To Fight Fire With Water

From the October, 2008 issue of Psychology Today, p. 22

Click to Enlarge. Feel Free To Download And Pass On.

I urge you to read this. Understand the enemy and he is yours.

Gee...Bet No One Saw THIS Coming!

"Clean" video renter arrested...for having sex with a teen!

What is it about Utah and shirt-rending morality that causes a man to freak out and behave even worse than the behaviors he rails against?

Freedom Equals Religion????

Mitt Romney, December 6, 2007 - "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

Errrrrrrrrrrrrr, not so much.

Apparently, Mitt hadn't farmed out a study of history to his staff to discuss in committee and prepare an executive summary of religion throughout history.

Indeed, a cursory glance at history shows that religion thrives where freedom is denied. This is part of the reason that Marx called religion the opiate of the people.

Even today, no one would deny that Islam is a religion, and that fundamental Islamists are against freedom. Yet, there's religion, being used to both terrorize nations, as well as pacify them.

I'm fairly sure that's not what Romney meant, yet his words echo hollow in the corridor of current events.

Too, Christianity has its fair share of tyrannical popes and autocratic kings, both of whom used the cudgel of the Bible to keep their people in line, while cynically holding out the carrot of "life everlasting."

And if religion requires freedom, Mr. Romney, just why was a part of America formed by the Puritans? They were escaping...ready?...religious dogma in England!

Your own religion is rife with examples of organized religion shunning your ancestors. Look at how the Mormons were driven from New York State into Ohio into godforsaken Utah, where in the middle of one of the most desolate places on the planet, Joseph Smith decided he'd found paradise.

It was paradise, sir, merely because no one was around to harass and oppress your forebears and their...I'll be kind...quirky thoughts on God and who precisely was He? I mean, come on...the Angel Moroni? There's a clue there, sir, if you take off the "i"...

Freedom is not religion, and religion is not freedom, and neither requires the other to exist. Even the ancient Greeks, the first truly democratic society on the planet, used religion not for freedom but to keep the citizenry (and more, the slaves) in line.

Freedom and religion, in fact, might be viewed as antithetical, antagonistic, even, and there's the rub and the idiocy of your comments yesterday. Rather than reassure the nation that you are, indeed, a mainstream conservative from a mainstream religion (and not a cult of blind fools), all you have succeeded in doing is handing the primary season to Mike Huckabee or Rudy Giuliani, by exposing a troubling neglect and ignorance of your own background, nevermind world events.

In short, Mr. Romney, you've gone from competent CEO to out-of-touch chairman of the bored.

And we on the left thank you.

The Curious Quiet

(image courtesy wallyg at Flickr.com)

I want you to close your eyes and imagine you are standing in the middle of Church Square of the blogosphere, at the junction of Piety Avenue and Judgement Boulevard.

Still your mind for a moment. Take a deep breath and exhale completely, and now, listen.

Did you hear it?

The sound of utter, embarrassed silence.

I think we've just witnessed the death of the Christian Coalition. There are, of course, many causes that this can be attributed to: the death of Jerry Falwell had to take a lot of the starch out of its sails, to be sure, but more, I think the marriage of Christianity to the GOP agenda created a monster that ultimately Man could not control.

So Jesus stepped in.

The signal to me that Jesus stepped in was the event of the week in politics: the self-debasement of Senator Larry Craig of Utah Idaho (frikkin' Mormons...always got their Mitts on everything...). Republicans from all across the narrow strip of right wing fascism denounced one of their own, vociferously, loudly, with few objections (curiously, most objections were voiced by liberals, who wanted no part of a rush to judgement).

The evangelical church, the backbone of the Republican-church pairing, was strangely silent. Where was Pat Robertson? Why wasn't he denouncing this "abomination" of a man the way he accused lesbians and witches of causing the terror attacks of September 11?

Where was "Dr." (psychology, not divinity...shame on you, pastor!) James Dobson, the head of "Focus On Family," the organization that just last year skewed research to "prove" that gays and lesbians make bad parents? Larry Craig has received a 100% approval rating from the Christian Coalition, an organization Dobson claims to be a major force in...why is he suddenly silent? He had no qualms about speaking out against Rudy Giuliani.

