Winning the war on Christmas just by showing up

For many years, the borough has allowed a garden club to place a Nativity scene on the ground surrounding the Memorial Fountain. Borough council decided this week to amend its policy and prohibit all displays on the fountain.

The change came after PA Nonbelievers Inc. (PAN), an organization of atheist, agnostic and secular humanists from around the midstate, notified Chambersburg it wanted to erect a sign reading “Celebrating Solstice — Honoring Atheist War Veterans.”

Earlier this month, PAN Capital Area director Carl Silverman of Camp Hill wrote the borough a letter stating its intention to erect the sign. While the group believed it did not need the borough’s permission because the creche required none, it was submitting a proposed design in “the spirit of cooperation,” the letter said.

“We didn’t want to take Jesus out of the public square,” Silverman said. “We want to put atheism in the public square.”

I'm going to suggest that this is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in the So-Called (they started it!) War on Christmas, ever. The display in favor of a particular religion came down so that the borough is now actually not giving lip service to a particular faith--just the way the "no establishment" clause is supposed to work.

I think the neat problem that asking to be included poses when it comes to atheists, is that it presents a confusing choice: "None of the Above". Take the following signs:



It brings attention to the idea that there is also the pov of "no religions," (although I don't like the idea of sanctifying Darwin--he was just a guy, maybe with a really great scientific idea, but just a guy.)

I think the problem with "Out atheism" is always going to be that it provides a choice. You can stick with the faith of your fathers, or not. You can follow a familiar story, or search for truth. And that would be the problem with atheists wanting equal time in the public square in Chambersburg, or on billboards anywhere.

Which leads me to wonder if certain arguments haven't been argued by atheists the wrong way about--take the "Pledge of Allegiance" argument. The idea was to strip out "under God" and leave it the way its original writer intended. "One nation, indivisible." No mention of God. Instead--why not add two words. Two little words: "or not."

"One nation, under God, or not... indivisible...."

It would include our point of view, and instead of "taking away" the "under God", it would provide a choice.

(This is merely a thought experiment. If this were a real experiment, I'd be arsed to do something. Since I'm not arsed to do anything, this is only a thought experiment. Bourbon was likely involved. No people were hurt during the thought experiment. That's why we only do the thought experiments.)

Uganda contemplates death penalty for gays--and The Family is involved.

From The Globe and Mail:

The Commonwealth convenes for a summit this week amid growing furor over a proposed law that would impose life imprisonment on homosexuals in Uganda, whose President is chairing the gathering.

The law, proceeding through Uganda's Parliament and supported by some of its top leaders, would imprison anyone who knows of the existence of a gay or lesbian and fails to inform the police within 24 hours. It requires the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” – defined as any sexual act between gays or lesbians in which one person has the HIV virus.

The controversy is growing because Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is the chairman of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, which opens on Friday with Stephen Harper joining the leaders of 52 other countries.

If it is raised at the summit, the issue has the potential to divide Commonwealth leaders, who hold deeply polarized views on homosexuality. A number of Commonwealth countries, including Canada and Britain, have liberal views on the subject, but many African and Caribbean nations are socially conservative and maintain laws on their books that criminalize homosexuality.

This would not only be an extraordinary violation of the human rights of gay people, but would be singularly unhelpful to society in oh, so many ways. Leave alone the reality that actual human beings would face death for having such a normal and basically benign relationship as sexual congress (with other penalties for persons who only know this could be going on without reporting it--compelling people to be miserable busybodies and informers). In the context of AIDS, this is astonishingly stupid. Where there is a risk of HIV infection (as there certainly is) driving homosexual practice further underground is stupid because of the secrecy and desperation this engenders. People won't want to test themselves for fear they will be exposed. They will be less open to discussing their status with their partners, or open to using condoms, for fear of letting on that they are having anything other than the socially-acceptable, hetero, married, and baby-producing kind. And because they know they could die anyway, why care if they get HIV and die? It lends an inevitability to the outcome that it by no means should have.

This is incredibly cruel and stupid and barbaric--and this is why the western influence of The Family does not exactly surprise me.

(By all means follow the link. I can't find a bit of the excerpt from the Jeff Sharlet NPR interview that isn't worth reading--I'd actually advise following my link and then following their links.)

The actual fact that anyone should find homosexuality so apposite to society that death is prescribed is revolting enough to me. That this is possibly being carried out in Africa is revolting because of the racism--Uganda is currently open to ideas, and The Family has them. It's like a little test. But would they want this for the US? Ah--there is the real bugger, isn't it?

