Dommie Watch

Church members enter Canada, aiming to picket bus victim's funeral

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:25:43 GMT

Last Updated: Friday, August 8, 2008 | 2:57 PM CT Comments669Recommend612
CBC News

Members of a fundamentalist American church group planning to stage a protest at the funeral for a Winnipeg man brutally killed on a Greyhound bus have managed to enter Canada, a spokeswoman told CBC News on Friday.

Canadian border guards are under orders to prevent members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a controversial Kansas-based sect, from entering the country.

The group intends to picket the funeral of 22-year-old Tim McLean to tell Canadians his slaying on July 30 was God's response to Canadian policies enabling abortion, homosexuality and divorce and remarriage.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's office sent an alert to border patrol to "look out" for people with signs and pamphlets consistent with the messages that the church promotes and to keep them out of the country.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of church founder Fred Phelps, said a group of church members was turned away from a border crossing at Niagara Falls, but a small group did manage to get into Manitoba overnight.

"They were looking for picket signs and they were looking for leaflets. Well, we don't do leaflets, and the picket signs, you know, Fed Ex ships them overnight," she said.

However, Phelps-Roper said the reaction the group has raised from some police and public officials has her questioning whether the planned protest will go ahead.

"The question to my mind [is] whether or not we ought to get them the heck out of that country, because that's some crazy stuff when you've got your officials talking like they are in a back-alley brawl and not government officials who took an oath to obey the law and so forth."

Phelps-Roper said she would advise church members not to go ahead with the protest if there is a concern they might be arrested or harmed.

Counter-protest planned

A counter-protest against the church's picket plans was launched on the social networking site Facebook on Thursday.

More than 700 people have since joined the group; postings indicate they plan to form a "human wall" around the family to shield them from the church protest, if it takes place.

Winnipeg NDP MP Pat Martin said the group should be "sent packing," and should not try to show up in Winnipeg "for their own safety."

"We're not going to allow these people to compound the tragedy of the McLean family loss, and Canadians simply won't tolerate these lunatics disrupting what should be a respectful service," he told CBC News on Friday.

"Your freedom to swing your arm in the air ends when it touches the end of my nose," he added. "What these people were going to do was hurtful, harmful and disruptive to the peace, order and good government that we guarantee to our citizens, so they have no place in this country."

Family in shock, requests privacy

Meanwhile, Tim McLean's mother released a short public statement Friday morning, saying the family is in "complete shock at the horrifying loss of our loved one."

Carol deDelley expressed frustration that some media outlets have not identified McLean's family members properly; the statement identifies Tim's parents and step-parents and the six siblings in his blended families.

DeDelley asked for privacy during the family's time of mourning.

Sauce

Border guards to turn away church group aiming to picket bus victim's funeral

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:02:22 GMT

Last Updated: Friday, August 8, 2008 | 9:09 AM CT Comments189Recommend180
CBC News

Canadian border guards are under orders to prevent members of a fundamentalist American church from crossing into Canada to protest at the funeral Saturday of a Winnipeg man brutally killed on a Greyhound bus last week.

Westboro Baptist Church, a controversial Kansas-based sect, intends to picket the funeral of 22-year-old Tim McLean to tell Canadians his slaying on July 30 was God's response to Canadian policies enabling abortion, homosexuality and adultery.

"God is punishing Canada for passing laws against WBC — by exposing Canadians as cannibals and highway decapitaters," the church says in a news release on its website, which refers to McLean as "The Headless Canadian."

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's office sent an alert to border patrol to "look out" for people with signs and pamphlets consistent with the messages that the church promotes and to keep them out of the country, Winnipeg MP Pat Martin told CBC News on Friday.

"Entering Canada by a U.S. citizen isn't an absolute right, and if you're coming here only to disrupt the social order and to promote what we consider to be bordering on hate crimes or hate language, they shouldn't come into Canada," Martin said.

"We're not going to allow these people to compound the tragedy of the McLean family loss, and Canadians simply won't tolerate these lunatics disrupting what should be a respectful service."

Freedom of speech is not absolute, Martin said.

"Your freedom to swing your arm in the air ends when it touches the end of my nose," he said. "What these people were going to do was hurtful, harmful and disruptive to the peace, order and good government that we guarantee to our citizens, so they have no place in this country."

A counter-protest against the church's picket plans was launched on the social networking site Facebook on Thursday. More than 500 people have since joined the group; postings indicate they plan to form a "human wall" around the family to shield them from the church protest, if it takes place.

The Westboro Baptist Church and its founder, Pastor Fred Phelps, gained infamy by protesting gay-pride rallies and the funerals of people who have died from AIDS-related illnesses.

In recent years, church members have also picketed the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming the deaths are also God's punishment for the country's tolerance for homosexuality.

Sauce

Sex in Crisis: How the Religious Right Is Trying to Ruin Sex for Everyone

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:57:04 GMT

By Dagmar Herzog, Perseus Books. Posted August 4, 2008.

The religious has right co-opted the language of feminism and the sexual revolution to try and make you feel bad about sex.

