It could be worse, part I

We could be Christians. Answers in Genesis distributes a little quiz about modesty: I took it and failed. Most of the questions assume clothing is defined by God, that the purpose of clothing is to hide sexuality, and the focus is almost entirely on women — look at questions #9 and #10, for instance. That could have come straight from a Muslim handbook.

The Style Quiz

Take the following True/False quiz to discover what you really believe about clothing, and then compare your responses with the answer key below.

1. According to the Bible, the primary purpose of clothing is to cover the body.

2. There’s nothing right or wrong about particular clothing styles. It’s all just a matter of taste and personal opinion.

3. The Bible tells us what styles of clothing Christians should wear.

4. Since the Bible says God looks on the heart, what we wear and how we appear aren’t that important; it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

5. Our clothes and appearance reveal a lot about our values, our character, and beliefs.

6. What I wear is not really anyone else’s concern. I should be free to wear the kind of clothes that I like and that I feel comfortable wearing.

7. Modesty means dressing in a way that is outdated, dumpy, and unattractive.

8. If a girl doesn’t wear trendy clothes that are at least a little revealing, guys won’t notice her.

9. Except for guys who are “over-sexed,” most men are not really affected by the way women dress. Most guys don’t even notice how women dress.

10. I can’t help it if guys struggle morally because of what I wear. It’s up to the guys to control their minds. I shouldn’t have to change the way I dress just because they can’t control themselves.

11. Parents shouldn’t impose their standards or beliefs about clothing on their kids. They should let them make their own decisions, even if they don’t approve of what their kids are wearing.

12. Christians are free to dress as they wish, because we’re not under the law, but under grace. It’s legalistic for parents or youth leaders to establish guidelines or standards for the way young people dress.

13. Christian women should never wear clothes that are revealing or that look sexy (i.e., clothes designed to arouse sexual desire or interest).

14. There are some public settings where it is okay for Christian women to wear clothing that exposes their private parts (e.g., thighs, breasts).

15. A woman can be covered from head to toe and still be dressed immodestly. 16. A woman can wear modest clothing and still be an immodest woman.

17. Most girls and women do not understand the meaning, the power, or the benefits of true modesty.

Oh, you want to know the right answers? Look below the fold.

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Ireland stands up to the Catholic Church

Last week, the Cloyne report was released. This document describes patterns of child abuse and in particular the willful intransigence of the Catholic church in correcting the problems in Ireland, and it’s pretty damned damning. One significant detail: the Church’s defense in recent months consists of claiming priestly pedophilia was a thing of the past, a product of the laxity and corruption of the general social atmosphere in the 60s and 70s, pushing the blame onto that awful liberal culture, not the church. Unfortunately, the Cloyne report assesses policies in the late 1990s, so we’re talking about relatively contemporary church practices. Maybe they can start blaming investment bankers instead of hippies.

Anyway, the report rips into the church at all levels, from the local diocese to the Vatican, and accuses them of failing to report cases of abuse, providing support for victims, or even of recording problems — the church had basically closed all doors for redress, and had insisted as usual on keeping the horrors hidden in house. It’s been a cult of secrecy that has permitted the abuses to continue.

Some of the local church officials have apologized — small comfort to the people who were sexually abused as children — but wouldn’t you know it, the Vatican rejects all criticisms. They say the Vatican’s instructions to Irish clergy were perfectly reasonable, because opening up these cases to secular authorities “risked contravening canonical law”. Right. Raping children isn’t as significant a contravention of canonical law as arresting child-rapers in a dog collar would be. It’s just more of the same dodginess from the Vatican.

However Maeve Lewis, director of abuse survivors’ group One in Four, hit out at Fr Lombardi’s claims. Saying they “completely lack substance”, she added his words are “part of the now familiar refusal by the Vatican to acknowledge that the culture of loyalty and secrecy which facilitated the sexual abuse of children extended far beyond the Irish Church.

“It is further evidence, if needed, that the Vatican’s claim to prioritise the safety of children is completely lacking in credibility,” she said.

Now though, in a major step, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland Enda Kenny has spoken out rather forcefully against the church.

