FunctionalAmbivalent

Perhaps If They Read the Bible Once In a While...

The Usual Suspects are screaming that President Obama is anti-Christian because he has no ostentatious public prayer on his schedule this National Day of Prayer.

I refer them to the Sermon on the Mount. Specifically, Matthew, chapter 6:

"Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

The Bible is open to interpretation, of course, and this particular passage I interpret as meaning: shut up, clown people, and let the grown-ups get on with their business.

The Powerful Jujitsu of Freedom In Action

I have an unswerving belief that the way to destroy offensive and dangerous buffoonery is not to suppress it, but to expose it to public view. Remember the speech by the President of Iran at Columbia Univeristy, which so many on the right imagined would boost Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's stature in the world:

The derisive laughter heard through much of Ahmadinejad's presentation demonstrates that the power of free speech is not just in the beautiful, inspirational things that are sometimes said, but in the exposition of the ridiculous and offensive as well.

There's no a significant argument about whether President-elect Obama should have put Rick Warren front-and-center at the Inauguration. It's a lovely gesture of inclusion that is clearly having the effect of making Warren's anti-gay bigotry Topic A in our national discussion. Banning Warren from the festivities would change the subject to the religious intolerance of the left.

OK, liberals: Which topic do you think most benefits the cause of civil equality?

I believed with Ahmadinejad that letting him appear would discredit him more than keeping him from appearing, and Ahmadinejad stepped up to the microphone and appeared to all the world bigoted and unreasonable. Letting him speak was the right thing to do, assuming the goal was to discredit him.

I believe the same thing about Warren. At the end of this, he's going to be -- deservedly -- a much less mainstream figure than he is now.

So Here's An Interesting Question

A just-opened pharmacy in Chantilly, Virginia, will not sell birth control, since the owners are Catholic and don't approve of that kind of thing. As we all recall, the religious right has previously advocated for Pharmacists' Rights legislation that would protect employees of pharmacies that do sell birth control when those employees refuse to sell birth control on religious grounds. I've written about it here and here.

So: will the religious right stand up for the rights of employees whose religious beliefs allow them to sell birth control to sell that birth control in the Chantilly, Virginia, pharmacy whose business model is to not sell birth control?

This isn't just a little bit of rhetorical snottiness. It goes to the central argument about church and state, and the claim by the religious right that they're fighting for religious freedom rather than the establishment of a state religion. Here the qusetion is whether the state will protect all religious beliefs, or whether it only protects approved religious beliefs.

So a little thought experiment: let's say an employee of the Chantilly, Virginia, pharmacy whose religious beliefs allow birth control decides he or she wants to sell birth control in that pharmacy. He or she sets up a little stand back by the blood pressure machine in the waiting area. What do you think the odds are that a member of the religious right will stand up for that employee's free exercise of his or her religion within the confines of that private business? I guess: zero.

From that I conclude that the Christian right has no interest in religious freedom and is motivated, entirely by their desire to establish their own brand of Christianity as the official state religion of the United States.

Latter Day Taints: Naked Calendar Update

A student at Brigham Young University who produced a beefcake calendar of "mostly modestly posed" former missionaries baring their pecs to the secular world has been excommunicated from the Mormon Church and denied the degree he'd already earned.

A Sept. 30 letter from Norman B. Finlinson, the school's executive director of student academic and advisement services, said a nonacademic hold was placed on Hardy's record after the church-owned university learned of the excommunication.

"If in the future you are reinstated as a member of the church in good standing, you are invited to contact my office regarding your possible eligibility for the awarding of a degree," Finlinson wrote.

The student, Chad Hardy, has lawyered up. The Men on a Mission calendar has its own MySpace page, naturally.

Pagan Irony

A woman performing a Wiccan ceremony to celebrate a run of good luck instead brings her run of good luck to an end:

The ceremony involves the use of candles, incense and driving swords into the ground during the full moon.

"It wasn't the first time I performed the ritual, but it was the first time I put a sword through my foot," she said.

The ritual took place in a cemetery in Lebanon, Indiana, a place that just screams "good luck" to me.

