TWGB: Burning of Babylon

 

"FIGHT fight fight!" - Rod of Iron ministry chants as they burn the 'Babylon Fire' at the Freedom Festival in Pennsylvania pic.twitter.com/VdGWx4AmUw

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) October 13, 2024

The whore of Babylon. You see, I take this personally. The Rod of Iron Ministries is a cult that descends from Reverend Moon, and loves guns, and I guess loves Trump? But where you see "Whore of Babylon" here--see also "Jezebel Spirit" elsewhere--like in the church of Lance Wallnau where weasel-human hybrid JD Vance briefly rallied. Where people spoke from the pulpit to proclaim Kamala Harris was using witchcraft to appear to be a competent leader. 

What if, though, female humans had the same entire mental capacity for leadership? Like Deborah and Judith? They could be intelligent and accomplished. They were better than the men around them. You say "any prophet" and I say Rahab. 

And the walls came tumbling down--very selectively. So much for your "Jericho marches". 

I have spoken of how I think "Fight Fight Fight" is just a desire to see carnage acted out by a deranged mind. But many people following Trump seem to be self-deranging. And are looking at him as a kind of Messiah figure. The casino bankrupt pussy-grabbing guy. Like his redemption redeems something else. 

The Un-American Project 2025

 

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" https://t.co/ndMJlNlUKH

— Media Matters (@mmfa) July 3, 2024

Look at this Bond villain bullshit: "which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." What he's saying right there is, will remain bloodless if the left lays back and lets it happen. Because I guess it's fun to threaten a whole Revolution. Tea Party people. I swear. They really want to see themselves proudly fighting to--

Install a monarchy? Undo the first American Revolution? Institute a lot of Christian nationalist and white supremacist rubbish that the majority of Americans don't want? 

Um--exactly. And there are a lot of former Trump Administration officials supporting this blueprint for chaos. 

Anyway, when I saw that term, "bloodless", all I could think of was 1/6 and the testimony of a Capitol police officer that she was slipping in people's blood that day.  They thought they were re-creating 1776. What they were doing was insurrection. What the 'bloodless" Project 2025 document boasts is undoing the American experiment of a government of, for and by the people--unless those people are conservative activists.

Idolatry and the Ten Commandments

 

The theocrats want to put the Ten Commandments in schools for the children's own good. The mere presence is supposed to imbue them with morality. Or would it? I think it isn't about moral instruction of young people so much as a moral win for them. Essentially--it pretty much boils down to letting the children of lesser gods know who is top dog around here. Yahweh. The Storm God of the Near East. You really don't need to venture too far from the first Commandment, or the second, depending on which tradition you follow (because different versions of the Ten commandments exist) to realize that an explicitly "Judeo-Christian" symbol is being put in schools to tell everyone the religious preferences of the dominant culture: "Put no other God before me."

We are told he is a jealous god in the Holy Bible. As a kid, this struck me as weird--who is he jealous of if he's the only game in town? (That, along with "Who the heck is he talking to at creation?" was enough to drop a pretty big silver piece about the traditions that preceded it and the hard work of scrubbing out the "other guys".) But that's not really it, is it?

We are also told humans were made in God's image--it's the other way about. God is jealous because he was made in ours. He throws tantrums--like drowning the world except for one family, or destroying whole cities--not because it is godly, but because the threat of violence is something humans understand: "Someone in power is angry--let's behave for God's sake!" 

Appeal to What, Now?

 

Breaking News: A second provocative flag linked to Jan. 6 was flown at a home of the Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito. https://t.co/DCnJ1drXPR pic.twitter.com/MB3JN3TapZ

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 22, 2024

Funny old thing about me, if you didn't know--I'm big on the separation of church and state. Once I realized the incompatibility of the first commandment and the first amendment, the idea that the ISA is, in any sense, a Christian or even biblically based nation flew out the window, and I realized that no person tries to present a government as divinely inspired without there being some real fuckery afoot.

