, but is in fact likely some personification of the issue - or profiting from it.

Needless to say, the only way any large group of opposition to issues of the day can coelece and persist in the face of reality is by focusing on one particular commonality, while accepting as a given that some will be on the other side of the line on other issues, and that diversity is to be celebrated, rather than demonized.

And it's empowered by the Internet, which I think can be stated as being, arguably, on the front line of disorganized dissent and unlikely alliances since it's very inception and spread through Government and those bastions of Godless Liberalism - Universities.

A person who understands this has no difficulty with the ACLU or the Annenburg Foundation's Factcheck.org - but on the neoconservative/Dominionist Right - all must agree about everything, or they are apostates, while none within the tent may be criticised at all (save when they are cast into the Outer Darkeness.)

Now, one thing Mr. Pitt may or may not have noticed, but the opposition to a centrist consensus about certain "litmus test" issues held dear by the Right has become increasingly unhinged, it's arguments increasingly paranoid, it's reliance on conspiracy theory and outright lies becoming it's primary mode, it's online and print proponents becoming less and less capable of coherent argument. This is also a victory. You see, it is, as I said above, a war for the hearts and minds of people - in the United States, of course, but indeed within the Americas and the world as a whole.

And in the United States, we are now beginning to see the contents of the hearts and the quality of the minds shrieking that we must all comply with their paranoid and infintile dribblings.

Please Don't Call Me "Liberal" T-Shirt by webcarve
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There's yet much to be done - but one by one by one, we must take back the organizations and structures that they have polluted, the school boards, the charities, the political organizations, the precincts - and I don't just mean "along partisan lines." They need to be taken away from the crazy people, by sane people of all political and religious persuasions.

From what I see out there, from the near absence of intelligable voices from the Right - when it used to be the core of political intellect, councelling against emotionalism and populism as the greatest enemies of democratic representative republics - there are a whole lot of utterly disgusted Conservatives trying to pretend it will all go away.

Well, it won't. Not without your help, ladies and gentlemen. And if you fear being called a Liberal or a "RINO" for your stances - remember, you are being called that by people capable of calling Obama a Communist and a Nazi in the same paragraph. What they really mean is "poopy-head," and all it shows is that they are simply not capable of behaving as functional, responsible adults in public places.

Sir Winston Churchill by webcarve

On the Conservation of Common Sense

"When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye." - Barry Goldwater

It cannot be said, often or firmly enough, that the Republican party in the US and various authoritarian and socially-conservative movements are the antithesis of all that is genuine, useful and true about traditional Conservatism.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (February 16, 2009) - Evangelicalism vs Conservatism: "The critical definition of conservatism, by which I mean that political tradition Burke founded, rests on a distinction between theoretical and practical wisdom. Burke insisted that abstract ideas of the Truth should not be our guide in political thought and action. He foresaw what would happen when tradition ceded to absolutism in the French Revolution. He prized experience, the wisdom of time, and the adaptation of existing institutions to new social realities. So for conservatives, the core political virtue is practical reason and common sense, not ideology, theology or absolutism."

Of course, one then has to look to the values that do seem to motivate a social conservative these days. While such people often point to religious values, and generally specifically Christian values, it is quite difficult to see a connection between the "book values" cited and the words spoken.

But I do think another writer - again, damn it - has put their thumb squarely upon it. Joe Brewer, writing for Truthout:

Taxation as Conservatives Understand It

I've already alluded to an interesting metaphor that helps make sense of conservative thought about taxes, which I'll call Taxes Are a Burden to make it explicit. The understanding of taxation that follows from this metaphor can be seen in this story:

Hard-working Americans are in need of some tax relief. Years of mismanagement by tax-and-spend liberals have taken money out of the hands of working people and put it into bloated government programs that serve special interests. We need to cut taxes, return fiscal responsibility to government, and put money back in the hands of taxpayers who know best how to spend it.

This perspective is grounded in two beliefs: (1) The world is comprised of individuals; and (2) People are inherently bad and must learn right from wrong through self-discipline. I like to call this the "Me First" perspective because it assumes that people must help themselves before thinking about others. It can be summarized with the declaration, "You're on your own!" The Me First perspective assumes that any assistance from the community would be "coddling" or "spoiling" us. This claim is asserted as truth in the conservative worldview.

Taxation as Progressives Understand It

Progressives have a different understanding of taxation that can be expressed through a variety of metaphors: Taxes Are an Investment, Taxes Are Membership Dues, Taxes Are Pathways to Opportunity, Taxes Are Infrastructure and Taxes Are a Duty. (Read more about progressive taxation in "Progressive Taxation: Some Hidden Truths") Reasoning that emerges with these metaphors can be seen in this progressive story:

Our great nation was founded on a promise of protection and opportunity. Through our shared wealth, pooled together by taxation with representation, we have invested in the public infrastructure that makes possible the creation of new wealth. We have a sacred trust to keep this promise alive throughout our lifetimes, expand it as we are able, and pass it along to our children.

This perspective is grounded in the beliefs that (1) Individuals are influenced significantly by our communities; and (2) People are inherently good and benefit from cooperation with others. I like to call this the "People First" perspective because it assumes that people must help each other in order to enhance their ability to help themselves. It can be summarized with the declaration, "We're all in this together!" The People First perspective assumes that we are greater than the sum of our parts and that new opportunities emerge when we make wise investments with the common wealth we share.

Now, I consider myself Conservative by reflex, but, as with Andrew, that is in the foundational sense, the sense in which Burke spoke. Further - and this comes both from my readings and studies and from direct personal interactions with people of all stripes - is that interactions between human beings, for good and ill, depend upon our assumptions of good will upon the other party. As unfortunate as it is that this assumption of unworthy motives for any public good initiative, it at least has one aspect to it; due to the efforts of the proponents of this viewpoint and the effects that one might expect of any such mutual self-congratulation society, neither the cheerleaders nor those led have the least embarrassment in stating these utterly unjustifiable assumptions aloud as being matters of presumed fact.

It's not only trivial to find examples, it's so pervasive that it escapes the bounds of ordinary political discussion. It comes out when Michael Savage speaks of autism. It comes out when any attempt is made to rationally discuss climate change, special education priorities, child abuse, or - conspicuously, economics.

Now, economics has political implications - obviously. And obviously, how one approaches the discipline and how one applies insight provided by the discipline is of course influenced by one's sociopolitical viewpoints - but IF the discipline itself can actually produce absolutely contradictory information depending on the POLITICS of the person asking the question, it's completely useless.

Well, this actually seems to be the working assumption of rank and file conservatives, and it's a viewpoint that's certainly encouraged by their heroes - that there is no such thing as an objective reality - that everything is dependent upon politics. Worse yet, the assumption that all persons are evil, and that people who disagree must be not just evil, but evil conspirators allows the self justification of all manner of evil deeds in "preemptive self defense."

We are in the paradoxical position where the people most likely to insist on the imposition of a "greater moral order" are most likely to do starkly immoral, illegal and immensely unjust things in order to achieve that goal.

Now, there is absolutely nothing Conservative in elevating evil over good as the foundation for society. And no doubt, most social and religious conservatives would agree, and insist that they advocate no such thing, that they are striving against evils, such as abortion, such as "the homosexual agenda," such as "drug culture" and "moral corruption" and such like things. But, aside from the entirely questionable ethical matrices in which these things are deemed absolute, unquestionable, nonnegotiable evils, it also becomes quickly clear that no possible consequence of actions taken against these actions may be taken. Indeed, in the mind of a generic Social Conservative, making such an argument means that you are "really" simply part of the same evil; that whatever your stated intent, your real motive, your real thinking is due to your inherent depravity.

