Anti-Dominionism

Cincinnati Zoo selling 'Combo tickets' with Creation museum

2008-12-01T16:07:25Z

I was just skimming my morning blogs, and this travesty caught my attention: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/11/shame_on_the_cincinnati_zoo.php

Apparently the Cincinnati Zoo, which I loved while I was living there, has started selling 'Combo tickets' with the Creation Museum.

I've been spreading this far and wide, so please, take the time to send them an email and let them know how this harms their reputation and undermines their goal of education.

Update: Problem solved! Apparently the outcry was sufficient for the 'combo ticket' sales to be pulled!

What happened to Antidominionism.com?

2008-11-24T12:27:07Z

Wasn't Antidominionism.com this group's website? What happened to it?

IAWTC

2008-11-03T03:47:36Z

"This isn't the end of Christian influence in politics, it's the beginning. If/when McCain loses, their next step will be to form an overtly Christian party, with Sarah out front, and I think they will put the Republican Party out of business."

~From a Letter to The Editor RE the Salon.com piece Sundown on Colorado fundamentalists

Not new ideas, but identifying new enemies

2008-10-15T11:20:05Z

From Joe Bageant's Blog
October 11, 2008

Dear readers,

Well, the masked political consultant blew through town the other day painting the town with his latest message, this time a big picture message. So big picture in fact, that it makes the ideas such as the "framing concept" of George Lakoff look like mouse farts. Before he again rode off on his white horse Mescalero, he left this silver bullet for us to contemplate -- the answer to the question: "Why the neocon bastards always seem to put six rounds into the chests of earnest liberals in every political gunfight, and why the Christian fundamentalists always cheer for the bad guys?"

In art and labor,

Joe

PS: Here are linked headlines to the two previous contributions to this site by our favorite anonymous political consultant: "Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus" and "Life in the Post Political Age".

By An Anonymous Political Consultant

The rise of religious fundamentalism as a political force is the most important and misunderstood development in our recent history.

The primary motivating factor in the development of the religious right is a defensive response to the challenges posed by the power of popular consumer and entertainment culture and not a backlash against progressive or liberal ideas and social movements.

The conflict between these two forces has come to dominate the discourse of our politics. What drives the intensity of this cultural war is the fact that it is a struggle between the only two revolutionary forces in American society. Popular culture is revolutionary because of the way and the relentless speed in which it challenges and uproots the traditional mores of American culture. Religious fundamentalism is revolutionary because it represents the only movement in American public life openly critical of American culture and society.

If the latter point seems strange to some, I would advise them to listen to an hour's worth of programming from Dr. James Dobson's daily broadcast on Christian radio. He is perhaps the most influential voice of the religious right on the broadcast medium. During that time, you will hear far greater criticism of American society and Americans on subjects such as greed, materialism, alienation caused by rampant individualism and the lack of supportive communities than you will hear on the purportedly liberal airways of Air America's Radio Programs.

When it comes to predicting the outcome of this struggle, there should be no doubt which side will ultimately prevail in this fight.

Religious fundamentalism here and abroad is no match for the powers of popular, consumer and entertainment culture. The reason for that is very simple: popular consumer culture is the most powerful and attractive ideology in human history.

It has three primary features. It demands no sacrifice from its faithful. It demands that you purchase and consume and that you become passively entertained.

The first principle is entirely unique in the annals of human history. All religions and ideologies demand adherence to a core of set principles, sacrifice, study and discipline. Popular consumer culture demands no attendance in mass political rallies, no involvement in one's community, no demand to read and educate yourself, no moral codes or dietary laws to live by, and no demand to read and decipher ancient text.

Its second principle is endless consumption completely detached from the objective realities of human needs, which also happens to be the basis for a significant percentage of the American economy.

Its third principle is the willingness and desire for passive entertainment, which is truly the devil's handiwork in any program whose purpose is to turn citizens into subjects. It is not entirely a coincidence that the rise of the most notorious totalitarian systems of the 20th century coincided with the advent of the film, radio and television mediums. Essentially any communication format, which can only speak, and never listens and rarely challenges you to think, is the best conditioning for the development of uncritical minds.

Of all the different factions in American society, it is only the most retrograde forces that have clearly understood the destructive effects of consumer popular culture on our society. This is likely because religious fundamentalists by the nature of their beliefs and narrow views of the world are forced to have a coherent set of ideas and framework, on what is important, on how life should be lived, and how individuals should conduct themselves in a society.

When it comes to measuring the actual impact of the religious right on our politics, there are two important items of note. First, it has realigned our political landscape and secondly, that it has not managed to achieve any real power.

The reason for the latter point is the result of the narrowness of its political agenda. During the 30 years of its active involvement in politics, and its development of both a significant political and communication infrastructure, the religious right in the United States has yet to formulate a coherent world view to address aspects of life outside of the narrow window of social issues it is concerned with.

Unlike the Christian Democratic parties in Europe, which effectively married the anti-communism and social conservatism of the Protestant and Catholic Churches with a relatively progressive economic agenda, or the Liberation Theologists of South America who attempted to create a coherent temporal and spiritual world view by bringing together Marxist analysis with the teachings of Christ, the religious right either by design or effect has failed to ask and answer the questions that would broaden the bases for its appeal.

This phenomenon creates unique opportunities to realign the correlation of forces in American politics. The truth is that the distance between religious conservatism and social democracy is far shorter than the difference between it and libertarian economics. Regardless of the fact they will never admit it the fundamentalist criticism of popular consumer culture is in fact a critique of market relationships. You cannot oppose the marketing of denigrating cultural products without conceding to the idea that the market should not be the sole arbiter in regulating all human activities and relationships.

The genius of the economic right and the neo-conservatives has been their ability to ignore this fact and work instead to fill in the blanks in the vast empty spaces within the worldview of the religious right with militarist and pro-corporate ideas.

The tasks of progressives is to tear apart the conservative consensus of the past thirty years by advocating agendas that will consistently split the constituencies of the religious right from its corporate right partners.

