In Which The Mayoress is Once Again Reminded Why She No Longer Attends Church

Oh guys.  I am going through one of those periods where everything I encounter in the news just makes me want to give up on every level.  It's all so frustrating and seemingly impossible.  So here we go with a few of the most upsetting.

One commenter summed it up quite succinctly:

"Bishop Long can actively shit on women and use "prosperity gospel" to bilk poor people out of their money and no one really gives a fuck. 

I strongly suspect that church folks wouldn't be NEARLY as upset if his alleged victims had been female, either. "

Read more: http://jezebel.com/5649005/relationship-advice-from-the-molesting-megachurch-pastor?skyline=true&s=i#ixzz10lTCavXb

On a positive-for-the-American-Christian-church note, I watched the film "Lord Save Us from Your Followers" the other night, and though it was a bit hokey, I thought it was a great treatment on the contemporary PR mess the church has created, and presents the best solution I've seen.  No, actually, the best I've seen was put forward a bit more subtly in Blue Like Jazz, but this builds upon it directly.  (Go Portland.) Definitely add it to your Amazon cart/Netflix cue.

Cartoons = Death

Well, well, well. Guess who's pissed at South Park again? I'm not going to go deep on this one because I don't want to be on any extremist's shit list and because other people are already explaining the ridiculousness better than I could, but I think you can all imagine where I stand on this issue.

Note to Mohommed of Revolution Muslim:
a) American are not "more worried about missing their favorite TV show than they are about the world," we're worried about our DVR not recording it.
b) Triscuits? Come ON. Cheez-its 4eva.

Freedom of Speech

Ever since I read about that Danish cartoonist narrowly escaping his murder a couple weeks ago, I've been thinking a lot about freedom of speech.

You remember a few years back when a Danish newspaper published a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammed. Well, showing an image of Muhammed is considered extremely blasphemous among Muslims, and riots ensued. A hit was put out on this cartoonist. Luckily, the Danish government took it very seriously and protected him, including installing a saferoom with a panic button in his home. The cartoonist was home with his young granddaughter when a man broke into his house with an axe to kill him, and the cartoonist narrowly escaped to the saferoom, protected his granddaughter, and survived.

The main doubts I have about writing this blog tend to be offending some business contact who googles me or my words getting quoted out of context some day if I run for office. But this story made me realize how much I take my First Amendment rights for granted. In other places, voicing my opinions could be grounds for imprisonment. Hell, McCarthyism here in America wasn't so long ago; what if the teabaggers and the Glenn Beck conservatives get some sort of crazy power and decide to punish everyone who doesn't agree with them? It sounds extreme, but you just never know who will be running things a few years down the road.

Do Atheists Need to Market?

After church on Sunday, Flora brought up the subway posters up lately that essentially advertise atheism. She thought they were pretty unnecessary - what's the point in advertising an opt-out? I somewhat disagreed, bringing up how much religion, primarily Christianity, influences our laws and elections, and so atheists need a seat at the table. Ironically, Flora is an atheist and I grew up very Christian. And we went to service at a Unitarian church.

This blog post by Randy Cohen, aka The Ethicist, on discussing religion touches on what I was trying to get at:

My political beliefs, my ideas about social justice, are as deeply held as my critics’ religious beliefs, but I don’t ask them to treat me with reverence, only civility. They should not expect me to walk on tiptoe. It is not as if religious institutions occupy a precarious perch in American life. It is not the proclaimed Christian but the nonbeliever who is unelectable to high office in this era when politicians of every party and denomination make a public display of their faith.

What do you think? Should religion be sacred? How about when it crosses over into politics? When it affects you, your children's education, your community?

Justice for All

This week's Savage Love column is brilliant of course, but the comments section in particular has some great thoughts on the gay marriage issue. I especially liked this one:

@27--"Isn't marriage fundamentally a religious institution?" Simply put, it isn't. There are a whole host of legal rights and responsibilities that a modern civil marriage grants. Off the top of my head: Next of kin benefits, the right of the spouse to be the one to make the crucial medical decisions when one becomes incapacitated. Survivor benefits, when you die, most workplaces have to pay your spouse some bucks. No spouse, no $$. You can't just unilaterally call it quits on your husband or wife and leave him or her out in the cold. When you marry, your spouse's kids more or less automatically become your kids, you have a stake in how they're raised.

And there're a lot more purely legalistic reasons why denying gays the right to marry is fundamentally legally discriminatory, and therefore in clear violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the US Constitution. It's not about religion, it's about justice. Liberty and justice for all.

Furthermore, "religion" itself doesn't unite with one voice to say anything about gay people. Yes, a lot of, perhaps most, discrete Christian sects are well behind the curve in their approach to gay rights, but not all. Unitarians are fully accepting of gays. Some Lutherans and Methodists are getting on board the big gay love bus. My own Episcopal church is busily tearing itself apart over the issue...

Atheism as Serious Political Issue

Just kidding, I had to title this post that in order to make this video relevant. You're welcome!

Where Do I Begin...

...with everything in this quote that is so wrong it's sickening?

As a life-long person of faith, it has been a long struggle for me to accept that atheists and agnostics - without what has always been for me essential grounding in faith and scripture - can indeed be truly moral and decent and self-sacrificing human beings. But in fact, I have learned they can be, and to a large extent as much as most people of faith. I don’t know if atheism will ever produce a Bonhoeffer, a Sophie Scholl, an Oscar Romero, an MLK Jr, but I have learned through personal experience to accept most nonbelievers as decent trustworthy moral human beings. But this kind of acceptance takes a long time for most normal traditional folks to develop. The same can be said for acceptance of Muslims or Gays. This kind of change takes time - so be understanding! Most evangelicals are sincere, good-hearted, generous, and compassionate human beings - but most have never had much personal interaction with Gays, Muslims, or Nonbelievers. It takes time.

— Ben Self

Ben. Ben, Ben, Ben. What is your definition of "moral and decent and self-sacrificing"? Why do you get to decide the societal meaning or value of those things? Most "normal traditional" folks? Normal? Why thank you. And to equate with Muslims and Gays? To even group the two, a religion and a sexual preference? A choice and how you were born? "Most evangelicals are sincere, good-hearted, generous, and compassionate" - which ones, Ben? If you've never had much interaction with the groups you describe, I can't imagine your circle of acquaintances is anything nearing large, so you're describing, what, the 20 people you know from your church who are just like you? How about all those believers that excommunicate those who leave the church, donate little or no time and money to the less fortunate, perpetuate hate, and implausibly think God cares more about abortion and gay marriage than feeding the poor, even though Jesus speaks pretty specifically on the latter in the gospels?

It doesn't take time, Ben. It takes exposure to different people, cultures, experiences. I get it, Ben, I once lived in a mega church suburb. But now I don't, and now my intolerances have shifted nearly 180 degrees. Very few things make me as impatient as Christians getting the beliefs of the mainstream American Christian church confused with actual scripture. You can't have it both ways.