Miscellanea Agnostica

It seems the Vatican has run out of stuff to do, these days, in spite of things like the Vatileaks scandal and the worldwide clerical child-abuse scandal (which it has yet to deal with in any kind of contrite, meaningful way). Yes, the robed denizens of the Holy See, you see, are more than slightly miffed that measures permitting gay marriage passed in three US states this past Tuesday, and it’s becoming the law of the land in France, too. The AP reports via the Washington Post that they’ve gone on the offensive over the matter (WebCite cached article):

The Vatican is digging in after gay marriage initiatives scored big wins this week in the U.S. and Europe, vowing to never stop insisting that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

In a front-page article in Saturday’s Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the Holy See sought to frame itself as the lone voice of courage in opposing initiatives to give same-sex couples legal recognition. In a separate Vatican Radio editorial, the pope’s spokesman asked sarcastically why gay marriage proponents don’t now push for legal recognition for polygamous couples as well. …

The Vatican’s anti-gay marriage media blitz came after three U.S. states approved same-sex marriage by popular vote in the election that returned Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency, Spain upheld its gay marriage law, and France pushed ahead with legislation that could see gay marriage legalized early next year.

The Vatican used expressed the raging paranoia typical of militant religionists:

The article insisted that Catholics were putting up a valiant fight to uphold church teaching in the face of “politically correct ideologies invading every culture of the world” that are backed by institutions like the United Nations, which last year passed a non-binding resolution condemning anti-gay discrimination.

“The church is called to present itself as the lone critic of modernity, the only check … to the breakup of the anthropological structures on which human society was founded,” it said.

Given that gay marriage is vehemently opposed by lots of people and groups … like the American Family Association and Focus on the Family in the US and other evangelical Christian ministries all over the world … the Vatican lies when it says it’s alone in this regard. The cold fact is that the R.C. Church is by no means alone in its effort to unravel the advancements we’ve made since the Enlightenment and yank humanity back to the Dark Ages.

Here’s a thought for those in the Vatican who think they should be able to moralize and tell humanity what it can and cannot do: Once you’ve purged your own Church of its criminals and miscreants; once you’ve handed over for prosecution every abusive cleric in your ranks and every bureaucrat and hierarch who covered up for them; once you’ve admitted your policies were focused more on protecting your own reputations and wealth than looking out for the welfare of children in your care; once you’ve explicitly conceded your organization is not above the criminal law of the countries in which you operate; once you’ve changed your policies to put children first and commit to operating more transparently; once every abusive priest, nun, brother, etc. and obstructionist bishop has confessed his/her crimes and begun their jail sentences; and once you’ve grown the fuck up and stopped blaming anything and everything but yourselves for what you did … THEN, and ONLY THEN, might you have anything coming close to the kind of moral authority that gives you any right to tell anyone else how to live. Until then, you should just shut your fucking mouths about the evils of gays, or of this horrible, rotten, insolent “secularism” you so passionately despise. They haven’t perpetrated anything close to the scope of crimes your own Church is guilty of worldwide.

Is that clear?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: 2012 election, 2012 elections, catholic church, christianism, christianist, christianists, gay marriage, gays, holy see, homophobe, homophobes, homophobia, homosexual, homosexuality, l'osservatore romano, religionism, religionist, religionists, roman catholic, roman catholic church, secular, secularism, vatican, vatican city

This is a classic example of religionists presuming themselves the ability to do something to others, that they will not tolerate other people doing to them. In other words, they’re the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. The (UK) Guardian reports on Catholic outrage over a Scottish cardinal being condemned for having condemned gays (WebCite cached article):

Catholic leaders have reacted furiously after members of the gay rights group Stonewall named Cardinal Keith O’Brien “bigot of the year” for his vigorous attacks on gay marriage.

Stonewall said its 10,000 members had voted “decisively” to give the title to O’Brien, head of the Scottish Catholic church, after he described gay marriage as a “grotesque subversion” [cached] of the universal human right which defines marriage as solely heterosexual. …

A church spokesman said the award showed Stonewall was intolerant of its critics. “Stonewall and others have promoted terms like ‘bigot’ and ‘homophobe’ relentlessly, in order to intimidate and vilify anyone who dares oppose their agenda,” he said. …

Stonewall insisted the award was entirely justified since O’Brien had been consistently abusive and intolerant about gay marriage. The cardinal had likened it to relegalising slavery [cached], said it was an “aberration”, and claimed it might clear the way for polygamous marriages and would cause “further degeneration of society into immorality”.