Editor's note: From the book Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics by Dagmar Herzog. Excerpted by arrangement with Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2008

The Religious Right is a capacious tent in which many agendas and approaches have found a home. There are conservative evangelicals who promise worldly prosperity and success (if only you trust enough in God's plans). There are others who gird themselves for Armageddon. There are the vehement defenders of "Merry Christmas" and school prayer and the enemies of evolution and intellectualism and "liberal elitism." There are highly intellectual (and themselves elite) members of the Religious Right. There are those who see the culture clash with neofundamentalist Islam as the current big threat, and those who work to justify the ongoing war in Iraq as a properly Christian cause. There are those who raise money for and organize tourism in Israel in the expectation that at the End of Days a majority of Jews will convert to Christ. But right-wing evangelicalism achieved power in American politics primarily through its sex activism. And in fifteen years of steady effort, it managed to undo the most important achievements of the sexual revolution of the 1960s-1970s.

This was accomplished through a selective appropriation and adaptation of key aspects of that old sexual revolution. Speaking in graphic detail both about sexual discontent and dysfunction and about the possibilities for ecstatically orgasmic and emotionally fulfilling bliss has been a core component. Without the promise of pleasure, the Religious Right would not have found nearly as many adherents as it has; repression alone is not sufficiently appealing.

Evangelical sexual conservatives took up some of the main concerns of the feminist women's movement of the 1970s-1980s. An interest in intensifying women's sexual pleasure has been a central focus of evangelical sex advice from the start. Many women's frustration at male fascination with pornography and emotional non-presence during sex -- another feminist theme -- and the need to help men get comfortable with physical and emotional mutuality, have also been taken up. So too have the classic women's movement themes of concern about domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and sexual exploitation of women. More recently, evangelicals have moved to adapt both feminist and mainstream advice about body image, in addition to generating a vast Christian dieting and addiction recovery industry. There is also an antiauthoritarian evangelical youth counterculture.

n its activism around issues of sexuality, the Religious Right has found ways as well to incorporate the insights of the New Age men's movement in its own program to transform an Internet-ogling insecure bumbler into a virile he-man who is competent at male-male friendship and rivalry as well as hot heterosexual romance. The movement has been wildly successful in part because of its extraordinary ability to present its own program as therapeutic. None of this, however, should distract from the fact that right-wing evangelicals have also been sadistic and punitive, eager to play to the most base human desires to feel superior to others who fail to live up to the expected norms.

While the roots of the Religious Right lie in anti-black racism (a history that has now been largely overcome but still goes woefully underacknowledged), it got its start in American national politics by organizing against abortion and homosexuality. In the wake of the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade in 1973, and in response to the growing public visibility of gays and lesbians in the 1970s and 1980s and their demands for an end to discrimination, evangelical conservatives could count on these two issues, along with more general calls for restrictions on sex education and the restoration of "traditional family values," as their major fundraising and mobilizing tools. All through the 1990s, playing to homophobic reflexes was one of the Christian Right's most popular tactics. But nothing has been more successful in the early twenty-first century than its ability to hijack the national conversation about heterosexuality.

Initially, telling the heterosexual majority what to do was not...

The U.S. Military of Today...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:21:53 GMT

...is obviously not the one I served in in the mid 80's -

Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats

By NEELA BANERJEE
Published: April 26, 2008
The New York Times

FORT RILEY, Kan. — When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.

Eileen Lainez, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, declined to comment on the case, saying, “The department does not discuss pending litigation.”

Specialist Hall’s lawsuit is the latest incident to raise questions about the military’s religion guidelines. In 2005, the Air Force issued new regulations in response to complaints from cadets at the Air Force Academy that evangelical Christian officers used their positions to proselytize. In general, the armed forces have regulations, Ms. Lainez said, that respect “the rights of others to their own religious beliefs, including the right to hold no beliefs.”

To Specialist Hall and other critics of the military, the guidelines have done little to change a culture they say tilts heavily toward evangelical Christianity. Controversies have continued to flare, largely over tactics used by evangelicals to promote their faith. Perhaps the most high-profile incident involved seven officers, including four generals, who appeared, in uniform and in violation of military regulations, in a 2006 fund-raising video for the Christian Embassy, an evangelical Bible study group.

“They don’t trust you because they think you are unreliable and might break, since you don’t have God to rely on,” Specialist Hall said of those who proselytize in the military. “The message is, ‘It’s a Christian nation, and you need to recognize that.’ ”

Soft-spoken and younger looking than his 23 years, Specialist Hall began a chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers at Camp Speicher, near Tikrit, to support others like him.

At the July meeting, Major Welborn told the soldiers they had disgraced those who had died for the Constitution, Specialist Hall said. When he finished, Major Welborn said, according to the statement: “I love you guys; I just want the best for you. One day you will see the truth and know what I mean.”

Major Welborn declined to comment beyond saying, “I’d love to tell my side of the story because it’s such a false story.”

But Timothy Feary, the other soldier at the meeting, said in an e-mail message: “Jeremy is telling the truth. I was there and witnessed everything.”

It is unclear how widespread religious discrimination or proselytizing is in the armed forces, constitutional law experts and leaders of veterans’ groups said. No one has independently studied the issue, and service members are reluctant to come forward because of possible backlash, those experts said.

There are 1.36 million active duty service members, according to the Pentagon, and since 2005, it has received 50 formal complaints of religious discrimination, Ms. Lainez said.

In an e-mail statement, Bill Carr, the Defense Department’s deputy under secretary for military personnel policy, said he “saw near universal compliance with the department’s policy.”