If people here (as in "in the US of A"), think it's alright to kill gays there, then they would....

Seriously--fuck The Family and everything they stand for. That sort of thinking isn't ever right, anywhere. What they are talking about is the real culture of death through ignorance and state oppression, and there is nothing good about it. People need to be nurtured, educated, and to find their own truth and their own happiness. Cutting them off from it under pain of death is evil. That is about as close to a statement of faith from me as you will ever get.


(The graphic above I stole from the website The New Gay. The article of theirs I link to here is really pretty enlightening. )

Rough Riders for Side-hugging. Huh?

It's catchy, though. (ZOMG--is the potential of a booby-feel or accidental clothes-on uglies-bump so wrong? Kids these days. Nice old-school shout out for "leaving room for the Holy Spirit" though.)

So much for my religion-bashing rota. (The Catholic Church--again.)

I'm going to just devote a little more blog-space to my irritation with the Catholic Church, because really, they have gone out of their way to get my notice. (I'd been meaning to get to Mormons at some point, but well, really--Glenn Beck. He bought into it, look at the general quality of things he buys into, draw your own conclusions.) But right now, I'm back to the Catholic Church, and not just because of the stupid Catholic Cardinals, who are tampering with the decision-making consciences of our elected congress-critters, denying Communion to some of them. I'm not even all that pissed about finding out how much money the church spent on lobbying against a basic civil right, which came to about half a million. (Yeah, I guess the collection plate doesn't all go to overhead and tending to the "least among us.")

What I'm astonished at is two stories that sum up one of the most persuasive arguments against the main claim of organized religion. Oh, not the "God exists" part. That part is just quaint. I've always been a bit more peeved at the "Morality stems from religion" part. See, it would seem to me that if morality did stem from religion, then the people with the highest personal morality--in practice, should be the clergy. But this story regarding the conspiracy to cover up a massive network of child abuse in Ireland, along with another story regarding rife sexual abuse and bullying within cloisters in India, make it clear that there definitely is confusion about what is moral and immoral and that religion did not improve upon the conduct of people most intimately familiar with it

Is it not written, " And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" (Matthew, again. So, I have a favorite gospel--in an atheist, there could be weirder things!) Also, doesn't the Bible say, "And whoever shall receive one such little child in my name receives me. 6 But whoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." (Also Matthew.) How does any of the religious know these verses and believe in them, and then either abuse a child or really any other person, and not believe they are offending Jesus? And how can it be covered up: is that a pious fraud--a lie better than truth? It's bullshit. How can the church persecute people for what they think--but fail to chasten people in the clergy for the real damage they did?

If their actions don't show faith in the creed, than how should they expect to exert moral authority on others asserting that it comes from that creed? If they preach what by and large isn't practiced--isn't it hypocrisy?

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful for lots of things. Health, family. An internet connection. So I will post my usually sloppy collection of Youtuberies




(Okay....the sound effects are creepy--but so was the interview.)






Yeah, I know this one is corny:

Sarah Palin book signing in Ohio--

This video is making the rounds, a bit:



These are Palin's people. They don't really think about issues but they are concerned about them. They don't have a lot of facts, but they just know that Sarah Palin is a real American. They aren't sure about the guy we have in office now. They watch FOX News.

It's kind of easy to come off as snarky or as putting them down for not knowing what it is they like about her, or at least, not being able to articulate it. After all, she has a hard time articulating her qualifications, herself.



But you get her basic gist. And it's that she isn't "elitist". She isn't condescending to the people in the first video, she doesn't think she's "better than" them--she is speaking as one of them.

Basically, that is the gift she has. When she is criticized as being unqualified or worse, having a point of view that is "crazy", to her fans it sounds like it's their own values that are being questioned. Critics of her point out that she she is wrong on the facts, but to her believers, she doesn't tell lies. Her veracity isn't what they are interested in, because they already have proof of her authenticity. They like that she shakes things up and want to see her succeed because it would vindicate what they see as the best things they believe in--"fairness", "freedom", "liberty". Oh, and cutting all spending (say wha--?).

This isn't to say I sympathize with their point of view. Supporting a person without knowing what she has in store for them or even being informed enough to know why her policies (to the extent that she touts any) should be supported or not, believing utter hogwash about martial law and that Obama's books were all about Leninism and Marxism (yeah, that would have gone over great during the campaign), and letting themselves be taken in by the notion that they are the victims in the culture war (losing their freedom of religion?) are all very hard for me to understand.