So, Catholics, let me get this straight. It’s OK for your cardinals to bluster, fume, stamp, and rage about gays — comparing gay marriage to “relegalizing slavery” and calling them every vile name in the book — yet it’s somehow impermissible for anyone to call them “bigots”? Really??? Are you people sure you want to go with that? I’d be careful if I were you; after all, this is hypocrisy, and your own Jesus specifically ordered you never to be hypocritical. Keep it up, and your mortal souls might be in danger.

Here’s another thought: If you don’t want to be called names like “bigot,” how about not saying bigoted things? How about keeping your nasty, fucking hatred to your nasty, fucking selves? That way, you wouldn’t cause others to call you out for being the hateful pricks you really are.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Hat tip: Peter at Anti-Bible Project on Delphi Forums.

Tags: archbishop keith o'brien, archdiocese of saint andrews and edinburgh, bigot, bigotry, bigots, cardinal keith o'brien, catholic church, gay marriage, gays, great britain, homophobe, homosexual, homosexuality, homosexuals, hypocrisy, hypocrite, hypocrites, keith o'brien, roman catholic, roman catholic church, same-sex marriage, scotland, uk

A couple months ago the well-known food company General Mills apparently committed the cardinal sin — in the eyes of militant religionists, anyway — of supporting gay rights. A devout Christian was so outraged by this, that he decided to stage a protest at company headquarters, by burning some Cheerios. But as the Smoking Gun reports, he managed to do just a little bit more than that (WebCite cached article):

The gay marriage opponent seen in a viral video accidentally setting a fire outside the General Mills headquarters is a Minnesota real estate broker who has previously recorded a series of anti-gay YouTube clips.

In the above video, Michael Leisner, 65, can be seen outside the General Mills corporate campus in Golden Valley. He is carrying a box of Honey Nut Cheerios in one hand and a blowtorch in the other.

As an aside … I wonder if there’s any particular reason Leisner chose “Honey Nut” Cheerios for his protest? But I digress:

But after Leisner torches the Cheerios box, he somehow allows flames to spread to the lawn in front of a giant General Mills sign. After trying–and failing–to stamp out the flames with his feet, Leisner tells two young companions, “Okay, get out of here guys.”

You’ve just got to love the way this idiot and his cadre of gay-haters fled the fire. What a class act!

Here’s video of this little exercise of religious expression:

I may have read the Bible extensively — from front to back, up and down, including reading the New Testament in its original Greek — but sadly, I appear to have missed Jesus’ instruction to his followers to “Go forth and set fires in My name.” If anyone out there would be so kind as to supply me with chapter and verse on that, I’d be much obliged. Thank you!

Please note that I refrained from exploiting the obvious pun reference to “flaming.” It would have been just too easy!

Photo credit: PsiCop original.

Tags: cheerios, christian, Christianity, christians, fire, flame, gay, gay hatred, gay marriage, gay marriage rights, gays, general mills, honey nut cheerios, marriage rights, Religion, religionism, religionist, religionists, religious

Religious Rightists seem to lose their microscopic little minds when it comes to marriage … or more specifically, gay marriage. They hate it, and they don’t want gays to marry, but they have trouble articulating any rational reasons for their subjective distaste for it. The most recent example of their stupidity and ignorance about this subject, came when GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum — the new “darling” of the Republican primary now that he’s had a near-win in the Iowa caucuses — as reported by the Los Angeles Times tried to explain to a college audience why he thought gays should not be allowed to marry (WebCite cached article):

Santorum is an ardent, outspoken opponent of gay marriage, favoring an amendment to the Constitution that would define marriage as solely between a man and a woman. He received a rough welcome from a group of college Republicans in Concord — and it likely didn’t help matters when he compared a same-sex union to polygamy.

“Are we saying everyone should have the right to marry? So anyone can marry anyone else?” Santorum asked, according to a video by NBC News. “So anybody can marry several people?”

Video of Santorum’s idiocy can be seen courtesy of NBC News:

The logical (and legal) problem with equating gay marriage with polygamy is one I’ve pointed out before, and that is that a gay marriage is still a contract between two people (as is a current “standard” heterosexual marriage), whereas a polygamous marriage involves several people. They’re fundamentally different, with polygamous marriages being much more complicated. They are just not the same.

Although I’m pointing out that he said it, I must concede that Santorum’s “gay marriage equals polygamy” equation is not something he devised, it’s actually standard Religious Right rhetoric. However, when one couples this piece of stupidity with his claim 10 months ago that the Crusades were not Christian “aggression,” you clearly have a man who’s blithely unconcerned with facts of any kind and unburdened by rationality. On top of that, last weekend Santorum said he thought the US should be open about its covert operations in Iran (cached):

“We need to say very clearly that we will be conducting covert activity to do everything we can to stop their nuclear program.