Note the Placement of the Lutherans

The correlation between Biblical literalism and intelligence, here. I wouldn't believe this kind of thing, generally, except that the Lutheran data point seems so accurate.

God Moves In Mysterious Ways

A couple in an East Windsor, New Jersey, split-level tract home discovers Jesus in the woodgrain of their bedroom door. Local television demonstrates no story is too small to cover. Here.

Not Coming Soon: Morally Uplifting Brassieres

A Singapore company has withdrawn its line of "Looking Good For Jesus" cosmetics after Catholics complained. Apparently, Catholics think faith is an ugly thing.

They Persist

A federal judge has ruled that the Gideons can't distribute Bibles in an Annapolis, Missouri, high school. Duh. Crackpot right-wing religious troublemakers at The Liberty Counsel promise to appeal the case.

For those of you who are interested, the Liberty Counsel is once again sponsoring a "Day of Purity" on Valentine's Day. Go here for information, including this fun fact:

63% of teenagers who have had sex wish they had waited longer.

Like, for example, until they got out to the car.

Go here to download a credit-card size purity pledge card.

Just Let's Get This Out Up Front and Go On With Our Lives

Here it is almost Halloween. It must be time to focus on Christmas.

I posted yesterday about WorldNetDaily turning the persecution complex of some Christians into a marketing opportunity (they won't be the last, trust me), and regular reader/nutty aunt in the attic Squidly came back with all the predictable arguments:

Regardless of your protestations otherwise, Christianity is very much under attack in the US. Nativity scenes, school Christmas pageants, and even Christmas trees--long a part of our American culture and heritage--are either banned or Orwellianly renamed (just what other holidays in December have "holiday trees"?). Stores instruct their clerks not to wish customers "Merry Christmas," even though Christmas is a legal holiday in the US.

And so on and so forth.

So just to get the holiday season off to an efficient start -- this being October, and my having heard an actual woman yesterday complaining of being "already behind" in her Christmas shopping -- I thought I'd come up out of the comments section for a moment to publicly state what I believe about the annual Christmas culture wars:

• The efforts to prevent government from sponsoring or endorsing Christmas displays are not anti-religious. They're anti-government-meddling-in-religion and do not constitute an attack on religious freedom. I am unaware of any ACLU or other lawsuits to keep people from erecting religious displays on private property, so long as those displays don't conflict with laws governing public hazards and tacky lawn art.
• The effort to put ostentatious Christmas displays on public property have nothing to do with faith and everything to do with the anger some conservatives have because they can't control what other people do and think. For them, erecting a Nativity Scene on the public green is the equivalent of spray-painting an obscenity on an enemy's garage door. It is a perversion of religion based on arguments that are intellectually dishonest and without spiritual meaning. They're self-pitying bullies who are insecure in their faith -- if they have any faith at all.
• Or, if they're not that, they're people who are entirely comfortable with the concept of an American Theocracy.
• The fact that government can't support something doesn't mean that something is oppressed.
• The instruction of store clerks to say "Happy Holidays" is a marketing decision designed to keep people who aren't Christians shopping. Jews, for example. It is not part of a liberal conspiracy, because most top-level marketing executives aren't liberal. And the True Meaning of Christmas has nothing whatsoever to do with any retail function.
• "Happy Holidays" is not an anti-Christian greeting. It is a friendly, inclusive greeting that takes into account the fact that several major religious and secular holidays take place in the same two week period.
• Christians who spend their time bitching about "anti-Christian" liberals on the verge of ruining the holiday are insane.  The True Meaning of Christmas disappeared from the public sphere a long time ago in a frenzy of retailing. The True Meaning of Christmas continues to exist in hundreds of thousands of church pageants where children sing "Silent Night" and around the dinner tables of millions of families who gather to express their gratitude for the coming of Christ. It is quiet and private, in keeping with Christ's admonition to not be like the hypocrites.
• Christians who believe that Christianity is a put-upon religion in the United States are nuts on a par with people who claim that the CIA controls their brainwaves through implants in their teeth. Their belief is so far from any verifiable reality that you can't rationally argue with them.

And, while we're at it:

• The people who whine most about Christmas are people who get paid to complain. Everyone who whines along with them is a sucker.

You may talk amongst yourselves.