Where are all those "countless" American Catholic bishops who threatened to excommunicate John Kerry for respecting the rights of women who aren't Catholic and don't necessarily agree with the Catholic Church regarding abortion? After all, the Bible condemns homosexual behavior according the the church, right alongside abortion...and if anything, is even more specific about homosexuality than abortion.

Where they at?

I think what we're witnessing, and not a moment too soon, is the death of the Religious Right as a political force. So many things have piled up over the past two years-- Catholic priests as pedophile, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, David Vitter, as well as Larry Craig and the death of Jerry Falwell, not to mention the absolutely tragic Bush presidency and the waning influence demonstrated during the 2006 midterm elections-- that I think the Religious Right has chosen to sit this one out.

In fact, I'd posit that the major reason Karl Rove left the White House was he realized he'd never be able to duplicate the "perfect storm" that created the Bush presidency in the first place, then managed to eke out a re-election. He knew he couldn't sell yet another load of manure about a Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, and expect that constitutency to figure out how to put enough ketchup on it to make it palatable.

That was the most intriguing part of the Rove strategy: that he found enough suckers willing participants to sell manure as a gourmet meal, such that more than half his work was done before the talking points left the building. He'd pass the points along to select "clergy"men, who would pass them along to legitimate clergymen, who passed them along to pastors and deacons and priests and ministers, who declaimed them from the pulpit, all in the name of keeping America "normal".

Note that only the first wave of prelates got any stroke out of the deal. Your local church only saw the grateful words of those above it.

As a liberal Christian, I can begin to imagine the disllusionment many of the flock are feeling right now: to sit and defend behaviors they find even more abhorrent than the blow jobs they were violently and vehemently protesting just ten years with their "allies" in the GOP must be enormous, and their embarrassment even more so.

After all, they donated money to these men, just like they donated money to Christ. In their minds, these men were the equivalent to Christ for that reason. They must have felt it was that important.

In my heart, I feel for Senator Craig, too. Not completely. Not enough to want to see him not get punished for his comments and votes against tolerance and his hypocrisies. But I can imagine the humiliation he and his family feel, and I feel for them for that. We've all walked a mile in those shoes, most of us never had to walk them on the front pages of the tabloid news with flashbulbs popping in our faces.

And I feel for Senator Craig in another way: how much it must hurt him to hate who he is.

True Christians Everywhere Shrug And Smile

Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

LYNCHBURG, Va. - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. "CPR efforts were unsuccessful," he said.

Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell "has a history of heart challenges."

TRANSLATION: The internal organ that most humans call a heart was, in Falwell, a shriveled raisin.

Seriously, could there be a more poetic end to this man?

(h/t to Susan)

He Just Doesn't Get It....

...and therefore will lose the GOP nomination:

On Friday, Giuliani restated his personal opposition to abortion but support of a woman's right to choose.

"It's a difficult issue," he said.

He sought to defuse the potent subject that could harm his chances of winning over primary voters who tend to be more conservative, saying Republicans risk losing the White House if they allow themselves to be divided.

"If we don't find a way of unifying around broad principles ... we're going to lose this election," Giuliani said.

Well, he gets that much of it, to be sure: abortion is not the biggest issue in this campaign and any candidate the GOP elects based on a stance on this issue is sure to be heavily hampered, because abortion is so low in the hierarchy of concerns of the average voter, after the invasion in Iraq and the shaky economy, that it's not even pulling double digits in polls.

But here's the bit he doesn't get:

And he called for more respect between people who have good-faith disagreements about issues.

"Those principles come from God, and that's why we're so lucky," he said.

Rudy, according to these people whose support you so desperately seek, abortion = murder. Period.

There is no middle ground, no God-given right for a "baby" to be "killed," and God (the father) is very clear on this point: an eye for an eye. If you murder, God will see to it that you are murdered, and He will use whatever instrument of destruction He can. It is these passages of the Old Testament that the Religious Right take comfort in whenever an abortion clinic is bombed.