If progressives are serious about winning victories that can realign our politics, they must find a way to marry the legitimate criticism of the decadence of popular culture with criticism of the decadence of an economic system that create the savage inequalities we see in America today. Once that is done, the entire project of the right collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.

The mastery of the political right over the past thirty years has been primarily to better understand the irrational factors in politics. Conservatives have always understood that when it comes to politics, people rarely act in their rational self-interest but instead on emotion, fears and the perception of their interests.

The first principle of organizing any successful new political movement is not new ideas but the identification of new enemies.

Tim Wise on Fascism

2008-10-15T02:47:38Z

This is How Fascism Comes:
Reflections on the Cost of Silence
By Tim Wise
October 12, 2008

For those who have seen the ugliness and heard the vitriol emanating from the mouths of persons attending McCain/Palin rallies this past week--what with their demands to kill Barack Obama, slurs that he is a terrorist and a traitor, and paranoid delusions about his crypto-Muslim designs on America--please know this: This is how fascism comes to an ostensible democracy.

If it comes--and if those whose poisonous, unhinged verbiage has been so ubiquitous this week have any say over it, it surely will--this is how it will happen: not with tanks and jackbooted storm troopers, but carried in the hearts of men and women dressed in comfortable shoes, with baseball caps, and What Would Jesus Do? wristbands. It will be heralded by up-dos, designer glasses, you-betcha folksiness and a disdain for big words or hard consonants.

If fascism comes, it will spring from the soil of middle America, from people known as values voters but whose values are toxic, from simple folk whose simplicity, far from being admirable, is better labeled ignorance, from "all-American" types whose patriotism is a dagger pointed at the very heart of the national interest, for it so forsakes all the best principles upon which the republic was founded, choosing instead to elevate and ratify the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, and the intolerance that also marked our country's origins.

If fascism comes, it will be ushered in by tailgaters at the big football game, by Joe Six Pack, who, upon finishing his sixth beer and belching forth the stench of a mediocre life lived, will gladly announce its arrival, so long as it comes with a steady supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon and hot dogs on the grill, and giant foam hands with a "We're Number 1" finger, some Mardi Gras beads and a good titty bar.

If fascism comes it will dress like a hockey mom, or a NASCAR dad. It will believe Toby Keith to be an artist, Larry the Cable Guy to be a comic, and that the world was made in six literal days less than 6000 years ago.

If fascism comes it will come from the small towns; the ones Sarah Palin, quoting a famous racist and Jew-hater, said "grow good people," and which occasionally do, but which, just as often grow provincial, isolated, fearful and superstitious ones.

If fascism comes it will come from faux populism, from anti-immigrant hysteria, from persons who have more guns in their homes than books, or whose books, when they have them, are principally volumes of the Left Behind series, several different copies of the Bible, and a plethora of romance novels.

If fascism comes it will be welcomed, lock stock and barrel by persons who pray at every meal to a God they visualize as white, whose son they also think was white, and who they believe is going to rapture them all into the sky upon the blowing of some heavenly trumpet, after which point all those who don't think as they think will be burned in an eternal lake of fire. Their vision and version of God is itself fascistic--to love a God who would do such a thing is to love an abusive, sadistic and evil deity after all--so it should come as little surprise that their conception of the state would be equally authoritarian or worse.

If fascism comes it will be at the behest of those who hold a contempt for what they call "book learnin," who prefer Presidents who mispronounce basic words because they make them feel smarter, and who are looking for nothing so much as a commander-in-chief with whom they would enjoy having a beer, or two, or twelve at some backyard barbecue.

If fascism comes it will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio, by hosts whose cerebral inadequacies are more than made up for by their bellicosity, their bombast, their willingness to shout down those with whom they cannot argue, for argument requires knowledge, and this is a commodity with which they have not even a passing familiarity.

If fascism comes it will come wrapped in red,white and blue, carrying a crucifix and a shotgun, projecting its own sexual confusion and insecurity onto others, substituting volume for veracity and rage for reason, and landing on the New York Times best-seller list as a result.

If fascism comes it will have a pajama party at Ann Coulter's house, pop pills with Rush Limbaugh, and go gay-bashing with Michael Savage, all in the same weekend. And it will refuse to learn another language or get a passport, because doing either of those would make one cosmopolitan--which is just another word for "faggot."

If fascism comes it will come because a lot of people who aren't like the folks I'm talking about here, won't stand up to the ones who are. Because we're too busy, don't want to make waves, don't want to lose friends, or alienate family. It will come, in other words, because those who know better are cowards, more concerned with getting along, making nice, and being liked than with telling the truth, calling out evil and saving their country.

If fascism comes it will come because of the silence, and thus, collaboration of those who think themselves good, and certainly superior to the knuckle-draggers they can see on YouTube at the McCain rallies, but who in the end are no better and in some ways worse than they: after all, at least fascists stand up for what they believe in. They are telling us, in no uncertain terms what kind of United States they want and are willing to fight for, and maybe even to kill for. But many "progressives," many liberals, many of the so-called enlightened are doing nothing at all.

If fascism comes it will come because those liberals thought voting for Barack Obama was all they needed to do; it will come because they allowed themselves to believe that politics is what a person does every four years, but not at work, and not in the neighborhood, and not at the dinner table. Meanwhile, know-nothings filled with hate, nurtured on racial and religious bigotry and who have overdosed on the kind of hypernationalism that has always proved fatal to those places foolish or craven enough to allow it a foothold, talk of their visions for America at every opportunity. They raise their kids on that sickness, they build churches whose very foundation is rooted in that cancerous rot, and they will think nothing of steamrolling those who get in their way.

So when, exactly, do we fight back? When do we say enough? When do we stand up to our relative or friend who sends us the e-mail about Obama being a Manchurian Candidate or al-Qaeda sympathizer, or the one about the decency of Midwestern flood victims as opposed to those stranded after Katrina, or about how God was punishing New Orleans because of its tolerance of homosexuality, and tell them what we think: namely, that they are a bunch of racist, heterosexist loons, whose friendship or familial connection we neither want nor intend to pursue unless they get help. When do we decide that we love our country and humanity too much to allow these people one more day of decent sleep, one more day of self-assured confidence in their craziness and the willingness of the rest of us to just take it? When do we decide that every irrational, Jeezoid, racist thing that comes from their mouths will be attacked, will be rebutted, until they can no longer take for granted the ability to say any of it in mixed company without being called out?