That has the effect of "thought stopping," and thought stopping - an technique to prevent examination of foundational assumptions - is the key to any successful mass movement that depends upon deception. It's one of the core goals of any system of brainwashing.

Now, I'm no atheist, so I will not immediately leap from there to the Dominionist collusion with Republicanism and conclude thereby that "Therefore religion is evil, a mere mechanism for social control by the elites, a means of demonizing the exercise of legitimate self will and free choice."

It is, however, an entirely rational conclusion to make, considering the impact Dominionism and other extreme religious movements have had upon world culture within the last decades, often in collusion despite apparent differences, and in concert with the darker aspects of Business and Government.

I don't happen to think this is in fact the fault of faith. It's simply that faith tends to concentrate a large number of people together, making it as an attractive power center as government to those who wish to influence others to support their own desires for power and influence, and even the most casual study of history establishes how regularly this had occurred and to what depressingly predictable ends.

Ends we are seeing right now.

It was to prevent just such outcomes, and I would argue, in genuine concern for the "better angels" of both faith and reason, good government and the genuine and appropriate ends of conscientious religious belief that the great thinkers of the Enlightenment argued for the necessity of a high barrier between church and state; that neither could properly focus on their proper ends by becoming entangled with the concerns of the other.

For when religious faith is perverted to excuse and even mandate violent words and acts against the "ungodly" in service of some supposed collective good - the result is never good. Moreover, it produces irresistible opportunities for the concealment and excuse of the most reprehensible acts and the most deplorable indifference toward the suffering and poverty of those deemed of no consequence by those who have gained control of church and state.

Goldwater, I think every good Christian ought t... by Gay_Art

Krispy Kreem; Mae West and Wingnuttery

Krispy Kreme to Give Out Inaugural Donuts; Right-Wingers Go Nuts | PEEK | AlterNet

"Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies -- just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet 'free' can be."

Sounds good. A free-donut campaign to coincide with Inauguration Day celebrations seems like a tasty promotional gesture.

But Krispy Kreme used the "c" word, and the American Life League is outraged. "The unfortunate reality of a post-Roe v. Wade America is that 'choice' is synonymous with abortion access, and celebration of 'freedom of choice' is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand," the group's president, Judie Brown said in a statement. ALL added, "President-elect Barack Obama promises to be the most virulently pro-abortion president in history. Millions more children will be endangered by his radical abortion agenda. Celebrating his inauguration with "'Freedom of Choice' doughnuts -- only two days before the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision to decriminalize abortion -- is not only extremely tacky, it's disrespectful and insensitive and makes a mockery of a national tragedy."

There are many things one could say about this reaction. "Bizarre" springs to mind. "Contrived" is one other thought. But then something about the page itself struck me, and I realized it was truly a Mae West moment.



In these days of context-sensitive advertising engines, Mae West's observation about publicity is more true than ever:

"I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right."

Actually, it's a gift from God, as far as I'm concerned - and no doubt to the good people at Krispy Kreem, who may well remember just how Florida Orange Juice (Due to spokescreature Anita Bryant's anti-Gay Crusade) became a touchstone for the Gay community in the 70's and 80's. It no doubt contributed to market share on the west coast. Gay activists credit her for inspiring the political activism of the gay movement today - in the same way as the Dredd Scott decision and various lynchings brought about the Civil Rights Movement in a direct line to Martin Luthor King and Barack Obama.

Well, now, thanks to Winguttia, Krispy Kreme may well be positioned to become an iconic snack of pro-choice voters, thanks to human perversity. But even if that doesn't happen, or is simply a passing ironic social comment, it's still worth noting - as a revelatory "tinky-winky moment."

That is to say, a moment wherein someones belief system - or more usually, their beliefs about someone else's beliefs - leads them to say something so utterly absurd that it provokes disbelief and reconsideration of that person's status as an authority about anything.

There's a precept I was taught long ago that can be summarized like this; "that which you accuse others of doing most frequently is what you are most guilty of yourself."

I think it extremely unlikely that Krispy Kreem would be so foolish to try and market their donuts just to "pro-choice" people. In this case it's pretty clear that the word is intended in the usual, English sense - of celebrating democracy and freedom of choice on inauguration day.

Likewise, I doubt very much they were trying to use "subliminal" or "coded language." That is much more the style of the right wing - who in condemning it as vile and deceptive when they see it in others, name it for the manipulative and dishonest practice that it is. Nonetheless, it's Right Wing - and particularly religious Right Wing people - who give the seminars on the practice. They may see it in the harsh light of day as being a little bit wrong - but not nearly so wrong as permitting the easily led to think for themselves! Nor am I being sarcastic in the slightest.

If you deeply, genuinely fear that people, given a choice, will always make the wrong choice because they are inherently evil, then "choice" is a very bad word indeed, and it makes perfect sense to associate that word with as many things you hold to be depraved as possible - if you believe that choice inherently leads to damnation.

This is, in fact, a fundamental tenant of many of the religions nearby or squarely within the Dominionist camp. All persons are evil, are saved only by coercion and self-denial. All things beautiful and pleasurable, interesting and fun are probably, if not definitely Tools of the Devil, particularly if they contain that most lethal of substances - "Ideas."

Speaking of books that contain ideas, you will not find that doctrine in the Bible. You have to do some pretty bizarre contortions and selective readings to come up with it. But it's accepted as Gospel - heh - within the Right Wing Church.

They believe that people, even children and particularly women are evil. By definition. (The Doctrine of Original Sin)

The only people who may not actually be working evil deliberately are your coreligionists. And of course, one of the greatest proofs of being Not Evil is discipline and Obedience to Proper Authority.

You know, people like Ted Haggard or Jerry Falwell. Nor are they exceptional, or "bad apples." They are both pretty typical examples of their sort - grifters, scam artists and profiteers.

The more that I've looked into it, the more I've come to realize that under the rhetoric, the issue of when life begins is immaterial; a mere tactical convenience that allows for visceral emotional, thought-stopping appeals. If that were actually the driving issue, it would imply certain other beliefs and calls to action which either do not exist at all, or do so with little or no support from the hard core "anti-choice" wing; social supports and mechanisms that would make it far easier for women to bring a pregnancy to term and support a child regardless of their personal circumstances.

Couple that to the same people objecting to the idea of birth control measures - even condoms and sex ed - and we realize what the real "choice" they object to is:

The issue is the right to choose to have sex at all, as opposed to an assumed duty to obey someone who's been issued a "fucking licence" by the dual authorities of Church and Male Parent; even when that obedience requires a sacrifice of one's own self interest and individuality.

The issue here is that people are not supposed to have the unquestioned right to choose. Sexual choice in particular; the early church fathers were obsessed with sex to a degree that would point to clinical disturbance in this day and age - but really, the idea of any individual choice is deemed frightening. Consider the practices of various religious orders that exist to make it possible to go through weeks and months, if not years without ever having to make a single, individual decision.

(Religous orders can be good or bad, of spiritual benefit or a system of brainwashing. Arguably, it's difficult to achieve the one without a degree of the other. But it will always turn out for the worse if the practice is accepted from authority as revealed without examination.)

