A Mask of Civility

I've run into this a number of times over the last few days, and it's worth noting:

Simply because you believe something does not mean it isn't harmful.

A very good example of this is the argument over marriage equality. While the segment of the population opposed to it is clearly loosing the fight, there are still those Christians (and Muslims, and Jews, and whatever) out there who think that, as long as you're not being Fred Phelps, you're okay. Or that you can still be intolerant but at the same time be a loving human being.

No. No.

Intolerant =/= Tolerance. You cannot be a loving human begin if you're a jackass who condemns people for expressing love towards individuals of the same sex.

"But... it's intolerant not to be tolerant of my intolerance!"

Alternatively:

"Oh yeah, you're tolerant, but not towards Christians who stand up for what they believe in. God doesn't hate you, he just [insert theological theistic teleological rhetorical garbage here]."

You're just intolerant of my intolerance, so you're not tolerant at all. That's how it always goes, isn't it? I'm not as bad as them, clearly, because I believe that God loves you but doesn't support your "lifestyle" choice - but I'm not as bad as Fred Phelps. I'm better than that.

Let me spell this out. I'd rather deal with Fred Phelps than you. Why?

For the same reason I'd rather deal with an honest, uncivil brute than deal with a dishonest, civility-obsessed caitiff. You have a gilded tongue, my f(r)iend, and it forks rather clearly down the middle. You are not better because you're not vocally an asshole. You still vote for vocal assholes, you still support polices drafted by vocal assholes, and you still believe shit told to you by vocal assholes. Everything you do is designed by vocal assholes; every waking moment of your life is controlled by these people. You do what they tell you to, you believe what they say, and you claim that you're better than them.

You're not better. You're subservient to them. You're worse. The vocal assholes made up their minds, and they're not cowards about what they believe. You are. You hide behind civility, you whine when people call you out for what you are. You're both just as wrong, but because you're a coward about what you believe, you're doing more harm than the vocal asshole who dictates your every waking thought. If these vocal assholes are the ubermensch, you are the last man.

If you believe something, stand up and accept it. Make it yours, actually believe it. Own it. Don't sit there and ho-hum about it. Your belief is the same thing as Fred Phelp's belief. Own it, goddamn it. Be a responsible adult and own it.

And ultimately, it's the same thing. How are you any different?

Because you hide it behind the mask of "civility." That doesn't make you better. That makes you an intellectual coward.

I'm not tolerant of you. I will never be tolerant of you. Not only because I'm intolerant of things that hurt marginalized people or hold populations of people down, but because I'm also intolerant of cowards. And when you step up and own your hateful belief, we'll be able to deal on even terms.

More Christian Evil; Why Religion is Child Abuse Reason #1,340,230,000

• State authorities have responded to at least 165 allegations of abuse and neglect in the past decade, but homes have remained open even after the state found evidence of sex abuse and physical injury.
  
• The religious exemption has for decades allowed homes to avoid state restrictions on corporal punishment. Homes have pinned children to the ground for hours, confined them in seclusion for days, made them stand until they wet themselves and exercised them until they vomited.
  
• Children have been bruised, bloodied and choked to unconsciousness in the name of Christian discipline. A few barely escaped with their lives. In addition, in two settled lawsuits, a mother said her son was forced to hike on broken feet; a father said his son was handcuffed, bound at the feet, locked away for three days and struck by other boys at the instruction of the home.
  
• Adults have ordered children to participate in the punishment, requiring them to act as jailers, to bully troublemakers or to chase, tackle and sit on their peers.
  
• Teens have been denounced as sinners, called "faggots" and "whores," and humiliated in front of their peers for menstrual stains and suspicions of masturbation.
  
• Parents share the blame. Some sign away their children for a year or more without first visiting a home or checking credentials. But state officials bear some responsibility because they have not warned the public about programs they believe are abusive.
  
