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Why the U.S. Is Not a Christian Nation
CNN Opinion...
Why U.S. is not a Christian nation
By Kenneth C. Davis, Special to CNN
July 4, 2011 9:10 a.m. EDT
tzleft.davis.kenneth_revere.jpg
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Thomas Jefferson is famous for words he wrote in the Declaration of Independence
Kenneth Davis: Jefferson's other words resonate as well
Jefferson wrote Bill of Rights set up "wall of separation between Church and State"
Founding Fathers knew the dangers of merging church and state, Davis says
Editor's note: Kenneth C. Davis is the author of "Don't Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition" (HarperCollins). He posts regularly at his blog at http://www.dontknowmuch.com/.
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PART ONE...
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(CNN) -- As America celebrates its birthday on July 4, the timeless words of Thomas Jefferson will surely be invoked to remind us of our founding ideals -- that "All men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator" with the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These phrases, a cherished part of our history, have rightly been called "American Scripture."
But Jefferson penned another phrase, arguably his most famous after those from the Declaration of Independence. These far more contentious words -- "a wall of separation between church and state" -- lie at the heart of the ongoing debate between those who see America as a "Christian Nation" and those who see it as a secular republic, a debate that is hotter than a Washington Fourth of July.
It is true these words do not appear in any early national document. What may be Jefferson's second most-quoted phrase is found instead in a letter he sent to a Baptist association in Danbury, Connecticut.
While president in 1802, Jefferson wrote: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State ... "
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CONTINUED...CNN Opinion... Why U.S. is not a Christian nation By Kenneth C. Davis,... more-
- EthicalVegan
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- 11 months ago
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My Take: On Adoption, Christians Should Put Up or Shut Up
CNN.....
June 16th, 2011
03:11 PM ET
My Take: On adoption, Christians should put up or shut up
Editor's Note: Jason Locy is co-author of Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society. He and his wife are adoptive parents and participants in Safe Families for Children, a voluntary alternative to foster care.
By Jason Locy, Special to CNN
When the Arkansas Supreme court struck down a voter-approved initiative that banned cohabitating straight and gay couples from adopting orphaned children, the Christian community predictably erupted.
Byron Babione of the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian lawyers, attributed the April ruling to a “political movement afoot to undermine and destroy marriage.” Baptist Press, the publications arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, ran an article that quoted Babione as saying the ruling reflected “a campaign to place adult wants and desires over the best interests of children."
On one hand, these comments aren’t surprising. Conservative evangelicals have decried “the anti-family gay agenda” for decades. On the other, they underscore the way many Christians denounce a social problem that they have no plan for solving.
And the problem here is not ultimately gays adopting — the prevention of which, I believe, was the impetus behind the Arkansas initiative and behind adoption restrictions in various other states. The problem is a global orphan crisis involving tens of millions of children.
In the United States, there are approximately 116,000 foster children waiting to be adopted. That means a judge has either severed the rights of the original parents or the parents have voluntarily signed their children over to the government.
To put this into perspective, we might compare the number of American orphans to the purported 16 million Southern Baptists who attend more than 42,000 churches nationwide. Quick math reveals that there are roughly 138 Southern Baptists for every child in the American foster care system waiting to be adopted. To say it another way, this single denomination has an enormous opportunity to eradicate the orphan crisis in America.
If you’ve spent any time in church, you’ve probably heard a sermon on Noah or Moses or David. But how many sermons have you heard on the biblical mandate to care for orphans?
When was the last time you heard your pastor declare, “if you choose to adopt a child we will stand with you. We will provide respite care, financial help and do everything possible to meet the needs of that child?”
Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics — the Christian Church — can provide safe, loving, permanent homes for these kids. Our faith dictates that we fight for a better way in both words and deeds.
When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him, and Peter responded yes, Jesus didn’t tell him to picket the wolves. He told Peter to feed and tend his sheep.
Some churches and Christian groups are stepping up. Focus on the Family launched a Wait No More initiative in Colorado in 2008, forming partnerships between local churches, adoption agencies and the government in order to encourage families to adopt through the foster care system. As a result, the number of Colorado orphans waiting for a family has been cut in half.
Christianity Today ran a 2010 report headlined “Adoption is Everywhere,” illustrating the trend among churches and Christians who are giving “attention to orphans, adoption, the fatherless, and so on.”
