The Howard Government's War on Homosexuality

You just can't win with the theocrats. You can water down civil union legislation as much as you like. You can bend over backwards to placate fundy sensibilities--despite this supposedly being a secular liberal democracy. The Federal Government will still knock it on its head, arguing that any legislation proposing the faintest trace of formal recognition of gay partnerships "undermines the institution of marriage." As if happily-married heterosexuals will abandon their marriages in droves and embrace buggery before the ink on the Bill is even dry.

Oh, well. The medievalists have to get kicked out eventually.

(For a decisive smackdown of the notion that allowing gays to be married "undermines marriage", see this post by The Language Guy)

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Godless in America: CNN on "Why atheists inspire such hatred"

We know atheists are America's most despised and distrusted minority. We know it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for an atheist to be elected to office in the US.

But this has to be seen to be believed.

Via Pharyngula

UPDATE: Austin Cline (atheism.about.com) reviews the CNN piece, and in another post provides an overview of other reactions in the Blogosphere. According to various commenters on Digg, if you attempt to make your feelings known to CNN about the story, you'll receive the following response:

Dear I-Reporter,

On behalf of CNN, please accept our sincere thanks for your I-Report submission during our memorial coverage of the tragic death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. Thanks to the many submissions from our viewers, our coverage carried the personal touch that came from his vast and personal outreach to his many fans. Our programming effort was a huge success, and you are part of the reason for that.

Again, we sincerely thank you and hope you will continue to send relevant submissions to us at http://www.cnn.com/exchange/ireports/topics/

Best wishes,

CNN Public Information

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"Come wit' it NOW!"

" Whadda I got to, whadda I got to do to wake ya up?"

Rage Against The Machine, who so criminally went AWOL on a Bush America that desperately needed them, will reunite for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April.

The movie ran through me
The glamour subdue me
The tabloid untie me
I'm empty please fill me
Mister anchor assure me
That Baghdad is burning
Your voice it is so soothing
That cunning mantra of killing
I need you my witness
To dress this up so bloodless
To numb me and purge me now
Of thoughts of blaming you
Yes the car is our wheelchair
My witness your coughing
Oily silence mocks the legless
Now traveling in coffins
But on the corner
The jury's sleepless
We found your weakness
And it's right outside our door

Now testify

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking II

The week in fundie . . .

*Saudi Arabia's War On Consonants (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
*Hush Money: The Right-wing Think-tankocracy's War On Science (Via Morons.org)
*Gay-bashed by the staff at Taco Bell (Via Morons.org)
*Fred Nile talks to Jesus. "I hate Osama," Jesus tells Fred. (Ninemsn)

UPDATE: The letters Q and W are banned in Turkey. The plus-sign is verboten among some groups in Israel.

On a different tangent, the expression "God damn" will get you arrested in Michigan.

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Cutting Edge: Godless in America

Tonight on SBS at 8.30:

The story of Atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair, for 30 notorious years, successfully challenged God in America and then in the summer of 1995 suddenly disappeared. The film uncovers the outrageous life of “The Most Hated Woman in America” and looks at her mysterious disappearance and death.

This documentary examines the struggle of the American Atheists group to be heard at a time when their President declares he is directed by God, and begins each day by leading his cabinet in prayer. They claim there are 30 million non-believers in the USA and they are determined to fight against the rising tide of fundamentalism.

Despite the clamour of Christian conservatives, veteran to young atheists in this film, show they are determined to fight back against what they see as the current power of religious importance in every area of public life.

A biography of O'Hair is available here. Her son William is a born-again Christian leader.

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Rational Response Squad on Nightline

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According to the Rational Response Squad's Brian Sapient, Nightline--unlike certain other media outlets--portrays the group and its "Blasphemy Challenge" fairly. (There is a transcript available also.)

Even so, some of the questions put to Sapient hail directly from the atheist-bashing playbook. For example, "What's wrong with God?" (a variant on the usual "Why do you hate God?"):

"What's wrong with the Tooth Fairy?" asks Brian. "There's nothing wrong with something that most likely doesn't exist."

And cop this exchange:

Nightline: Do you worry about going to Hell?
Rational Response Squad: [Laughing at what has to be one of the most inane questions one could ever put to an atheist] No. No, not at all.
NL: Is that because you think Hell's gonna be fun if you do go there?
Rational Response Squad: [More laughter, perhaps partly out of surprise that, as dumb as the previous question was, this guy has managed to top it with the current question] No, because there's no reason to believe that Hell exists.

To be fair to the interviewer, given the religious demographics of the United States, he was probably obliged to play the "Fundies' Advocate" and couch the odd question in Believer-ese. But what happens when God's spokespersons themselves chime in? Firstly, you get the strawman:

"I think how sad it is that someone would be rejecting hope essentially," says the Reverend Kathleen Liles, an Episcopalian minister

Followed by ad baculum reasoning:

"I think if people are courting blasphemy, going out of their way to cross that line, that is just dangerous," says Paul de Vries, the president of the non-denominational New York Divinity School which provides ministry training. "They might get themselves in eternal trouble."

(Nice bit of editing there by the Nightline crew, by the way: with religion, you get hope and the fear of eternal damnation.) Back to Rev. Liles for a spot of projection:

"I can't say I'm really surprised by it. We live in a very difficult time. I think people have a lot of anger, people have a lot of anxiety. If you want to challenge something: if you're young and you feel like kicking out windows, saying something like this about God is one way to exercise that."

And finally, circular reasoning:

"Faith is a gift, it is a mystery, as so many other gifts from God are,'" she says. "And when we open our hearts to God, then God will give us the faith to believe."

In order to believe in God, first you must believe in God. Got that?

UPDATE: From the Nightline forum:

It is very obvious that all Atheist are the low life part of of society. Atheist lack moral values, they lack academic education and they lack all forms of consciouness. I feel sorry and pitty all the pathetic Atheist who try to use their so called knowledge to over throw christians. Surely Atheist can not articulate any meaningful sentence structures to describe their trailer trash ways. It is true God gave all men free will to call him a savior or to call him a liar. To bad Atheist choose to be ignorant filthy mental midget creatures who believe they know it all. To bad the God of the bible knows more then them. To bad my dog knows more then them. To bad hell is real and all atheist are going to hell. Atheist have no hope even God calls them fools.I laugh at all Atheist and their small minded uneducated monkey ways. Atheist are afraid to to take my challenge because they are not real atheist they are toilet paper. (Big laugh.) (Big Smile)

UPDATE II: I have been in fairly regular correspondence the past couple of days with the owner of this blog.

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Happiness is . . . a kong foo sing

The movie itself is ordinary (at least by comparison with its predecessor) but the kung-fu sequence from Wayne's World 2* featuring Mike Myers and James Wong ("Seinfeld? Four?") is pure gold.

(*I'll be buggered if I can figure out how to embed it in this post, however.)

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