114. ignorance

‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.’
— Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits

Full disclosure: I am angry right now.

If you follow GLBT news at all, one of the big items in Minnesota is the announcement on Tuesday^[1] that the Anoka-Hennepin school board is considering an alternative to the Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy^[2] that’s in place right now. This is the home district of Michele Bachmann, the anti-gay congresswoman whose husband Marcus(ss) runs the [Pray-Away-the-Gay] counselling clinic^[3].

In case you aren’t familiar, the current policy prohibits teachers and administrators from talking about or interfering in matters concerning a student’s sexual orientation—including a student being bullied—the purpose being (and I’m speculating here) to protect school officials from being sued over insinuating that a teen is gay. What it’s created, however, is a culture in which GLBT teens have little recourse from bullies, and a culture in which nine students have committed suicide in the past two years, some of whom were gay or merely perceived to be gay.

Again, this is the home district of Michele Bachmann. And, not surprisingly, the Parent’s Action League, an ultra-conservative group, is protesting the new policy^[4], stating that it is “being used as a pretext to advance a much broader agenda: the legitimization of homosexuality and related conduct to impressionable schoolchildren [and] will undermine the academic focus of this district and open the door to pro-homosexual and related conduct materials in the school curriculum thereby exposing students to concepts hostile to their religious faith and or moral convictions.”

So, “school safety” = “pro-homosexual.” Simply astounding.

MinnPost reported in an article on Thursday^[5] that these parents also requested that, should this new policy be instituted, students also have access to information about conversion (i.e., “ex-gay”) therapy, a form of psychological terrorism that has been denounced and derided by every reputable therapist. They also demand that (and I’m not making this up) officials “provide the history of gay-related immune deficiency (GRID), AIDS, and the medical consequences of homosexual acts” and “provide pro-family, ex-homosexual and ex-transgender videos to secondary media centers.”

GRID, in case you don’t know, was the name initially proposed for the disease that became AIDS. In 1982.^[6] It was promptly discarded for its inaccuracy^[7]. Yet here it is again, in 2012, being referred to in a proposal by a bunch of right-wing, religious, anti-gay parents.

In Michele Bachmann territory.

This comes in the same month that the Tennessee General Assembly is meeting about the HB229 (a.k.a., “Don’t Say Gay”) bill^[8] that’d make it illegal to even mention homosexuality in a public school, even though another 14-year-old committed suicide^[9] this past week after he was relentlessly bullied at his school for being openly gay.

And we need to prohibit teachers from talking about homosexuality, as if that will stop kids from turning queer.

Just like we need to keep telling teens not to have sex before marriage, which is obviously going to stop teen girls from getting pregnant—just like it’s stopping them in Texas, which has the third highest teen birth rate^[10], and the highest repeat teen birth rate^[11], in the country. That’s one race you don’t want to come first in.

I am angry that there are still anti-sodomy laws^[12] in Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Montana, which means the police can technically arrest you in your own home for having “gay sex.”

I am angry that Oklahoma State Rep. Mike Reynolds is attempting to push new DADT legislation^[13] that would ban GLBT citizens from openly serving in the National Guard (even though a similar measure was attempted in Virginia last year, and the federal government responded by threatening to cut their entire budget)^[14], a measure that Rick Perry lent his support to by encouraging Christian Oklahomans to mobilize.

I am angry that a 16-year-old atheist student ^[15] in Rhode Island received violence and death threats after she sued her school to have an overtly Christian banner taken down. (This is supremely ironic, considering that Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams in 1636 as a haven for religious freedom.)^[16]

I am angry that an Oklahoma Republican, State Sen. Ralph Shortey, is actually pushing a bill that would (according to the website Talking Points Memo):

outlaw the use of human fetuses in food, because, as he says, “there is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors.”^[17]

Yes. Soylent Green is a tasty food additive made from dead babies.

I am angry that Rick Santorum (among other things) is publicly saying that he thinks that women who become pregnant after being raped should “make the best of a bad situation” and carry the fetus to term as a “broken gift from god.”^[18] (This coming from a privileged white guy who will never have to face that scenario himself.)

I am furious that Tennessee Sen. Stacey Campfield (R) said that it’s “virtually impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.”^[19] Tell that to the 12 million women living with AIDS in 2009 in Sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 8.2 million men. (More on women living with AIDS globally at http://www.avert.org/women-hiv-aids.htm.) Tell that to the children—born of heterosexual parents, mind you—who were infected at birth.

I am furious that the Catholic Church still advises against condom use^[20], in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas where it could save millions of lives, under the notion that condom use will encourage fornication and prevent procreation.

I’m fucking angry.

That is all.