I could be wrong, but last I knew, anything you were open and “clear” about cannot also remain “covert.” And if the infamous Stuxnet cyberattack hasn’t clued the world — and the Iranians, not to mention Mr Santorum — into the fact that the US is covertly trying to sabotage Iran’s nuclear-weapon efforts … well, then no amount of being “clear” about it is going to help.

Either Rick Santorum is one of the stupidest people on earth, or he’s acting as though he is, just to play up to Christofascist GOP primary voters; but neither of these conclusions is very comforting.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: 2012 campaign, 2012 presidential election, 2012 primary, bigamy, christian right, gay marriage, gop, marriage, polygamy, religious right, republican, rick santorum, santorum

I just love talking about what I call “disaster theology.” That’s when some hateful religionist claims that God caused some disaster or other, because he’s angry about something. Really, it’s not God that’s angry … it’s the person appealing to disaster theology. Theirs is the kind of sanctimonious anger that causes one to revel in the misery and suffering of others, because they — of course! — are much too pious to fall victim to it, themselves. I can think of few ways to show the vile nature of fierce religionism, than this tendency to dance for joy because of a catastrophe.

The latest example of it comes from a true master of “disaster theology” about whom I’ve blogged previously, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, and it’s reported by the Huffington Post because apparently the mass media can’t be bothered reporting on the ravings of enraged religiofascists (WebCite cached article):

A New York rabbi claims gay marriage and the earthquake that shook the East Coast are directly connected.

In a video uploaded to YouTube, Levin says gay rights legislation, like the gay marriage law passed in New York, are responsible for earthquakes, like the one that struck Washington, D.C. Tuesday.

“The Talmud states, ‘You have shaken your male member in a place where it doesn’t belong. I too, will shake the Earth,’” Levin says.

Here is this ferocious religiofascist’s video on Youtube:

Incongruously, this sanctimoniously-outraged bigot claims not to be a bigot after all:

“We don’t hate homosexuals,” he says. “I feel bad for homosexuals. It’s a revolt against God and literally, there’s hell to pay.”

OK, I get it. You don’t hate homosexuals, you just claim they’re “revolting against God” and that it’s God who hates them — not you! — and will make them “pay” for their rebellion.

Yep, I definitely got that little maneuver. You personally hate gays, but in order to swerve out of the way of having to admit you hate gays, you attribute the hatred instead to your God, and then say that God, not you, is the one doing all the hating.

There’s another word for that: Cowardice! The rabbi is too cowardly to admit the “hatred” and bigotry are his own, so like a sniveling crybaby, he hides behind his God.

I also note that, if God caused this earthquake because he’s angry that the state of New York now permits gay marriage, he missed his target; the middle of Virginia is a long way from New York. I have to wonder if it’s even possible for the Almighty to have missed his target … ?

Rabbi Levin is hardly the only person who’s used an earthquake to advance his own religionistic philosophy. The earthquake in Japan a few months ago, and the one in Haiti a year and a half ago, were both used to the same effect, by lots of ferocious, militant religionists. “Disaster theology” is as old as history itself, and it’s long past time humanity outgrew it.

Hat tip: Mark at Skeptics & Heretics Forum on Delphi Forums.

Photo credit: USGS.

Tags: disaster theology, earthquake, gay marriage, jew, jewish, judaism, rabbi, rabbi yehuda levin, religionism, religionist, religionists, virginia earthquake, yehuda levin

The crybaby Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, is sure to flip out, if he hasn’t already. The New York Times reports that key votes in the state Senate have changed to which would permit gay marriage in the Empire State (WebCite cached article):

Thirty-three state senators have publicly declared they will support legalizing same-sex marriage, all but assuring passage of the measure which will make New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples can wed.

The Senate took up the measure just before 10 p.m., and the Senate galleries were packed with gay couples in support of the bill and religious opponents of it.

To date the chief objection to the legislation has been that it would force clergy to marry gays, even if their sect/cult/denomination/whatever objects to it on doctrinal grounds. But the governor proposed language which would alleviate that:

On Friday, the legislative leadership reached an agreement on a measure that they said would protect those religious institutions; that measure was approved Friday evening in the Assembly.

Note that such language is unnecessary; religious freedom already precludes forcing clergy to marry anyone they don’t want to marry. In its decision that allowed gay marriage here in my home state, the Connecticut Supreme Court stated so. My guess, though, is that the Religious Right will, nevertheless, keep throwing fits, continuing to promote the fiction that clergy being “forced” to marry gays is imminent — in spite of the fact that it’s not, and in spite of the unnecessary, explicit language that was added to the New York bill. They can’t help but do so … after all, lying is second-nature to them. They don’t know any better. Plus, they’re doing it for Jesus!