At most, they may expect to have one or two permissible options, but never without the input of an Authority, for - and this is according to the doctrinal underpinnings of right-wing American Protestantism - people are literally incapable of making correct choices without the benefit of "grace," so, those who do not share that faith are obviously, consciously and clearly "of the devil."

By the way, from a theological standpoint, from any reasonable reading of the texts, it's complete nonsense. But it's terribly convenient nonsense, for it makes an authoritarian structure unquestionably necessary for salvation! Disobedience will, absolutely, lead to hell - if you believe the Authorities, who are more than willing to send you there, lest your arguments seem persuasive. Those who disbelieve are either freethinkers - such as myself - or members of various priesthoods. Which one becomes, after actually reading the Bible and the arguments for such silly doctrines really depends on one's ability to stomach hypocrisy in the name of personal advantage and/or "The Greater Good."

That's why it is so important to question authority, to provoke such authorities into making statements; to see if they actually ARE authoritative or are "just playing an authority on television."

As much as I pelt Augustine and Paul with bitter fruit from fallen trees, they had lots of good stuff to say as well. So long as you realize they were human, the products of their time and philosophical context and therefore limited in their ability to give absolutely correct guidance in all matters.

But first, you have to realize that even if the bible WERE the "Inerrant, Literal Word of God," it would still not support such constructs as Reconstruction Theology, Original Sin, Marionism, Calvinism or Augustine's views on the place of women within the Church.

Once you give up the Magic Fairy Dust Theory of Inspiration, the idea that despite centuries of translation, cultural shifts and linguistic difference, the King James Edition is absolutely and literally true, you find that the Bible is one of the more concentrated sources of wise and human advice known to mankind - and that the King James the most beautifully poetic way of expressing it - in the English Language, of course, and In My Humble Opinion.

Obama's Inaugural Fuckup

I probably don't feel as crushed as my politically queer friends and inspirations do by Obama's choice of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation.

Most are focusing on Warren's anti-gay activism, and it's certainly important. But it's the part of the iceberg above the water. I'm concerned about the iceberg itself. Warren is a front-line Culture Warrior and he's across the trenches from me. So, this leads me to ask, aloud; on which side will Obama be?

Obama says he wants this to be "the most inclusive Inaugural ever." Well and good; well and good; but there ARE some positions that you cannot include without implying a degree of tolerance. I, along with a great many people, feel that certain ideas cannot, may not, must not be tolerated. I say this as a red-letter Christian and a diligent student of both Constitutional Democracy and the values and theology of people like Wright.

For myself, I'm unwilling to include in my zone of tolerance anyone who claims a fundamental right to DENY human rights to other people for any reason, and I am even more unwilling to tolerate a person willing to bear false witness - as an ordained minister - in order to achieve a political goal.

Via The Box Turtle Bulletin

This is the same Rick Warren who recently said that the relationships of his “many gay friends” are no different from child rape, incest or polygamy. He also jumped on the paranoia bandwagon surrounding same-sex marriage by falsely claiming that Prop 8’s failure somehow would have overturned the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and religion. (It can’t. No law or state constitution can.).

I would not stand on the same stage with the man. It's a damn ignorant signal for a man who is both a religious man and a Constitutional scholar. It's not at all an "inclusive" move. It is, on the contrary, a very much disinclusive move.

Senator - I'm disappointed. I expected to be, but I'm surprised at how stunningly symbolic a betrayal this is; how very visceral. How very tone deaf.

Let me be blunt, Mr. Obama; whether you like it or not, whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, there IS a culture war in America. It HAS been declared on the American people by leaders like Warren, like James Dobson, like the late and unlamented Jerry Falwall.

Nor is it just about abortion and marriage rights. In fact, these are mostly smokescreen issues. Pick almost any urgent issue facing us; the economy, the climate crisis, health care, human rights, globalism - and you will find them squarely on the wrong side. When they have been given power to address these issues - and Bush did a lot of that - they consistently made things far worse than mere lack of qualification and intelligence would suggest.

Nope; it's a matter of policy; policy that believes that not only are unbelievers going to hell, but that they should be sent there as a matter of state policy.

Check the Christian Broadcasting Network site, or the Focus on the Family site, or any of the other official organs. Check out the whole Dominionist movement. Warren is not merely associated - his church is at the forefront.

Here's what Discernment Ministries says about Dominionism:

The dominionist’s kingdom must be advanced on Earth by gaining control of governments (State), utilizing business (Corporations) and partnering with social sector (Church) institutions. New bridges are being built based on triangular relationship between all three sectors of society. The Church is forming partnerships (or collaborations) with State and/or Corporate interests in order to implement dominion. Peter Drucker, the management guru, was instrumental in overseeing the implementation of this agenda – to create a three-legged “healthy society” globally – via Rick Warren of purpose-driven fame. Warren was mentored by Drucker, as were a number of other evangelical leaders such as Bob Buford of Leadership Network. Buford trained an entire generation of aspiring megachurch pastors in Drucker’s social philosophies. The megachurches are based on the Drucker corporate business model. Drucker’s ideas also undergird the faith-based (Church-State) movement which has been politically championed by the neoconservatives in Washington.²¹ Dominionism is significantly breaking down the walls between Church and Corporations (see point 4 below). In brief, the three-legged stool of dominionism looks like this:

CORPORATE + STATE = Fascism

STATE + CHURCH = Faith-based

CHURCH + CORPORATE = Fusion –
the Merchant Church

I cite them because they are about as rock-ribbed a source as I could find.

Don't even speak to me of compromise with such, Sir; it's incompatible with oath you intent to take at the Inaugural.

These people believe they have the right and duty to oppress others. They oppose the rights of people. They are utterly and implacably opposed to all that is Constitutional and Ethical. And, given half a chance and a bottle of Jim Beam, they would happily drag you to death behind their Humvees.

Sir, the Inauguration is about symbolism. This is not a good symbol. It's even worse policy. And it's exactly what your policy will end up being if you lie down with these dogs.

Credit: Chromefishtian Sticker by webcarve

Culture War? Bring it on, Newt!

Media Matters:

Gingrich: "[T]here is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us"

Summary: Discussing actions by individual protesters of Proposition 8, Newt Gingrich stated: "I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion."

ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES:

"So the hordes of darkness want to impose their values on all right-thinking religous people? Like the value of letting those hordes of darkness get married? How is that imposing on some totally separate people?

In Newt Gingrich's world nothing distinguishes 'you telling me how I should live' from 'me telling you that you shouldn't determine how I live'. They are symmetrical values. And anyone telling him that he shouldn't butt into other people's private lives is a fascist.

Of course Newt Gingrich preaching people on morals is always good for laughs."

ME; writing at Zazzle.com for a new product section. Sometimes I blog there first. There are two reasons for that; first, this is how I support my blog.

Second - it's a way of reaching people that would never, ever read my blog, by catching their eye with a compelling graphic. The more popular my designs become, the more exposure they get, the more people see them and the more impact I make.

I have some hope that money will follow impact. But the impact needs to happen first. So if you want to help out in this, my mission; buy something, or just visit this site and add a star rating to these culture war products.

Culture War

We are currently experiencing a vicious cultural war. You can see it here on Zazzle in graphic terms. In personal terms you lived through a major battle between the forces of the Religious and Cultural right versus ... well, versus everyone else. It's a fight to the last ditch to impose a narrow, superstitious, Wasillian, Christofishian, moralistic worldview on everyone, for no particularly good reason, other than to validate that worldview. After all, if nobody is permitted to dissent, or even learn that there are gigantic gaping moral, ethical, religious, spiritual, economic and humane exceptions to the rules they wish to make YOU live by. As for them? "They" consider the rules to exist to control the behavior of OTHER people.