References:

Baca, Maria. “4 of 6 on Anoka school board back new policy on sexual orientation.” StarTribune. 24 Jan 2012.
Anoka-Hennepin School District. “Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy.” 9 Feb 2009.
Benjamin, Mark. “The Truth Behind Marcus Bachmann’s Controversial Christian Therapy Clinic.” Time Magazine, 15 Jul 2011.
Lindquist, Bryan, and Michael Skaalerud. “Concerns & Demands.” Parents Action League, 09 Jan 2012.
Hawkins, Beth. “Learning Curve.” MinnPost, 26 Jan 2012.
Altman, Lawrence. “New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials.” The New York Times, 11 May 1982.
Altman, Lawrence. “Outlook on AIDS is Termed Bleak.” The New York Times, 13 Jun 1988.
Towle, Andy. “Tennessee’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill is Back for Another Try.” http://www.towleroad.com, 17 Jan 2012.
Huffington Gay Voices. “Phillip Parker, Gay Tennessee Teen, Commits Suicide After Enduring Bullying.” Huffington Post, 23 Jan 2012.
“50-State and National Comparisons.” The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Nov 2011.
“Lowering the Teen Birth Rate in Texas.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 Jun 2011.
Murphy, Kevin. “Gay groups angry Kansas anti-sodomy law remains on books.” Reuters, 24 Jan 2012.
Wright, John. “Oklahoma lawmaker seeks to ban gays from serving openly in state’s National Guard.” DallasVoice, 10 Jan 2012.
Nolan, Jim. “Cuccinelli: Va. could exclude gays from National Guard.” Inside NoVa, 31 Jan 2011.
Goodnough, Abby. “Student Faces Town’s Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer.” The New York Times, 26 Jan 2012.
“Rhode Island.” Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States. 2007. Encyclopedia.com. 27 Jan 2012.
Rayfield, Jillian. “Oklahoma GOPer Proposes Bill To Outlaw ‘Aborted Human Fetuses’ In Food.” TPM. TPM Media LLC, 25 Jan 2012.
Graff, Amy. “Rick Santorum: Rape babies are gifts from God.” San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst Communications Inc., 24 Jan 2012.
Gittleson, Wendy. “Tennessee Rep. Says It’s ‘Virtually Impossible’ To Contract AIDS Through Heterosexual Sex.” Addicting Info. 26 Jan 2012.
Bowcott, Owen. “Catholic church tries to clear confusion over condom use.” The Guardian. 23 Nov 2010.

93. sisyphus

Quick aside here from NaNoWriMo.

My friend Jenny just posted a link to an article on Ye Olde Facebook that was posted by Rachel Held Evans entitled “A Non-Zero-Sum Conversation Between the Traditional Church and the Gay Community“, which I guess is a re-post of an article written by a guy named Richard Beck. I thought about commenting but then decided to write my own quick rebuttal before plunging back into the writing fray.

For those who don’t care to read or explore either of these authors or their articles, let me sum up briefly. The thrust of the piece is that the gay community and the trad Christian community have mutually compatible interests in promoting acceptance, even in the face of fundamental differences in belief. “Both groups share a mutual concern in treating others with respect, love and dignity,” Beck writes. “We share an interest in the Golden Rule. We both want to be treated well.” He also rightly observes that trad Christians have an obligation as Christians to display kindness, hospitality and generosity – three things that the church lacks in spades.

He continues:

“The game isn’t zero-sum; it’s non-zero-sum. Fighting doesn’t have to be the only thing we have in common. There are significant areas of mutual concern, locations where we can drop our fists and partner together on important Kingdom work . . . Imagine how the conversation would change between the traditional Christian and gay communities if traditional Christian communities became, say, known for their guardian angel and anti-bullying programs and initiatives, often partnering with local gay advocacy groups to get this work done.”

This is a lovely, Utopian image where everyone gets along and is able to put aside their differences and work together to build a world based on peace and love. It’s a sentiment that many of my Christian friends express (including my two best friends, Mark and Emily) in their continuing work in building a church that fosters such a worldview, and is open to discussion and bridging that conversation with the trad Christian church in bringing about real and tangible change in how Christians and gay (and really anyone who is of a non-believing persuasion–Jews, Muslims, atheists, Hindus, etc.).

Well, forgive me for not jumping on the hippie bandwagon (to be sarcastic for just a moment) but I have experienced first-hand the “openness” of the fundamentalist church. And I can say that without hesitation that my friends will be fighting an uphill battle both ways to start that conversation; and maybe that says something of their love for people, and their willingness to not give up.

