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

Just when you thought the R.C. Church couldn’t have reached a new low in depravity — for instance, they stole newborns from “wayward” mothers in Australia, and in Spain, and probably lots of other places — the (UK) Telegraph reveals the Church managed, back in the 50s, to have had boys mutilated because they were “homosexual” (WebCite cached article):

Evidence of the castrations has emerged amid controversy that it was not included in the findings of an official investigation into sexual abuse within the church last year.

The NRC Handelsblad newspaper identified Henk Heithuis who was castrated in 1956, while a minor, after reporting priests to the police for abusing him in a Catholic boarding home.

This particular form of abuse was apparently not included in an abuse report released a few months ago. The claim is that there was no way to trace the allegations, however, the real reason is that the report’s writers were trying to cover up government participation:

Evidence emerged on Monday that government inspectors were aware that minors were being castrated while in Catholic-run psychiatric institutions.

Minutes of meetings held in the 1950s show that inspectors were present when castrations were discussed. The documents also reveal that the Catholic staff did not think parents needed to be involved.

There are also allegations that Vic Marijnen, a former Dutch Prime Minister, who died in 1975, was linked to the case.

In 1956, Mr Marijnen was the chairman of the Gelderland children’s home where Mr Heithuis and other children were abused. He intervened to have prison sentences dropped against several priests convicted of abusing children.

The involvement of former prime minister Marijnen — even though he’s long since deceased — certainly might cast a shadow on the Dutch government, so it’s natural the report may have avoided this matter.

It’s amazing how the R.C. Church continues to lament its lack of influence on occidental society, and even pitches fits when it feels it’s being disrespected … but clearly the Church tore up and burned its “respect” card long ago. It no longer deserves anyone’s deference or respect. The sooner society understands this, the better off we’ll all be.

Oh, and once again, I have to ask all the lay Catholics out there who may read this (and since I’ve heard from some of you, I know you’re out there): When the hell do you plan to get the fuck off your sorry, lazy little asses and do something about the horrific monstrosity that is your own Church? Only you can change it. Either you have the courage to force it to change, or you don’t. But since you refuse to try, I can only assume you approve of this abusive behavior.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

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

Tags: castrati, castration, catholic child abuse, catholic child abuse scandal, catholic church, catholic clerical abuse scandal, catholic scandal, child abuse, christian, Christianity, christians, clerical child abuse, clerical child abuse scandal, dutch, dutch catholic church, gay, gays, gelderland, henk heithuis, holland, holy see, homophobia, homophobic, homosexual, homosexuals, mutilation, netherlands, priestly pedophilia, roman catholic, roman catholic church, vatican, vatican city, vic marijnen

Christians love to claim that their religion makes them “moral” people, and that morality doesn’t exist outside of their religion. Unfortunately, this just isn’t true. Christianity has absolutely no power to force its adherents to behave. And Christians continually write themselves “permission slips” to misbehave whenever they wish.

The latest example of this was reported by WBBJ-TV in Jackson, TN, in an incident which is almost unbelievable (WebCite cached article):

A gay Gibson County couple said they were assaulted when they tried to attend church services at the Grace Fellowship Church in Fruitland last Wednesday.

“I went over to take the keys out of the ignition and all the sudden I hear someone say ‘sick’em,’” said Gibson County resident, Jerry Pittman Jr.

While Christians attacking gay people is certainly not incredible — it happens a lot, sadly — what makes this story unusual is this:

Pittman said the attacked was prompted by the pastor of the church, Jerry Pittman, his father.

The attacking deacons included Pittman’s uncle, of all people. There were also a number of (presumably Christian) bystanders, who stood still and did nothing to help:

[The younger Pittman] said bystanders did not offer assistance. He said the deacon yelled derogatory homosexual slurs, even after officers arrived. He said the officers never intervened to stop the deacons from yelling the slurs.

Those accused have also gone to the unusual extreme of preemptively contacting the TV station and ordering them not to contact the elder Pittman:

Pastor Pittman’s attorney contacted ABC 7 Eyewitness News by phone and said she had no comment and demanded we not contact the pastor.