People like "them" have the informal but very real view that if a crime is not prosecuted, it never happened. People like "them" are not "criminals," so therefore, people that know "them" - like the mayor, the sheriff, the town council, the local prosecutor - will know that the "R" after their name and the chrome fish on their SUV means that they are different, exceptional and special; to be rewarded for their good work on the front lines with a free pass when they venture into the gray areas in the dead of night. "Oh, ye hypocrites!"

For myself, I believe that we should eliminate inappropriate shame and guilt. I absolutely abhor those who secretly indulge it while publicly exploiting and condemning others for advantage. By their fruits, ye shall know them. Economically, socially, politically, ethically and practically speaking - how do you like THESE rotten apples?

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Frank Schaeffer goes for the Chromefishtian Groin

Words in Red: Luke 16:10
by

webcarve

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SING it, Frank!

Take a hard look at yourselves. Play back this year's Republican convention and you'll see an all-white crowd of people screaming for offshore oil drilling -- fat lot of good that will do! more carbon! more polution! -- and essentially reacting like starved hyenas when presented with a piece of juicy carrion. At the convention Sarah Palin and others produced nothing more than a snide list of smart ass put downs aimed at the really dumb, with so little substance that former conservatives such the late William F. Buckley, for instance (let alone my late father) would simply have been ashamed to be in your company. You have become a hate-filled rabble proud of your ignorance and resentful of the rest of your own country, resentment that's exceeded only by your maudlin (and false) sense of victimhood.

People that hate half the population of their own country can scarcely be called patriots. On the contrary, people who exult in mocking as their only way to "contribute" to solving our huge environmental, energy, military and economic problems are true subversives.

The smell emanating from your convention was that of a beer hall putsch circa 1930s, not anything remotely like participation in a democracy. Now you all know what it felt like to be in a lynch mob minus the hanging. You should be ashamed. But shame is something that apparently Republicans are no longer capable of feeling, at least when you get together in a mob.

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Here's what I said on Zazzle about the illustration, before I read this. It's nice to know I'm not merely howling in the wilderness - entirely.

Don't tell me you are a Christian. Really. If you need to tell me that you are a Christian, that guarantees I might have some doubts about it, otherwise. It also tells me a lot about why you think it might improve my opinion of you, in the face of other things I might learn of.

Oh, and when you say "God Told You" or "God Wants you to" or most especially, "God hates," understand that when you accept the responsiblity of speaking for God, there's a biblical standard of accountabilty.


The OT cites are especially grim, dear. What was that you said about a gas pipeline, again?

Click thru to check out the back of the shirt. >veg<

If your husband told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?

Salto sobrius: Jim Benton on Fundies vs. Gay Marriage

A very interesting article on why gay marriage upsets the fundie applecart. Turns out said apple cart is hauling horseapples anyhow - the rationale for opposing gay marriage hinges on the despicable abomination of a man submitting to another man.

a heterosexual marriage that deviates from "God's plan" can be condemned as such, and there is always hope that through "good Christian example" teaching, preaching, and prayer, these "misguided sinners" can be shown the proper path. (And the true dominionists can hope they will have the power of the state at least to teach students properly, and even have laws that will correct the poor, deluded "equalitarians".)

But there is no way that a gay couple can choose to conform to these teachings. The roles, in the minds of the radical Christians are biologically and theologically based. The question of which gender should be submissive is not a matter of choice. It is rooted in the idea that "man was created first and woman sinned first" in Eden. Yes, a woman may (and should, according to voices like Stormy Omartian's) freely choose to submit to her husband and act according to God's plan. But that is because she is a woman. A man who should choose to submit to his wife, in the same way, would be an unnatural abomination.

And, obviously, same-sex marriages either do not have a woman to "willingly submit to whomever it is we need to be submitted to", or they lack a man to be submitted to. No amount of preaching can change this, no amount of Christian example will change this. Any gay marriage, by existing, challenges this idea of a proper, "traditional" marriage.

Well, you know MY methods, Watson. Not only should gay marriage of all sorts be recognized - to the extent that I admit that the state has any business recognizing any relationship at all - but more heterosexual couples should make a point of giving the horselaugh to this nonsense:

For a similar view let's look at the Southern Baptists. In an article on subjugation of women in that denomination, Dr. Bruce Prescott & Dr. Rick McClatchy (who have become "Mainstream Baptists", a group which split from the Southern Baptists as a protest against the emergence of extreme and rigid conservatism in the older group) write in Baptist Faith and Message, a Baptist "Confession of faith"):

"subjugation of women extended to the privacy of Baptist homes when a statement on the family was added to the BF&M. In line with the chain of command made explicit in the 1984 resolution, the 1998 family amendment advised wives that they must ‘graciously submit' to their husbands."

"The unconditional nature of the wife's subjugation became clear at the official press conference following the statement's adoption. Dorothy Patterson, wife of Paige Patterson and a member of the committee that drafted the family statement, said, ‘When it comes to submitting to my husband even when he is wrong, I just do it. He is accountable to God.'"

But these groups are relatively liberal. I could go on and on -- oh, you've noticed -- but I'll end this by requoting Tedd Tripp, from my article on baby beating.

"You must provide examples of submission for your children. Dads can do this through biblical authority over their wives, and Moms through biblical submission to their husbands." p. 142

"Don't waste time trying to sugarcoat submission to make it palatable. Obeying when you see the sense in it is not submission; it is agreement. Submission necessarily means doing what you do not wish to do. It is never easy or painless." p. 145

"Your children [and by implication, your wife] must understand that when you speak for the first time, you have spoken for the last time." p. 151

Yep. Funnymentalism; the last refuge of the bull asshole - and those to weak and stupid to lead a household without violence. But nonetheless, I support the right of those who wish such relationships and are above the age of consent to enter into them.

However, raising children to behave this way is, I think, child abuse. Not to put too fine a point on it, I think that the widespread abuse of children by people who loudly adhere to such beliefs is all the force this argument against it being either Christian OR American needs.

Evangelical Repents Paving Road to Hell

Chuck Baldwin, a Florida radio preacher and evangelist, has come out and said the following. And the following is why he's supporting Ron Paul.

Unfortunately, it has been the Christian Right's blind support for President Bush in particular and the Republican Party in general that has precipitated a glaring and perhaps fatal defect: the Christian Right cannot, or will not, honestly face the real danger confronting these United States. The reason for this blindness is due, in part, to political partisanship or personal aggrandizement. Regardless, the Christian Right is currently devoid of genuine sagacity. On the whole, they fail to understand the issues that are critical to our nation's--and their own--survival.

Republican candidates have learned how to "talk the language." They know that Christians are basically compassionate and trusting people, and therefore prone to being gullible and easily manipulated. They know that Christians have short memories and are desperate to be accepted at the king's table (largely a result of the church-growth movement and mega-church mentality).

It is at this point that much blame should be cast at the feet of the leaders of the so-called Religious Right. They have proven themselves to be much more interested in enriching their "ministries" (and themselves in the process) than they are in standing uncompromisingly for the truth. The infatuation with power and success has made them weak and vulnerable.

As a result, George W. Bush and Karl Rove have made mincemeat out of the Religious Right. They have shown everyone that once you win the support of the Christian Right with rhetoric, you can get by with just about anything. Christians are horrible at holding Republicans accountable.