Trump, a hedonist, a personification, in his way, of the deadly sins, is a "tool" in the vernacular, but has also been used by Christian Nationalists as a tool to get their feet in the door of the White House. Why? How? I suspect it's that his hands are dirty and theirs stay clean, while their agenda will fall into place under him because he simply is an authoritarian. They don't care "what's in his heart". 

He's a gift to them. A gift from heaven. He'll outlaw abortion and birth control and eradicate wokeness and restructure society back to where everyone knew their "place" in the great chain of being. Where's the catch?

This is a democracy, and most people here don't actually want that, is the catch. We were supposed to have done away with the idea of terrestrial kings who have a "divine right" to do anything. Let alone place religious tests on who participates in government or how laws should induce people to behave. The founders of the US were all too aware of European sectarianism and the dangers thereof, and were trying to manage a system that would accommodate an already diverse society.

Theocrat Chat with Tommy Taterhead

 

I beg this very stupid man's entirely irrelevant pardon, but how does he think in this day and age that folks in Central American have not heard about Jesus? Just hordes of uncontacted tribes "with languages nobody heard before" I guess. https://t.co/n1LFvvPmJE

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) March 1, 2024

There is a lot going wrong here in just a few brief sentences. The first thing I take issue with is that we need "God" in government at all. Individuals might take something from having the presence of a deity in their lives and have comfort and strength in their faith, but government itself--our government, is made of laws. Our country's population is made up of people with many different faiths. I think that the First Amendment to our Constitution is the remedy against the sectarian wars and religious persecutions our forefathers were well aware of in Europe--and Tuberville here completely demonstrates why the Christian nationalist desire to get God in government is folly.

Whose God? Because the various immigrants crossing the border aren't ignorant of the concept of God. It seems to me that Tuberville is concerned that they might be followers of the "wrong" God. All of my ancestors came from countries where Protestants and Catholics clashed. Does Sen. Tuberville think Papists follow the Whore of Babylon? Or has he been misguided into thinking "foreigners" are probably some sort of untutored heathens? Is he unaware that Protestant evangelism has penetrated Central and South America? The same religion, roughly, he himself follows? 

This is a man who should be very careful indeed whom he considers to be untutored. I've met many a non-Christian whose grasp on theology is very likely better than the Senator's grasp on anything. 

The Haunting of the House on the Hill

 

The thing that alarms me about the new Speaker of the House is he's explicitly against the separation of church and state in a way that a lot of Republicans just aren't that outspoken about. They very well might well be theocrats to some degree: they just aren't that obviously so. Ted Cruz's dad is Seven Mountains dominionist. We don't talk about it that much. Josh Hawley has some Christian nationalist vibes. 

But Mike Johnson is just a flat-out a denier of the separation of church and state, to the extent that he credits supernaturalism (God's providence, or anointing) for the raising up of leaders (including an embrace of the historical revisionism of David Barton regarding the subject). It's a problem: the halls of Congress really should not be haunted by assorted head spooks like the various religious notions of its members. We elect leaders by popular choice: that means that the people vote for them, not that they are picked by someone's idea of the cosmic creator of all the things. I could suggest an empirical experiment of the success of God doing the things by inviting all the Bible-believers to stay home on election day, and I would probably find myself shocked! by their lack of faith that works aren't actually getting electoral things done IRL. 

Johnson is like the Forrest Gump of theocracy: he took down his podcasts so we wouldn't know how fringe he is. His wife, who is all about the LGBT conversion, took down her website, too.  Almost as if people might be horrified at what their actual beliefs are. But he's been associated with crisis pregnancy centers. His "adoption" of his 14 year old son at age 25 while still unmarried via the troubled Young Life Ministries is suspect as hell. 

The Christian Nation We Never Were

 

Disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, disaster chow pitchman, is concerned that the Pride celebration at the White House means that the US is no longer a Christian Nation.  I would like to be very reassuring while I say this to him: We never were.  The original inhabitants of this nation were not Christians, and despite all the Christians who came to this land seeking refuge from their Old World persecution, you have to understand, actually being a "Christian nation" or the product of any one religion is a weirdly wrong idea to have about our founding. 

