Please, Sarah Palin, go away

She’s as funny as a clown’s pratfall, but she’s also as fascinating as a head wound. I hope she’ll vanish from the public discourse, but here I am, at the same time gawking over her latest inanities.

Remember how she was caught looking at really trivial notes written on her hand? She’s got a new excuse. God does it, too, and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for Sarah. It’s in the Bible, in Isaiah 49:

15Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.  16Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.  17Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee.

This is one of those stories where God tells the poor oppressed Israelites that he really does love them, and will take care of them, and will deal with their malefactors appropriately. And in Old Testament terms, “appropriately” means in as grisly a fashion as possible.

25But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children. 26And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.

That Jehovah. Keeps track of his loved ones by scribbling their names on his apparently very large hands, and punishes their enemies by making them eat their own flesh and drink their own blood.

And if that isn’t enough Palin stupidity for you, look at this: she hates that socialist health care, but she admits that she would regularly hustle across the border to take advantage of Canadian health care. I think it’s really cool that she so willingly identifies herself as a parasite, a thief, a hypocrite, and a good Christian.

Now…can we have Canadian-style health care put in place here in America? It’s good enough for Sarah Palin, so it must be good enough for God, so it must be the right thing to do.

Reality rejection syndrome

This is old news. The NY Times has an article on the expanding agenda of creationists to include denial of lots of other phenomena that make them uncomfortable. We’ve known this for years! It isn’t just creationism; those beliefs have a surprisingly high correlation with denial of climate change, denial of HIV’s role in AIDS, anti-vax nonsense, rejection of the Big Bang, dualism, etc., etc., etc. At the root of these problems is discomfort with modernity and change, resentment of authority, anti-intellectualism, and of course, goddamned religion, which is little more than a rationalization for maintaining barbarous medieval values. So, yeah, face the facts: creationism isn’t just a weird reaction to bad science instruction and those annoying godless liberal college professors — it’s just one symptom of a deep-seated mental derangement.

One example from the story:

In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”

They often do this, taking the opportunity to try and get a whole slate of dogma incorporated into law. This one, from State Reprehensible Tim Moore of Kentucky, is just particularly stupid, but characteristic of the genre. I’m just impressed that now human cloning is a theory — I thought it was a technique.

They also mention the recent South Dakota resolution.

“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” the resolution said, “but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.”

Change the wording a little bit, and substitute “shit” for “carbon dioxide”, and it’s still just as true.

I have been repeatedly told that going to the root of the problem, the unwarranted deference given to religious views, is a tactical error if what we want is to improve the citizenry’s understanding of biology. What these kinds of absurdities reveal, though, is that creationism is just one wretched excrescence of a whole body of pathological thought…and that focusing on one symptom while avoiding the cause is pointless.

Repent, Amarillo!

Or you will be exterminated! You know, Texas has a reputation of being a nasty place full of particularly ignorant rednecks, which I don’t blindly agree with — I know too many smart Texans, and it does have many good organizations, like the Texas Freedom Network — but this is a blight that smirches even that already sooty name. I am speaking of a vicious vigilante organization called Repent Amarillo. Look upon that link and quiver with disgust.

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It’s saturated with military imagery: men in uniform, humvees, helicopters, helmets; they compare themselves to special forces; they call themselves the Army of God, and sport Bible quotes glorifying warfare. They aren’t military, but they pretend they are, and bring shame to both our soldiers and their faith. They’re actually just cowardly busybodies who snoop and whine at their neighbors, and harass their employers until they get fired. They are not nice people. They’re actually some of the worst kind of people.

They are a “rabid group of religious nuts” who object to the usual targets of fundie hatred — gays — but also harrass people who visit sex shops, engage in consensual heterosexual activity outside the bounds of traditional marriage, and…well, here’s a list of their targets.

1. Gay pride events.
2. Earth worship events such as “Earth Day”
3. Pro-abortion events or places such as Planned Parenthood
4. Breast cancer events such as “Race for the Cure” to illuminate the link between abortion and breast cancer.
5. Opening day of public schools to reach out to students.
6. Spring break events.
7. Demonically based concerts.
8. Halloween events.
9. Other events that may arise that the ministry feels called to confront.