Hence, neocon Republicans such as Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, and even Rudy Giuliani are all currently receiving fractured support from the Christian Right. However, you can mark this down: the Christian Right (with few exceptions) will eventually coalesce around whoever wins the Republican nomination--no matter who it is. You see, it's all about political partisanship. Principles are only something we talk about during off-election years.

Indeed, that HAS been the problem, Sir; the willingness to abandon principle when presented with the dangling bait of an apparent victory over the heathen, the godless, the moral relativists. Surely God must approve any means that promise to achieve such ends?

And suddenly we are all on a smoothly-paved downward slope to what, if not literal hell, will certainly do until the real thing comes along.

Now, there are a lot of folks out there who will suggest that the support of "nuts like this," for Ron Paul, people they adjudge to be religiously intolerant, even bigots and racists means that people of genuine social conscience and enlightenment should not support Ron.

For myself, I see it to people of this ilk waking up and smelling the coffee, realizing to what extent they have been led around by their noses by people even less principled, even more willing to offend the liberties of others, and realizing that perhaps, just perhaps, playing within the rules established by the Constitution is a good idea after all.

And so long as we all do that, it matters little if I think he's a religious fanatic , ideologue and pinhead, or that he thinks I'm a Godless Liberal apologist for sodomy and goat marriage. Even if we are correct in our mutual understandings and each of us is as abhorrant to the other as our first impressions might suggest, - our ambitions are limited by the compact, and he can no more force me to enter into a covenant marriage than I can force him to marry a goat.

At this point, we heave a sigh of relief realizing that the only way the beliefs of one can affect the other is through persuasion and choice, having the constitution to rule out coercive rule by any temporary majority or influential minority.

And this allows us all to enjoy a richly diverse, constantly evolving culture that is responsive to ever-changing circumstances.

At some point, people on the Right started using "diversity" as a dirty word, conveying the idea that any different idea of any sort was a visceral threat to be stamped out, not something to be tolerated in others, considered respectfully and accepted or rejected for personal use as free persons have every right do do.

By the way, that's exactly how I have treated Chuck's faith. Nice folks, most of them, but as he observes, entirely too gullible, and entirely to easily deluded by the greedy, the evil and the manipulative.

People who believe that diversity and tolerance is a social evil are - in my mind - too stupid to breed and should be retroactively aborted lest they poison the very body politic with their bigotry. And millions agree with me, even if they wouldn't put it quite that strongly.

Now do you see why we have a Constitution? None of us are entirely immune to bigotry and prejudice. Let us celebrate then our compact to keep it within decent bounds, and to let no single set of prejudices dominate us all.

Odds are, there's only a few of us that would truly prefer the results. You see, ANY exclusive vision of how things "ought" to be, what values and beliefs people "should" have or what values they should have and hold that rise above the legally required minimum of nonviolence is incompatible with liberty. If you cannot tolerate the liberties of others, you should simply admit to yourself that some honestly authoritarian philosophy would be appropriate.

In a libertarian society, you are entirely free to be a Nazi, an Old Catholic, a Stalinist, or what have you. You just have to live with the fact that your only valid source of Authority is being persuasively authoritative. The moment you start demanding followers to do as you think they ought and the right to back up that demand by force, a libertarian culture reserves the right to leave you alone.

Entirely alone.

Alternet Leads with Porn Tease.

One thing I've learned over the years is that when there's a slug about porn or sex in the title, the odds of there being something I don't need for sale is inversely proportional to the distance between the tease and the payoff.

In this particular case, it takes three pages of this Alternet book excerpt to get to the point:

We think of the call of pornography as crass, like a carnival barker's. Like the neon lights of Times Square in its pornographic heyday. Men go to buy pornography in the "red-light" district, the "combat zone." Pornography seems to shout out at us, crudely.

But in reality, pornography speaks to men in a whisper. We pretend to listen to the barker shouting about women, but that is not the draw. What brings us back, over and over, is the voice in our ears, the soft voice that says, "It's OK, you really are a man, you really can be a man, and if you come into my world, it will all be there, and it will all be easy."

Pornography knows men's weakness. It speaks to that weakness, softly. Pornography ends up being about men's domination of women and about the ugly ways that men will take pleasure. But for most men, it starts with the soft voice that speaks to our deepest fear: That we aren't man enough.

Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity,

This is supposed to get you to cough up 12.95 for the promise of more insights into sex, porn and masculinity. And perhaps the author promises new insights, or at least a new viewpoint on an amazingly ancient and tediously commonplace reality. Perhaps you should chalk my reaction up to sheer annoyance at the thought that this fellow seems to have every reason to expect to be paid for things I've been saying for free.

Actually, I think that may have a great deal of truth to it. I find it both annoying and baffling, because for most of my life, I've been trying to figure out what possible reward there could be for "being a man" that would make it worth the depths of stupidity men seem willing to plumb - and women encourage - in order to convince themselves and others of it.

But certainly sexuality and pornography are deeply involved in this effort - and porn is very much involved in maintaining this paradigm as being both normal and unquestionable.

If you read Graphictruth, then you will have been exposed to this idea rather a lot - that pornography is an instrument and reflection of our culture, no better understood than when you examine what sorts of porn and pornographic entrepreneurs are ruthlessly oppressed - and which sorts are tolerated, or even encouraged by strangely-crafted government regulation.

Anyway, the observation that porn in general and the sex industry in particular has a great deal to do with encouraging heteronormative sexual behavior is - to an aspie blogger living in America's Great State of White Heterosexual Sin - a blinding glimpse of the blatantly obvious.

This is underlined by the fact that I spent a long stint as a reviewer of porn sites on my own pornographic link site. Why did I stop?

Well, when you get up in the morning, looking forward to another day of blatant sex and tentacle porn and realize that you'd really just rather play Sims and watch cooking shows on cable, it's time for a change. Hell, one glimpse of Ron Jeremy's ass is enough to make you question your entire life path. It wasn't JUST Ron Jeremy's ass that made me switch to politics, but it serves as a fundamental symbol of everything that did.

So, speaking as someone who has put on their hip waders and gone shoveling, there's far less that is truly depraved in the world of porn than you may fear, and far less of interest than curiosity, temptation and hype may lead you to expect.

The greater irony is this; I've found that in exploring the ethics of politics, I have not managed to avoid any significant downside of my previous concentration on the ethics of sex and porn, and as a great karmic punchline, Ron Jeremy's ass has been replaced with Dick Cheney's face. It's not an improvement.

But in comparing the two, and finding no significant distinction other than how metaphorical the nonconsentual cornholing of the underdog of the storyline may be, I have, I think, stumbled across a few useful insights along the way.

Pornography exists for the same reason as any other form of communication - to persuade you that some idea or another is worth your time, attention and donation of power and approval.

Porn is no more an end in itself than my writing this blog is. Both exist to convince you of something, and it's up to you to discern whether or not you should be convinced, and if you are, to who's benifit it is that you are convinced, and what exactly the price of that conversion will be.

Most American porn exists to convince you that you do NOT have to think about the moral and ethical consequences of living and acting like a stereotypical asshole, uncaring of the consequences of one's desires upon others. Indeed, it exists to sexualize those consequences, to validate the harm done as both just and due those who are not heterosexual white protestant assholes.

That kink is not just out there, it's out there with corporate sponsors, jumping up and down with it's fake boobs bouncing, along with single-click access to army.com.