We are by no means a Christian nation. John Adams said as much in the Treaty of Tripoli.  There's a lot wrong with assuming that our founders were all of a mind about religion--which is exactly the reason to presume we are not founded on religious principles, but practical ones. There are ample statements from our founders that attest that freedom of religion was the only way to maintain an already-diverse religious population, Thomas Jefferson was proud enough of his religious freedom edict in Virginia that he had it made a part of his final epitaph. 

Who is Paying for Dinner?

 

I think it's a gosh darn shame that the beer-loving scamp of the current SCOTUS line-up was forced to flee Morton's Steak House before dessert was served because of the outrage of nearby protesters, but as we all know, the word "restaurant" appears nowhere in the Constitution and after all, it's not like anyone has a right to privacy, right? Freedom of speech, check. Freedom to peaceably assemble--check. Freedom to eat a steak and not be reminded that you decided a case in a way that has doctors playing chicken with the reaper before being able to determine whether to render care to a miscarrying pregnant person in crisis because of the legal liability you helped impose on them? No. 

No. I don't see how Brett Kavanaugh has that right.  He has the privilege to make that kind of decision, and his nomination to the bench was financially backed by people who strongly expected that was exactly the kind of decision he would render, even if he did not say as much during his Senate hearing. All the same, he does not get to escape the world in which his decision has consequences. Any more than a pregnant 10 year old does. 

Now, a person who carried a grudge like a piece of shrapnel in their guts might wonder a lot of things about Kavanaugh--but I will just ask this blogpost's titular question: Who is paying for dinner? 

Jesus, Guns, Babies, SCOTUS

 

The Dobbs bomb dropped today, and it was already quite a week for SCOTUS conservative signifying. There was an elevation of the free exercise concept regarding religious liberty over the establishment clause, which feels sloppy as hell. Free exercise doesn't to my mind imply taxpayer-funded exercise. We have now introduced a situation in which, having opened the door to funding some religious-operated schools, would the state government be determining a cut off at some point?  All religious schools? Scientology, Hare Krishna, Church of Satan? 

(Look, I'm not a Mainer or Maine's mom or anything, but why do you have such a thing as areas that don't have an actual public school? Instead of offering tuition to anyone, just do a school. I think the world would be a better place if there were more schools. Figure out where there is a gasping need, build it. I don't know how a community exists that doesn't think there is a need for a local school, but okay, village, if you don't build it, the state can just step in that way. Shrug. Of course, I don't believe in private or homeschool education because there's a risk of things being way off standard. Ever see the Abeka curriculum? Yikes on bikes.)

We also saw a radical dismantling of gun control, also pretty bizarrely decided, with Justice Thomas telling us somberly that Justice Taney had some good points in the Dred Scott decision. Wait.. Have we retired the idea that you absolutely do not have to hand it to the Dred Scott decision; because I feel like I missed a memo. Last I checked we were not handing anything to the Dred Scott decision. 

But while the conservative justices were feeling extra cute with their decisions (history might delete later) it's no surprise that Thomas once again added to the obvious furor that the Alito-written Dobbs decision was going to cause by actually saying the unravelling part out loud--yeah, we're coming for Obergefell, Lawrence and Griswold.  (Who is going to check us, bitch? he did not add.) You don't have a private life that isn't dictated by the state. We can control your vertical and horizontal--the outer limits of your physical choices. You will fornicate inside the lines. God will decide if child will issue or not. If you die, you die. 

Sorry, I Don't Pray That Way

President Biden urges Congress to come together at the annual National Prayer Breakfast: "How do we unite us again?" https://t.co/op1SRzM9L7

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 3, 2022

Maybe it's because I'm militantly agnostic, or maybe I'm just a firm believer in the separation of church and state, but the idea of the National Prayer Breakfast never has sat well with me. The idea that the nationa can unite in prayer doesn't seem as important to me as whether we are united in a sense of common citizenship apart from our religious inclinations, which are diverse.