Wow. If that doesn’t scream “I’m guilty!”, I don’t know what does!

The station offered this video report:

It’s not mentioned in the story text, but in the video — at around the 1:40 mark — the sheriff implies that it might have been the gay couple that had been “making trouble,” not the deacons who attacked them. I’m impressed with what a class act Sheriff Chuck Arnold is. (Not!)

This is just another of numerous examples of demonstrable Christian hypocrisy — they claim to be upstanding, righteous people, but their actual behavior falls far short of that. Way to go, Christians! Well done. You must be so proud!

Hat tip: Apathetic Agnostic Church.

Photo credit: Termin8er.

Tags: attack on gays, christian, Christianity, christians, fruitland TN, gay, gibson county, gibson cty TN, grace fellowship church, homophobe, homophobes, homophobia, homosexual, jerry pittman, jerry pittman jr, jerry pittman sr

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights organization that began its life by litigating desegregation cases, has doggedly tracked “hate groups” around the country for a couple of decades. It’s best-known for having tracked white-supremacist groups, but recently, the SPLC applied its definition of “hate group” to some Religious Right organizations and churches. Here is their list, which includes specific reasons why they’ve designated each as “hate groups” (WebCite cached article). The full list of 18 is as follows:

1. Abiding Truth Ministries

2. American Family Association

3. Americans for Truth About Homosexuality

4. American Vision

5. Chalcedon Foundation

6. Christian Anti-Defamation Commission

7. Concerned Women for America

8. Coral Ridge Ministries

9. Dove World Outreach Center

10. Faithful Word Baptist Church

11. Family Research Council

12. Family Research Institute

13. Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment

14. Illinois Family Institute

15. Liberty Counsel

16. MassResistance

17. National Organization for Marriage

18. Traditional Values Coalition

Some of these are localized groups, but some others have a national presence and are politically influential — especially with the 2010 elections which will put the House of Representatives into the hands of a number of Congresspersons who’re basically automatons doing the work of these outfits. I’ve also blogged on the antics of some of these outfits; ordinarily I’d provide links to all of them, but they’re too numerous for me to do that (I blogged a half a dozen times or more on the Qur’an-burners at the Dove World Outreach Center alone).

The SPLC has basically thrown them into the same bin with a whole raft of other types of “hate groups” which most people would recognize as such: the Aryan Nations, Neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, etc.

The Religious Right is, of course, outraged about this; see e.g. this Christian Post story (cached article). (As though that’s news … I mean, aren’t they always outraged over something? Their stock in trade is “outrage.” If they ever stopped being outraged, they’d cease to exist.)

Well, boo-fucking-hoo hoo, people. If the shoe fits — or in this case, if the definition of “hate group” applies — then wear it. In other words, if you don’t want to be condemned, then stop condemning other people. See how easy that is?

Hat tip: Little Green Footballs.

Photo credit: Image Editor.

Tags: abiding truth ministries, afa, american family association, aryan nation, aryan nations, chalcedon foundation, christian identity, christian right, concerned women for america, coral ridge ministries, cwa, dove world outreach center, dwoc, family research council, family research institute, frc, fri, fwbc, gay, gays, hate, hate group, hate groups, homophobe, homophobes, homophobia, homosexual, homosexuality, homosexuals, ifi, illinois family institute, kkk, ku klux klan, liberty counsel, massresistance, neo-nazi, neo-nazis, neonazi, neonazis, religious right, right, southern poverty law center, splc, traditional values coalition, tvc

Over the past few months I’ve blogged many times on the Roman Catholic clerical child-abuse scandal and that Church’s dismal failure to handle it in anything approaching a mature and morally-upright fashion. But no one should be fooled into thinking scandals of this sort are limited only to Catholicism. Evangelical Protestants such as Ted Haggard and George Alan Rekers have been caught up in sex scandals over the last few years (albeit with adults). And before them, of course, there were Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.