Mr Kenny told the Dáil that the Cloyne Report highlighted the ‘dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.’

The rape and torture of children had been downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold, instead, the primacy of the institution, which are its power, standing and ‘reputation’.

The hierarchy had proved either unwilling or unable to address what he called the horrors uncovered in successive reports, a failure which he said must be devastating for so many good priests.

Mr Kenny said that the Catholic Church needed to be truly and deeply penitent for the wrongdoing it perpetrated, hid and denied.

‘Instead of listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal,’ Mr Kenny pointed out that the Vatican’s reaction had been to parse and analyse it, with the eye of a canon lawyer.

The full speech is available online. Kenny is a believing Catholic, unfortunately, but good common sense and a recognition of what is morally right overrides obedience to the church, and here are a few more parts I liked.

But thankfully for them, and for us, this is not Rome.
Nor is it industrial-school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane smothered conscience and humanity and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish-Catholic world.

This is the ‘Republic’ of Ireland 2011.

A Republic of laws…of rights and responsibilities…of proper civic order…where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version…of a particular kind of ‘morality’…will no longer be tolerated or ignored.

Cardinal Josef Ratzinger said “Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.”

As the Holy See prepares its considered response to the Cloyne Report, as Taoiseach, I am making it absolutely clear, that when it comes to the protection of the children of this State, the standards of conduct which the Church deems appropriate to itself, cannot and will not, be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic.

Not purely, or simply or otherwise.

CHILDREN FIRST.

Bravo!

Why are they even debating this?

The UK has been having a debate about Sharia law in the House of Commons. Why, I don’t know; it’s so regressive and oppressive, such a step backward, that it ought to be simply dismissed out of hand. Maryam Namazie gave a speech opposing Sharia law, and here’s a small piece of it.

After all, Sharia law is based on the Koran, the hadith (sayings and actions of the prophet Mohammad), and Islamic jurisprudence. They all agree that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s, a women can’t sign her own marriage contract, men have the unilateral right to divorce whereas a women have limited rights to divorce; child custody goes to the father at a preset age; girls get half of the inheritance boys do and so on.

The Islamic Sharia Council explains why this is so: With regards to women’s testimony, ‘If one forgets, the other can remind her.’ It’s the difference between a man and a woman’s brains.’ ‘A woman’s character is not so good for a case where testimony requires attention and concentration.’ And this also applies to divorce. ‘Women are governed by emotion; men by their minds so he will think twice before uttering talaq [divorce].’ It goes on to say it is not ‘derogatory’ but ‘the secret of women’s nature.’

We’re done. Really, there’s no debate necessary at this point; we live in the 21st century, when no legal code should enshrine inequalities (and I’m well aware that there are inequities in US law, but we’re fighting hard to remove them, not add more).

Guess what makes Josh McDowell cry?

I think the loony Christian apologist has got something right. He has identified the greatest threat to Christianity:

The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have… whether you like it or not.

Hooray for the internet!

Now here is the problem, going all the way back, when Al Gore invented the Internet [he said jokingly], I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that’s exactly what has happened. It’s like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there… This abundance [of information] has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field [giving equal access to skeptics].

Somebody should book this guy for the next skeptics’ conference — he’ll make everyone very happy.

Catholic compassion

I guess the Catholic church is concerned about the rights of breast cancer tumors: they probably identify too much with a deadly metastatic disease, and don’t want to seem them hindered. At least, that’s the only way I can interpret the decision of the Toledo, Ohio diocese to ban all support for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Or maybe it’s just because breast cancer primarily affects women, so letting them die is of minimal consequence to them.

Their published reasoning is almost as ludicrous as that. Church officials say they won’t support Komen because 1) some of the money might go to Planned Parenthood, and we all know how much sanctioned church doctrine hates rational family planning, and 2) some of the money might someday support stem cell research. The Foundation doesn’t have any specific programs funneling money to stem cell research right now, but they might, someday, so let’s cut ’em off for something they don’t do!