It also strikes me as bizarre and hypocritical that one might want to unite with people who are part of openly anti-LGBT and Islamophobic hate groups. Even though Biden's message of unity is well-taken, I just don't know if there is value in it, and have a hard time seeing the value in saying nice things about Mitch McConnell that stretch the values of words like honesty and honor. I think it's a tradition that needs to go.

How's that Grifter Messiah?

 

Having written so much about politics, I definitely feel where Jim Acosta is coming from in talking about "post-Trump stress disorder". Do I want to pay the Former Guy any mind or finally get myself off of that loser and write about things that are actually happening now? But the thing of it is, the damage that Trump did will live on for a long time, and his biggest fans still don't seem to understand that.

Case in point--the campaign cash-grab where Trump donors were signed up for automatic recurring WEEKLY donations. From the story:

Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out. 

As the election neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed. It introduced a second prechecked box, known internally as a “money bomb,” that doubled a person’s contribution. Eventually its solicitations featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language. 

The tactic ensnared scores of unsuspecting Trump loyalists — retirees, military veterans, nurses and even experienced political operatives. Soon, banks and credit card companies were inundated with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars.

WinRed fraud claims at one point comprised 1-3% of credit card fraud claims, which is just astonishing--and yet, there are some awfully gullible people who think that lovely Mr. Trump didn't have anything to do at all with how their bank accounts got raided. And some of them might have even given to Trump's post-election money begs, since Trump claimed (and why would he lie?) that he never lost. And he still does claim that very thing, even in his Easter message.  

He's something, isn't he? Just a very put-upon billionaire who definitely thought he was winning that election, but he needed your dollars and your prayers. And some folks will tell you that he could still rise again. From the pulpit, no less. 

Even though he was a failure as a president, never even built the fucking racist wall that was the cornerstone of his promises, and let hundreds of thousands of people die of COVID-19 under his watch through sheer ineptitude and partisan wankery. This should tell you an awful lot about the kind of pastors who would "prophesize" about Trump--not any of it good. The man was picking the pockets of his faithful. He was fleecing his sheep. I would assume that any church that lifted him up as an example would "go and do likewise". 

*The above picture is not a photoshop--it's real. And they were not either trying to equate Trump with Christ--they said. This is the exact reason I'm for separation of church and state and especially don't love pulpit politicking. It's manipulative and debases politics and religion alike. 

A Pleasant Shock

News Analysis: LGBT rights leaders were stunned Monday when 2 conservative justices sided with the majority in one of the most sweeping gay rights decisions by the Supreme Court so far, write Adam Nagourney and Jeremy Peters https://t.co/l8xUm7XLKr

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 15, 2020

I think there's something very bittersweet in the shock some felt that the SCOTUS decision affirmed that LGBT people should be treated equally under the law with respect to employment. It is the decision that should have been expected, in that the law speaks against discrimination on the basis of sex and how else would one define the nature of being gay or transgender without the concept of sex? But it's also unsurprising to see the dissent try to turn on quaint and outmoded definitions and social conservatives groan that they have been betrayed.

(As an church/state separation enthusiast, I'm heartened by the idea that there isn't much room for a religious exemption, in that businesses hire people to do a job, not live an identity. While it might make sense, for example, that a priest be Catholic to do a Catholic mass, or that a mohel be Jewish, I don't see what business it is of, say, a craft store, what their cashiers identify as or who they love or marry so long as they don't short their till and are good with customers.)

But in this day and age, I'll let the shock go and enjoy that there is some pleasant news for a change. I also wonder if this decision forms the basis for a challenge to the Trump Administration's decision this past Friday to permit healthcare discrimination for trans people. (Although I think it more likely it will just be reversed by the next administration before we find out.)