Despite such efforts, the American orphan crisis remains. Too many churches still find it easier to stand behind a megaphone decrying the morality of laws than to stand beside a child in need.
Thousands of orphaned children in America need grandmas and grandpas, embarrassing uncles and crazy aunts. They need someone to teach them to fly a kite and throw a ball and read a book and tie their shoes. They need someone to call mom and dad.
In fairness, adopting a child is not easy and many of these children face difficult adjustments once they’re adopted. They have experienced pain, loss, hurt, confusion and misplaced trust. They have endured physical, emotional and sexual abuse — things most of us don’t even want to imagine.
In 2008, when my wife and I adopted through Bethany Christian Services, the organization educated us on the possible challenges of adopting a child. They informed us that even though our daughter was a baby when we brought her home, she would eventually ask tough questions, as would our friends and family.
But my wife and I know our faith demands action and that sometimes action takes us out of our comfort zone.
As a father of three — two biological children and an adopted child — and a host to a number of children that have needed a temporary home I can tell you these kids need less arguing over who should and should not be allowed to adopt and more families stepping up and saying, “we will adopt.”
It is time Christians decide to either step up or shut up. If a Christian group wants to wade into the discussion over who should adopt, it needs to put its money and manpower where its mouth is.
That means not only challenging families and churches to adopt from foster care (which costs virtually nothing financially) but also to adopt children resulting from unplanned pregnancies, children with special needs and children of mixed race or minority ethnicity.
If Christians’ only desire is to fight the culture wars and score political points, then they should continue to lean on empty rhetoric. But if they truly care about the family and the Bible, they’ll begin caring for children who desperately need a home.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jason Locy.CNN..... June 16th, 2011 03:11 PM ET My Take: On adoption, Christians should... more-
- EthicalVegan
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- 12 months ago
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- 2 comments
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WHACKO-TV DATE AN ATHEIST
The staff and management do comfort us, but this commercial we took for WHACKO-TV sure got a lot of people round these parts upset. Once again, the sales department will take anything these days. We hope you enjoy the little joke we added to the spot before it went on the air. Those internet companies that run ads on our station never really check to see if we messed with it. Please don’t tell them.The staff and management do comfort us, but this commercial we took for WHACKO-TV sure... more-
- dwightdouglas
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- 12 months ago
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Tax the Churches - give revenue to hungry children
an idea on what to do with the money if religion was taxed in USA and Europe-
- googygood
- added this
- 1 year ago
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- 0 comments
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Why do Americans still dislike atheists?
Pretty good read for your consumption!
Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.
Rarely denounced by the mainstream, this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently — and uncivilly — declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens.
Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close.
A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.
Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.
As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions and to obey the golden rule. They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are, and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric. They value freedom of thought.
For the rest of the short article go to the link provided!Pretty good read for your consumption! Long after blacks and Jews have made... more-
- kennymotown
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- 1 year ago
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Godless Billboard Goes Up In Orange County, California
May 04, 2011
Godless Billboard and Conference in Orange County
(Orange County, CA, May 4, 2011) "Don't believe in God? You are not alone."
These words are appearing on a prominent billboard in Westminster on the west side of Beach (California Hwy. 39) at 19th Street, facing south. It will remain up through the Memorial Day weekend. The 14 by 48 foot billboard features the words superimposed over an image of a blue sky with clouds and is illuminated at night. It has been placed by the Orange County Coalition of Reason (Orange CoR) with $6,325.00 in funding from the United Coalition of Reason (UnitedCoR).
This ad campaign also marks the public launch of Orange CoR, a coalition made up of 13 Orange County atheist, freethought, humanist and religious liberty groups with activities ranging from social to educational and activist to charitable.
A major event for members of these groups, and for other nontheists, has been coordinated with the run of the billboard. It is the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference being held at the Orange County Airport Hilton in Irvine on Sunday, May 15. Major speakers from California and around the nation will be featured. Details are online at http://www.freethoughtalliance.org/2011conf.html .
Beyond this, the Orange County billboard is part of a larger effort. Other billboards have been announced this week in Fresno, Modesto (Ripon) and Stockton, California. And since the spring of 2009 there have been similar ad campaigns in Sacramento and San Diego as well as Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia.