But Mikey Weinstein, a retired Air Force judge advocate general and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the official statistics masked the great number of those who do not report violations for fear of retribution. Since the Air Force Academy scandal began in 2004, Mr. Weinstein said, he has been contacted by more than 5,500 service members and, occasionally, military families about incidents of religious discrimination. He said 96 percent of the complainants were Christians, and the majority of those were Protestants.

Complaints include prayers “in Jesus’ name” at mandatory functions, which violates military regulations, and officers proselytizing subordinates to be “born again.” After getting the complainants’ unit and command information, Mr. Weinstein said, he calls his contacts in the military to try to correct the situation.

“Religion is inextricably intertwined with their jobs,” Mr. Weinstein said. “You’re promoted by who you pray with.”

Specialist Hall came to atheism after years as a Christian. He was raised Baptist by his grandmother in Richlands, N.C., a town of less than 1,000 people. She read the Bible to him every night, and he said he joined the Army “to make something of myself.”

“I thought going to Iraq was right because we had God on our side,” he said in an interview near Fort Riley.

In the summer of 2005, after his first deployment to Iraq, Specialist Hall became friends with soldiers with atheist leanings. Their questions about faith prompted him to read the Bible more closely, which bred doubts that deepened over time.

“There are so many religions in the world,” he said. “Everyone thinks he’s right. Who is right? Even people who are Christians think other Christians are wrong.”

Specialist Hall said he did not advertise his atheism. But his views became apparent during his second deployment in 2006. At a Thanksgiving meal, someone at his table asked everyone to pray. Specialist Hall did not join in, explaining to a sergeant that he did not believe in God. The sergeant got angry, he said, and told him to go to another table.

After his run-in with Major Welborn, Specialist Hall did not file a complaint with the Army’s Equal Opportunity Office because, he said, he was mistrustful of his superior officers. Instead, he told leaders of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, who put him in touch with Mr. Weinstein. In November 2007, Specialist Hall was sent home early from Iraq after being repeatedly threatened by other soldiers. “I caution you that although your ‘legal’ issues are yours and yours alone, I have heard many people disagree with you, and this may be a cause for some of the perceived threats,” wrote Sgt. Maj. Kevin Nolan in Specialist Hall’s counseling for his departure.

Though with a different unit now at Fort Riley, Specialist Hall said the backlash had continued. He has a no-contact order with a sergeant who, without provocation, threatened to “bust him in the mouth.” Another sergeant allegedly told Specialist Hall that as an atheist, he was not entitled to religious freedom because he had no religion.

Responding to questions about Specialist Hall’s experience at Fort Riley, the staff judge advocate, Col. Arnold Scott, said in an e-mail message, “In accordance with Army policy, Fort Riley is committed to ensuring the rights of all its soldiers are protected, including those of Specialist Hall.”

Civilian courts in the past have been reluctant to take on military cases, and the Justice Department has yet to respond to Specialist Hall’s lawsuit.

“Even if it doesn’t go through, I stood up,” Specialist Hall said. “I don’t think it is futile.”

Kids' dress-up day draws Christian ire

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 04:50:03 GMT

...cross posted from Dominionism...

REEDSBURG, Wis. [AP]- An elementary-school event in which kids were encouraged to dress as members of the opposite gender drew the ire of a Christian radio group, whose angry broadcast prompted outraged calls to the district office.

Students at Pineview Elementary in Reedsburg had been dressing in costume all last week as part of an annual school tradition called Wacky Week. On Friday, students were encouraged to dress either as senior citizens or as members of the opposite sex.

A local resident informed the Voice of Christian Youth America on Friday. The Milwaukee-based radio network responded by interrupting its morning programming for a special broadcast that aired on nine radio stations throughout Wisconsin. The broadcast criticized the dress-up day and accused the district of promoting alternative lifestyles.

"We believe it's the wrong message to send to elementary students," said Jim Schneider, the network's program director. "Our station is one that promotes traditional family values. It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values. To promote this to elementary-school students is a great error."

Schneider co-hosts "Crosstalk," a nationally syndicated call-in Christian radio show.

After the program aired, both the school and Reedsburg School District office were flooded with calls complaining about the event.

The response surprised Principal Tammy Hayes, who said no one had raised any objections beforehand. She said a flier detailing Wacky Week had been sent home with children the prior week, and an announcement was also included in teacher newsletters.

The dress-up day was not an attempt to promote cross-dressing, homosexuality or alternative gender roles, district administrator Tom Benson said.

"The promotion of transgenderism — that was not our purpose," Benson told the Baraboo News Republic. "Our purpose was to have a Wacky Week, mixing in a bit of silliness with our reading, writing and arithmetic."

The theme for Friday's dress-up day came from students, Hayes said.

"It's different every year. They basically present the ideas, and they vote on what they would like from Monday through Friday," Hayes said. "... They did not mean anything by this day. They were trying to have fun and come up with a fun dress-up day."

About 40 percent of the student body dressed up Friday, Hayes estimated, with half portraying senior citizens and half dressing as the opposite sex.

"I can assure you we will not be having this day (again)," Hayes said.

Reedsburg is in southern Wisconsin, about 60 miles northwest of Madison.

~After reading this, I thought to myself, "These people are frightened of everything." Which gets me to wondering what they really think of Jesus. I mean, if they're that scared, how powerful can Jesus really be in their hearts and minds?

Walls close in on Phelpses

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:04:53 GMT

Judge orders liens on church building, law office

I've Been Waiting For Something Like This...