They also plan to hit:

1. Sexually oriented businesses such as pornography shops, strip joints, and XXX-rated theaters.
2. Idolatry locations such as palm readers, false religions, and witchcraft. Many of the smaller missions listed above may be just prayer oriented missions for tearing down demonic strongholds or they may involve more aggressive use of soldiers and prayer warriors. Some other missions occasionally employed may be “undercover operations” where the groups show up together but are not publicly visible together to effect the outcome of a public meeting such as city commissioners meetings, etc.

Check out their Warfare Map. It includes local Buddhist churches (“False god”), the Islamic center (“Allah is a false god and Muhammad is a false prophet”), the Masonic Lodge (“Masonic rituals and teachings in the upper ranks is based on Egyptian paganism. Full of secrecy. Only evil hides in the dark”), the Universalist Church (“Teaches that everyone is going to heaven. This calls Christ a liar. You cannot be a Christian if you call Christ a liar”), the Unitarian Universalist Church (“Pagan and witchcraft headquarters for Amarillo. Pagan and witchcraft celebrations and rites are performed here”), St Andrew’s Episcopal Church (“Referred to an OUTstanding Amarillo’s (Homosexual activists) website as a ‘gay friendly’ church. In other words, they do not tell homosexuals who attend this church that they must repent of the sin of homosexuality. This is a serious violation of scripture”), and Beavers Gentleman Club (“Total nude strip club”), among many others.

“Repent or perish” is their message. They show up dressed in army fatigues, carrying bullhorns, with ghetto blasters blaring Christian music, and they write down license plate numbers and photograph people doing anything they disapprove of. They are our American Mutawwa’in, petty tyrants of propriety with a bloated sense of their own importance. They are our self-righteous wanna-be oppressors.

Keep this in mind. This is the future the Pat Robertsons, the James Dobsons, the Sarah Palins want for us — a kind of Saudi Arabia that differs only in the name we give our prophet.

I am offended!

Another day, another outraged Christian. Parents in a Utah school district were horrified to discover a link on the district web page to an evil essay:

The new battle centers on a link on the district’s Web page that was quietly removed on Feb. 16. Titled “America: Republic or Democracy?” the link led directly to an essay by William P. Meyers, a California-based writer who heralds his belief that Jesus Christ is one in a long string of “historic vampires.”

I, too, am deeply offended. Meyers doesn’t know how to spell his own name, and everyone knows Jesus wasn’t a vampire — he was a zombie.

But here’s another weird thing: you can read the offensive essay, and what you’ll discover is that it says nothing about Jesus or vampires. It’s about the nature of the US government, which he explains is not a simple democracy, but a republic that evolved towards more democratic representation gradually, which is not a contentious issue at all, or shouldn’t be. It also points out something that is probably even more offensive to the purists who worship the founding fathers like a council of demigods: among the motives of the American revolution was a demand to protect the institution of slavery, and the desire of acquisitive land speculators to seize more native American land.

Uh-oh. Questioning the nobility of our forefathers? Trouble.

And then the essay concludes with another obvious, simple piece of reporting:

There are no longer any voter-qualification impediments to democracy in the United States. But many have noted that the will of the people has tended not to prevail, and that a majority of people eligible to vote are so discouraged that they do not vote. The main reason for this is the buying and selling of elections and politicians by the wealthier class of citizens and their special interest groups. A year or more before elections take place, the winner is decided by those who vote with dollars. But this is a defect in democracy, not a reason to abandon it. The answer is to cure the defect, not to attempt to destroy our representative democracy.

Hmm, I think I like this guy even if he does consistently misspell his name. Unfortunately, to constitutive conservatives like the yahoos in Utah, the message in the essay is…creeping socialism! And they get even more hysterical:

[Meyers] believes in anarchy, pagan worship and that Jesus was just a leader of a small cult and is a real vampire! He advocates radical socialism, limiting families to two children, abortion to term, homosexuality, worshipping the sun instead of a ‘dead Jesus,’ saying that Mary was just an unwed pregnant teenager, and many other socialist political views, just two clicks from the district’s home page. … All this was linked directly from Alpine School District’s Web site.