Now, despite my obvious contempt for unthinking assholes and my lack of sympathy for the inevitable consequences to those who insist on acting as if they have a right to fuck up and fuck over anything that disputes their self-image as King o' da World, it should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer that asshole upon asshole fratricide is so commonplace that it's no longer news.

I have absolutely no problem with genuine sociopaths removing themselves from the gene pool, and to the extent that they can be encouraged by sex or adreneline to make some contribution along the way, I can only applaud. But, alas, the sociopaths have taken over the asylum and have convinced a lot of people that sociopathy is synonymous with masculinity; even with Christianity.

Well, the only cure for such offensive pornography is, as the saying goes, "more and better pornography." We must not abandon the most reliable handle upon the future behavior of our youth to those who would wank them to destruction.

Me, I much prefer lesbian porn. And I don't mean two hot chicks making it while each keep an eye on my designated representative, the camera, to see if their artful antics please their vicarious master. Not that I'm immune to that, or even feel particularly embarrassed about not being immune to hot theatrical simulated sex between professionals. It's like a corn dog at the fair - you know it's not very good for you, and you know that it has no place in a regular diet, but hell, it's fair food and it doesn't count.

The economy of my entire state rests upon this whole premise, and as I enjoy our attractively low tax rate, I will not sneer - save at those Californians who are far too Liberal to approve of such things, except for one or two weekends a year.

But I have seen real lesbian porn, and not a corn dog - it's an entirely different and far healthier cuisine. It's only "lesbian porn" by virtue of the fact that lesbians were the first (that I'm aware of) to seriously explore the idea of "what would porn that didn't automaticly validade a partiachal, heteronormative, white ethnocentric worldview look like?" Another term that you might run across is "alternaporn" or "alt-porn;" it's all pornography with explicit counter-cultural themes.

Some pioneering women - like Ducky Doolittle, for one - found that it was a lot more interesting and fun to create good porn that demonstrated good sexual ethics and views toward other women than stridently against bad porn that perpetuates destructive ideas and the oppression of women, and along the way, the idea that it was possible to have hot recreational sex with the persons of agreeable sexuality and gender without feeling like you needed a shower and a shriving afterwards.

Or in other words, if sexual shame is an essential part of what you think is "hot" about sex - maybe you should think about that in terms of it's moral and ethical implications.

Andraea Dwarkin and Cynthia Makinnon may well have revealed a great deal that was wrong with heteornormative porn, society and men accultured by it, but they offered little or nothing nothing other than "just keep your legs crossed" as an alternative vision. I wager neither was any fun at parties. The Catholic church has long advocated a militant asexuality as the alternative to approved sexual behavior - I don't really see a feminist restatement of the same dramatically futile and destructive moralism as a great contribution to the ethical evolution of humanity.

Anyway, to get to the point that the book is trying to get you to absorb by luring you in with the potential of possible vicarious tittiliation; "King of the Hill" mentality has not served our culture, our society or our planet well. It has not even well-served the interests of those who would be good kings capable of holding a hill wisely and well.

You see, one of the great surprises and ironies of my life was finding out that I am something of a patriarch.

I suppose none of us can really evade our childhoods, or the necessity to at least try to make things work out better now than they did then. I'm neither the typical patriarch nor am I much interested in expanding my sphere of influence beyond my household, because I lack the required kink almost entirely. The lust for power over the lives of others has no attraction for me, but in some curious way, I'm able to provide security for those who are compatible with my other twitches. Indeed, I think that having those twitches and flaws to a cater to is part of my attraction. It's possible to make a positive difference in my life, validating those who do it. But I know my limitations and am unwilling to be such a living example of the Peter Principle as so many of those who are briefly showcased upon the cover of Forbes. And, given the insight into State Mandaded patriarchalism as recently demonstrated by Saudi Arabian "justice" - I would never stoop to benefit from such a culture.

If I were born Saudi or Wahabi, at this point I'd feel honor bound to publicly renounce both citizenship and sect - for whatever government, religion or culture that exists solely to blow smoke up my ass and tell me what a big strong manlyman I am does me no great service in my role as safekeeper and guardian for those who need it - while forcing upon me the distractions who do not need me in the slightest.

In sexuality and life, it's far better to trade upon who you really are than try to claim to be what you are not, if for no other reason that you will lose out to those who either do not have to fake it at all, or who can fake it more convincingly.

Those who seek power over others - sexually, in politics, in commerce, in life - do it because that is a visceral need for them. It's not because they deserve it, or because they can be assumed to be able or willing to do anything useful with that power when they have it. Using power wisely and well is a skill, as well as an under-acknowledged responsibility. Understanding and acceptance that there IS a price to power is, sadly, almost never something that comes with the kink itself. And yes, folks, the need to hold power over others is a psycho-sexual kink, to the point of being a disastrous character flaw if not admitted. (CF. George W. Bush; Hillary Clinton, Wahabism.)

If those who need power like vampires need blood are not trained and guided to seek power wisely and use it well, they will fail - and it will almost by definition be a cascade failure of catastrophic proportions. (CF. George W. Bush; Hillary Clinton, Saudi Arabian Justice)

But most people do not have that kink, and it's both foolish and self-deceptive for us to accept that it is the definition of a "real man" to seek dominance over others and to be fulfilled by expressing that domination - without any question of "why, and to what end?"

In football, there can be only one quarterback - and a quarterback without a defensive line is what you call "roadkill." To extend the metaphor, a QB who calls stupid plays and embarrasses his team will be without his defensive line for every single play until he either gets a plan, or gets the hell off the field.

The fact is, those who think they "clawed their way to the top" by virtue of their own efforts, who define themselves not by what they have won, but how many others lost out to them are fools. Fools, and very often useful tools. (CF George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Conservative Muslim Clerics and domestic Dominionist Christian Clerics.)

The real secret to gaining and holding the hill is building a consensus that you look good up there, and accepting the quid pro quo that you must serve the ends of those who feel that way in order to remain there. That's true of Patriarchs, Presidents and all those entrusted with power and influence. The MOMENT you start believing that you have the right to the power you havem or at least argue to that effect based on a presumption of Divine Right, you deserve, at the very least, the derisive mockery of those you would exploit with negative responses up to and including a shotgun blast to the testicles in degrees measured according to your unwillingness or inability to deliver on your obligations.

Life is a power exchange - you will be given this power to use by those who judge you able to use it to their benefit for just so long as you do that. They can take it away at any time - and they don't have to climb the hill themselves. All they have to do is politely step out of the way of the next ambitious tool who wants to take everything you have away from you - not realizing that it was never yours and will never actually be theirs.

Dear King Abdullah - do you think it wise to allow a situation in your nation, your culture and faith where it would be to the benefit of half your population to seek the support and protection of men and women of another faith and more just culture? Do you think the Prophet would be sympathetic to your plight, or would he dryly observe that in getting in the car with Wahbiists, your kingdom deserves whatever it gets?

One thing I know about the Prophet - aside from any religious teachings - is that he was a man of profound ethics, one who believed in justice. So, what would he have to say about a religion based upon his good name being used to commit injustice?

Just a little rhetorical question. I'd ask the same of any Christian, sir; indeed, I often do.

I'll tell you a little secret about me and my particular kink. I find no romance in the tale of King Author; I find nothing attractive at all about sitting anywhere on the outside of the Round Table.

My archetype is Merlin - and like Merlin, I will continue whether or not Aurthur succeeds or fails. Because, well, there's an Aurthur born every minute.