Why, in the face of the fascism they would surely introduce if given the chance, are we intent on being so nice? Why are we not more offended? Offended not merely at what such persons say about others--like Obama, or Latino immigrants, or whatever--but even about we who look like them? After all, their open exhortations of racism presuppose that they are speaking for us, and that this kind of brain-dead ventilation is something to which all white folks should aspire as though it were virtually the essence of enlightenment.

If fascism comes it will come because we did not see in their actions a sufficient threat, or because we allowed ourselves to believe that it couldn't come, that our institutions were too strong, our people too good, for that to happen. If it comes it will come because we allowed ourselves to believe the rosy and optimistic version of America spun by Obama, without tempering that optimism with a clear-headed appraisal of the way that (sadly) a still huge number of Americans actually think: because we allowed the vehicle of our hopes to outrun the headlights of truth; because we convinced ourselves that we actually lived in the country of our aspirations, rather than the nation we have at present.

And if fascism doesn't come--if, rather, democracy does--it will come because good people said no. It will come because we saw in this moment the opportunity to demand the full measure of our humanity and to pour it forth upon the national soil. It will be because we understood that democracy isn't what you have, it's what you do. But if we are to issue that demand, if we are to stand straight and fulfill the potential we possess to do justice, we had best exercise the option quickly, for the opponents of justice are on the move. They are preparing to enter on the winds of our silence and indifference, and complacency. Let them find no quarter here.
--------------------

The above essay appeared on Tim Wise's Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=658220669&ref=ts

Posted with little commentary...

2008-10-09T15:57:59Z

...but the recommendation that you read all the links, and definitely watch the video.

"There is a tipping point, at which, at which time, because of the sin of the land, the people then have to be displaced.... God is preparing a people to displace the ones whose sin is rising so that then they tip over and the church goes in - one is removed and the church moves in and takes the territory. Now, that does not mean that the people are removed, because God removes them from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light. They are given an opportunity to change allegiances."

You can see that they take pleasure in the idea that they have blinded an enemy, "killed" Mother Theresa, caused cancer in a woman after burning down her house and blowing up her car, and ultimately driving her away.

And if you still think these people aren't out to do you harm, or that people who are sounding the alarm against Dominionism are just "paranoid"--yeah, tell me that again.

We need to keep this woman out of office at any cost--and if you don't think so, then you're not paying attention.

Welcome to Gilead, Governor Palin

2008-10-03T00:37:12Z

From Truthout
Tuesday 30 September 2008
by: Cynthia Boaz

If you've ever read Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, "The Handmaid's Tale," you will recall the key role that was played by the women assigned to be the "Aunts." The story revolves around a futuristic American society in which fundamentalist Christians install a gender-based caste system where each woman is assigned a specific societal function. It is a commentary on the dangerous erasing of the line between church and state in the contemporary United States. The merging of religion and government is carried out by a group of older, white male "commanders" whose propaganda demands that citizens be constantly terrorized into submission and obedience. The resulting regime is Atwood's vision of the worst-case scenario: an American police-state theocracy where every woman's identity is reduced to her sexual attributes, and each is assigned to a category based on her physical qualifications. Subtle references to racist philosophy are mixed into the literalist religious rhetoric.

The attractive young women of reproductive age are the "handmaids"; the attractive but infertile middle-age women are the "wives"; the dark-skinned women of any age are domestic servants, and so on. All women are forbidden from reading or writing. The country is renamed the Republic of Gilead, a reference to the biblical homeland of the patriarchs. And the Aunts - who are middle-aged white women of some previous prestige and education - are especially sinister characters. The primary job of the Aunts is to keep the handmaids (the childbearers) subservient. They go about this by convincing the handmaids that they are powerless and can only contribute to society when they fulfill their God-given responsibility to serve the commanders. The Aunts' job, put simply, is to exploit other women by keeping them submissive and telling them that it's for the good of all (and even more insidiously, that in obeying, the handmaids "empower" themselves.) What makes the Aunts so remarkable is their collective failure to realize that they are simply being used by the commanders to keep other women in line, and their willingness - glee, even - at doing so is simultaneously sad and terrifying. So what compels the Aunts to become traitors to both their sex and their country? First, they believe that their contribution to the repressive social order is righteous, and second, they've found that under this rigid system of social control, they have the illusion of a tiny bit of power.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. Governor and Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin is the Gileadian "Aunt" manifested. Her sudden emergence onto the American political scene, accompanied by a burst of enthusiasm on the part of many American women, is a surreal example of life imitating art. Much of Palin's rhetoric, tactics and personal philosophy seem to be taken directly from the Auntie training manual. By accepting the position on the GOP ticket despite her astonishing lack of qualifications, Palin signaled that she was prepared to be used - on the basis of her sex alone - in exchange for the promise of status and power. Refer to Palin's RNC convention speech, which was mostly a fawning homage to McCain's patriotism and leadership, sprinkled with condescending references to Obama as "our opponent." Although the lines were delivered with Palin's own folksy vernacular and over-enunciation, it was not Palin, but McCain - or more accurately, the GOP elders at whose feet he finds himself on election eve - who wrote the speech and whose voice echoed through the hall that night in St. Paul. Women who find themselves drawn to Palin because they think she epitomizes the classic "woman who has it all" might want to take a closer look. Sarah Palin was picked for the ticket solely because of - not despite - the fact that she is female. By keeping her sequestered from the media, McCain has confirmed he does not have faith in an unscripted Palin's ability to represent the campaign to the world. By going along with it, Palin is telling us that she's perfectly fine with being controlled by her male superiors. And by portraying herself as the candidate of the empowered woman (while simultaneously promoting policy that is openly hostile to the interests of working and middle-class American women), she reveals the sad truth about how little progress we've actually made.