No, it wasn’t. It actually took a fair amount of digging to find out what the heck they’re talking about. Here is his position on abortion and birth control — it’s not at all inflammatory, and includes some simple common sense, like “It is not an appropriate role of government to try to boss people’s sex lives around.” He does not advocate sun worship, in fact proposes quite the opposite. The vampire story is an introduction to a book, and isn’t even on the same site.

If it weren’t for a howling mob of witchhunters trying to find cause to censor a short, simple essay on American history that they found offensive, I wouldn’t have found any of that. It is interesting that they don’t actually address any of the content of that one essay, but instead have to resort to mad, flailing character assassination to silence a simple explanation of historical facts that did not fit their deranged view of the world.

South Duh-kota, hang your head in shame

The South Dakota senate has been wrestling over an important resolution, HCR 1009. Here’s the original text. It will look rather familiar to anyone who has seen creationist bills roll through a legislature.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:

(1) That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;

(2) That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect [sic] world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative; and

(3) That the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints which have complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global warming phenomena; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Legislature urges that all instruction on the theory of global warming be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances.

Notice the “just a theory” clause, and the “alternative theories” clause (which includes “astrological”! and “thermological,” whatever that is), and the “just an opinion” clause. That is one jaw-droppingly stupid resolution.

I wish it had been preserved in all its naked inanity, but somebody must have noticed how bad it was, and the resolution that passed has been amended. It’s still the same story, but the more obviously idiotic key words have been removed.

A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, Calling for a balanced approach for instruction in the public schools relating to global climatic change.

WHEREAS, evidence relating to global climatic change is complex and subject to varying scientific interpretations; and

WHEREAS, there are a variety of climatological and meteorological dynamics that can affect world weather phenomena, and the significance and interrelativity of these factors remain unresolved; and

WHEREAS, the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints, which has complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global climatic change phenomena:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that all instruction in the public schools relating to global climatic change be presented in a balanced and objective manner and be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances.”

They missed the irony of passing a political resolution protesting the politicization of a scientific issue, however. It’s still just a gang of conservative politicians trying to force equal consideration for discredited alternative nonsense in the public schools.

I’m still wondering if any South Dakota teachers will be presenting the astrological evidence against climate change in their classrooms, though.

Canada is sharing in Christian shame

The Canadian government is planning to help a fundamentalist Christian group, Youth for Christ, to proselytize. They’ve offered to contribute several million dollars to the construction of a youth center in downtown Winnipeg, which sounds like a wonderful, useful idea…except for the fact that the group building it has this as their mission:

To impact every young person in Canada with the person, work and teachings of Jesus Christ and discipling them into the Church.

They also openly admit to their plans:

Sharing the person of Christ with every young person within our target group in Canada (5.4 million youth). This will require the development of new strategies, as well as strengthening existing efforts.

So, sure, anyone can come on down and freely use their skate park, their gym, their various services, and they don’t need to be Christian. It would be especially great if they aren’t Christian, because they will be met by a team of cheerful youth pastors who will tell them all about the glory of Jesus while they work out or play. That’s the whole purpose of the facility — not to provide a healthy recreational outlet for kids, but to corral the unconverted in one place for easy predation by a coven of kooks out to win over their minds.

Here’s another nice twist to the story, too.

Roughly one in 100 youths contacted by the organization — 17,010 out of 154,192 — “responded to the opportunity to become a Christian,” said the report, which identified “the aboriginal youth community” as a “prime area for development.”

It’s not just those cranky atheists who are outraged at the funneling of money into Christian evangelism — it’s an ethnic issue, and Youth for Christ knows it.

The Christian youth centre in a primarily aboriginal neighbourhood stirs up thoughts of historical assimilation, some First Nations leaders told councillors.

Nahanni Fontaine, director of justice for the Southern Chiefs Organization, an advocacy group for First Nations people in southern Manitoba, said giving public money to the project would be like contributing to the contemporary version of residential schools under the guise of helping youth.

“[We] saw religion used as an abusive and violating mechanism in which to assimilate aboriginal children into Euro-Canadian mainstream,” she said.

“Aboriginal people were assured that these sort of infringing practices and strategic policies would never occur again.”

Approving this proposal would just be sanctifying a “more contemporary form of the residential school experience,” Fontaine said.