Grand Old Perverts : Outed in the Worst Way.

State Representative Richard Curtis says he's not gay, but police reports and court records indicate the Republican lawmaker from southwestern Washington dressed up in women's lingerie and met a Medical Lake man in a local erotic video store which led to consensual sex at a downtown hotel and a threat to expose Curtis' activities publicly. KXLY4's Jeff Humphrey reports.(video)

Cross-Dressing Republican Caught With Male Hooker Resigns, But Still Won't Admit He's Gay: resigned. From "I'm not gay" to "I resign" in 24 hours is pretty good... for a Republican.

"Today I submitted my letter of resignation to Governor Gregoire effective immediately. While I believe we've done some good and helped a lot of people during the time I served in the Legislature, events that have recently come to light have hurt a lot of people. I sincerely apologize for any pain my actions may have caused.

"This has been damaging to my family, and I don't want to subject them to any additional pain that might result from carrying out this matter under the scrutiny that comes with holding public office."

It hardly seems worth adding anything to this, but it's my blog and I gotta. But I'll keep it pithy and to the point; is it not remarkable how much "Republican Family Values" seems to represent repression and screaming denial?

And just as a cross reference (ehheh), here's a cogent post linking Dominionist and Evangelical Conservative religious upbringing with tortures at Abu Ghrab. And no, it's not a stretch.

Welcome to the Turd Reich.

Let's start with a really graphic truth.



As I commented on Clipmarks, where I found it, I'm not an athiest by any means, but I do make a point of not believing in the "god" followed by the folks this adorable young lady is referring to.

All of this started with a revealing look into what "abstinance only" Sex Ed is really supposed to accomplish, via quite an extended chain of associations...

Hell's Handmaiden > Nicest Girl and Destroyer of Planets > Winter's Haven > Classically Liberal > TPM Cafe: an excerpt from an Excerpt from "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism"

For all who believe. Reclaiming America for Christ is a place where the Christian nationalist movement drops its democratic pretenses and indulges its theocratic dreams. So at the 2003 conference, when the abstinence educator Pam Stenzel spoke, she knew she didn’t have to justify her objection to sex education with prosaic arguments about health and public policy. She could be frank about the real reason society must not condone premarital sex—because it is, as she shouted during one particularly impassioned moment, 'stinking, filthy, dirty, rotten sin!"

A pretty, zaftig brunette from Minnesota with a degree in psychology from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, Stenzel makes a living telling kids not to have sex. Rather, she makes a living trying to scare kids out of having sex—as she says in her video No Screwin' Around, if you have sex outside of marriage “to a partner who has only been with you . . . then you will pay.”A big part of her mission is puncturing students’ beliefs that condoms can protect them. She says she addresses half a million kids each year, and millions more have received her message via video.

Thanks to George W. Bush, abstinence education has become a thriving industry, and Stenzel has been at its forefront. Bush appointed her to a twelve-person task force at the Department of Health and Human Services to help implement abstinence education guidelines. She’s been a guest at the White House and a speaker at the United Nations. Her nonprofit company, Enlightenment Communications, which puts on abstinence talks and seminars in public schools, typically grossed several hundred thousand dollars a year during the first Bush term.

At Reclaiming America for Christ, Stenzel told her audience about a conversation she’d had with a skeptical businessman on an airplane. The man had asked about abstinence education’s success rate—a question she regarded as risible. “What he’s asking," she said, “is does it work. You know what? Doesn’t matter. Cause guess what. My job is not to keep teenagers from having sex. The public schools’ job should not be to keep teens from having sex.” Then her voice rose and turned angry as she shouted, “Our job should be to tell kids the truth!”

“People of God,” she cried, “can I beg you, to commit yourself to truth, not what works! To truth! I don’t care if it works, because at the end of the day I’m not answering to you, I'm answering to God!”

Later in the same talk, she explained further why what “works” isn’t what’s important—and gave some insight into what she means by “truth.” “Let me tell you something, people of God, that is radical, and I can only say it here,” she said. “AIDS is not the enemy. HPV and a hysterectomy at twenty is not the enemy. An unplanned pregnancy is not the enemy. My child believing that they can shake their fist in the face of a holy God and sin without consequence, and my child spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy. I will not teach my child that they can sin safely.”

The crowd applauded.

Of course, Stenzel isn’t just teaching her child.

There's more...
Now, this sort of candor about the frankly theocratic, Dominionist agenda of the Evangelical Right Wing is difficult to find outside of the provinces of converts and those who prey upon them, and it's rare for it to pop up in such a mainstream source, so this may all be quite new to you.

I've been watching these people for decades now - or more to the point, watching over the shoulders of the watchers, so if you actually require more convincing, you should start with Theocracy Watch. I mean, it's not that you can't find the truth of it, they are quite frank about their intentions when they think the other side isn't paying attention.

However, this is a particularly juicy bit of revelation, because the interlinked issues of sex ed and abortion are visceral illustrations of a worldview that, frankly, demonizes human nature.

Consider the contrast between the emphasis on making pregnancy as inevitable as possible with militant opposition to consider any social fail-safes for mistakes, accidents, poor decisions or the unpredictable circumstances of life, isseus that are of concern to any person of genuine Evangelical Christian faith, or indeed, anyone who takes the words of Jesus to be important and morally instructive.

I'm sorry if that seems arrogant, but those who discount the positive importance of the words of Christ while treating 19th century Dispensationalist twaddle as if it were Scripture are, aside from being grouchy, mean-spirited, spiteful, intolerant, fearful and judgmental prudes with an unhealthy interest in the bodily functions and private affairs of others, have also stretched the definition of "Christian" to the point where Christ Himself would not recognize it.

In my own opinion of course. But then, it's always been a feature of established Christan churches to ignore almost all of what Christ had to say, or to re-interpret it in favor of the interests of wealthy and powerful patrons - and this is why I belong to no church at all. I have found none that do not insult my faith.

Nor have I ever felt that anyone has the right to question me - or even inquire into - what precisely my faith is, or whether I'm "right with God." I refuse to even be pinned down as to whether I believe in a literal God, much less a literal Christ.

Hell, HE refused to make a clear statement as to his own divinity; I take that as a clear statement of intentional ambiguity. But I digress, other than to observe that anyone who takes the Bible as a clear set of instructions on what you - not them, but YOU - should do or not do, regardless of your faith or the lack of it may be - is both a busybody and damnably lacking in the most essential ethic of all.

"That which is hateful to you, do not do to others." "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." "An it harm none, do as you will." Three religions, three different ways of putting the same idea - mind your own relationship with the divine and let others mind theirs. And further, let your actions speak in accordance with your words.

One of the more famous Christian parables is the Parable of the Fig Tree, which states, essentially, that you know the worth of the tree by the fruit that it bears; that the tree that bears sweet fruit is tended and cared for while the tree that bears bitter fruit is cut down and cast in the fire. Like most, if not all parables attributed to Christ, it's a self-evident observation of everyday reality in first-century Palestine; only the very rich could afford the non-productive luxury of a purely ornamental fruit tree - when productive trees were every bit as beautiful.

Now, here at Graphictruth, I'm not particularly respectful of nor interested in religious morality, but I am passionately concerned with issues of ethics, which I pithily refer to as the science and discipline of "not fucking up."

The single MOST predictable source of "fucking up," of "mistake generation," or of "sin" if you will, is an inordinate concern with the affairs of and actions of other beings, coupled with a willful blindess as to the consequences of one's own intrusive actions. A "sin" is a mistake, a transgression against another, a harm or disharmony, willful or mistaken. A sin is a trespass - as anyone who has attended both Lutheran and Catholic services will know.