More recently, yet another evangelical has found himself facing a sex scandal of his own, and this time the accusations involve somewhat younger victims. The CBS News Crimesider reports on the expanding case of Atlanta megachurch pastor Bishop Eddie Long (WebCite cached article):

New pictures [cached] have surfaced of Bishop Eddie Long, prominent pastor of a 25,000-member megachurch outside Atlanta, as a third man has come forward accusing the anti-gay advocate of coercing him into sex.

CBS News’ Erica Hill reports the pastor allegedly sent his accusers numerous photos [cached] of himself including at least several of him wearing spandex and workout clothes.

It’s not known precisely how the photos surfaced.

This scandal has been brewing for a week or so, and has reached the point where Long can no longer ignore it, even if — perhaps — he’d first thought he could deflect it:

Long canceled an interview with the Tom Joyner Morning Show Thursday, opting instead to make his first public response to the sex allegations during a service at his Atlanta-area church on Sunday, according to his lawyer, who appeared on the nationally syndicated radio show in Long’s absence.

This article goes into some of the allegations, and also explains Long’s pedigree as a prominent evangelical:

In lawsuits filed this week, three men who were members of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church claimed Long coerced them into sexual relations with gifts including cars, cash and travel when they were 17 or 18 years old. The sprawling church in Lithonia, Ga., about 18 miles outside of Atlanta, counts politicians, celebrities and the county sheriff among its members and hosted four U.S. presidents during the 2006 funeral of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King.

One of the claims in the lawsuits is that Long had sexual contact with the young men, who were enrolled in New Birth’s ministry for teen boys, during trips he took them on in the U.S. and abroad. Gillen said the travel was part of a mentoring program that other young men also participated in.

The problem for Long is not merely that he’s a pastor who knows better than to engage in such behavior, but that he’s an outright hypocrite, since he’s been something of an anti-gay crusader:

Long has called for a national ban on same-sex marriage and his church counsels gay members to become straight. In 2004, he led a march with Bernice King to her father’s Atlanta grave to support a national constitutional amendment to protect marriage “between one man and one woman.”

Bishop Long appears to have forgotten that his own Jesus explicitly, clearly, and unambiguously ordered his followers never, ever to be hypocritical.

It remains to be seen what he will say when he addresses his congregation on Sunday. Some news reports suggest he may be resigning pending the outcome of these cases, however, another CBS News Crimesider report shows some defiance on his part (cached):

Bishop Eddie Long spoke out for the first time Friday about allegations that he had sexual relationships with at least three teenage boys in his Atlanta-area church. …

Long said he was in the middle of a battle.

“We will arise through this situation, and go forward, and we are moving forward,” Long said.

That sounds like a guy who’s hired a batallion of attorneys to fight these lawsuits, not someone who’s preparing to give in and go away silently.

It should be no surprise to anyone that, in looking for reactions to this scandal, the mass media ran immediately, microphones extended, to the aforementioned shamed Ted Haggard, who is (likewise no surprise!) supporting his fellow scandal-plagued evangelical pastor, as AOL News reports (cached):

Disgraced pastor Ted Haggard cautions that no one should rush to judge Atlanta megachurch Bishop Eddie Long, who is accused of coercing three young men into sex.

“Nobody’s guilty until the court says he’s guilty,” Haggard, the former head of a 14,000-member congregation in Colorado, told AOL News in a phone interview Wednesday.

I don’t know what’s more pathetic … that the mass media thought that the shamed pastor had anything to say worth hearing, or that Haggard had the audacity to say that no one is permitted to think ill of Long until a court renders a verdict?

Photo credit: TBN Newsletter.

Tags: anti-gay, atlanta, atlanta GA, Bishop Eddie Long, chrisitianity, christian, christians, eddie long, evangelica, gay, gay marriage, gays, homophobia, homosexual, homosexuals, lawsuit, lithonia GA, new birth missionary baptist church, scandal, scandals, sex scandal, sex scandals, ted haggard

President Obama announced his latest choice for the US Supreme Court; it’s Solicitor General Elena Kagan [WebCite cached article]. The Religious Right — along with the rest of the country’s conservative faction — is going nuts about it. But the R.R.’s objection is not based on her qualifications or lack thereof. They object to her based on what they assume (not what they know) about her sexuality. Religion Dispatches covers some of the R.R.’s whining and bellyaching:

Focus on the Family, which previously signaled it would not support gay nominees because they lack the necessary “character” and “moral rectitude,” today opposes Kagan because of her “her emotional and legal commitment to the LGBT agenda.” And the American Family Association demands that the media ask Kagan if she’s a lesbian, because “no lesbian is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.”