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:31:32 GMT

Right Wing Evangelist Dobson Endorses Huck

BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:49:57 GMT

"The origins of the fundamental reciprocal relationship between physical violence and physical pleasure can be traced to philosophical dualism and to the theology of body/soul relationships. In Western philosophical thought man was not a unitary being but was divided into two parts, body and soul. The Greek philosophical conception of the relationship between body and soul was quite different than the Judeo-Christian concept which posited a state of war between the body and soul. Within Judeo-Christian thought the purpose of human life was to save the soul, and the body was seen as an impediment to achieving this objective. Consequently, the body must be punished and deprived. In St. Paul's words: "Put to death the base pursuits of the body—for if you live according to the flesh, you shall die: but if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live" (Romans 8:13). St. Paul clearly advocated somatosensory pleasure deprivation and enhancement of painful somatosensory stimulation as essential prerequisites for saving the soul."

A neuropsychologist contends that the greatest threat to world peace comes from those nations which have the most depriving environments for their children and which are most repressive of sexual affection and female sexuality.

The Battle For Your Mind

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:42:27 GMT

"CONVERSION is a "nice" word for BRAINWASHING . . . and any study of brainwashing has to begin with a study of Christian revivalism in eighteenth century America. Apparently, Jonathan Edwards accidentally discovered the techniques during a religious crusade in 1735 in Northampton, Massachusetts.By inducing guilt and acute apprehension and by increasing the tension, the "sinners" attending his revival meetings would break down and completely submit. Technically, what Edwards was doing was creating conditions that wipe the brain slate clean so that the mind accepts new programming. The problem was that the new input was negative. He would tell them, "You're a sinner! You're destined for hell!" As a result, one person committed suicide and another attempted suicide.And the neighbors of the suicidal converts related that they, too, were affected so deeply that, although they had found "eternal salvation," they were obsessed with a diabolical temptation to end their own lives."

As you can see, this was found during a study of Scientology...but as the author states, these techniques are used by Dominionists, politicians, and others as well.

Evolutionary Theology

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:13:23 GMT

From Digby's Hullabaloo
Sunday, December 05, 2004

Those of you who follow the religious beat more closely than I do have probably seen this article called The Fundamentalist Agenda, by Davidson Loehr. I may not have religious experiences, but I do have epiphanies and reading this was one.

From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.

The five characteristics are

1) Men rule the roost and make the rules. Women are support staff and for reasons easy to imagine, homosexuality is intolerable.

2) all rules must apply to all people, no pluralism.

3) the rules must be precisely communicated to the next generation

4) "they spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. (Several of the scholars observed a strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled by the state. One scholar suggested that it's helpful to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. The phrase 'overcoming the modern' is a fascist slogan dating back to at least 1941.)"

5) Fundamentalists deny history in a "radical and idiosyncratic way."

All of this is interesting and it's interesting because it crosses all religions, cultural and regional boundries. When the scientists were presenting their abstracts, "several noted that all their papers were sounding alike, reporting on 'species' when studying the 'genus' was called for, that there were strong family resemblances between all fundamentalisms, even when the religions had had no contact, no way to influence each other."

Now, evolutionary psychology theories of the moment can be awfully facile because mostly they reinforce certain social norms that can easily be explained in other ways. (No Virginia, women do not necessarily practise fidelity and men do not "need" to spread their seed far and wide because of their alleged biological programming. It's a lot more complicated than that.) Still, this explanation for fundamentalism --- and more importantly perhaps, why it rears its ugly head from time to time is very thought provoking:

The only way all fundamentalisms can have the same agenda is if the agenda preceded all the religions. And it did. Fundamentalist behaviors are familiar because we've all seen them so many times. These men are acting the role of “alpha males” who define the boundaries of their group's territory and the norms and behaviors that define members of their in-group. These are the behaviors of territorial species in which males are stronger than females. In biological terms, these are the characteristic behaviors of sexually dimorphous territorial animals. Males set and enforce the rules, females obey the males and raise the children; there is a clear separation between the in-group and the out-group. The in-group is protected; outsiders are expelled or fought.

It is easier to account for this set of behavioral biases as part of the common evolutionary heritage of our species than to argue that it is simply a monumental coincidence that the social and behavioral agendas of all fundamentalisms and fascisms are essentially identical.

What conservatives are conserving is the biological default setting of our species, which has strong family resemblances to the default setting of thousands of other species. This means that when fundamentalists say they are obeying the word of God, they have severely understated the authority for their position. The real authority behind this behavioral scheme is millions of years older than all the religions and all the gods there have ever been. It is the picture of life that gave birth to most of the gods as its projected champions.

Fundamentalism is absolutely natural, ancient, powerful—and inadequate. It's a means of structuring relationships that evolved when we lived in troops of 150 or less. But in the modern world, it's completely incapable of the nuance or flexibility needed to structure humane societies.

Perhaps it is facile to suggest that these people are less evolved but well...if the shoe fits. I actually think this is a fairly decent explanation for the phenomenon.

The author goes on, however, to suggest that the reason for fundamentalism's rise is that liberalism has failed to properly incorporate progress into society which leaves many people uncomfortable thus "defaulting" to the basic human response.

But for the liberal impulse to lead, liberals must remain in contact with the center of our territorial instinct and our need for a structure of responsibilities. Fundamentalist uprisings are a sign that the liberals have failed to provide an adequate and balanced vision, that they have not found a vision that attracts enough people to become stable.