Well, there can be no greater trespass than to presume for another what actions are, for them, sins, WITHOUT REFERENCE to any harm that may be done to others.

To state that sex IS a sin, without any linkage to causation of harm is in fact "the bearing of false witness." Sexual activity - and the urge to do it - often puts us in absurd and dangerous positions, and quite often leads to "unfortunate blessings, absence the prudent usage of birth control. But to define pregnancy as an inherent consequence of sin and to enforce that attitude as a social truth by draconian legislation and social shame is to do harm against the innocent product of what would otherwise be not so much a sin as a surprise.

The harm that is done is the deliberate result of prudes and pecksniffs ensuring that there ARE harmful consequences, when it is their plain duty as human beings first and Christians second is to ensure that no harm, or as little harm as possible comes to any member of their community, and most absolutely to spare no trouble or expense in meeting the needs of the innocent and needy.

But when we study their words and their actions, we find that the only members of the human community that they consider worth consideration are those who are "saved." That stance alone - well, it's fairly orthodox, if somewhat despicable, and condemned by implication in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, but with most Christians, that's expressed as inaction, rather than as actions against the interests of other.

Dispensationalists and dominionist theocrats have taken this a step further, if not in doctrine then in explicit teachings by their most respected writers and leaders. The "saved" are those who share their dominionist theology and who therefore actively suppport the effort to impose - by whatever means - a theocratic rule on earth.

Those who are NOT saved deserve no help, no shelter, no succor, no consideration; they do not deserve even life itself, save for the length of time needed to bring a life into the world that can be potentially saved in order to oppress the unsaved.

Later in the same talk, she explained further why what “works” isn’t what’s important—and gave some insight into what she means by “truth.” “Let me tell you something, people of God, that is radical, and I can only say it here,” she said. “AIDS is not the enemy. HPV and a hysterectomy at twenty is not the enemy. An unplanned pregnancy is not the enemy. My child believing that they can shake their fist in the face of a holy God and sin without consequence, and my child spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy. I will not teach my child that they can sin safely.”

If it's something that cannot be said aloud in the marketplace, if it is something that can only be spoken of in private, to the self-appointed "elect," the likelihood is that it is a "truth" that depends on a shared, unquestioned, untestable, unprovable assumption. That, or it's an outright lie of Xenuvian magnitude.

Here's the lie. "I will not teach my child that they can sin safely.” She is not making millions of dollars teaching her own children, or even the children of fellow believers. She's making those millions uttering calculatedly dangerous falsehoods to children in public schools, based on the assumption that a little premarital fornication is "shaking their fists in the face of holy God."

Schools exist to teach data and facts, ideally as free from ideological and religious bias as possible. Why? Because we, also, wish our children to avoid "sin," not from fear, but from good information that leads to making rational, informed choices. If they must take risks - and for some, it does seem they must, let them at least become the best risk calculators possible.

And this woman wishes to subvert this whole process, knowing, for we have her own words to tell us the truth of her knowledge, that due to her lies, there will be pregnancies, there will be abortions, there will be STD infections and there will be deaths that could have been avoided with a condom, because it's better that a few sheep who stray should perish, lest the flock as a whole be led astray!

Waaait a minute! That's not what the parable of the Lost Sheep says! But if your concern is to herd the maximum number into the slaughterhouse against every natural urge and instinct, yes, you have to convince them that the only thing more terrifying than the scent of blood and fear is an unreasoning fear of everything else.

These verses from the King James could not be more clear:

15	¶ Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16	Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17	Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
18	A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19	Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Mt. 3.10 · Lk. 3.9
20	Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Mt. 12.33

Boy, it takes a lot of thumping and theology to obscure the meaning of this. False prophets (prophets being those entrusted with explaining scripture) will be known by their fruits; by the consequences of their actions, the harm they do to others and to the faith of innocents.

By their fruits, you will know them. By their actions, they stand condemned before you. But fortunately, you do not need to "cut them down and throw them in the fire" in any but the social sense. "Shake the dust from your feet."

Read their works, discern their intents - and then vote for the OTHER fellow. Mock them. Question them loudly in public, and snicker at the prevarications and evasions that they substitute for answers. Do as I have done here, and shine lights into their dark places to show what scuttles and chitters within.

If your school board continues to embrace such nonsense as abstinance-only sex-ed or, god forbid, requires equal time for some creationist folly, you need a new school board. That means that some of "you" need to run for that office.

Meanwhile, make a point of doing what you would normally do in life or in business in any case. If you know someone is a liar, a cheat, a fraud or a thief, you avoid them. You don't take them into the bosom of your families and you certainly do not knowingly employ them. We are speaking of a mental disease that is as socially dangerous as methamphetimine, crack, heroin and alcohol together, if for no other reason that it brings about the ruin of families and entire towns, while remaining undetectable in urine. When thier choices affect you, you bring them before your neighbors for justice - just as you would with any other criminal.

Am I advocating "religious discrimination?" Only in the sense that we all must learn to discriminate between good apples and bad. You give 'em a thump, have a good sniff, and then, and only then do you take a bite. If it's late in the season, you might go as far as to cut it open just to be sure.

You see, we are told not to discriminate against people of faith for what they believe - that's wrong. But nothing in the Constitution or the Bible says that you should suspend judgment about what people actually do when their actions affect you and put you at risk. It really does not matter whether their actions are due to some faith-based delusion or a more honest greed for power - their mental state is not your concern unless they ask you for insight or access to appropriate medication. We can only righteously and reasonably act on what people actually have done and will probably do based on what they have done before.

Judging people on the good or evil of the outcomes of their actions and the worth of their stated, real-world goals is not "religous discrimination." It's critical review, and it IS judgment - but then, they claim the right to judge you based on your actions and choices without any reference to outcome. Having so judged, let them be judged also.

These are people who's essential theology depends on dominating public policy by stealth or force. In some far reaches, some will go so far as to say that there must be atomic war in the middle east so that their vision of pie in the sky will come sooner rather than later. These are people that pray faithfully for Armageddon and work toward that end, every day.

Now, take a look at the Middle East and the meddling there. Does it seem to you that averting the risk of wholesale atomic warfare there is a current domestic policy priority? Does it seem there is any respect for, much less consideration of the rights and value of the millions who must inevitably perish as a result of this hateful delusion?

If you believe in the Bible, or any other time tested and reputable ethical system, somewhere in it you will find reference to a universal truth, one that is so predictable that there may well one day be literal equasions describing it.

It amounts to this: when you harm others, that harm will rebound, and likewise, when you do good to others, that good will rebound. Most actions tend to be mixed somewhat, so life is a mixture of both good and evil consequences - and indeed, many times which it is depends entirely on how you choose to look at it.

Those who choose to see only evil in the choices of other and to actively reject any good that comes from the actions of "such people" as my good friend, ana voog, as being "satanic deceptions" are willfully lying to themselves and others. Having blinded themselves to much good, and devoting the whole of their attention to seeing particular sorts of actions, for good or ill, as being evil by definition, they have renderd themselves blind themselves to the evil they do in the name of good and the overwhelming, insupportable, reeking pile of karmic crap they have accumulated.

Those great and insightful Prophets, Cheech and Chong, had something to say about that.

"You can't polish a turd."

And that is exactly what the their vision for our future is; A Turd Reich.