Lest we think that Senator McCain is hesitant to keep pushing this stereotype in the face of abysmal performances by Palin in news interviews, the most recent reports reveal that his campaign intends to hype the expected wedding between Palin's pregnant daughter and her boyfriend, the date of which is apparently being set just prior to the November election - with McCain and Palin sitting in the front row. Is it possible that Sarah Palin is just blissfully un-self-aware, or is it that she so eager for any illusion of power that she'll allow herself to be marketed no matter what the cost to the dignity of all women? If Palin were truly an empowered woman, she would have refused to allow herself and her daughter to be used in this manner - to assist a party whose rhetoric and imagery promote the ideal woman as deferential to established norms rather than acting as an independent - or critical - thinker. If her selection was intended to signal to American women that empowerment is possible, why is Palin being kept under lock and key? Clearly, this is not an individual whose intelligence or perspective McCain respects, or else he would permit her to speak for herself. To continue pretending that Palin's selection was anything other than an attempt to manipulate the voting public on the basis of a straitjacketed view of sexual roles is a dangerous lie that no American of any gender can afford to abide.

Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University.

On a more mundane level, read The Palin Payoff: How Sarah Brings in the Christian Cash

33 Pastors Flout Tax Law With Political Sermons

2008-09-30T19:52:15Z

From WaPo
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 29, 2008

CROWN POINT, Ind., Sept. 28 -- Defying a federal law that prohibits U.S. clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation Sunday that voting for Sen. Barack Obama would be evidence of "severe moral schizophrenia."

The Rev. Ron Johnson Jr. told worshipers that the Democratic presidential nominee's positions on abortion and gay partnerships exist "in direct opposition to God's truth as He has revealed it in the Scriptures." Johnson showed slides contrasting the candidates' views but stopped short of endorsing Obama's Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain.

Johnson and 32 other pastors across the country set out Sunday to break the rules, hoping to generate a legal battle that will prompt federal courts to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

The ministers contend they have a constitutional right to advise their worshipers how to vote. As Johnson put it during a break between sermons, "The point that the IRS says you can't do it, I'm saying you're wrong."

The campaign, organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, a socially conservative legal consortium based in Arizona, has gotten the attention of the Internal Revenue Service. The agency, alerted by opponents, pledged to "monitor the situation and take action as appropriate."

Each campaign season brings allegations that a member of the clergy has crossed a line set out in a 1954 amendment to the tax code that says nonprofit, tax-exempt entities may not "participate in, or intervene in . . . any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office."

This time, the church action is concerted. Yet while the ministers say the rules stifle religious expression, their opponents contend that the tax laws are essential to protect the separation of church and state. They say political speech should not be supported by a tax break for the churches or the worshipers who are contributing to a political cause.

In an open letter Saturday, a United Church of Christ minister, the Rev. Eric Williams, warned that many members of the clergy are "exchanging their historic religious authority for a fleeting promise of political power," to the detriment of their churches.

"The role of the church -- of congregation, synagogue, temple and mosque -- and of its religious leaders is to stand apart from government, to prophetically speak truth to power," Williams wrote, "and to encourage a national dialogue that transcends the divisiveness of electoral politics and preserves for every citizen our 'first liberty.' "

In the modern red-brick Living Stones Church in Crown Point, a town of 28,000 residents 50 miles southeast of Chicago, Johnson explained why he thinks a minister should dispense political advice. He then laid out his view of the positions of Obama and McCain on abortion and same-sex marriage, which he called two issues "that transcend all others."

"We want people when you prick them, they bleed the word of God," Johnson said.

Johnson said ministers have a responsibility to guide their flocks in worldly matters, including politics, calling the dichotomy between the secular and the sacred a myth: "The issue is not 'Are we legislating morality?' This issue is 'Whose morality are we legislating?' "

Asked why he felt the need to discuss the candidates by name and to be explicit in rejecting Obama and his pro-choice views, Johnson said he must connect the dots because he is not sure that all members of his congregation can do so on their own.

The congregation greeted Johnson's reasoning and his criticism of Obama with applause.

"When things of the world don't line up with Scripture," said Ed Kraus, 61, who executes reverse mortgages for a living, "he has a right to say they don't."

Ruth Stiener went a step further. "He has a duty," she said. "Heaven forbid that that is ever taken away from our pastors."

Robert Tuttle, law professor at George Washington University, is skeptical that the Alliance Defense Fund project will result in a new judicial interpretation of the 1954 law. "The only way this gets into a court is if the IRS, number one, decides to enforce and the enforcement mechanism they choose actually causes an injury to a church," said Tuttle, who studies the intersection of law and religion. "That's not something that happens often in campaign activity."

More than 180 members of the clergy have signed a pledge from the Interfaith Alliance, a Washington-based group that seeks to separate faith and politics, agreeing not to endorse a candidate on behalf of their house of worship.

"I have no objections to clergy taking off their robes and walking out the door of their church, synagogue or mosque and immersing themselves in political campaigns," said Rabbi Jack Moline of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, chairman of the Interfaith Alliance board. "But a sanctuary should not be a place of political agitation on behalf of a candidate. On behalf of issues, yes. Of candidates, no."

Moline added: "Endorsing a candidate from the pulpit is saying, 'This is what our God says should be the government of the country.' I think that is a nightmare scenario for a country that introduced the Bill of Rights to humanity."

As for Johnson's criticism of Obama, the Illinois Democrat supports the right to choose abortion. He opposes same-sex marriage but supports civil unions for gay couples.

"Senator Obama is a committed Christian and a man of deep faith," said Joshua DuBois, Obama's national religious affairs director. "And the notion that there is only one way to address issues like abortion, or that people of faith cannot support full civil rights for all Americans, is absurd."

Staff writer Jacqueline L. Salmon in Washington contributed to this report.

The Palin Presidency - Official Movie Trailer (2 minutes)

2008-09-29T23:04:51Z

Cross Posting is your Civic Duty

[Source]

Left Justified: CIA is taking over the churches

2008-09-26T05:42:57Z

From The Rock River Times
September 24, 2008
By Stanley Campbell

I didn’t think much when I met one of the evangelical pastors from an Assembly of God church, and he told me he was a former CIA agent. I wondered how he came by his faith. I thought he might have had to reconcile himself with what he had done for the United States government now that he was a pastor for the Lord. But then I met another, and then another. There seems to be a plethora of pastors who once worked as intelligence officers for the world’s largest spying corporation.