"The point of our ongoing nationwide awareness campaign is to reach out to the millions of atheists and agnostics living in the United States," explained Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason. "Such nontheists sometimes don't realize there's a community for them because they're inundated with religious messages at every turn. We hope our effort will serve as a beacon and let them know they aren't alone."
Reaching out to the like minded isn't the only goal of the effort. "We hope people will discover that one can be good while being godless,” said Bruce Gleason, coordinator of Orange CoR. "After all, you'll find people like us throughout the country. We're your friends and family members, your neighbors and coworkers.”
Edwords added: "All the billboards going up this week also celebrate the National Day of Reason on May 5, an alternative observance to the National Day of Prayer. And they will remain up even after the supposed Rapture that a few have predicted for May 21."
# # #
For a hi-res image of the billboard, free for media use, visit www.OrangeCoR.org .
The Orange County Coalition of Reason is a collection of 13 atheist, freethought, humanist and religious liberty groups working together to increase awareness of nontheist issues and foster community among members.
The United Coalition of Reason is made up of over 40 local coalitions nationwide and works to raise the visibility and sense of unity among nontheistic groups by promoting cooperation and providing funding and expertise.May 04, 2011 Godless Billboard and Conference in Orange County (Orange County,... more-
- EthicalVegan
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- 1 year ago
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The God Debate II: Harris vs. Craig
It starts out slow , but the end questions are great !-
- artemis6
- added this
- 1 year ago
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- 2 comments
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Student stabs himself to prove God exists.
Virginia Tech Police were called to the Drillfield Wednesday afternoon following a report of a student stabbing his own hand with a pen.
Police were called at 1:19 p.m. by a 911 call from a witness at the scene.
Alexander M. Huppert, a freshman university studies major, then assaulted an officer who approached to check his welfare, according to a police press release. After a short struggle with the officer and several witnesses, he was taken into custody.
The incident took place near a table promoting a local version of “Ask an Atheist Day.” The student group Freethinkers at Virginia Tech sponsored the table.
Witnesses said Huppert stood near the table for nearly an hour. Approaching the table, Huppert borrowed a pen and drew a circle with a cross inside on the back of his hand.
Nicole Schrand, a senior psychology major, said Huppert then asked students at the table to stab him in the cross with the pen to “prove to us God existed.” The students declined.
“We don’t believe in assaulting people,” Schrand said. “We’re very against assaulting people.”
Huppert then asked for the pen back, a request Schrand and other students declined. Seeing another pen, Huppert grabbed it and began stabbing himself in the back of the hand.
“If it had been a more streamlined pen, I would have expected it to go through,” Schrand said.
Wade Duvall, who was also working at the table, walked away from the table to call police. Duvall, a graduate student studying physics, first called the Tech Police non-emergency number.
“They told me to hang up and call 911,” Duvall said.
Tyler Pease, a freshman communication major, intervened when he saw Huppert attempting to stab himself in the wrist. Pease, a member of Campus Crusade for Christ, convinced Huppert into giving him the pen.
Schrand said Huppert attempted to confront Duvall after seeing him on the phone, but several people at the table stood between the two.
Duvall said an officer showed up in less than a few minutes. He said Huppert did not cooperate with the officer’s command to take his hands out of his pocket.
Duvall said Huppert then “smacked” the officer on the scene. In the resulting struggle, the officer called for assistance to apprehend Huppert.
“He kept calling for help,” Duvall said. “So I joined.”
Duvall initially grabbed Huppert’s arm. Pease also assisted in subduing Huppert. With additional officers responding, Huppert was taken into custody.
“I was shaking after it was over,” Duvall said.
Pease said the incident ended “better than I expected.”
“As soon as he started hurting himself I was thinking to myself this could go really, really badly," Pease said.
Onlookers were surprised at how quickly the situation escalated.
“I didn’t realize what was going on until police subdued him,” said Brenda Hawkinson, who observed the incident. Hawkinson described Huppert as “glassy-eyed.”
The release said that while in custody Huppert broke out a police car window and assaulted two other officers. None of the officers’ injuries required medical attention, and no other individuals were injured during the incident.
Huppert was charged with three counts of felony assault on a police officer, as well as charges of resisting arrest and destruction of property.