My suspicion as to why Rudy hasn't full-throatedly abandoned a woman's right to choose, the way Mitt Romney did, probably stems from an ugly skeleton in his closet. I have no other evidence of this, of course, but my guess is, somewhere deep in his past is a trip to a doctor with a woman to quietly "take care of a condition."

Rudy, you see, doesn't exactly have the best track record for fidelity, and I'd wager at least once, his peccadillo has backfired on him. If he were to fully abandon a woman's right to choose, even to pay lip service to overturning Roe v Wade, there's a woman with a doctor's bill poised to strike.

I say this, because Rudy's never been one to mince words or straddle a fence, even if he felt it might cost him a few votes. He's always relied on his "strength" (which apres W could be read to mean single-minded determination to fuck things up) to carry along people who might disagree with his positions on a minority of issues, trusting that his pigheadedness and "limousine redneck" stances on other issues will win the day.

One more thing: Rudy's trotted out a cutesy little turn of phrase to explain away his flip flop on abortion:

"I disagree with myself sometimes, and I change my mind sometimes," Giuliani said to laughter as he addressed a largely anti-abortion audience at Houston Baptist University.

Sound familiar?

Kerry: I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.

Somewhere, there's a DNC ad writer furiously playing with Rudy's quote.

My Easter Sermon

You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

Much has been made over the past ten or so years about wearing your heart out on your sleeve if you're Christian, and you had better have the right heart (pun intended) or you'd be savaged in the media.

In truth, although 85% of this nation identifies itself as "Christian", most of us probably are closer in philosophy to Bono than to Robertson. The rigid dogma of the Religious Right is fading finally, although I expect one or two more paroxysms of "true faith" rearing its ugly head before it finally dies once more.

I say "once more" because American history, indeed, world history, is filled with periods of this dogma orthodoxy. Usually right around a milepost like a millennium.

Then things go back to normal for two reasons: one, it's pretty pointless to worry about the end times and two, people grow up a little.

Part of why I titled my own blog "The Non-Rapturist's Guide To The Galaxy" is to dissuade people from thinking that all Christians are loons. Jesus informs my beliefs, He shapes my faith and my life, but He doesn't own it.

Which brings me to what this post is about: Living life in grace.

See, the secret to life is to live in truth. Truth is grace. Truth is the force in which we can find our grace, and in truth, we can find what we are looking for.

To live in truth is to acknowledge that a higher being lives within us, whether you want to call that being Christ, Astarte, the Force, Buddha, whatever. He (or She) sees truth, then speaks truth, then does truth.

And the truth is, we all live on this planet. We all suffer the same fate as everyone else, the same indignities, the same tribulations and the same joys and triumphs. What connects me to you, is what connects you to me, and connects us both to everyone and everything else here and in the universe. ("For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.")

Which is more true than you can imagine. The air you breathe now was once breathed by Socrates, by Napoleon, by George Washington, by Joan of Arc. The water you drink today has passed through Hitler and Jesus, through Julius Caesar and Mother Theresa, possibly even through me.

Sometimes, all we need to do is ask and we will receive. Sometimes, we ask and we don't receive, or don't think we did, because sometimes no is as good an answer as yes. But we also must give when others ask, or else the whole thing falls apart.

And I think this is what my Lord, my Jesus, not the Jesus of Pat Robertson and John Hagee and Ann Coulter, will ultimately judge me on for heaven: did I live in His Grace on earth? Did I understand that what I do, what I ask for, what I give, affects everyone else on this planet? And that life is a zero-sum game, in that what I get means someone else gets less, so its incumbent upon me to give back to that equation?

So what to make then, as a Christian, of Christ's gift? How much must we give back to equalize our part of the equation?

A lot more than we do, I think. A whole lot more. Fortunately, we have the rest of our lives to do it. Seek, and ye shall find, but ye shall find it within you. You are enough.

Happy Easter to you, if it applies, or even if it doesn't.

And don't forget: support me for (not)President!