The problem with the trad Christian community and why I think this Utopian world will never come about is that their beliefs about the Bible and about this world will always prevent this. It’s why Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, James Dobson, Peter LaBarbera and the rest of the anti-gay crowd can say the things they do and still sleep at night. They honestly believe that they are doing homosexuals a favor by “proclaiming the Truth” (and yes, I am using the capital T there purposefully) in order to free them from their “lifestyle of sexual bondage,” which I think was something like the phrase Bachmann used once.

Underlying their actions is the fundamental Christian belief that this world is not all there is, and that a better world awaits those who love and follow Jesus after death. Amongst the Evangelicals is the additional caveat that you have to “proclaim him as your Lord and Savior.” Just try doing a search for “how to become a Christian.”

“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” – Romans 10:9 (NASB)

It’s this eschatology that allows them to believe that the only thing that matters is getting to the right side in the afterlife. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS EXCEPT FOR JESUS. That “nothing else” includes sexual orientation, because obviously God created us all with a heterosexual orientation–right? So what does it matter if you have to live 70 years in total misery or loneliness if at the end of all that you have an eternity with Jesus?

[hold for laughs]

It’s this view that will not allow any sort of conversation between gays and trad Christians, and I don’t know that Richard Beck or Rachel Held Evans really understand that. I have the sense that they grew up in much more generous Christian denominations that were more life-affirming and dignity-affording. Then again, maybe they do and like the pacifist protesters getting beaten down in the film Gandhi they know what they’re in for.

All I know is that until trad Christians back down from their position of biblical literalism and inerrancy, there can be no conversation, for to even back down would be to waver in devotion to the Word and to God, which means jeopardizing their eternal security. My own parents would rather hold to that notion: that if I continue to “live as a homosexual” that I will one day suffer an eternity in hell while they enjoy a blessed eternity with Je-sus. (No, my parents are not Southern televangelists, but it’s fun to make them sound like they are.

It was partly because of this that I became an atheist in the first place (and I’ll be devoting my 100th blog entry to the reasons why I am an atheist). Jesus supposedly stood for love, affording dignity to all persons and speaking out against hypocrisy. And yet his followers resemble more the men who allegedly put him to death, and are putting gays to death every day in one form or another. They will continue to fight against gay marriage and equal rights for gays. They will oppose anti-bullying measures because it “encourages the proliferation and tolerance of homosexuality in schools.” They will rail against the teaching of evolution, ignoring all evidence that contradicts and disproves creationism.

Because the bible told them so.

67. intrinsical

*This article was written for the Minnesota Skeptics blog, but pending its review I thought I’d post it here for a sneak peek*

I’m embarrassed it took this long, really.

New Christian converts have barely finished asking God to “kindly please not smite them” before a copy of the Gospel of John is practically shoved into their hands, and yet it took me nearly six months to crack open Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene.” (Yes, there are plenty of mixed feelings and eye rolling about Dawkins to go around, but this should be required reading for any burgeoning skeptic or nonbeliever.) This past February I finally came out as an agnostic naturalist, but it wasn’t until a month ago that I even owned a copy of that book, or until two weeks ago that I finally cracked it open and decided to find out for myself what all the fuss is about.

Growing up as a fundamentalist Christian, the name “Dawkins” was almost synonymous with “Satan.” He was an evil (albeit misguided) scientist trying to lure the Faithful away from the fold and into his godless atheism. Yet (and I’m still devouring it) once I started reading and considering what he was saying, I found myself almost giddy, reveling in his language about survival machines, natural selection and replication. The thought of how life on this planet came about through processes that happened over a time frame larger than the mind can’t even comprehend, and the sheer beauty and awfulness of it, was almost a religious experience in itself. I’m this close to running out and getting one of those Darwin fish decals to slap on my car.

The other night I was visiting a friend of mine who is a more “non-traditional” Christian. She’s pro-gay rights, pro-choice, a Democrat, and many other things most fundies would consider blasphemous. We got onto the topic of evolution—something she accepts as fact without issue—and, naturally, “The Selfish Gene” came up. During the course of the discussion, she posed a query: What advantage might there be for an “inherited” belief in god? This came up after I suggested that the idea of “god” was probably a cultural construct, and she countered by saying she’d grown up in a non-religious home but had always had a sense of “god.” So, if there is no God and the universe and all life within it happened spontaneously, why do some believe in a deity while others do not? Is it a trait handed down through generations, like left-handedness or eye color?

It makes sense, actually. Having a religion would have carried some evolutionary advantage for our early ancestors. With their limited scientific knowledge, holding religious beliefs may have helped them cope with stressful situations such as disease, accident, natural disasters, animal attacks, and attacks from other hostile tribes. It would have facilitated social bonding and the fostering of community. Religious rituals also carry powerful symbolism, and the sense of belonging derived from going through such rituals would’ve been vital to our tribal ancestors.