He was processed and transferred to Montgomery County Jail, where he is being held without bond.
The report said the investigation was still ongoing.
Schrand said the incident was not “what we were hoping would happen” during the event. Schrand noted the desire to remain polite during the event.
“We did not try to be offensive ever,” Schrand said.
Pease commended the group for having a “very open dialogue” during the event.
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/17381/student-stabs-himself-attacks-policeVirginia Tech Police were called to the Drillfield Wednesday afternoon following a... more-
- bundlebear
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- 1 year ago
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Superman Vs. God? The Ultimate Question is Finally Answered!
Superman Vs. God? Who is the most superior of superior beings? Find out here!-
- Arin_Kambitsis
- added this
- 1 year ago
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- 3 comments
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Leading Atheist Publishes Secular Bible
CNN...
April 11th, 2011
11:21 AM ET
Leading atheist publishes secular Bible
By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
The question arose early in British academic A.C. Grayling’s career: What if those ancient compilers who’d made Bibles, the collected religious texts that were translated, edited, arranged and published en masse, had focused instead on assembling the non-religious teachings of civilization’s greatest thinkers?
What if the book that billions have turned to for ethical guidance wasn’t tied to commandments from God or any one particular tradition but instead included the writings of Aristotle, the reflections of Confucius, the poetry of Baudelaire? What would that book look like, and what would it mean?
Decades after he started asking such questions, what Grayling calls “a lifetime’s work” has hit bookshelves. “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible,” subtitled “A Secular Bible” in the United Kingdom, was published this month. Grayling crafted it by using more than a thousand texts representing several hundred authors, collections and traditions.
The Bible would have been “a very different book and may have produced a very different history for mankind,” had it drawn on the work of philosophers and writers as opposed to prophets and apostles, says Grayling, a philosopher and professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, who is an atheist.
“Humanist ethics didn’t claim to be derived from a deity," he says. "(They) tended to start from a sympathetic understanding of human nature and accept that there’s a responsibility that each individual has to work out the values they live by and especially to recognize that the best of our good lives revolve around having good relationships with people.”
Humanists rely on human reason as an alternative to religion or belief in God in attempting to find meaning and purpose in life.
Determined to make his material accessible, Grayling arranged his nearly 600-page "Good Book" much like the Bible, with double columns, chapters (the first is even called Genesis) and short verses. And much like the best-selling King James Bible, which is celebrating its 400th year, his book is written in a type of English that transcends time.
Like the Bible, "The Good Book," opens with a garden scene. But instead of Adam and Eve, Grayling's Genesis invokes Isaac Newton, the British scientist who pioneered the study of gravity.
"It was from the fall of fruit from such a tree that new inspiration came for inquiry into the nature of things," reads a verse from "The Good Book's" first chapter.
"When Newton sat in his garden, and saw what no one had seen before: that an apple draws the earth to itself, and the earth the apple," the verse continues, "Through a mutual force of nature that holds all things, from the planets to the stars, in unifying embrace."
The book's final chapter features a secular humanist version of the Ten Commandments: "Love well, seek the good in all things, harm no others, think for yourself, take responsibility, respect nature, do your utmost, be informed, be kind, be courageous: at least, sincerely try."
Grayling, reached Friday at a New York hotel just as he began his U.S. book tour, has been dubbed by some a “velvet atheist” or an “acceptable face of atheism,” he says, in contrast to more stridently anti-religious writers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, both of whom he counts as friends.
In other contexts, Grayling – who will soon take over as president of the British Humanist Association - admits he’s written critically about religion. But not in "The Good Book."
“It’s not part of a quarrel,” he says of his latest work. “It’s a modest offering… another contribution to the conversation that mankind must have with itself,” and one he says he wrote for everyone, Bible lovers included.
Given where society is today, inviting that conversation is all the more important, he says.
More than 16% of Americans say they are unaffiliated religiously, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Even so, Grayling says the hunger for a spiritual connection continues. That yearning, he argues , can be satisfied for many by taking a walk in the country, curling up with a beautiful book of poetry or even in falling in love.
“In all different ways, we can celebrate the good in the world,” he says.
While many intellectual traditions – religious and otherwise – teach that there’s “one right way to live,” Grayling says he hopes “The Good Book” will encourage people to “go beyond your teachers, your text” to understand that “we have to respect and relate to one another.”