• Florida taxpayers have supported some unlicensed homes with hundreds of thousands of dollars in McKay scholarships — a government program to help special needs students pay tuition at private schools.

Smaller government; YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK! Christan Love! Can you feel it, or do we have to HIT YOU HARDER? Fucking monsters, every last one.

Once Again, It's This Stuff Again

So, the clowns in Georgia (yep. To quote Adam Savage: There's your problem) are setting up for a fight with the ACLU and the rest of the civilized world. They've set up the Ten Commandments inside of a court house (Why do they do that? Why; of all the places to put them, why blaspheme them by sticking them up in front of one of the most dysfunctional justice systems on the planet?), and to my knowledge, even passed a bill making it "perfectly legal" to do so.

The common argument I routinely here is that they're the foundation for American Law and the foundation for Western Law. Western Law I can't speak too, but I know they sure as hell are not the foundation for American Law; explicitly, the Constitution.

How so? A lot of atheists say that, but very few of them actually stop to explain the number of ways that the Ten Commandments violate the Constitution, expecting people to either know or go and look it up themselves. Well, I have some free time tonight (and an earache; the sinus infection wasn't bad enough, you know. I really hate living in this state, with it's unpredictable weather), so I'm going to lay out exactly how and why the Constitution, if it was inspired by the Bible and the Ten Commandments, as is so commonly claimed, it was as an example of what not to do in a system of law.

The very first thing you have to do when talking about this is decide which of the various versions you want to use. Exodus and Deuteronomy both give two versions with their major and minor differences, and each Christian sect has their own variation on the theme. There are some things that run in common, however, but they're not as many as you would think. When you think about it, the very concept of a "generic" list of 10 Commandments is offensive to at least some Christian sect somewhere, because "generic" usually means "dominate group", which in this case would be some form of Baptist. Because it becomes a theological clusterfuck trying to determine which set to use, however, I'm going to just role with whatever set is easiest for me to find - and because Wikipedia is there for me, and Exodus comes before Deuteronomy, that's the version I'm going to be using. I have no fetish for "original commandments" because, if you recall, Moses supposedly broke the original ones on the ground when he saw that the Americans were worshiping Adam Smith, money, and the golden idol of Capitalism Hebrews worshiping the golden calf, so I personally couldn't care less. I just need an example list to show you how wrong this is, so Exodus will do.

Judeo-Christian Mystery Religion

This has been making its rounds on the Internet for a sometime now, and I've been waiting until I got a free moment before I comment on it.

Texas has a new Republican platform. And it's everything we've come to know and love from these motherfucking shit-for-brain idiots on the right. If you thought the Iowa platform was bad, boy howdy, you ain't seen nothing yet...

With this, the Republicans have finally struck a blow at the reality and in the process, created a gaping singularity of stupid that is slowly draining the collective IQ nationwide.

The Klan, Operation Rescue, and Al Qaeda

For those who don't know, Operation Rescue is a terrorist organization, just like Al Qaeda. They're a terrifying mix of violent extremism and anti-woman, anti-life, anti-human self-righteous blindness, run by a man who can only be described as a corrupted, soulless monster.

The right to not have to use a coat hanger for abortion in the United States has come under fire. Like all other third world countries, a patriarchy convinced of it's own conceited worldview has stepped up and deemed women as unacceptable human beings. No where is that more visible than in Operation Rescue, the Orwellian named group who's sole purpose seems to be bombing women's health clinics, killing gynecologists, and lying about how they didn't want any of the above to happen.

So yes, sort of like the Klan. But the Klan had the guts to stand up and say it was what they wanted. Like other Right-wing cowards, Operation Rescue can't do that.

And just like the Klan, I hope they become shunned really soon. Because these theocratic cryptofascists have adopted a new technique in their battle against female human rights: these radical clerics have started adopting a database with the names, pictures, work hours and work locations of all the doctors who preform abortions.