Now, I’m not a paranoid person, and I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but the thought of ex-CIA agents taking over fundamentalist congregations seems too weird.

Because I remember when pastors were liberal and anti-war. I remember hearing of Catholic CIA agents who blew the whistle on atrocities committed in Vietnam and Central America. In fact, some of the best-known heroes of the left came from a religious background, entered the CIA and were appalled at what they were ordered to do.

Case in point: Daniel Ellsberg. Once a seminary student, then an officer in Vietnam, and finally working for the nation’s highest intelligence organization, he was ordered to compile all the records of our war in Vietnam into a readable history. Ellsberg got them published by The New York Times, instead of keeping them secret. Otherwise known as the Pentagon Papers, these records showed how America deceived its own citizens and fostered a war in that far Southeast Asian country, of which we are still feeling the effects today.

President Richard Nixon, to try to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, set up the “plumbers” spies who ransacked Ellsberg’s psychiatrist office. Tricky Dick then used these same plumbers to tap the Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate office buildings.

Other former CIA agents, like Phillip Agee and John Stockwell, told their stories of intrigue and American meddling in the affairs of other countries. All had a religious background and a penchant for telling the truth at inconvenient times. And in the ’80s, it seemed Protestant churches led the forefront of the peace movement. Maybe liberals got religion when Ronald Reagan was elected President, but they opened the church doors to Central and South American refugees fleeing American imperialism. Latin American “liberals” were being called Communists and were getting killed left and far left. Those that made it to our borders were given sanctuary in some of the churches of the United States.

The FBI hounded most of these pastors and lay people. But it was a time of religious fortitude. The congregations, most of them, stood strong against federal intrigue. And they were proven correct: from Chile to Chiapas, the long arm of the CIA reached into innocent people’s lives.

This may have triggered the CIA encouraging their members to find religion. I’m not saying it’s a program set up by the government. But if I were to write a novel, I would use the premise of evangelical churches getting lots of support from the United States government’s right wing.

It was about the 1990s when the growth of these churches reached corporate levels, and television enhanced the conservative Christian political activists. Many of the mega congregations have a conservative bent to their politics, and I would like to know how many of those pastors got their degree from Arlington, Va.

There is talk that in the End Times, an Anti-Christ will show up preaching peace but planning wars. There is little that is more anti-Christ than the Central Intelligence Agency. And some of these churches believe God hates homosexuals and wants us to go to war and kill Muslims. They have little regard for immigrants, and some profess Jesus never asked us to help the poor. If that isn’t “anti-Christ,” I don’t know what is.

But it all could be an overworked imagination.

Stanley Campbell is executive director of Rockford Urban Ministries and spokesman for Rockford Peace & Justice.

Some interesting links...

2008-09-09T22:51:51Z

If you are thinking that Sarah Palin might not be a bad idea for the country on the basis of the fact that it would be good to have a woman as vice president, and are not yet convinced that Sarah Palin is a little more than "just a l'il ol' hockey mom", and is too incredibly insipid to be a threat...

Go here.

Or here.

Or here.

And while I hate to resort to Wikipedia, they have a fairly tidy explanation of what "Third Wave of the Holy Spirit" is all about.

Sarah Palin belongs to a Neo-Pentecostal, Charismatic cult which is considered, even by some of the most outspoken of evangelicals, as "heretical" in its vehemence, its alleged perpetration of supernatural attacks, and its wackiness. They are the fringe of the fringe in the area of lunacy, and they are more dangerous than you could possibly believe.

And there are people who are about to enter the polling booth that can't see past her pro-life stance, her pretty face and her aw shucks demeanor to understand that she is a woman who believes in concentrated psychic attack against those who would oppose her.

Isn't that what we get accused of? ;-)

But here's the thing--this woman is as much an enemy of Christians as she is of non-Christians...but a lot of the Christians don't want to talk about that, because they don't want those secular madmen, Obama and Biden, to take office. They are blinding themselves to the fact that this woman adheres to a doctrine that even they cannot theologically support, just because she wants to keep unwanted fetuses in unwilling wombs and Creationism in science classes and "In God We Trust" on the green stuff enough to vote for her.

But we're not quite that foolish, are we?

Are we?

It's clear that Sarah Palin has declared unashamed and unvarnished spiritual warfare on anyone who falls outside her narrow viewpoint--and that includes Pagans, Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Catholics....and other fundamentalist Christians. She associates herself with a church that not only disapproves of "these kinds of people", but believes in their total obliteration via forced evangelization and conversion.

Now that she and her cronies have Kenya out of the way, she can now turn her attention, with her newfound national recognition, to eliminating what she doesn't like about America--and what she doesn't like, my friends, is you.

It's clear to me that if we aren't aware of that, and refuse to think with our brains instead of our desire to eliminate gender bias in politics, or, even more horrifically, think that it isn't all that important, then we are about to see a very interesting four years ahead.

The stakes are very high--higher than you can imagine, and a word to the wise is sufficient.

And if I'm preaching to the choir, mea culpa. But it scares me to think that even one person reading this community would even dream of casting a vote that would help this woman into a position of power, and I think that sharing these links might even turn your most conservative adversaries a little closer to your way of thinking.

Could Presidential Candidate Barack Hussein Obama be the "Anti-Christ?"

2008-09-06T10:50:29Z

This site deals with Biblical Prophecy and some of the "Anti-Christ" characteristics of Barack Hussein Obama. Barack is the perfect candidate to allow "Full Anti-Christ control of the U.S."

..i don't think this is satire..

"By their works ye shall know them"

2008-09-02T01:08:20Z

Religious Right’s Prayers Answered: God Sends Storm of Biblical Proportions

From Craig Hardegree writing at Talking Points Memo comes a brilliant analysis of the results of the call to prayer led by Stuart Shepard for Focus on the Family.