Early sales indicate that people are open to what this new "Bible" teaches. On Monday, Grayling’s book was number 41 on Amazon’s UK bestseller list and number 1 in the philosophy and spirituality categories.CNN... April 11th, 2011 11:21 AM ET Leading atheist publishes secular Bible... more-
- EthicalVegan
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- 1 year ago
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Why feminists are less religious - Guardian News
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/29/why-feminists-less-religious-survey
"In our survey of British feminists, more than half said they were either atheist or had no religion. Here's why that might be.
Feminism, said evangelist and Republican broadcaster Pat Robertson in 1992, "is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians". The feminist retort: "Sorry I missed church. I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian," has since made its way on to T-shirts, fridge magnets and bumper stickers.
Where religion's concerned, maybe Robertson was right. Maybe feminism does lead women to reject traditional religion.
For our book about the resurgence of feminism in 21st-century Britain, Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist Movement, Catherine Redfern and I surveyed nearly 1,300 British feminists. We wanted to find out who the new feminists were, what inspired their engagement with feminism, which gender issues they were concerned about, and so forth.
One of our questions was: "Please describe your religious or spiritual views (including none/atheist/agnostic)" (the wording is worth mentioning, since how you ask questions affects the results, as debates on the religion question in the census reveal).
The results show that, when compared with the general female population, feminists are much less likely to be religious, but a little more likely to be interested in alternative or non-institutional kinds of spirituality.
When the 2001 census asked "What is your religion?", more than three quarters of women said they belonged to a major world religion. In the smaller 2007 British Social Attitudes survey (which asked the question more openly), 60% of women said they regarded themselves as belonging to a religion.
But in our project, only one in 10 identified with a major world religion (mostly Christianity). Just over half the feminists said they were either atheist or had no religion. One in six was agnostic. One in 12 considered themselves spiritual but not conventionally religious and the rest answered in other ways (there were a couple of pagan atheists and Buddhist Christians, for instance).
It seems, then, that feminism does inspire women to reject religion.
Robertson was worried that feminism was challenging traditional Christian values – at least, values he considered Christian. Many liberals and feminists, concerned about the rise of fundamentalism and its erosion of women's rights, conclude similarly that feminism and religion have little in common. As Cath Elliott put it:
"Whether it's one of the world's major faiths or an off-the-wall cult, religion means one thing and one thing only for those women unfortunate enough to get caught up in it: oppression. It's the patriarchy made manifest, male-dominated, set up by men to protect and perpetuate their power."
Sidestepping the arguments about whether or not religion is irredeemably oppressive to women (Christina Odone has refuted Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom's recent claim that it is), it's important to ask why feminists think like this. Is it that they have all undertaken a rational examination of the claims of different religions and found them wanting?
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The proportion of feminists in our survey who were not heterosexual is high (40%). Given the tendency of many religious organisations to condemn homosexuality, it's unlikely that these gay or bisexual feminists would feel at home in them.
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Feminists' lack of interest in religion is joined by a somewhat increased attraction to alternative or holistic forms of spirituality, from yoga, Reiki and Zen meditation to Paganism and Wicca. These forms of spirituality set themselves up as gender-equal, and this is probably why feminists like them.
In contrast to the perceived devaluation of women's bodies in traditional religion, holistic spiritual practitioners have created female images of divinity, developed positive rituals around menstruation and childbirth and given women positions of spiritual authority.
We need to know far more than a survey can tell us about how religious attitudes are formed to tell whether these hypotheses are accurate.
In the 21st century, religion has become visible again. Around the world, state approaches to religion and secularism have significant repercussions for religious women's wellbeing, so it's vital that feminists consider carefully their approaches to religion – for other women's sakes, if not for their own.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/29/why-feminists-less-religious... more-
- fernweher
- added this
- 1 year ago
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- 268 comments
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"Gender Neutral" Updates to the Bible: Editing the Word of God
Don't Worry Bible Thumpers, a "Gender Neutral Bible" is not part of the Gay Agenda.
God still hates all the things you hate, and all the really politically incorrect stories & rules will be left alone. Mankind would never alter the inspired word of the Lord when it comes to who will burn in hell and why noone should wear clothes of multiple fabrics.