Unspeakable Cruelty

Ohio bill orders doctors to ‘reimplant ectopic pregnancy’ or face 'abortion murder' charges https://t.co/zI9b2NJQS8

— The Guardian (@guardian) November 29, 2019

It's hard at times for me to fathom the kind of mind that meditates on how to be pointlessly cruel to pregnant people and call it "pro-life". Ectopic pregnancies are depressingly common (about one out of a hundred pregnancies) and must be terminated to avoid threatening the life of the mother. They can occur for no reason, but there is a correlation with some fertility treatments and with women who have conditions like PID and endometriosis that can impair fertility. There is no surgical way yet devised to perform the kind of transplant that this bill suggests. The bill goes a step beyond other bills that criminalize miscarriage or that are based on pure falsehood, like the myth of "abortion reversal". This bill would make doctors engage in a kind of human experimentation, and their patients into the experiments.

It doesn't seem likely to me that this bill was conceived of by people unaware that it is cruel and absurd, but by people with a vicious attitude towards reproductive care. It's intended to be punitive towards pregnant people and the doctors who tend to them. And I have no doubt the makers of this bill believe they have only the most moral intentions--to create an atmosphere of ignorance and fear regarding a part of human sexuality, in accordance with the dictates of religion.

I am disgusted.

So, Extortion is a Deeply Held Faith Value, Now?

Fox's Pastor Robert Jeffress: "The effort to impeach President Trump is really an effort to impeach our own deeply held faith values" pic.twitter.com/1X751y5HU5

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) November 1, 2019

I can't say that I'm shocked when Christian conservatives turn everything into culture war, but this line of bull comes from the same place the "the Democrats are trying to repeal the 2016 election" comes from: it's a way of pretending the impeachment isn't about what Trump and his administration have done (lean on Ukraine for investigations into Hunter Biden and Crowd Strike) but about taking something away from the folks who voted for him. It's also a step on the rung to that grotesque idea that somehow, if one fairly corrupt and dishonest politician were removed from office, there would be a pretext for civil war (there's another thing Jeffress has actually said), I guess between the good Christians and the "godless" liberals.

It looks like religion is a refuge that Trump has decided to cling to in his hour of need:

Honored to pray for @realDonaldTrump and our nation! Also discussed the many great accomplishments under the leadership of President Trump. He continues to work tirelessly on behalf of the American people
(Official White House Photo by Joyce Boghosian) #prayer #potus #nation pic.twitter.com/rJ6ExahYXN

— Paula White-Cain (@Paula_White) October 31, 2019

That's Paula White, Trump's spiritual adviser and new head of the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. She's something of a prosperity gospel grifter, but what I find problematic is that she has used her following to tell people they must support Trump or answer to God.  But this idea that the Christian Right has a duty to support Trump seems to be broader than just the handful of Trump's biggest fans. It also seems to be the mindset of Trump's Attorney General and his Secretary of State.

Where does this message go? In some ways, it reverberates in the minds of people who believe that liberals want to not only take citizens' guns away, but their Bibles as well. But an unpleasant turn can be people who move from the mere puffery of a Michele Bachmann, who claims that Trump may be the "most godly" president we will ever have, to people who consider support of Trump as a literal part of their worship.

And when Trump, in his divisive fashion, implies it's time for the civil war? Would it be wrong to disobey the anointed? I wonder where people who use this rhetoric will choose to draw the line.

(For what it's worth, I'm not sure that a narcissist like Trump needs this kind of support--it's too easy for it to go to his head. )

Secretary of Church and State

It is a little bit jarring, just after noting that AG William Barr blames "militant secularists" for all sorts of nation-decaying moral turpitude, from drug use to experimental jazz, that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has seen fit to grace the official government page for his agency with an advert for his speech on being a Christian Leader. There once was a Secretary of State who delineated a separation of Church and State, but Mike Pompeo does things a little differently.  I guess we could disagree about the results.