Were they truly just trying to be "mildly humorous," in which case they would have been gulity not only of "making a mockery of God's...gift to us of prayer" but showing the true hypocrisy that Dominionism needs to survive?

Or were they serious in their request? Were they really "asking God for a sign to the entire nation as to who should be president, by asking him to send a torrential and disrupting Act of God during the convention of the one who should not be president?"

Either way, they didn't get what they wanted.

Grossly inappropriate ad

2008-09-01T20:01:55Z

I figured this community would get a kick out of this advertisement that appeared on a CNN.com report of Hurricane Gustav:

Regular readers of the community will know why this is a bit ironic, if not grossly inappropriate. If you don't know, here's a link to some quality Google time.

Four words...

2008-08-30T08:00:54Z

Vice President Sarah Palin.

Vice. ("Teach both [creationism and evolution].")

President. ("I believe that honoring the family structure is that important [as to deny benefits from homosexual couples]".)

Sarah. ("I am pro-life and I believe that marriage should only be between and man and a woman. I am opposed to any expansion of gambling in Alaska.")

Palin. (Wasilla, Alaska's "first Christian mayor")

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the dawn of the American theocracy. If you thought things were bad under Bush, just wait until Sarah Louise Palin of Sandpoint, Idaho-- home of creationism apologist Ben Stein and former LAPD detective Mark ("You can take one of these niggers, drag 'em into the alley and beat the shit out of them and kick them.") Fuhrman-- takes the Presidential Oath of Office beside the bier of John McCain.

Vice President Sarah Palin.

Or shall I say, "We are all screwed."

(PS- I do not give a damn what gender this candidate has. This matter is far too important to allow Dominionist charges of hypocrisy among us "liberals", by which of course they mean anyone who oppose the coming American theocracy. Needless to say, this matter has nothing at all to do with feminism, and the Dommies know it. So let's nip that argument in the bud right now.)

Looks like God answered

2008-08-25T23:18:11Z

Remember that prayer request for the Demcratic National Convention to be flooded?

Be careful what you wish for

The sprinkler was located on the club level in a skybox which had recently been renovated to host a news crew. It appears the skybox belongs to Fox.

"Woe to Pastor Warren and his ilk"

2008-08-24T07:10:08Z

It's almost funny when Dominionists fight amongst themselves. Almost, that is, until one remembers that these are the same folks who are going around burning crosses in kids' arms with an electric probe. Then, somehow, it ceases to be amusing.

But let's try to forget about that as we examine the Dommies' reaction to the recent Saddleback Civil Forum on Presidency, hosted by noted evangelical (and senior pastor of the church at which the forum took place) Rick Warren. The Forum could have been-- and in this writer's opinion, looked like it was going to be-- a nationally televised prime time infomercial for Dominionism. That it wasn't is perhaps a credit to Pastor Warren's very Christian value of inclusion, a testament to Barack Obama's rhetorical skill, or perhaps both.

Even so, it's the failure of the Forum to hijack the worldwide resources of CNN, like a cross-country flight over Ohio on a September morning, that has Dominionists beside themselves with anger, striking out even against their fellow Christians. Dave Daubenmire is a good example of this; his article on NewsWithViews.com entitled, Does Evil Exist? is a diatribe against Rick Warren for committing the mortal sin of drifting toward "the religious left". Daubenmire apparently finds time to excoriate Warren as his friend and fellow Mount Vernon (Ohio) resident John Freshwater (see above) won't be fired until at least October. Having won his buddy a temporary stay of termination, "Coach" Daubenmire turns his attention to national politics.

"Seeing how this was a debate involving self-proclaimed Christians, in a Christian church, hosted by a Christian pastor, this was a great opportunity for America’s leading evangelical to define for all America the root cause of our nation’s problems," writes the coach. Apparently Daubenmire expected McCain and Warren to recount the events of the past eight years, and then-- like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell before them-- point their fingers at Obama and proclaim, "You helped this happen." Daubenmire continues, "Instead, Pastor Warren moved on to climate change, adoption, and other peripheral issues. Perhaps I am wrong, but I would expect “America’s Pastor” to handle the debate in a manner that would reflect the attitude of the Berean Christians who 'searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.'"

Yes, folks, the coach considers climate change to be a "peripheral issue". Peak oil apparently does not concern Daubenmire; not while his employer is silent in underwriting the fuel costs of sending a bus load or three of football players out of town on a Friday night. No, the issue for Daubenmire is how Christianity is "under attack":

"How could a Christian pastor not more aggressively defend the Cross? Why are CNN, Time Magazine and the God-hating media fawning over this “evangelical” pastor? Could it be that they love his non-judgmental form of Christianity?"

Heh. First of all, I didn't realize the "Cross" was under attack at Saddleback that night. If it were, you might expect that the "God-hating media" would show a total disregard for Warren's form of Christianity, "judgmental" or not. Which brings me to the true reason behind Daubenmire's rants, and indeed Dominionism itself.

Dominionism thrives on conflict. The theology preached by Dominionists demands a certain judgmentalism; not just from their god, but from their adherents as well. Daubenmire was unwittingly honest when he derided Rick Warren's "non-judgmental form of Christianity". The Dominionist religion is under attack, because they need for it to be under attack. That's the only way the Dommies can pass judgment upon the world. They hate pacifists, as pacifism gives them no recourse for radical change. It's difficult to pull off a coup d'etat in a prevailing spirit of compromise and republican form of government.

Daubenmire takes one last moment to condemn Warren: "Woe to Pastor Warren and his ilk. They call evil good and good evil." He then proceeds to list various sins he thinks are to blame for what he thinks are America's problems. Predictably, they mostly center around "fornication". The coach, however, shows how out of touch with America he really is as he lists these pressing and urgent problems: AIDS. Abortion. Poverty and single motherhood. Communism. It wasn't long before I found myself expecting to read his ranting about drugs, heavy metal music, long hair, and that new-fangled cable television.

I suppose we should expect Daubenmire to list these as the problems facing America. Not only does the coach hail from a rural hamlet seemingly 20 years behind the times, but the simple fact is that the vision of America he wants his neighbors to believe in is one that existed before the Cold War ended, the Republican party ceased to be relevant, and the Dominionists started their campaign to ruin America. It suits the coach well for he and his neighbors to be blissfully ignorant of the changes to the world since religious zealotry began strangling the globe.