The problem with all of this — aside from the fact that these people seem to think that any gay person is too deficient ever to have any kind of federal office in the first place, which is a ridiculous position — is that it’s not even known whether or not Kagan is gay! A blogger recently suggested she was, and CBS News foolishly relayed this unfounded claim as fact; the White House, however, says this is untrue, and it cannot safely be assumed that Kagan is gay. (The blogger who started the rumor is Ben Domenech, who was a Bush Junior operative. Needless to say, his credibility on the matter is very thin, if not nonexistent.)

At any rate, the Religious Right continues to denounce Kagan as a lesbian and whines about her nomination to the Supreme Court based on that … but they have no idea if she really is a lesbian in the first place.

This wouldn’t be the first time the R.R. has stamped and fumed childishly — and sanctimoniously — about something, without knowing the facts of the matter. And one can safely assume it won’t be the last. More’s the pity.

At any rate, Ms Kagan’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether or not she can serve as a Supreme Court Justice. I for one do not care whether she’s gay or not.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: anti-gay, barack obama, childish, christian right, elena kagan, gay, harvard law school, homophobe, homophobes, homophobia, homophobic, homosexual, immature, immaturity, juvenile, lesbian, lgbt, nomination, Religion, religious, religious right, scotus, solicitor general, supreme court, supreme court nomination, us supreme court, white house

My home state of Connecticut is an odd place. It’s a “blue state” which — despite having a Republican governor — is run by Democrats in the legislature and its state employee unions. As a whole it votes liberal and Democratic reliably and consistently. It’s only the third state to permit gay marriage — by virtue of the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling in Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health. Compared with the rest of the country, Nutmeggers are extremely liberal.

But in a few ways it’s still a very parochial state. It still has blue laws, for example. Connecticut also has three very powerful and influential Roman Catholic dioceses (those of Bridgeport and Norwich, and the archdiocese of Hartford) which have, over the last year and a half, become extremely “activist” along Religious-Right lines, as I’ve blogged already. (Even though nationally the Religious Right tends to be Protestant, not Catholic.)

The reason for their political activism is not immediately clear … however, I suspect it’s a push-back effort … the dioceses in Connecticut have suffered from bad press for several years as a result of pedophile priests (such as Fr Stephen Foley, who — when he was sued by one of his victims — the archdiocese of Hartford tried to keep from being deposed in civil court (WebCite cached article). By ramming Religious Right-type causes down Nutmeggers’ throats and trying to make themselves into “kingmakers,” the bishops are playing on Connecticut’s underlying stream of parochiality, hoping to have at least one success that gets people to forget their complicity in previous scandals.

The Kerrigan case … and the presence of gays and gay causes in general … has provided no small amount of fodder for Catholic activism in Connecticut. The most recent example of this campaign is an odd but remarkably ardent campaign to prevent DCF — Connecticut’s child-care agency — to help gays (as reported by WTIC-AM radio in Hartford):

The state Department of Children and Families takes down part of its web site describing a program to train care givers on the needs of homosexual young people.

A conservative political group, and a Christian legal group had threatened to sue over the web pages for the Safe Harbor Project.

American Center for Law and Justice lawyer Vincent McCarthy said his organization sent a letter to the department, “demanding that the state of Connecticut DCF discontinue its endorsement of an alternative religious point of view that endorses the homosexual lifestyle.”

The web pages that were taken down included links to gay-accepting churches in Connecticut, including some in the United Church of Christ, and the Unitarian-Universalist Church

How dare the state of Connecticut offer gays a resource for acceptance!? Why, it cannot be tolerated!