That is serious stuff. People seem to have forgotten what we, Canada and the US, were doing a bit over a century ago: we were actively ripping children away from their native parents and boarding them up in schools where they were taught the White Man’s Ways, which usually involved religion in some way or another. My own university (which is celebrating its history this year) had its beginnings as a native American boarding school, run by an order of Catholic nuns. That’s not something to be proud of, but a stigma to be overcome. Why would Winnipeg want to be afflicted with a new racist black mark on their history?

Bob Marshall backpedaling, unsuccessfully

Marshall, the awful little Republican who claimed that disabled children were God’s punishment on women who got abortions, is now trying to claim he never suggested any such thing, and that his remarks were misinterpreted. Fortunately, he was caught on video:

He has also said many other odious things.

It’s worth noting that Marshall has a history of saying offensive things – or being “misinterpreted.”

He said this about abortion in the case of rape: “[T]he woman becomes a sin-bearer of the crime, because the right of a child predominates over the embarrassment of the woman.”

And he said this about contraception: “[W]e have no business passing this garbage out and making these co-eds chemical Love Canals for these frat house playboys in Virginia.”

I think it’s his political career that has become a toxic waste dump.

They don’t really care about the children

About 20 clergy, representing the very best of Christian theology, of course, and various Republicans gathered in Virginia to protest the existence of Planned Parenthood—they want all state funding, about $35,000 a year, stopped. They claim that Planned Parenthood is an evil organization because it provides abortions (which I consider a necessary and brave service, given the violence of anti-choice lunatics) and contraceptives, ignoring the fact that they also provide reproductive health care for women. In a just and rational world, Planned Parenthood would be regarded as a heroic organization, helping to make this a better world.

Not in the minds of these pious zealots, though. Bob Marshall voluntarily exposed the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the protest with a few choice words.

The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.

In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.

He’s lying. There is no evidence that abortion imposes long term risk of any kind on women or their subsequent children. He’s confusing what he wishes were true with what is actually true.

I despise his imaginary, wrathful, poisonous, child-torturing god. This is what these kinds of Christians hold as just: that an omnipotent monster would wreak vengeance on children for a mother’s actions, and furthermore, that a handicapped child is a punishment for the parents. That’s simply twisted. A suffering child is loved no less by a sane parent, and our hearts are wrenched by the troubles of even our healthiest children. Think about what this dumb wretch has said to every child who is less than perfect in this world (which includes all of us, of course): we are his god’s instrument of torture for our parents. God is the psychopathic bastard who forces failings on us to make our mothers suffer a little more.

God must really hate Bob Marshall’s mother, then, to inflict such a demented fuckwit on her.

You can write to Bob and let him know what you think of his deity. And Virginians — I don’t care whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, conservative or liberal, but could you please stop putting evil, narrow-minded little pissants like Bob Marshall in positions of power? Let him be an affliction to his own family, and leave the rest of us alone.

A few additions:

Angie the anti-theist is getting an abortion — good for her for being bold enough to put a human face to the issue.

And here’s a weird twist. For all their protestations about equality, somehow they think blacks are a different species?

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Libertarianism defined

Uh-oh, the libertarians are getting noisy again. I have not expressed myself clearly enough, I guess. I will remind them all of my previous commentary about anti-environmentalists and libertarian nut-cases, and I will also cite with great approval a passage from one of my favorite authors.

It has been revealed that I’m a fan of Iain Banks. On my last long flight, I read his latest, Transition(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), which is a SF novel about people who can shift to alternate streams of reality, and who choose to meddle. One of the heroes of the story, Mrs Mulverhill, is explaining to another character about the various bizarre forms of government they find in alternate time-lines, and she defines one of the more freakishly weird.

“Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.”

That is perfectly in line with my own sentiments. Libertarianism isn’t so much a political and economic movement as it is a widespread pathology.

As for the book itself — not bad. It suffers a bit from odd expectations, since he writes his SF Culture novels as “Iain M. Banks” and his less genre-specific (and often more disturbing) books as “Iain Banks”, and this is an M-less book that isn’t about the Culture but is definitely SF. It’s a fairly mainstream SF novel without the level of perversity and weirdness I love most about Banks’ stories, but still recommended.