Just as it's no coincidence that all fundamentalisms have similar agendas, it's also no coincidence that the most successful liberal advances tend to wrap their expanded definitions in what sound like conservative categories.

John F. Kennedy's most famous line sounds like the terrifying dictate of the world's most arrogant fascist: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Imagine that line coming from Hitler, Khomeini, Mullah Omar, or Jerry Falwell. It is a conservative, even a fascist, slogan. Yet Kennedy used it to effect significant liberal transformations in our society. Under that umbrella he created the Peace Corps and vista programs and through them enlisted many young people to extend our hand to those we had not before seen as belonging to our in-group.

Likewise, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used the rhetoric of a conservative vision to promote his liberal redefinition of the members of our in-group. When he defined all Americans as the children of God, those words could sound like the battle-cry of an American Taliban on the verge of putting a Bible in every school, a catechism in every legislature. Instead, King used that cry to include Americans of all colors in the sacred and protected group of “all God's children”—which was just what many white Southerners were arguing against forty years ago.

When liberal visions work, it's because they have kept one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory.

He's basically saying that in order to pave the way for change, liberals have to first be aware of the sacred symbols and rhetoric of traditionalism and then attempt to harness those symbols to advance our cause. I think there is some truth in that.

The Bible is one, of course, but so are the "sacred" texts of our nation, those that outline the rules and beliefs of our territory and tribe. Those symbols and totems are powerful mojo for the other side if we don't lay claim to them. They mean more than just surface martial nationalistic nonsense --- indeed, if this thesis is true, they may be more powerful than Christian fundamentalism. At the very least, liberals should embrace the symbols like the flag and the constitution and all the apple pie traditions with the knowledge that if we don't, a more pernicious force will. It's about the power of deeply held territorial impulses. Christianity and Islam are only a couple of thousand years old. As the author says, the [fundamentalists] have "severely understated the authority for their position." Perhaps we should stake that authority for our side in service of our ideals.

I can think of a few ways we might do this. The first that comes to mind is to pit fundamentalism against territory. If this retreat to fundamentalism is really a default to primitive biology, then we can frame this as America vs the fundamentalists. And lucky for us, it's easy to do and will confuse the shit out of the right. We have a built in boogie man fundamentalist named Osama on whom we can pin all this ANTI-AMERICAN fundamentalist dogma while subtly drawing the obvious parallels between him and the homegrown variety.

We start by having the womens' groups decrying the Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST view of womens rights. These FUNDAMENTALISTS want to roll back the clock and make women answer to men. In AMERICA we don't believe in that. Then we have the Human Rights Campaign loudly criticizing the Islamic FUNDAMENTALISTS for it's treatment of gays. In AMERICA we believe that all people have inalienable rights. The ACLU puts out a statement about the lack of civil liberties in Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST theocracies. In AMERICA we believe in the Bill of Rights, not the word of unelected mullahs.

You got a problem with that Jerry? Pat? Karl????

Pit American liberalism against Islamic Fundamentalism. Since it's pretty much exactly like Christian fundamentalism, perhaps at least a few people will draw the obvious conclusions. But more importantly, it places us with, as the author says, "one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory." This way we define the territory as being ours while at the same time placing the fundamentalists firmly outside of it by using the symbols of territory instead of religion.

I am concluding more and more that we are dealing with a pre-modern political situation in a post modern world. It's not about issues, it's about tribal identity. We have to start thinking in terms of how to communicate our ideals and our vision in symbolic terms. Go for the gut, not the head. My view is that we can do this by using our sacred political symbols to illustrate what we believe in. People use the Bible and that's just fine. But it isn't the only game in town. "This Land Is Your Land" can bring a tear to the eye as well. And if this fellow is correct in that religion is being used in service of something far more primal than we realize then there is definitely more than one way to skin a cat.

I'd be interested in hearing other ideas you may have about how we might communicate by keeping "one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin," without compromising our principles or our agenda.

(And yes, I've read Lakoff. He's great, but we need to consider not only framing, but the context of the argument and the "feelings" into which we want to tap. I think this issue of territorial impulse and biological default settings in times of rapid social change is one way to think about it. There are, undoubtedly many others.)

Thanks to this exceptional rundown of the "abstinence only" story from Barbara O'Brien, from which I got the link to the article. I highly recommend you read both if you are interested in this topic.

Colorado Gunman Left Twisted Trail

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:50:47 GMT

By ERIC GORSKI Associated Press Writer

Dec 12th, 2007 | DENVER -- Matthew Murray's world was haunted by demons.

Somehow, a child of a prominent doctor, someone who was homeschooled in a comfortable Denver suburb, evolved from would-be Christian missionary to a killer trying to rain Columbine down on the Christian world.

A family spokesman said Murray grew up in a loving home. But other interviews and what appear to be Murray's own online ramblings portray a disturbed individual who resented his sheltered upbringing, had problems with his mother, heard voices in his head, felt rejected and abused — and yet appeared to be searching for a place to belong.

He sought refuge in everything from an online forum for recovering Pentecostals to an occult group.

Those volatile ingredients combined Sunday morning when the 24-year-old Murray killed four people and injured several others in a rampage that spanned 70 miles, from a missionary training center that expelled Murray to Colorado Springs' New Life Church, a symbol of the Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity he so despised.