So What Are They Gonna Edit ?
Well . . .
Apparently Mankind is starting to think God didn't give enough "Props" to Womankind, so henceforth any refference in the NIV bible to "Brothers" will be changed to "Brothers & Sisters" and "Men" will be changed to "People". But don't expect any real changes 'Sisters', the bible will still teach that women should be stoned to death if they lie about being a virgin or refuse to marry their rapist.Don't Worry Bible Thumpers, a "Gender Neutral Bible" is not part of the... more-
- Stoneyroad
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- 1 year ago
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Female Sexuality Still Terrifying to Conservative Lawmakers
The Republican attack on Planned Parenthood, in the form of the House zeroing out funding for the organization in the continuing resolution on the federal budget, seemingly came out of nowhere. For decades, the kinds of services provided with federal dollars by Planned Parenthood—-contraception, STD testing and treatment, cancer screening—-had been assumed non-controversial by the Beltway media. The reproductive rights debate was framed mainly as a fight over bodily autonomy versus fetal life, between secular humanists and religious folks who believed fertilized eggs had souls.
So why then an attack funding STD treatment and contraception? Why, all of a sudden, do you have politicians like Rep. Steve King railing against Planned Parenthood not because of fetal life—-after all, depriving women of contraception access will likely increase the abortion rate—-but because Planned Parenthood is “invested in promiscuity”? Why do you have a conservative figurehead like Sean Hannity arguing not that abortion is wrong because it’s taking a life, but because teenage girls shouldn’t be making out in the back seats of cars in the first place? Why is Gov. Scott Walker not only attacking collective bargaining rights in the state of Wisconsin, but trying to eliminate contraception coverage (but not erectile dysfunction medication) on the grounds of “morality”?
The dusty old argument that female sexuality is a subversive force that needs to be strictly controlled isn’t as dead as we thought. The mainstream conservative movement is bringing it out of hibernation, and this time with a twist: now they’re arguing that women need to have their rights taken from them for their own good.
In the decades prior to Griswold v. Connecticutand Roe v. Wade—the Supreme Court decisions that legalized contraception and abortion, respectively—the arguments for restrictions on women’s reproductive rights barely needed explanation. Millennia of male dominance, from the mythology of Eve to the The Seven Year Itch, held that female sexuality so threatened the bonds of society that controlling it took precedence over allowing women rights. But after these groundbreaking Supreme Court decisions established women’s right to privacy, opponents of reproductive rights were forced to switch gears.
Enter the fetus. Striking a pose of concern for “fetal rights” allowed the anti-choice movement to attack at least one tool women use to claim ownership over their own sexuality, and sadly, anti-choicers made dramatic inroads against abortion rights hiding behind the fetus. But claims about fetal life don’t produce a clear path to arguing against access to contraception and medical care for STDs. Not that conservatives haven’t tried. The fringe of the anti-choice movement has attacked (at times, with mild success) contraception access with claims that hormonal contraception is a form of abortion, but this kind of argument is stalled because of the scientific and common sense evidence against it.
Returning to arguments that paint female sexuality as a corrosive force that must be controlled by restricting women’s rights has been a steady desire in the anti-choice movement. But how, when the public sees the sadism in that argument for what it is? The answer that conservatives have happened upon is to argue that women need to be denied their rights for their own good.
For years now, arguing against women’s rights for women’s supposed wellbeing has been worked with surprising success on the already contentious field of abortion. Arguments that women are victims of their own freedom have been successfully wielded to restrict women’s access to abortion. In various states, legislators have passed mandatory waiting periods and ultrasound laws by arguing that they need to protect women from their own rash decisions. Even the Supreme Court engaged with the paternalistic argument, banning a certain later-term abortion procedure because, as Justice Kennedy explained in the majority decision, women might later regret the decision.
After years of using paternalism against abortion rights, Republicans have taken twinning the majority in the House as the signal to expand the “restrict women’s rights for their own good” arguments to contraception. The initial target is Planned Parenthood, but it will likely not be the last.
Fringe anti-choicers have been trying out arguments that contraception is bad for women for years now in their own circles. The gist of it is that the widespread availability of contraception has lured naïve women into thinking they can have sex whenever they want, and the result has been nothing but misery for women: serial abortions, abandonment by men, depression and loneliness. Men, the argument goes, are no longer forced into marriage with women who withhold sex or get pregnant to trap men. And apparently women need begrudgingly formed marriages to be happy.