Does this scare you? Because it scares me. And we know exactly what it will be used for. It's getting a bit hot in here, and the law needs to step in. Now. Before someone else dies.




h/t the Slacktivist

The New Christian Sharia

If you've ever wondered what a critical failure in civics looks like, look no further than the Liberty Council. In a pique of fantasy, they rewrote the Constitution. Christian extremists masturbating their faith over civic law is nothing new in this country; whether it's lying and claiming that "we're a Christian nation" or lying about Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers/framers of the Constitution, a document they hold in such high regard they've never read, for fear it might be sacrilege. Their ideas are like all the different superpositions of an atom - once you look at it, they collapse (this is provided you accept wave-function collapse).

For those unfamiliar, the Liberty Council is an insult to pathetic jokes in the field of law. They basically have to lie about being a law firm, because they sit at the intersection of "law", "extremism" and "that burrito that you didn't eat all of and threw away last Friday." They're the "moral substitute" pushing Christian Sharia, and like 99.9% of all moral substitutes, they suck at what they do.

So, in an effort to pretend that they don't suck, they rewrote the Constitution, and modeled it after their own Christian Sharia law. Now, figure this - they scream that the United States is a Christian nation. If it's a Christian nation, why the hell are you rewriting the Constitution? It should be in the original Constitution (and not the Declaration of Independence, assdouche - they're two entirely different documents), but it's not, so you have to rewrite the Constitution that this country is built upon in the name of turning it into the Christian nation that it always was despite it not being in the founding documents? Spin me 'round and 'round; this oroborous of logic isn't ending anytime soon. Of course, that's the least of their logical flaws - why do you think they resort to lying? There is no legitimate debate because this isn't a Christian nation. Lie and make it up, concoct, list to FOX noise, In God We Trust does not mean Jesus, and I challenge any conservative to prove me wrong.

Never mind the fact that the phrase is unconstitutional to begin with.

But, let's take a look at this abomination that the Liberty Council shat out - this joke of fixer-fic of the Constitution.

(TW: Language - moreso than usual - and all the usual TWs associated with anything out of the bigoted and stupid political Right)

School's Prayer

Here's my new version of this school's prayer:

Our Heavenly Father

Grant us each day so that we may regress and stay ignorant; so that we may express our intolerance and bigotry towards those who are different from us. To remain mentally and morally stunted, as well as physically confrontational, for we are not adults, and have no other recourse for expressing our feelings. To be cruel to the helpless and the downtrodden, the unprivileged and those with a different view, so we and our teachers may mock our classmates for disagreeing with us. To be as utterly dishonest as possible, to others and ourselves. Help us be as self righteous and arrogantly hypocritical as possible. Teach us the value of hate and ignorance, as well as intolerance and inhuman cruelty, so that we may express it towards those whom we disagree. Help us conduct ourselves as such so that we can bring due credit to the Christians of Rhode Island in general and Cranston High School West in particular.

Amen.

Oh, but she won. Congratulations, Jessica Ahlquist - stay strong in the face of adversity. She's won so far, and she'll win here, too. Those Christians are full of shit - they're all talk, without the moral fortitude to back up their immoral words. Not that this takes away, nor should it take away, any fear that their words inspire. They should all be taken seriously - so seriously I'm posting their names here, along with their comments.

Taste the Christian love. If it tastes sorta like shit, that's because it is.

NOM Lies; News At 11

h/t Dispatches

This is like the Funny Right-wing Martyr Complexes; this shouldn't even be news anymore. Liars lie, false truths are told, shit-eating grins are given and nothing gets done. NOM is really good at this; especially the shit-eating part.

So at the end of the day does it really surprise anyone when lairs rehash the same tried "argument" - I wouldn't even dignify it with that term but I can't think of another word, and this sure as hell isn't a debate - that praying on young children is identical too two adults who love one another giving their consent to engage in sexual activities? And this is the best argument they have.