As a matter of preference, I think it would be wrong to say that Mike Pompeo's faith would be in anyway disqualifying for his office--obviously, the traditions of the United States should hold that there is no litmus test with regard to religion for higher office. I'd say it is dismaying that he elects to depict things through the lens of his religion without respect to externalities like whatever is actually happening. Being Trump's chump, excusing and covering for apparent abuses of office, and even finding an excuse for what Trump's incompetence is doing to Christians in Syria shows dubious leadership of any sort, whether Christian or otherwise.

As to the profession of his faith, if he does so in his personal time, this is no concern of mine--but broadcasting his Christian leadership on his official agency website seems to be both a timely advertisement of his faith (and refuge!) and a thing that does not belong there, as if privileging the special nature of leadership and Christian thought (and shading the leadership that might be posed by persons of other faiths, or no faith at all).

A person in his office should know better, but it is perhaps true that knowing better and doing better are separate things in Trump World.

John Kasich and Exporting "Judeo-Christian Values"

You know, I think OH Gov. John Kasich has come as close as there can be to being the "reasonable man" on stage in primary debates. He's informed, compassionate, and except for a little signifying, not overtly doling out pandering horseshit.

Which is why this business with creating an agency to dispense Judeo-Christian memes to countries he deems could use them is a hot mess. Remember just a blog post or so back when I mentioned that Ben Carson's adviser, Gen. Dees, was in favor of militarized missionaries? Well, that sort of thing is actually not allowed by military convention--US soldiers are not to proselytize.  (It's bad enough when heavy proselytization is used on the troops themselves.) We have this funny old thing here in the States about church and state separation, despite the best efforts of people like the head of Ted Cruz' SuperPAC, David Barton, to pretend it is not a real thing. An agency like the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, created under President George W. Bush, is questionable enough--but even that office recognizes the Establishment Clause and steers away from proselytizing.

This proposal does not. It specifically mentions "Judeo-Christian values"--implying that any other values of any other creed must be less-than. (I've recently mentioned on Twitter that "Judeo-Christian" is such a passive-aggressive phrase in that the third Abrahamic faith is, intentionally, silent.) It specifically would be geared towards spreading "Judeo-Christian values" to--whom? The poor benighted boogers of lesser faiths who don't have values that Kasich recognizes as "correct"? Why, that is tremendously paternalistic and really likely to make people more pissed off at our colonialist mindset!

Yeah. I had a little respect for Kasich, but, while this idea might sort of woo evangelicals, seriously, if there was a way to peel them off of Carson and Cruz, Huckabee would have tried it. I think it's a turkey, and as God is my witness, I do not believe turkeys can fly.

Reading, Writing, or Rapture?

I'm basically suspicious of the idea of homeschooling, folks. See, while a part of me wants to believe that the majority of homeschoolers just want their kids to receive a better education than the state can provide them, it seems to me that a part of that desire comes not only from a deep distrust of government and people who are different from oneself in the first place, but also a desire to exert a great deal of control over one's own children, in being the only conduit through which their worldview gets constructed. I feel like this is a dangerous thing, because the world is populated by many people with many conflicting interests and views. Getting only one filter for understanding the world isn't much better than getting a blindfold. I've mentioned before instances where this control over children denied them not just a complete education, but basically their lives. I can also point out that this distrust of outsiders is also sometimes a guard against being caught abusing children.

But the biggest thing I worry about is the idea that kids might not get any kind of education at all. That parents, with good intentions or bad, try their own idiosyncrasies out on their kids and adopt this method and that, and wind up with kids who aren't properly educated and aren't well-capable of taking on employment opportunities or caring for themselves. That sort of thing sounds like it could be guilt-ridden and hard to overcome, because the child so (un)educated might themselves be isolated by a distrust of formal learning opportunities to fix their educational deficits.