I’m also rather peeved about another thing. The head of the Ohio Komen affiliate said, to persuade the church to reverse its declaration, that the local affiliate had not used any of its money to support Planned Parenthood. Screw that; maybe you haven’t, but you ought to be willing to do so if appropriate, and don’t throw an ally under the bus like that.

Rachel Maddow will give me nightmares tonight

This is wicked. Maddow compiled crazy deranged comments from a collection of ministers who will be speaking at Rick Perry’s big prayer event in Texas, where he purportedly will work out economic policies with these wackos. Near as I can tell, that policy will involve sending Oprah to Gitmo, herding the Jews off to Israel, and avoiding sex with demons.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now you can be afraid, too.

The International Day against Stoning

I hope this is something we can all agree on. Today is the The International Day against Stoning, a consciousness-raising event organized by Mina Ahadi, Patty Debonitas, and Maryam Namazie to call attention to the fact that some countries still practice public stonings as punishments for petty offenses against propriety. There are people in prison right now, awaiting that day when authorities drag them into the public square and people murder them by battering them with rocks.

As you know Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is still languishing in prison. The authorities recently mentioned her case saying that no final decision had yet been reached on her stoning sentence and that Sakineh must remain in prison. Falsely accused of murdering her husband, her only crime is that she is a woman in Iran. Her lawyer, Sajjad Houtan Kian, also remains in prison for having had the courage to defend her and other women with stoning sentences in Tabriz prison; he has been sentenced to four years imprisonment, been put under a lot of pressure and lost 20 kilos (44 pounds) as a result.

The campaign to Save Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani has been an important one. It has spoken out in defence of humanity, and against the barbaric punishment of stoning everywhere. It has mobilised immense pressure against and condemnation of the Islamic regime of Iran from millions across the globe. These are accomplishments we must all be proud of.

On 11 July 2011, the International Day against Stoning, let’s once again step up the pressure to demand Sakineh’s immediate release and an end to stoning. Join us by either standing in a city square with a photo or poster of Sakineh, tweeting, or by organising an act of solidarity or a flash mob to raise awareness and attention. On 11 July, in 100 cities worldwide, let us once again raise the banner of humanity against one of the barbarisms of our time.

Follow the link; there are recommendations and addresses for letters of protest. Make it known that the international community regards these barbarous, vile practices as heinous and contemptible.

More sophisticated theology

People keep telling me that I have to read up more on real theology, you know, the stuff where smart old white guys sit around in seminaries and invent rationalizations for whatever the hell they want to believe. Unfortunately, I don’t see any difference in principle (but hopefully, in outcome) between what, for instance, elders of the Mormon church or Catholic bishops say, than the ideas of Peter Lucas Moses, who has his own special interpretation of God’s holy word.

A religious leader in North Carolina shot to death his four-​year old step son because he thought the boy, Jadon Higganbothan, might be gay. The man, Peter Lucas Moses, 27, who also shot to death a 28-​year old woman, may face the death penalty.

Moses, whom police stopped short of calling a cult leader, lived in a one-​room home with nine children and three women. The 28-​year old woman, Antoinetta Yvonne McKoy, Moses killed had been beaten and strangled with an extension cord before Moses murdered her. The day he did, she had escaped to a neighbor’s house and begged her to use her cell phone. The neighbor did not call police because she claims she thought the woman might be mentally disturbed. She witnesses Moses dragging her into the house, and still never called police.

If you lack a rational, empirical rubric for evaluating truth-claims against real world evidence, how can you claim that Catholicism or Scientology or Mormonism or Islam or Lutheranism or Black Hebrews are any more right than anyone else?

There’s a lot of attention being focused on the young child who was murdered for suspicion of being gay, but I find the murder of McKoy just as appalling. What did she do, you might wonder?

She was a failure as a woman, apparently.

McKoy found that she couldn’t have children and wrote dairy entries begging “Lord” not to kill her, prosecutors said.

How primally Abrahamic…how primatological. The purpose of this religious construct is to control the fertility of its members, and again, there’s not much difference between one cult and Catholicism, except for tactics. Catholic leaders tend to avoid shooting women in the head anymore, and instead shackle them to a lifetime of pumping out babies, but its the same miserable need to control women’s lives.