Now … this story does not mention the Catholic Church or the state’s Catholic bishops as being part of this. And they may not be. However, there is a connection, which is referred to later in the article:

Family Institute of Connecticut director Peter Wolfgang said “This was the state stepping in to reeducate our children.

“This is the next big fight, and we will step in to fight it wherever we can, but this was such an obvious open and shut case because it had to do with the state taking a position on religion in clear violation of the first amendment,” Wolfgang said.

Peter Wolfgang is a prominent Connecticut Catholic, and his Family Institute dutifully aligns itself with the state’s Catholic bishops on all of their various crusades.* So it’s not unlikely that they played some part in this effort, even though it’s not overtly stated here.

At any rate, there appears to be no good reason for these religionazis to prevent the state from offering gays a positive resource they can rely on … except as part of their generalized homophobia and desire to repress gays in all ways and make them into second-class citizens. Way to go, guys. Keep up the gay-bashing. You continue to look like the intellectual Neanderthals you’ve shown yourselves to be for nearly 2,000 years.

* My choice of the word “crusade” here is deliberate and not metaphorical. The Catholic bishops in Connecticut are assuredly at war with gays. If they possessed the ability to raise armies against them — as some Popes such as Urban II and several Church councils sent armies to go to war with “the infidel” during the Middle Ages — I have no doubt they would be doing so, right now. That their “crusade” is one of propaganda, lawsuits and politicking, rather than a martial expedition, is just a reflection of modern reality … and a reminder as to why “separation of church and state” is so very important.

Tags: bishops, blue laws, connecticut, DCF, gay marriate, gays, hartford, homophobia, nutmeggers, peter wolfgang, religious right, roman catholic church, web site, WTIC, yankee institute

Concerning the “gay exorcism” I blogged about earlier, the pastor of Manifested Glory Ministries in Bridgeport, CT has finally stopped being coy about the video they’d posted online but then yanked when people actually paid attention to it. Pastor Patricia McKinney appeared on CNN to “explain” what happened. (Not that she actually “explained” anything.) Video of this train-wreck interview can be viewed at the Friendly Atheist blog.

Near the start, Ms McKinney makes this statement:

I just wanted to tell the world out there that Manifested Glory Ministries Church is not against homosexuality. We do not hate them. We do not come up against them.

This claim, however, is contradicted just a few more moments into the interview, when she said:

You can come in our church, but you cannot live that lifestyle in our church.

Put these statements together, and you have, “We’re not opposed to homosexuality, we’re just opposed to homosexuality.”

That’s about as nonsensical and asinine as anything I’ve ever heard.

An interesting point — which further reveals how medieval this church’s thinking is — that Ms McKinney makes several times in the interview, is “Everything has a spirit.” This is an archaic point of view; not merely medieval, but ancient and primeval. It is also at the foundation of all fundamentalist thinking. To a religious fundamentalist, the world itself — and everything in it — is fully alive, and is part of the vast cosmic contest between Good (i.e. God) and Evil (i.e. not just Satan, but “the World,” sin, secularism, etc.). Everything that happens, emerges directly from this enormous, ongoing universal struggle. People’s behaviors and even thoughts are a manifestation of this struggle … and in a very real, and both personal and personalized, way. In many ways, fundamentalists — of any sort, not just Christian — end up seeing the world as a terrifying place. Everything around them can potentially be arrayed against them and against their cause (God). This is one of the reasons why fundamentalists tend to be so paranoid in their thinking (the gun-toting Louisville pastor I blogged about is a prime example of this phenomenon).

While Christians have traditionally viewed themselves as being “different” from the pagans who preceded them, ironically their view that all things … people, objects, even behaviors … are living, breathing, metaphysical entities (or “spirits”) with their own existence, motives and purposes, is not appreciably different from the animism that was part of most pagan belief systems.

Put bluntly, Christianity has encountered its enemy — and has become it!

Tags: animism, bridgeport CT, exorcism, fundamentalism, gays, homophobia, homosexuality, manifested glory ministries, paganism, pagans, patricia mckinney