But maybe our dear coach would do well to learn of some other sins. Like lying, for example; "bearing false witness" is one of the 10 big "thou shalt nots" in his religion. And yet, while his buddy John Freshwater lies about just what he was doing with an electrostatic device, their friends from Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue lie about the state of the US economy. This, of course, was necessitated in part by the liars just up the road in Cleveland who introduced "predatory lending" and "subprime mortgages" to the world. Now many of these same liars are trying to uproot Ohio's new law against payday lending. Not a word from the coach, despite the fact that usury is also a sin listed in the Bible. Oh, and before we move on to other sins, let's not forget "Mission Accomplished", and the lie that Iraq held WMD's. Anything about that, Coach?

Oh, but these are sins over which Daubenmire has no control. After all, it's a lot easier for the coach to harass the unwed mother he just helped kick out of high school than to confront the business at the end of town that is robbing from the poor. So let's talk about the sins our dear Dauber can help.

"Wherefore say to the house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord God: Verily, you are defiled in the way of your fathers, and you commit fornication with their abominations. And you defile yourselves with all your: idols unto this day, in the offering of your gifts, when you make your children pass through the fire: and shall I answer you, O house of Israel? As I live, saith the Lord God, I will not answer you." -Ezekiel 20:30-31

It's ironic that I should be quoting Ezekiel here against the Dominionists. After all, the Dommies seem to have cornered the market on wild-eyed blood-drunk prophets. Still, this passage is damning to Daubenmire... and no, not because of the burns his buddy "FreshH2O" left on the arms of children. Daubenmire and other Dominionists violate this passage in a more metaphorical, yet ironically also a more literal way.

Let's pause for a little perspective. Ezekiel was ranting against the practice of making children pass through fire as a test of faith to their parents' gods. Now, as one whose own kids have jumped the fires of Bealtaine, personally I have no problem with this practice. But being that our dear coach demands that we study the scriptures for answers to our problems, I think we should start (and end) our little Bible study here.

Dave Daubenmire is no stranger to making kids pass through firestorms for his religious beliefs. Before Freshwater, Daubenmire gained national attention in the late 1990's when he demanded that the public high school football team he coached pray with him at the start of each game. Children are pawns to Dommies like Daubenmire. And if some of them are harmed in the process, well, Daubenmire sums it up best in this article: "God called it the wages of sin. Unfortunately, sin also affects the innocent. Timothy McVeigh called it collateral damage."

I'll pass on the observation that Daubenmire appears here to be favorably comparing the most prolific Dominionist terrorist in history to his God. I'll also pass on examining the very literal contravention of Ezekiel offered by this publisher of "children's Bible stories", which I encountered when researching the Ezekiel passage. (The publisher cheerfully asks kids, in reference to the story of Noah and the flood, "Next time, God will destroy the world by fire. Will YOU be ready?") Instead, I'll close with the observation that Dave Daubenmire has made a living of making children and the weakest in society pass through all sorts of political and theological fire.

Woe be to Dave Daubenmire and his ilk.

A Protest Song

2008-08-13T04:50:35Z

Community speaks for, against Mount Vernon teacher

Yes, they're still fighting the same old battles over there in Mount Vernon, Ohio. (And in an ironic coincidence, they're also re-enacting the Civil War. The South won, interestingly enough; "capturing the hearts of visitors". Gimme a friggin' break.)

One of the largest venues in tiny Knox County, Ohio was commissioned for the meeting of the Mount Vernon City School District. The primary topic of discussion, of course, was John Freshwater. "Fresh H2O", as he has become known, is a rallying point for Ohio Dominionists, who still believe the lie that he was fired for displaying the Ten Commandments and/or the Bible. (He displayed both in his science classroom, and was fired for insubordination in his repeated attempts to ignore the approved curriculum and use his position as a bully pulpit against MV schoolchildren.)

The turnout in support of "Fresh H2O" was sickening. I could not bear to watch most of even the first video, posted on YouTube. (I won't be linking it here. It's on the first Topix page linked above, if anyone is interested.) However, the demonstrators for John Freshwater did inspire me to write this song. In it, I personified (rightly or wrongly) the supporters as the "Mount Vernon PTA". Apologies to any actual parent-teacher partnership that may or may not be established in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

Hey Mount Vernon PTA,
How many kids have you burned today?
One, two, three, four,
And still your god wants more, more, more.

Tomorrow is your Kingdom Come,
Fresh water flows and your will be done.
It won't be long before the Judgment Day
Brought on the kids by the PTA.

Hey Mount Vernon PTA,
How many kids have you burned today?
Five, six, seven, eight.
Gotta set them pagans straight.

And if the parents should complain,
Twas all good fun; there was no pain.
No mark left by electric sword,
We'll salve your souls with God's Word.

Hey Mount Vernon PTA,
How many kids have you burned today?
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
Just so they believe as ourselves.

Evolution's bunk, don't be uncouth.
We'll break the law to preach God's Truth.
Which god, you ask? Oh don't be sly,
It's the angry old man up in the sky.

Hey Mount Vernon PTA,
How many kids have you burned today?
Twenty, thirty, forty more.
The more to please the God of War.

Hey Mount Vernon PTA,
How many kids have you burned today?
Burning kids forevermore,
Because your god wants more, more, more.

a little levity

2008-08-12T01:22:19Z

The world seems like it just keeps getting grimmer and grimmer...

So, having found this, I decided to share [and hey, it's almost on-topic] in the hopes of raising a smile.

http://ircpics.com/img.php?id=21437

ETA
The server the image is on seems to be going up and down like a turbo-yo-yo...I'll leave the link there and people can try again later. [but don't go crazy, it's just a cheap gag really.]