So, hearing that a "homeschooling" family wants to forgo any curriculum at all because they are waiting on the Rapture strikes me as appalling. That's abusive. We're working on two thousand years since the life of Jesus, and no man knows the hour or the day of his Coming again. So why in the heck wouldn't you want your kids to pick up a little knowledge in the meanwhile on the off-chance they might have use of some adult skills? Or just to keep themselves usefully busy? Or because knowing stuff is rewarding and interacting with the world is why we are actually here?

Fired in Kansas for Not Heeding a Call to Prayer?

A former employee of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has filed suit against the Office for being fired for not attended church services enough. That kind of firing is pretty unusual for a government office, I would think, it's just that, where Kansas is concerned...I tend to believe it.


It's not just that KS Governor, Sam Brownback, is a pretty notorious hardcore Christian with a disregard for notions of separation of church and state. It's that using religion as a litmus test for establishing that one is the right kind of people goes with some of the voter discrimination nonsense that Kris Kobach has become known for (he calls it anti-fraud--I'm pretty sure making sure the "right people" are voting comes with very definite ideas about who the "right people" are).

Kris Kobach has "scare quoted" religious organizations that have opposite views than his about his particular crusade--as if he doesn't think they're quite Christian enough if they don't share his views. So why not show employment discrimination as well?

(It sort of reminds me of that Bush Administration hiring scandal involving Monica Goodling. It's very ideological and not very appropriate.)

The Naked Theocracy of Roy Moore & Friends

So the judge who unironically went out of his way to show reverence to a giant graven image a few years back, one whose first dictate was "Don't worship graven images", is having a moment over marriage equality.

His lawyer has drafted a fun letter regarding where he stands. Which is even further to the--well...

His man said:

"The governor better get ready for civil rights legislation making sexual orientation the same as race," Johnson writes. "That's law now – the questionable science regarding the origin of homosexuality – now law of the land. When, oh when, will we see this so-called court is nothing but a kangaroo, masquerading as a court of law?!" 

Johnson begins the letter: "Jesus Christ is Lord of all." 

That is followed soon thereafter with: "Public officials are ministers of God assigned the duty of punishing the wicked and protecting the righteous. You cannot serve two masters: you must pick -- God or Satan." 

Johnson ends the letter urging disobedience of the court ruling. 

What is the rule of law anyway when God makes up the rules? There's more where that bit came from, but the essential gist is--the First Amendment is for a very particular kind of Christian, and the rest of you heathens can hang. In other words, it comes straight from a Cracker Jack box that is 100% nuts.

There is a Very Good House Bill Regarding Blasphemy Laws

I don't usually say many good things about Congress, but recently, I read about a bill I very much approve of--a resolution in favor of calling for the repeal of blasphemy laws worldwide.  Now, I know that such a resolution doesn't mean that all nations will decide they need to dump their current blasphemy laws, but as a statement of principle, it's one I'm very in favor of. And one that human rights activists, atheists, agnostics, and free speech fans alike can get behind.

The text of the resolution makes note of the murder of Rashid Rehman. It might as well be talking about Walid Abu al-Khair,  the lawyer of Raif Badawi. The jurisprudence behind a blasphemy or sedition conviction is very like a Potter version of pornography--the powers that be know it when they see it. Which means that blasphemy charges are very much politicized, and the use of them is not about defending the faith, so much, as defending the local political machine.

You bet I find that appalling. Consider the case of the recently murdered bloggers of Bangladesh. In part, their murders are about a scrum of militants who wanted blasphemy laws imposed to protect their Islamic ideal of government.

I have never found this kind of politicization of religion in any way fair. To my mind, sanctifying religious argument is a bit like lese majeste, in that it means that the status quo can't be safely argued, which denies people the right of openly criticizing the very structures that govern them. I may not like to see certain political figures lampooned in certain lazy and stereotypical ways--but I respect the right of people to do so.

I think blasphemy laws are especially ludicrous when found in majority Christian nations. Actually, that any professed Christian should be in favor of blasphemy laws or capital punishment, in light of the Crucifixion, has always struck me as really strange.