Photo credit: Castorp Republic.

Tags: albany, albany NY, civil rights, gay, gay marriage, gays, homosexual, homosexuals, marriage, new york, new york state

As most of my readers are probably aware, gay marriage is tantalizingly close to being legalized in the state of New York (WebCite cached article). The Religious Right in that state, naturally, is throwing fits over this possibility. Among them is New York’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan. He’s known for his screaming irrationality, which I’ve noted previously, for example, in a diatribe he penned on his own blog, accusing the New York Times of being “anti-Catholic” because it was insolent enough to dare run stories on the reports of abuse within the Catholic Church in Ireland. It was worldwide news for months, as first the Ryan report and then the Murphy report were released there — but the Archibishop thinks that newspapers who reported on them must — by definition — be “anti-Catholic.”

It almost goes without saying, then, that Dolan’s knickers are again in a knot, as Albany edges closer to allowing gay marriage. In his irrational, sanctimonious rage, he made a comparison that is, quite frankly, completely unreasonable (cached):

Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.

Dolan dislikes the idea of gay marriage, therefore if the state of New York allows it, then New York will have become a vicious totalitarian regime that will kill people at will.

I have to ask: Your Excellency, are you serious? Or are you daft?

Dolan is — as usual — just being childish. The legalization of gay marriage has no relation to totalitarianism, no matter where it’s practiced. Permitting gay marriage will not — repeat not — affect anyone other than gays who wish to marry. Heterosexual people will not be forced to marry others of their own gender. It will never happen. If gay marriage is permitted in New York, it will not change the lives of heterosexual couples in any way. Period.

Note also that His Excellency’s complaint is, more or less, the fallacious debate tactic known as reductio ad Hitlerum. The only difference is that he’s naming different bogeymen than the Nazis or Adolf Hitler. Otherwise it’s the same thing.

Hat tip: Religion Dispatches.

Photo credit: J. Stephen Conn.

Tags: albany, albany NY, archbishop of new york, archbishop timothy dolan, archdiocese of new york, catholic church, civil rights, gay, gay marriage, gays, homosexual, homosexuals, marriage, new york city, new york NY, roman catholic, roman catholic church, timothy dolan

In a development which arguably has been a long time coming, the Obama administration has finally decided it will not defend the Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996. The New York Times reports on this announcement (WebCite cached article):

President Obama, in a striking legal and political shift, has determined that the Defense of Marriage Act — the 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages — is unconstitutional, and has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court, the administration said Wednesday.

The announcement was not made in person, and not by the president, as the Times explains:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the decision in a letter to members of Congress. In it, he said the administration was taking the extraordinary step of refusing to defend the law, despite having done so during Mr. Obama’s first two years in the White House.

“The president and I have concluded that classifications based on sexual orientation” should be subjected to a strict legal test intended to block unfair discrimination, Mr. Holder wrote. As a result, he said, a crucial provision of the Defense of Marriage Act “is unconstitutional.”

The Religious Right, of course, is not happy about this:

“It is a transparent attempt to shirk the department’s duty to defend the laws passed by Congress,” Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “This is the real politicization of the Justice Department — when the personal views of the president override the government’s duty to defend the law of the land.”

I’m not sure any Republican has any kind of moral standing to complain about the “politicization of the Justice Department,” given what the Bush Jr administration had done with it. Fucking hypocrites.

At any rate, this bodes well for my home state of Connecticut, which has permitted gay marriage since the Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health decision was handed down by the state Supreme Court in late 2008.

All I can say is, good riddance to this law. The idea that marriage is something that needs to be “defended” is logically absurd. Marriage is something that people willingly enter into. Their ability to do so need not be “defended,” since they can do so whenever they wish. The idea that allowing gay marriage somehow prevents heterosexual couples from marrying, is likewise absurd. It does no such thing!

Lastly, the Religious Right’s assertion that, according to Judeo-Christian principles, marriage can ONLY be between one man and one woman, is factually incorrect, as I’ve blogged previously. There have been several different kinds of marriage during the history of the Abrahamic faiths; there is no “one” definition of it.

It’s time for the Right — which, especially during the Obama administration, has argued that government meddles too frequently in people’s lives — to put its money where its mouth is, and stop getting in the way of gay couples marrying, if they wish to. Freedom is a good thing; we should have more of it, not less.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons / Claus Ableiter.

Tags: barack obama, christian, christian right, Christianity, christians, defense of marriage act, doma, gay marriage, kerrigan v commissioner of public health, marriage, marriages, obama, obama administration, president barack obama, religious right, wedding, weddings