In support of defunding Planned Parenthood, you’re seeing this “contraception begets sex begets misery for women” argument repeated in far more mainstream channels than you would have even a few months ago. National Review editor Kathryn Lopez attacked Planned Parenthood on the grounds that access to contraception had killed romance and laid waste to women’s chances at marriage. (How she explains the profits of the wedding industry in an era when people have supposedly stopped marrying is beyond me.)
Ross Douthat took Lopez’s argument and gussied it up with tortured statistics, while making essentially the same argument in the New York Times. Male commitment is the necessary ingredient for female happiness, he argued, and Planned Parenthood inhibits women from this goal by allowing sexually active single women the same access as the monogamous. Women should want to lose their access to affordable contraception, he insinuated, as it would turn them from cat-owning spinsters into girlfriends and maybe even wives.
Most disturbingly, the supposed feminist Democrat of Fox News, Kirsten Powers, argued in the Daily Beast that contraception doesn’t even prevent abortion. Her unique twist on the argument that women’s rights hurt women was not that rights deprive women of husbands so much as depriving them of babies, by tricking them into not reproducing. The basic argument is the same: women are too stupid to know what they want, and so the government will have to take away contraception for their own good.
Even if Planned Parenthood survives this attempt to strip it of its federal subsidies, the anti-choice movement has gained a significant amount of rhetorical ground in the past few months. Arguments that women can’t be trusted with contraception were resigned to fringe blogs decorated with fetal guts in the past, but now the very same radical anti-sex arguments are being bandied around in the Daily Beast and the New York Times. The mainstream assumption that contraception isn’t controversial has been challenged. Next time contraception access gets threatened—-likely when the HHS tries to make birth control mandatory coverage under health care reform—-these arguments will be trotted out. Next time, they won’t seem quite as radical.
Source: http://www.alternet.org/rights/150168/female_sexuality_still_terrifying_to_conservative_lawmakersThe Republican attack on Planned Parenthood, in the form of the House zeroing out... more-
- LISTENTHEFUCKUP
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Anti-Gay Pastor Arrested For Masturbating Near Playground In New Orleans
Every year, the Rev. Grant Storms takes his bullhorn and his anti-gay rhetoric to the Southern Decadence festival in New Orleans. This year, he might not make it -- he was just arrested for masturbating near a children's playground in Metairie.
Storms, 53, was spotted by two different witnesses with his pants unzipped and his eyes trained on kids playing on Friday afternoon.
The women asked a park employee to call the sheriff.
NOLA.com reports that Storms was released without paying bond because of jail overcrowding.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/02/man_booked_with_masturbating_a.html
Storms is well-known to many in New Orleans' gay community, since he makes a scene every Labor Day weekend at the gay celebration known as Southern Decadence.
"He's done everything through the years to disturb that and try to make it into something nasty that it's not," Southern Decadence organizer Chuck Robinson told NOLA. "If the Rev. Storms is caught doing that in our city, it is ludicrous and heinous that he would have the nerve to complain about any kind of sexuality."Every year, the Rev. Grant Storms takes his bullhorn and his anti-gay rhetoric to the... more-
- toyotabedzrock
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A "Blasphemous" Portrait of Jesus
John Dominic Crossan's 'blasphemous' portrait of Jesus
By John Blake, CNN
February 27, 2011 1:48 a.m. EST
PART ONE…
(CNN) -- One of his first fan letters came from someone who declared:
"If Hell were not already created, it should be invented just for you."
Other critics have called him "demonic," "blasphemous" and a "schmuck."
When John Dominic Crossan was a teenager in Ireland, he dreamed of becoming a missionary priest. But the message he's spreading about Jesus today isn't the kind that would endear him to many church leaders.
Crossan says Jesus was an exploited "peasant with an attitude" who didn't perform many miracles, physically rise from the dead or die as punishment for humanity's sins.
Jesus was extraordinary because of how he lived, not died, says Crossan, one of the world's top scholars on the "historical Jesus," a field in which academics use historical evidence to reconstruct Jesus in his first-century setting.