Murray, as promised on the Web, came "armed to the teeth" with an assault rifle, handguns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. An armed church security guard, a new Christian believer, cut him down in a spray of bullets before he could carry out even more violence. An autopsy showed Murray delivered the final, fatal shot to himself.

By all accounts, Matthew Murray grew up in a deeply Christian home. His father, Ronald, is a well-known neurologist who helped develop a tissue bank used by researchers fighting multiple sclerosis. His mother, Loretta, worked as a physical therapist before devoting herself to raising and home-schooling her two boys, Matthew and his brother, Chris.

"Matthew Murray was surrounded by love and support," Casey Nikoloric, a family friend and patient of Ronald Murray's, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "His family is heartbroken, devastated and simply lost in grief."

Most information about Murray has become known in recent days through ranting Internet posts that appear to be the shooter's words. On one, a poster called "Chrstnghtmr" complained of not being able to "socialize normally" after being homeschooled and described being an outcast who was always left out of everything.

One posting obtained by The Associated Press was to a site called Independent Spirits, a gathering place for those affected by a strict Christian homeschooling curriculum.

The author describes going with his mother to a conference at New Life. The poster said he "got into a debate" with two prayer team staff members, who monitored him then tracked down his mother and "told her a story that went something along the lines of I 'wasn't walking with the lord and could be planning violence.'"

The post includes biographical information that matches Murray's background — including his involvement in Youth With a Mission, which ran the training center he targeted in last weekend's rampage.

Other posts also complain of an overbearing mother. At one point, the author said his mother patted him down for CDs, video games and DVDs whenever he returned from an electronics store. In another, the author lambasts Bill Gothard, a Christian evangelist who developed a strict Bible-based home school curriculum.

Kevin Swanson, executive director of the Christian Home Educators of Colorado, of which the Murrays were members, said just 1 percent or 2 percent of the group's 16,000 families use the curriculum described in the posts.

Swanson said homeschooling should not be considered the cause of Murray's downward spiral, just as public schools shouldn't be blamed for a recent shooting rampage at an Omaha mall.

On another Web posting, a person believed to be Murray said that his post-graduation options were limited to missionary work or attending Oral Roberts University, the flagship university of charismatic Christianity. A fast-growing subset of evangelical Christians, charismatics and Pentecostals believe the Holy Spirit continues to show signs and wonders in the world, including speaking in tongues, prophesy and miraculous healings.

Murray ended up enrolled in "disciple training school," a sort of Missionary 101 program run by Youth With a Mission, one of the world's largest evangelical Christian mission groups.

But warning signs soon emerged at the residential program in Arvada, a Denver suburb.

A former YWAM staff member, Michael Werner, told The Rocky Mountain News that Murray was painfully shy and had trouble socializing after growing up sheltered. Later, he exhibited extreme mood swings, spreading rumors about homosexuality at the center and performing dark rock songs by Marilyn Manson and Linkin Park at a 2002 Christmas celebration.

One night, Werner said Murray was chattering to himself and explained he was "just talking to my voices."

Murray was to take a mission trip to Bosnia, but YWAM officials said he was kicked out of the program for unspecified "health reasons."

Murray directed his anger toward Christianity and religion in general. Posting on a suicide chat group, a user who went by "dyingchild—65" pledged to "make a stand for the weak and defenseless ... this is for all the young people still caught in the Nightmare of Christianity ... for all those people."

He fixated on people and groups that explore the dark side of spirituality, becoming obsessed with the satanic lyrics of Swedish metal bands.

Murray attended events held by the Denver-based occult group Ad Astra Oasis during the last two years, but was turned down when he sought to become a member of the group. His involvement with them apparently ended in October.

Ultimately, Murray's rage took him to the front steps of his former YWAM dormitory and New Life Church.

The senior pastor of New Life, Brady Boyd, said he believes his church might have been an "ignition point" for a man with long-standing emotional problems. While Boyd said it was sad that the gunman was raised in the Christian faith and turned against it, he believes the rampage had less to do with faith than with Murray's "organic makeup."

As a charismatic pastor, Boyd also believes a supernatural battle between good and evil is at work.

"If you read the Bible, there are angelic and demonic forces at work on the earth today," he said. "But I also think that many times, those evil forces take advantage of people who already have existing conditions."

Church officials say Murray's name appeared on a visitors' card several years ago, and online postings thought to be made by Murray described disgraced founding pastor Ted Haggard as his mother's favorite pastor.

Some of Murray's vitriol was published on a site catering to ex-Penecostals.

Joe Istre, who runs the site and is president of the Association of Former Pentecostals, said that while people who leave any faith traditions hold grudges, leaving Pentecostalism carries unique challenges. That includes feeling isolated from family and former friends, and emotional scars from leaving churches with dictatorial pastors and little financial transparency.

"Not that it was a necessary ingredient, but his Pentecostalism was part of the recipe" of the shootings, Istre said.

In an Internet post about four hours before the shootings at New Life, a poster going by "DyingChild—65" said he searched for spiritual answers.

All the poster found in Christianity was "hate, abuse (sexual, physical, psychological, and emotional), hypocrisy, and lies."

The rant ended: "I'm going out to make a stand for the weak and the defenseless this is for all those young people still caught in the Nightmare of Christianity for all those people who've been abused and mistreated and taken advantage of by this evil sick religion Christian America this is YOUR Columbine."