I want to just assume these people are none too bright, but I can't. The videos are reminders that the facts vs. faith question doesn't pertain to religion alone.

The War on Christmas is pretty much on, now.

My husband marked the annual flare-up between us and the season by asking me a question I already knew the answer to:

"Can you guess what they started playing at work?"

Without missing a beat, I answered, "Christmas music." It's not even Thanksgiving yet, and the Christmas music is being heard in retail stores, probably throughout America. I knew, because I worked retail myself about eleven years ago, and they did it to us then--constant, wall-to-wall Christmas music.

It would start as sporadic Christmas songs interspersed between the usual repetitive warblings of Musak drivel. But just after Thanksgiving, it became all Christmas, all the time. I suppose that it's something retail stores do to encourage people to be in a merry, giving, cheerful shopping mood. Great for the customers, or at any rate, the ones who like Christmas music. But for the employees?

It's like psyops. No, seriously. Being bombarded for eight or nine hours with that trite, sappy nonsense--think about it: spending that whole time on your feet being nice to people while listening to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" for the umpteenth time is a very subtle form of mental torture. I'm not saying it's the exact equivalent of the songs being played to torment detainees at Gitmo or whatever. I'm just saying that there is a time and a place for Bruce Springsteen's rendition of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town", and that twice a day, every day, is not that time. It gets under your skin. It makes you associate the holiday with work--not always pleasant, since holiday shoppers aren't always merry shoppers. It transforms the benign treacle that usually brings visions of sugarplums into a poison that brings thoughts of reindeer slaughter.

Okay. Maybe I exaggerate. But what I don't think is always considered is that these songs really are sometimes very Christian-referent. I realized this when I was working at a store in my old neighborhood. Better than a third of my customers were very observant Jews, and a similar number were Russian immigrants. They could have given a good goddamn about "O Little Town of Bethlehem." My first Christmas at the store, I asked if it was maybe possible that next year, we could get Hanukkah paper to go with all the Christmas paper we had (my manager was Jewish, so he totally understood). Maybe we could even try to get it--by Hanukkah!

I never really found out what the effects of the wall-to-wall joyful ti--ii-dings of joy, comfort and joy, were on our customers. I was in an office supply store, so while we sold a lot of computer games and printers and we got some fancy desk-top tchochkes, we didn't see quite the kind of seasonal madness that a toy store probably sees. Probably, since shopping is an in-and-out thing, it isn't torture for customers. Since I'm somewhat "culturally Christian", I don't know if it's actually alienating to people of other faiths, even though it kind of seems like it should be to me now.

(I may be a hardened case, though. I am the veteran of public school choirs and also sang in college--so practicing Christmas carols for hours on end was part of my "Musak resistance training.")

When I hear the Christmas Musak during my shopping, it still causes flashbacks of how tired I really got of hearing the same songs over and over--any song, played often enough, can begin to grate. Knowing that my husband is suffering from this torment on a daily basis (which he would militate against on aesthetic, even if not religious grounds, being not just an atheist but a lover of good music--and much Christmas music is pretty cheesy) is heart-breaking.

Maybe store associates are saying "Happy Holidays!" to customers in order to be inclusive. But the people who complain about a "War on Christmas" never really sat in a store and noticed Karen Carpenter turning "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" into a funeral dirge, have they? Well, HAVE THEY!!????? (Or "Home for the Holidays". Also sad.)

Ahem. Almost lost control there. Anyway, anyone who has done a stretch in retail, and especially if they have done a stretch in retail and been a non-believer in the details of Christmas, knows that Christmas is actually in your ever-loving face every day for sometimes over a month. We didn't start a war on Christmas--it's like Christmas started a war on us!

I am totally going to make up very bad lyrics to the next Christmas carol I hear.


(Christmas BONUS story: I used to take the bus to class when I was in college, and I passed a yard that had a very handsome chow dog. Well, all chow dogs are handsome, but they are tempermental furry beasties, and this one seemed to be left in the fenced yard too damn often. Yards are at least "out", but a dog gets bored. Anyway, one year, the people the chow belonged to set out a nearly people-sized light-up Santa on their front yard, the kind that has a hole in the bottom for the wires to come out. One day, as the bus passed that yard, the chow dog had the Santa over on its side, and....was doing something very familiar to the hole where the wires came out.

I don't know if dogs ever get coal in their stockings. I just know that if Santa Claus wasn't coming to town, that dog was taking him to town. I laughed my behind off at the image all day.)