It also seems a by-product of our consciousness and awareness of our mortality. You don’t want to think about your friend having just died because that means that someday you too will die and cease to exist. So it seems most likely that we created an afterlife and a God (or gods) to look after us both there and in this world too. An all-powerful God also appears to fill the parental void left once we grow out of childhood and into a cold, inhospitable world without a parent (i.e., ‘god’ to children, giver of life and gifts).

So here’s where this is going: If indeed “God” is merely a delusion, should we as a nation be basing deeply held political beliefs on such a foundation? As a skeptic invested in civic life, this worries me probably more than anything, especially when I hear politicians invoking religious, even eschatological language and rhetoric. Would it have been less American on 9/11 for George W. Bush to quote Psalm 23 or end his national address with “God bless America”? Or would Barack Obama have been any less patriotic had he not ended with “May God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America” on the night he announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed? Furthermore:

This past April a 1996 ban on the federal funding of stem cell research in the United States was finally lifted—a ban that George W. Bush affirmed in 2001 when he said that “human life is a sacred gift from our creator.”
Israeli-U.S. relations have been historically shaped around the biblical belief that Israel is God’s “chosen nation,” and that any government that aligns itself against Israel aligns itself against God. That’s foreign policy based loosely on a religious notion.
“Blue laws” remain in effect in state ordinances around the country, including in Minnesota, that prohibit the sale of alcohol on Sundays, originally under the idea that people should be in church, and many states also require car dealerships to be closed. Originally these laws were in accordance with the “day of rest” commanded in Exodus 20.

More recently has been the battle over same-sex marriage, vociferously led by GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. At the root of this conservative opposition to GLBT rights is the deeply held belief that, according to the Bible, God ordained marriage as between one man and one woman. They also point to several key scripture passages that they consistently use to label the GLBT community as “unnatural” and to deny them equal rights under the law. Law currently shaped by religious ideology, mind you, not law informed by unprejudiced, scientific and logical fact and evidence.

So what happens when you view the Creation story not as a factual account of the origin of the human species but as a variant of common creation myths in the Ancient Near East—including the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish? And what further happens when you view this story not as literal, God-given fact but as an attempt to explain where we came from? From there the narrative of scripture as Truth Handed Down From On High begins to unravel because so much depends on the veracity of this first story, at least in the view of fundamentalist Christians, which (looking at this as a former fundamentalist myself) is partly why this is such a critical issue.

And yet, religion is shaping and forming domestic policy, defying the Jeffersonian concept of a “wall of separation between church and state.” Skeptics are famous for debunking the paranormal, homeopathy and cultic belief systems, turning the same piercing scientific objectivity on them as we do for any academic subject. What would happen if we were to apply that to American civic life, calling out political leaders when they fail to uphold the Constitution they swore to protect and instead uphold religious ideology?

Because when last I checked, America still wasn’t a theocracy.

66. surprise

This morning on Twitter I saw a story from the Advocate about a church sign in North Carolina that was smashed and vandalized because of its anti-gay message:

GOD LOVES GAYS
BUT HE HATES A
PERVERTED LIFE
STYLE (sic) ROM.1-26-27
TURN OR BURN

The woman from the church, Anna Benson, who put up the sign in the first place, seems genuinely surprised that anyone would have found that message offensive. “I love the gays,” she said. “I love everybody.” The pastor of the church supports the message too, stating that it’s based on “biblical truth.”

Yesterday I came across an interview with Michelle Bachmann responding to questions from David Gregory on Meet the Press about her stated positions on homosexuality and her support for a same-sex marriage, amongst other things (the entire interview was about twenty-five minutes altogether).

At one point in the conversation, the following exchange took place:

“That is the view that President Bachmann would have of gay Americans?” Gregory asks (after playing an excerpt of her speech at the 2004 National Education Conference).

Bachmann responds, “I am running for the presidency of the United States. I am not running to be anyone’s judge.”

“But you have judged them,” Gregory continues.

She looks a little taken aback. “I don’t judge them,” she replies, and then later adds, “My view on marriage is that I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that’s what I stand for; but I ascribe honor and dignity to every person, no matter what their background.”

There’s a tragic, profound disconnect here between word and action. Both Bachmann and Benson are either unable or unwilling to see the implications of their positions. They see homosexuality and the person as two different entities: a natural playing-out of the “love the sinner, hate the sin” mentality that I grew up with. That’s an appropriate approach to take with, say, a five-year-old hogging the bricks in the playroom or Wynona Ryder shoplifting; but a propensity towards selfishness or a willful breaking of the law is a world away from a sexual orientation. Psychology and science are finally affirming what so many of us have known our whole lives: that, as Lady Gaga sings, we were born this way. Or if we weren’t that our sexuality was shaped in the same way that a heterosexual person’s is.