———

Associated Press writers Judith Kohler, Jacques Billeaud and Dan Elliott in Denver, Allen Breed in Raleigh, N.C., and Religion Writer Rachel Zoll in New York Denver contributed to this report.

GOP Rep Declares US a Christian Nation, Calls on Americans to "Stand Up" and "Worship Christ"

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:49:42 GMT

Rep. King isn't alone. McCain and Huckabee both have declared that America is a Christian nation.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH THESE PEOPLE!?!?

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:09:05 GMT

A British teacher has been charged in Sudan with insulting religion, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs.

The Foreign Office has confirmed that charges have been laid against Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool.

She was arrested in Khartoum after allowing her class of primary school pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Knife-wielding California rapist caught - he's a minister

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:06:29 GMT

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3731
by: pam
Fri Nov 23, 2007 at 07:00:00 AM EST

Another sick perv in the pulpit, this time a beast cruising late nights in the streets targeting sex workers, threatening them with a knife and raping them.

Investigators say the 23 year old minister used the same tactics each time he approached women off Parkway and Motel Drives. Once he lured them into his car, police say at least 4 women were raped while the suspect held a butcher knife to their necks. Fresno police say Anthony Ireland was repeatedly targeting random women along Highway 99 near Olive Avenue, a well known place to pick up prostitutes. ...Monday Ireland was charged with 4 felony counts of forcible rape with special circumstances. He could face additional punishment since there are multiple victims and he used a dangerous weapon.

Ireland, who was seen as "very likeable, loveable" and "people were drawn to him" by those at International Crossroads Community Church is married as well. In fact he had been on this violent rampage while his wife lay in the hospital battling a chronic disease.

"What Would Jesus Buy?"

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:45:13 GMT

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse (the end of humankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt.)

The Commercialization of Christmas: What Would Jesus Buy?

Your Creation Museum Report

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:40:22 GMT

First, imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horsehit. An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center, generating explosive levels of methane as bacteria feast merrily on vintage, liquified crap. This is a Herculean load of horseshit, friends, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Augeas.

The Cancer From Within

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 11:13:02 GMT

I no longer recognize the Air Force Academy as the institution I attended almost four decades earlier. At that point, I had no idea how invasive this extreme evangelical “cancer” had become throughout the entire military, that what I had witnessed was far from an isolated case of a few religious zealots.

Holiday Hucksters: Religious Right Cranks Up Another `War On Christmas'

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:52:15 GMT

Original found here.

By Rob Boston Tue Nov 06, 2007 at 12:26:54 PM EST
topic: Analysis of Christian Right section:Front Page

Your kids are queasy from eating too much candy, there's a decomposing jack o'lantern on your front stoop and the trees in your back yard are rapidly shedding leaves. Sounds like the time is right for another "War on Christmas" brought to you by the Religious Right!

That's right. These days, the Religious Right doesn't even have the decency to wait until Thanksgiving to start whining about what terms people use to describe the December holidays.

Liberty Counsel, a Religious Right legal group associated with the late Jerry Falwell, issued an alert Oct. 30 vowing to slap retailers with either a "Friend" or "Foe" label this year based on whether the word "Christmas" appears in their ads, in catalogs and on Web sites.

Focus on the Family, in an effort to be hip and trendy, has a new video short out featuring Stuart Shepard, one of its faux reporters. The cheeky Shepard explains how this year he's celebrating "Tossmass" by discarding all of the catalogs that fail to use religiously correct terminology.

Not to be outdone, the folks at World Net Daily are hawking "Christmas Defense Kits" featuring a bumper sticker that reads, "This is America! And I'm going to say it: `Merry Christmas!'"

How charming. There's nothing like being an obnoxious prig for the holidays.

Lately I've been researching this whole "War on Christmas" thing for a story I'm writing for December's Church & State, and I've noticed a few things. For starters, promoting the "War on Christmas" has become a cottage industry for the Religious Right. These groups make tons of money selling pro-Christmas stuff: buttons, stickers, memos that purport to explain your rights, etc. Keeping the "war" alive is crucial to the Religious Right's bottom line.

Secondly, over the past year, the Religious Right has shifted the discussion from things like battles over Nativity scenes on public property to the language, decorations and even in-store greetings offered by retailers.

Why are the legal eagles of the Religious Right focusing on what stores do instead of government? Simple. The number of battles over holiday symbols is decreasing. The courts have ruled on this matter ad nauseum, and guidelines are in place. Retailers are the new big, fat target for the Religious Right's whiny campaign. The Religious Right needs a new enemy to attack to ensure those dollars flow in and to keep its followers in a constant state of agitation and mock outrage over the latest assaults by the anti-religious fanatics who support church-state separation.

But it's the usual Religious Right con. Most advocates of church-state separation don't spend much time obsessing over what stores are doing or saying in December. When a unit of government takes it upon itself to celebrate the religious aspects of a holiday on everyone's behalf, we have to speak out. But the shops down at the mall aren't part of that. They aren't arms of the government. Some say "Christmas" in their ads and some don't. Who cares? The holiday will come either way. (Remember, the Grinch even stole the last can of Who Hash - yet Christmas still came.)

In fact, one could argue that all of the brouhaha at the mall is a distraction from the central message of Christmas. Does the fact that a giant corporation uses the word "Christmas" in its ads truly mean it is interested in marking the birth of Jesus? Chances are, its real goal is persuading you to bust out the credit cards and spend, spend, spend.