Why the don't these people just go away? They've lost. Repeatedly. Their ideology and agenda is gum in the machine, and you can only tolerate gum in the machine for so long before you have to remove it and throw it away. They don't have a true word amongst their claims except for one verse from Leviticus, and it's not even the verse that supports abortion (that'd be 27:6, for those keeping score at home - "If it is a person between one month and five years, set the value of a male at five shekels of silver and that of a female at three shekels of silver" and if it's a thing under one month, because anything under one month aren't people by Leviticus, not a single fuck one is given. Except, of course, a fine determined by the husband in accordance with Exodus 21:22-23.)

So not only are they dishonest about gays, they're dishonest about how they treat their own holy book. Gasp. Shock. Awe. I would never have suspected. You'd think that they never even read it before, but we know that can't be true. After all, that'd make them hypocrites too.

10 Differences Between the Religious Right and Jesus

h/t Confessions of a Former Conservative

He does a pretty good take down of this silly little list of points built on strawmen and distorted ideas of what the Religious Right think and what the actual reality around President Obama is. This "10 differences" list is a joke through and through, built around a number of fallacies and straight up stupid claims. As I was reading their list, I couldn't help but think "you know what? I can do better than this." And because this is likely how all great things in this universe being, I concocted my own list of 10 differences - in this case, the 10 differences between the Religious Right and the Jesus they claim to worship.

A heads up - do not refer to the Religious Right as "the Pharisees". For starters, there are still Jewish people who practice Pharisical Judaism, and that's insulting to them. Second, the Pharisees were concerned with the rule of law and the way that the law was carried out. The Religious Right doesn't give a rat's ass about religious law. They only want the religious law insomuch as it benefits them - which is why you hear this made up garbage about how Jesus made it "okay" to eat shrimp and wear mixed fabric clothing while still making it "wrong" to be gay, when there's nothing in the New Testament or any of Jesus' teachings to back that up (oh, sure, you can get Paul to help by quoting maybe two verses out of how many? But you know what? Paul was an asshole. And Paul was not Jesus). So no, let's stop calling them the "modern Pharisees." That's an insult to the practitioners of Pharisical Judaism ancient and modern, and it's not clever or remotely correct.

Also, before we go any further - yes, I have read the Bible. Most atheists have read it. I've read it even further, and I've made an even stronger effort to understand it, because I'm both an author and a student of literary criticism. You can't study Western Lit completely without understanding the Bible.

Right Wing Asshole Being Right Wing Asshole

This is certainly a "stop the presses" title. Gasp - a right-winger being an asshole? Do they come in any other flavor but asshole?

You get generic asshole flavor, but sometimes, they'll have a mixed flavor. Like "bigoted-homophobic-sexist" or "bigoted-racist-sexist" or you'll get the mystery flavor, where it can be any of the above, better known as the "Rush Limbaugh" flavor or the "FOX news" flavor.

Well, some guy I've never heard of before called Matt Staver has just earned his own, distinctive flavor of bigoted right-wing asshole.

Why Target, Macy's, and Lowes Support Bigotry and Hate

By now, I'm fairly sure that you've at least heard of the whole controversy surrounding the TLC show, All-American Muslim. I've never seen the show, and I don't watch TLC (not since they stopped being "The Learning Channel"). For those who haven't seen it or heard what was going on, one of those "inhumanly pro-family" (if I may borrow a phase from Fred Clark) organizations from (where else?) Florida (you were expecting Texas. Admit it) has pressured the sponsors of the program to back out, trying to get the program taken off the air.

It's greatest offense? Well, I imagine that the show displays Muslims as being people, rather than freakishly inhuman things ready to blow up your good, White, Christian country a moment's notice. This is a good thing. It helps fight back against the absurd propaganda that's concocted in the weird and frightening labyrinthine depths of the twisted organ right-winger's call a "mind", and can help "normalize" Muslims. Or, at least, the popular conception of what a Muslim is. I've said before that I worked with a lady who had blond hair, blue eyes, and dressed like any Western who also happened to be Muslim. She identified herself as a Muslim to me, and it was rather surprising the first time because I certainly did not expect it. So this show helps, at least, remove the overly negatives and humanizes the popular conception of Muslims and Islam, as opposed to just, y'know, lying about how they all want to kill us for freedoms, replace our law with Sharia Law, and other stupid shit like that.