Yet this is precisely what my parents and most everyone else in the Evangelical camp continue to assert: that homosexuality is a choice, blindly in the face of mounting evidence from all sides, and that it is something that can be “cured” (or “prayed away”). And for them it absolutely has to be, or else their theological house of cards falls to pieces. Because if the Church is wrong on this issue, what else are they wrong about?

What this view allows the conservative Christian Right to do is dehumanize the GLBT community. Without a face there’s no human collateral. Rather, it’s an impersonal “agenda” that’s threatening your family, your children, your home and your way of life. An agenda can’t be hurt. It can be legislated and discriminated against without impunity. It can be vilified and demonized.

I wonder if Michelle Bachmann or Anna Benson could continue to believe what they do if they sat in a hospital room with a couple being separated because the law didn’t recognize either partner as next of kin. Or an afternoon with Bradford Wells and Anthony Makk, who is being deported back to Australia, even though they have been together nineteen years and were legally married in Massachusetts seven years ago (DOMA prohibits the federal government from recognizing their status under the law as a state-approved married couple)–and Makk is Wells’ primary care-giver (Wells has AIDS). Were they a married couple, Makk could not be deported. Heterosexual couples do not face this scenario.

With the mobilizing machine of the Tea Party, there’s a strong likelihood that in the next presidential election a Republican could sit in the Oval Office (most likely Rick Perry, if my reading of the GOP is accurate), wielding influence and power and armed with a deliberate religious and extreme right-wing ideology to craft public policy that could have very real implications for the GLBT community in particular. It’s this dual-mindedness that allows their indifference and bigotry to thrive in conservative corners of politics and mainstream America, fueled by the voices of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and the denizens of Fox News and other conservative pundits.

It wouldn’t bother me so much either if it were just the pundits, the Glenn Becks, or the Rush Limabughs doing the ranting. They have a constitutionally guaranteed right to do so. However, We the People of the United States–e pluribus unum–are not sending elected officials to state and federal office to promote their personal or religious ideology. We elect and appoint judges who are studied in law and we expect them to apply that law fairly and without prejudice or bias. (That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway.) Similarly, we elect public officials in our representative democracy to uphold the Constitution and to be the voice of their constituents. How often do judges have to make rulings that conflict with their personal beliefs? They will often say so in their dissenting opinions, but must abide by stare decisis, whether or not they agree.

Perhaps I’m being idealistic here, but I rather think politicians should be held to the same standard of upholding constitutional law rather than their religious or personal moral beliefs. They are elected to represent the People as fairly as possible, not “their” segment of the population. Will Michelle Bachmann stand up for gay Americans? Likely not.

The scales of public opinion are shifting ever-so-gradually towards a positive attitude of same-sex and other “non-traditional” relationships. But if the religious Right has their way, all of that could be undone with a few well-worded speeches and the stroke of a pen.

64. b-side

BACHMANN SETS NEW TONE WITH BRAVE NEW ALBUM

July 18, 2011

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, in an effort to court GLBT voters who, up until recently (and for good reason), had felt justifiably distanced from the GOP presidential hopeful, partly due to her controversial positions on women’s reproductive rights, homosexuality and slavery, today released a brave new album of campaign tunes with covers of Lady Gaga, Queen, Melissa Etheridge, Rufus Wainwright and Cher songs in hopes of winning over skeptical voters. The 52-minute LP includes anthems such as “Don’t Hide Your Love,” “Turn the Beat Around,” “I Will Survive” and “Y.M.C.A.”

The album’s rousing titular track, Ozzy Osbourne’s 1980 classic “Crazy Train,” sets a breakneck pace for this pounding, bluegrass-infused record, which features her husband Marcus on their renditions of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” with cowbell credits on Diana Ross’ “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

The album rounds off with a moving piano ballad—Dusty Springfield’s “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me,” with an exposed and vulnerable Michele at the keys, her soulful vocals providing the perfect close at the beginning of what is likely to be an exhilarating campaign, hopefully with her gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered supporters at her side.

Because if anything can unite these two sides on common ground, it’s bluegrass and gay anthems.

###

Just to cover my bases, this is not—I repeat NOT—an actual news story (though it would be pretty damned hilarious if it were). It came from the recesses of my imagination, my fear and loathing of Michele Bachmann, and was inspired by this weekend’s episode of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!