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

2008-08-09T13:29:27Z

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

2008-08-08T16:04:54Z

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

A standardized test the Dominionists are doomed to fail

2008-08-08T07:50:02Z

Recently, it was pointed out to me that John Freshwater, the Mount Vernon, Ohio science teacher who branded at least one of his students with a cross as part of his 12 year effort to turn his classroom into a proselytization center, was actually the only Mount Vernon science teacher whose students received satisfactory marks on Ohio's standardized test battery. This made me wonder: Should we be weeding out Dominionists early, thus giving us a true measure of the secular failures of public education? Perhaps that way, we can see just how bad the schools would be without Jesus in the classroom... or more likely, just how dumb Americans have become since the establishment of Dominionism as a major political force in this country. What follows, then, is a tongue-in-cheek standardized test that Dominionists are doomed to fail.

Section 1: Language arts

The antonym of "Christian" is:

Non-Christian

Atheist

Liberal

Muslim

Conservative is to right as Liberal is to:

left

wrong

demonic

a cuss word

Complete the following paragraph with a grammatically correct phrase from the choices below:

Jack and Steve met at Red State University. They began dating, and in the spring of their freshman year they were married. Three years later, Jack and Steve ________ Red State University.

were graduated from

was throwed out of

done did piss off

repented of there sins before the entire faculty and student body of

Section 2: Sciences

Which of the following is a method by which scientists can date the age of embedded fossils?

Chronostratigraphy

Genesis, chapter 1

Demonic possession, so to recite the lies of Satan

Repentance, accompanied by acceptance of Creation Science

The calculation of quantitative relationships of the reactants and products in chemical reactions is called:
1. Stochiometry
2. Witchcraft
3. Alchemy (and is thus a heresy)
4. Playing God
(Note: Burned-out Organic Chemistry majors are excused from this question.)

The first words of the classical Hippocratic Oath are as follows:

I swear by Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath.

SAY WHAT?!?

You gotta be kidding me!!

No, seriously... the first answer can't possibly be right.

Section 3: Mathematics

The palace accountant made an inventory of all the valuable pieces in the palace. He found 30 gold basins, a thousand silver basins, 29 silver pans, 30 small gold bowls, 410 small silver bowls, and a thousand other vessels. How many pieces were counted in total?

2,499

5,469 [Ezra 1:11]

Unknowable, because he hid them with Saddam's weapons of mass destruction

None, because they were shipped to a tax shelter in Barbados

Mike has three apples, Jimmy has four apples, and Andrew has five apples. Sarah asks Mike, Jimmy, and Andrew for 25% of the total of their apples. How many apples should Sarah be given?

Three apples

Sarah needs to get herself a job. (Unless she has kids, in which case she should be content with all the apples her husband dutifully provides for her.)

Only our merciful Lord can say how many apples any of us should receive in life.

We do not permit Sarah to speak, for she is a woman in the company of men.

Given the mass of Saturn, what is the change in velocity required to achieve a Hohmann transfer orbit in a small interplanetary probe upon a gravitational assist as the vehicle transits Jupiter?

Approximately 15.7 kilometers per second.

There is no need for a gravitational assist, as Saturn orbits the stationary Earth.

Well first of all, the small interplanetary probe will need to really want to change its sinful ways...

"Here"

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

2008-08-06T14:02:57Z

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...

You read it here, first!

2008-08-01T03:13:01Z

Remember, folks: When the liberal blogosphere asks you where you learned of the latest Dominionist attacks, tell them you read it in dominionism. We're not just another anti-dominionist forum on LJ. ;-)

The fight against exorcism-related abuse is not over. :3

2008-07-30T03:12:43Z

A few weeks ago, the Texas Supreme Court--which has had a distressing record as of late in defending religiously motivated child abuse or, more properly, refusing to prosecute on claims of clerical errors--tried to throw the Laura Schubert case out and reversed a settlement granted Schubert in 1996 (yes, the Assemblies of God has had this tied up in the courts for twelve years--she had won a precedent-setting case against an Assemblies church).

The good news is that despite Texas' stupidity, this is not the end of things.

Per the Star-Telegram, the parents of Laura Schubert (who is now on SSI due to complex PTSD directly related to the horror she experienced) have announced that they intend to make it a federal case--and it reveals several new details about the incidents and what has happened to the family since. (Warning to ex-Assemblies/ex-neopente walkaways: some of the material in the article is potentially triggering.)

Among other things, it turns out that the hell extended over a six-day period, beginning with an impromptu "deliverance ministry" service inspired by claims of sighting of a demon on the youth church campus, resulting in a 72-hour stretch where Mrs. Schubert was not able to rest and culminating in the involuntary exorcism (where she was physically restrained). The Assemblies have claimed in court that not only was she apparently traumatised by experiences in Africa (ironically, involving the very ndoki "kid witch" bullcrap that the Assemblies is fomenting throughout sub-Saharan Africa that has resulted in literally hundreds of children having to run for their lives and an international charity founded to help these kids and other victims of religiously motivated child abuse) but that her trauma was in part due to hypoglycemia--which, of course, is likely related to the damn abusive exorcisms in the first place. :P

Besides, hypoglycemia does not cause carpet burns and bruises--documented by her parents.

As a direct result of what happened, Schubert's father--who was formerly an Assemblies missionary--is now a walkaway from the Assemblies and may be best considered an agnostic at this point; Schubert's brother has become a dropout due to complex PTSD caused by witnessing the exorcisms; and Schubert (who has since remarried) is now training as a counselor specifically to help kids who are victims of child abuse.

The big news--as far as the anti-dominionist community and survivor communities go--is that as of July 27th, her parents have announced their intention to file an appeal with the US Supreme Court in regards to the matter. The Texas decision goes against so much preexisting case law that is *is* likely that the Supreme Court would be interested in hearing it; if it does, there could be major implications far beyond even fighting dominionism (among other things, the court decision in Texas directly conflicts with past rulings in other jurisdictions that have ruled that people have the right to sue for abuse in churches, even if claimed to be part of the theology--in fact, the Texas Supreme Court reversed on a claim that essentially stated the Assemblies' promotion of "deliverance ministry" was an absolute defense against claims of abuse due to First Amendment protections; a Supreme Court ruling on this would affect everything from past and ongoing cases against Scientology to lawsuits against Catholic dioceses that protected abusive priests).