"I cannot imagine a more miraculous life than nonviolent resistance to violence," Crossan says. "I cannot imagine a bigger miracle than a man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square."
In another time, Crossan's views would have been confined to scholarly journals. But he and his best-selling books, including the recent "Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography," have changed how biblical scholars operate.
Crossan believes the public should be exposed to even the most divisive debates that scholars have had about Jesus and the Bible. He co-founded the Jesus Seminar, a controversial group of scholars who hold public forums that cast doubt on the authenticity of many sayings and deeds attributed to Jesus.
John Dominic Crossan says even the writers of the Bible disagreed about Jesus' message.
The 77-year-old Crossan has built on the seminar's mission by writing a series of best-selling books on Jesus and the Apostle Paul. With his silver Prince Valiant haircut and his pronounced Irish accent, he's also appeared on documentaries such as PBS's "From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians" and A&E's "Mysteries of the Bible."
Crossan's overarching message is that you don't have to accept the Jesus of dogma. There's another Jesus hidden in Scripture and history who has been ignored.
"He's changed the way we look and think about Jesus," says Byron McCane, an archaeologist and professor of religion at Wofford College in South Carolina. "He's important in a way that few scholars are."
CONTINUED…John Dominic Crossan's 'blasphemous' portrait of Jesus By John Blake,... more-
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Senate Passes Bill To Teach Bible In Ky. Schools
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/135/7/d/Atheist_Quotes_by_Unikraken.png
FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Bible classes could be taught in Kentucky public schools under a bill that's made it halfway through the legislature.
State Senator Joe Bowen wants Kentucky public school students to have an opportunity to take classes about the bible.
"No doubt about it, the most important book ever written and obviously, it's had so much influence on our society and all of western civilization," Bowen said.
Last year, former State Senator David Boswell introduced the same bill. It passed the Senate, but died in the house.
Bowen defeated Boswell last November.
Now he, too, has passed the same bill out of the Senate, even though Bowen admits there's nothing preventing Kentucky public schools from teaching bible classes now.
"There's not, but this provides a road map, OK, this sets the foundation," he said.
Last year, when Boswell introduced the bill, State Senator Tim Shaughnessy voted for it. This year, Republican Bowen introduced it, Shaughnessy didn't vote on it.
"I didn't read it as closely as I should have," Shaughnessy said. "I spent a little more time looking into it."
Shaughnessy specifically said a provision allowing students to substitute their own text for the course throws academic credibility out the window.
State Rep. Reggie Meeks has a harsher view of the bill – he believes the Senate, with its 34-1 vote in favor of the measure, is pandering to Kentucky's Christian voters.
"It's like waving meat in front of a dog, OK? You give them what they want," Meeks said.
"What this bill provides for is a social studies course. It's education, it's not indoctrination," Bowen said.
"I suspect it will not make it out of the house this year, either," Meeks said.
"We know that was an obstacle," Bowen said.http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/135/7/d/Atheist_Quotes_by_Unikraken.png... more-
- toyotabedzrock
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Mr. Deity and The Showroom
Here's the very latest "Mr. Deity" episode, filmed this past Saturday and uploaded yesterday.
If this is your very first "Mr. Deity" episode, check out some of the others (perhaps even before you watch this one), because this particular episode is like none other.
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Some samples....
Mr. Deity and the Hard Wire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Lf8kJ6Lng
Mr. Deity and the Host:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTTwSJK_XMI
Mr. Deity and the Really Hard Time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ujpzdeolA
Mr. Deity and the Matter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxpZDlvtOm8&feature=player_embeddedHere's the very latest "Mr. Deity" episode, filmed this past Saturday... more-
- EthicalVegan
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Atheist high school groups on the rise!
The SSA needs our support!-
- KnoaWyls
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Texas atheists trade porn for Bibles
Porn for Bibles: A student atheist group, the Atheist Agenda, located at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), is once again engaged in their annual "Smut for Smut" campaign, in which they offer pornography in exchange for Bibles, or other so called "holy" texts.
http://www.examiner.com/humanist-in-national/texas-atheists-trade-porn-for-biblesPorn for Bibles: A student atheist group, the Atheist Agenda, located at the... more-
- unimatrix0
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Mr. Deity and The Matter
Here's another terrific episode of "Mr. Diety," released just today.-
- EthicalVegan
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