Lowes, one of the companies they petitioned, backed out of the show and stopped sponsoring it. I know where I won't be shopping for home supplies in the very near future, and I recommend all readers of this blog vote with their feet. I prefer small, local hardware stores, and we still have a few of those around. But that's beside the point. What we have here is what happens when the peacock puffs up it's chest and thinks that it's managed to scare off competitors - it pushes the envelope.

Now that same Florida association is pushing to get Degrassi's sponsors to jump ship, too.

Yep, NAR're Really That Stupid

For newcomers, the New Apostolic Reformation (it's something like that; the acronym is NAR, like the hair remover but without the "i") is a particular breed of Dominonist theology. Yeah, I know that dealing with one breed of that theology should be enough, but bad things never come alone, they always feel the need to come in pairs, triplicates, or more. NAR (not the National Association of Rocketry; these people are nowhere near that intelligent) is the movement that aligned themselves with Bachman (no, that's not why this is post is titled as it is), and they're pretty determined to enforce their own twisted brand of God and religion on people. They are dominionists after all. However, they'd make horribly stupid villains. Really, it's an insult to us liberals that out of the whole mass of humanity, these are the clowns that rise to met us.

"Hate" Is Too Strong A Word

... but damn if I can't find a word that's only slightly less strong, that sums up how I feel towards the political right.

h/t Butterflies and Wheels, Digital Cuttlefish

Proof That, Once Again, Hate is Irony Deaf

Steve Jobs died the other day.

I'm only recently discovering the joys of the various Mac toys - I bought myself my first iPod at the beginning of last year, the first large purchase I ever made for myself by myself, with money I made at my job - I've been a PC user most of my life, because honestly, it's all I've ever known. Hell, I was using 98 right up until a few years ago. I use my iPod almost every day; it quickly replaced my MP3 player when I lost back a few years ago and I don't think I could ever go out for a run without it. I wouldn't mind getting an iPhone, either, and I really do want to get an iPad. I'm just dirt poor. The point is, the Mac toys are pretty cool. It's a sad fact that their creator is gone.

Jobs was a man who revolutionized the way we Internet (yes, Internet is now a verb) and the way we connect to the world at large. It's always sad to loose someone brilliant; there's so few of them in the world today, when a brightly shining star goes out, it's always noticed.

Oh, and speaking of dim stars - the Westboro Baptist Cult has announced that they, being the awesome, Christ-like Christians they are, will grace Job's funeral with their presence. And they did it from an iPhone, too, on Twitter. Irony deaf much?

Apparently, it's some business about how they're attention starved, and how they want to be a part of everything and the media hasn't been paying attention to them lately - you know how it goes. When worthless people start feeling lonely, they try to make everyone else feel worthless as well. They're looking for a platform to spread their arrogance and filth; that's why I usually don't talk about them. Yeah, we all know the WBC. Nobody gives a fuck about them. Fine, you're going to heaven. Good for you - if you're there, I don't want to be anyway. I couldn't think of a more horrific way to spend eternity than with the Phelps clan. There's not a loving God one that would enforce that sort of punishment on anything in creation.

Unlike Jobs, the day Phelps dies will be a day to rejoice and gather up, sing songs, and enjoy the passing of an evil, wretched, dirty little old man who deserves all of the scorn he gets.

Ah, Our Future Med Students...

I weep for our nation.

Trigger: Extreme misogyny. We're talking "What the Religious Right wants to say about women who take control over their own bodies but lacks the fortitude to say" levels here.

Will You Idiots Make Up Your Goddamn Minds?

The only thing more hilarious than Rick Perry is watching him shove is foot so far down his throat he'll be shitting toenails for the next few weeks.