It's sad, really. The Religious Right's holier-than-thou brigade claims to treasure Christmas - and then drafts it as cannon fodder in its culture war, spending three months hawking offensive, in-your-face buttons and stickers that make a mockery of a season that is supposed to be dedicated to peace and love. Is that really what Jesus would do?

For those in the Religious Right who genuinely are offended because the newspaper ad from Best Buy fails to include the word "Christmas" and the temporary clerk at the Sears dares to say "Happy Holidays," I have some advice: This Christmas, ask Santa Claus to bring you a life.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:25:33 GMT

I am not happy when people ask, "How is the situation for Christians?" Those who kill don’t kill only Christians. They kill Muslims as well—the situation is the same for both .... The Christian house is next to the Muslim house. Each has his own religion, each defends his own home, each defends his religion. But your faith is for God, the country is for everyone.

- Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, patriarch of the Baghdad-based Chaldean Church, which has existed for nearly 2,000 years. The pope recently named him, along with 22 others from around the world, to the College of Cardinals, making Delly the first Roman Catholic Cardinal from Iraq in modern history. (Source: The New York Times)

~This was in my "Sojourners" e-letter today.

For The Love Of Jesus, Enough Already!!

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:49:09 GMT

Right-Wing Christian Cleric Caught Soliciting Underage Boys for Sex

America's Armageddonites Push for More War

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 08:10:13 GMT

Some fundamentalist evangelicals have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about.

~The above is a link to an AlterNet article by Jon Basil Utley, an associate publisher of The American Conservative no less. It is jammed packed with links itself and well worth the read. Much of this turf is familiar to long time fans of dogemperor, but re-reading is always unnerving, especially when the writer is a political ally of Patrick Buchanan!

Huckabee Stirs the Mormon Issue

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:11:57 GMT

From Mike Allen’s “Politico Playbook”

For the “Political Players” series, CBS News’ Brian Goldsmith talked with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

CBSNews.com: “Do you believe that Mormonism is a legitimate form of Christianity?”

Gov. Huckabee: “You know, Mormonism is a faith that people adhere to. And I think people ought to respect anybody’s faith. I am not all that familiar with the intricate details. I have enough trouble keeping up with my own faith. So, I do not spend lots of time trying to evaluate somebody else’s.”

CBSNews.com: “But do you think they’re real Christians?”

Gov. Huckabee: “Once again, I am not going to try to judge. That is for them to determine whether they accept Jesus Christ as the only revelation of God on Earth. And, if they do, then that is how a person is a Christian, not by the label they wear, but by the position they take on the role and the personhood of Christ.”

~Does this even need commentary?

Something Really Scary For Halloween

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:33:00 GMT

Some Christian pastors embrace Scientology

Theocracy Now!

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:14:17 GMT

From HufPo
Blogged by Max Blumenthal

On October 20 and 21st, I attended the Value Voters Summit, a massive gathering hosted by the Colorado-based Christian right mega-ministry, Focus on the Family, and its Washington lobbying arm, the Family Research Council. With the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani leading in the race for the Republican nomination and the threat of another Clinton presidency looming, the stakes for the Christian right were high.

At the Summit, I witnessed all of the major Republican presidential candidates compete for the affection of so-called value voters. Rudy Giuliani, the current frontrunner, sought to assuage movement leaders' concerns about his multiple marriages, pro-choice politics, and penchant for cross-dressing. Mitt Romney pledged to fight for a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, hoping his newfound conservatism would somehow lessen evangelical resentment of his Mormon faith.

Though no candidate emerged from the Summit as a clear Christian right favorite, the badly underfunded former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee won over the audience with his insistence that banning abortion would put an end to America's illegal immigration problem. Huckabee's comparison of "liberalized abortion" to the Holocaust further endeared him to the "value voters." Later, during a press conference, I challenged Huckabee to explain the logic behind his rhetoric.

Recently, there has been a lot of mainstream media noise about a new, more socially conscious evangelical movement rising from the angry ashes of the Christian right. Pastors like Rick Warren and "evangelical feminist" Bill Hybels are supposedly bringing issues like the environment and poverty to the forefront of the movement's social agenda, while pushing anti-abortion and anti-gay activism to the wayside. Yet no one told those evangelicals gathered at the Value Voters Summit about this friendly new initiative.

If anything, the movement seemed more extreme and paranoid than it did four years ago. Rev. Lou Sheldon, dubbed "Lucky Louie" by his former paymaster Jack Abramoff, told me that homosexuality is a "pathological disorder" and "a groove" that is difficult to escape from. He proceeded to passionately defend his friend, Senator Larry Craig, from allegations of homosexuality.

Star Parker, a former welfare cheat who had multiple abortions, claimed to me that abortion is the leading cause of death among African American women between the ages of 25 and 34. Then she described her wish for the forced quarantine of all "sodomites." Parker was not a lone wacko milling around in the hallway; she was a speaker invited by the Family Research Council.

Neoconservative activist Frank Gaffney appeared at the Summit as well. Before a standing room audience, Gaffney exclaimed that "by not being bigoted and not being racist, [George W.] Bush has embraced Islamofascists on several occasions." Phyllis Schlaffly echoed Gaffney's comments, declaring that there are too many mosques in America.

These incidents and many more are captured in my latest video report, "Theocracy Now: In Search of Values at the 2007 Value Voters Summit." See it for yourself.

Suffer Not the Trick-or-Treaters...

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:38:51 GMT