See, in the recent debate, Perry got himself in trouble with the TEAbaggers and Teavangelists when he announced that, following in True States Rights tradition (which, for those who aren't native to the United States, means that this fool thinks Texas, one of the biggest Welfare states in the Union, could survive a day by itself. We keep tell them to shut up and do it then, but they don't, because they know. Today, State's rights are uniformly used to couch bigoted principles. Whenever someone brings up 'State's rights' on certain issues, it's because they're a bigot, usually a homophobic one), state should be allowed to decide whether or not they want to pass gay marriage laws.

Heh.

Oops.

So *This* Is The Sanctity of Marriage They Keep Babbling On About - Rape

After reading this, and seeing all their garbage about how allowing gays and lesbians to marry each other will lead to rampant pedophilia, and how conservatives continually prove unable to tell the difference, I've come to the conclusion that "consent" is not a word in the conservative vocabulary.

This is a heads up - what follows is pretty explicit in it's misogyny. It's also an incredibly twisted worldview - but then, I've come to expect nothing but from these people. I'm afraid that if, by this point, one of these sick bastards started making some sense, it'd mean the fabric of reality had come undone.

Also - cluster F bomb ahoy:

The Nature of Dominionism

It's Saturday! Yay! This means that your ol' buddy Enigma has another big essay for you all set and ready to roll, in this edition of Saturday Social Studies. Last time I look a look at an Enlightened (if not severely misguided) philosophy called Objectivism. In a strange case of Enlightened philosophy verses Enlightened philosophy, I put the smack-down on Rand's immature and self-contradictory philosophy.

Today's essay has nothing to do with Rand, Objectivism, or Enlightenment verse Enlightenment.

Today, we're looking at the Dark Ages verses the Enlightenment. Today will be a day of strange bedfellows, as it often is when I have to dissect religious philosophy - in today's essay, we'll be looking at Dominionism. This is more dangerous than Objectivism, and no, this isn't some Christian boogieman that hides under Liberals' beds at night and goes "boo." We'd be better off if a figment of the imagination was all that it was.

Uh... Whoa.

This one actually follows up my last post rather nicely. This particular comment, penned by a genius scribe over at the Free Republic sums up, in a nutshell (with emphasis on the "nut") exactly how extreme the position is capable of getting. Read this carefully.

What Is It With These People...?

Anyone remember Pat Buchanan? No? Consider yourself fortunate, because here he comes again, dredging the most wretched part of humanity along on his tailcoats. This man is sick, he has to be. I know he's evil; of that there's no question.

You'll recall that not even a week ago (maybe a little longer, I have difficulty keeping track of time when I have weird work weeks), there was a mass murder in Oslo, Norway. This mass murder was carried out by a Christian Terrorist by the name of Breivek, a nationalist, open Christian, and general right wing nut who loved to read, among other things, World News Daily (an American right-wing cryptofascist/insult to cryptofascism "news" and "opinion" webpage devoted to being as flat-out stupid as possible the right-wing cause). Mr. Breviek (whose name I will not be arsed to spell correctly because he doesn't deserve it) callously slaughtered 80 innocent children and teens in the name of Christian terrorism, and published an absolutely insane, 1500 page diatribe that rivals the Necronomicon in terms of sanity damage if you read it, without all the cool abilities that come along with reading the Necronomicon (i.e., the ability to drop Yog-Sothoth on the next CPAC meeting). Well, the right-wing noise machine's been scrambling, trying to distance themselves from Mr. Briefek, with the end result being the so-called "anti-Jihadists" in this country claiming they're somehow different from Mr. Befrvek's anti-Jihadism and Christian Terrorism. Out of the echo chamber comes Pat Buchanan, who I considered a real piece of work before this, but after it... well. Here, I'll dissect his argument just I have others in the past. It's probably the safest way to get near this, but remember - don't forget your moral hazard gear.