Clearly there is a God in Heaven - Because the Athiests Won

You know, I cannot think of a clearer example of the deliberate "establishment of religion" than the clear and obvious attempt to make public compliance with and participation in a Christian prayer a pre-condition of participation in school, school activities, or indeed, within the social matrix of the town itself, a small pimple on the panhandle of Oklahoma.

The behavior you clearly see in the video is of course, unconstitutional, prima facia, and I delight that the matter was taken to court - and on even better grounds than this rather old video clearly shows.

The Smalkowski case attracted national attention after Nicole Smalkowski was kicked off of the girls' basketball team after refusing to stand in a circle with her teammates on the gymnasium floor of the Hardesty public High School and recite the "Lord's Prayer." After school officials learned that she and her family were Atheists, lies were created about her as grounds to take her off of the team.

When her father Chuck discovered conclusively that public school and law enforcement officials had lied to him about his 15 year old daughter, he and Nicole and her mother Nadia went to the home of principal Lloyd Buckley to attempt to discuss the matter with him. Outside of his front fence, the principal struck Chuck, who blocked the blow. Both men fell to the ground and Buckley sustained minor injuries, the provable origins of which were strikingly contrary to his under oath trial testimony. Buckley then took out misdemeanor criminal assault charges against Chuck. After Smalkowski rejected the offer to drop the charges if he and his Atheist family left the state, the charges were raised to a felony. Chuck called American Atheists for help.

Chuck won his day in court - despite the room being packed by people literally praying for his conviction. I presume this is one case where the answer is "What part of 'I am a God of Justice' escaped you all these years?"

The school district will lose and I say that with the unstated but sincere underline - "if there is a God in heaven."

There is a specific reason I say that. And it is a reason that is absolutely critical to persons of all faiths - but most especially to Christians, inasmuch as these points were raised, exemplified and made to be conditions of faith by the example and words of Jesus. In other words, if you think as a Christian paster that what you see here is an example of what "good Christian kids do" than you are are in contention with the words in red and unqualified to lead a Christian church of ANY denomination.

You see, Christians may well dispute the positive meaning or the exact expression of those words in a positive sense - but when one is cheer-leading exactly the sort of thing that sent Jesus himself off on a snorting tirade of righteous indignation - that would be outside the bounds of sectarian variation, or even schism.

Indeed, in Christian theological definition that goes back to the earliest days of the church, one teaching in direct disputation of the direct words of Christ would be...

Oh, I'm sure you know this one. It's on the lips of every odious little thumper out there.

Yep. That's it: "ANTIChrist."

Now I state this, with absolute confidence that I can support it biblically, in depth - but all I really need to do is to point you to a decent concordance and council you to study the concepts of hospitality and to read what Jesus had to say about practitioners of public piety, such as the Pharisees.

But having said that, I'm going to further state that there is a much greater point at issue having nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not whether honest observers should quotes around the word Christian when referring to you.

The point is this - if you have to establish your religion by force and maintain it by indoctrination and immersion, if it cannot sustain itself in the face of one little teen-aged atheist who respects both her moral position and your own enough to not commit an act of dishonest piety for your town's comfort - you don't have a faith. Or rather more to the point, you clearly have no faith in your faith.

So, that would be a Vente Grande of What's the Point with whipped nonsense and bullshit, wouldn't it?

And since it is all that, and you are indeed using force to sustain it against utter collapse in the name of preserving social order and of course the social rank of it's most visibly pious practitioners, it really wouldn't actually be wrong for another church to come to town with a dutiful and militant congregation and practice exactly as you preach?

Would it?

Be careful how you argue against that, for that's pretty much exactly what has happened in many churches, due to leadership from various "Christian" organizations - the takeover of entire parishes by outsiders; takeovers that amount to theft on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, an honest person and a good Christian wouldn't want to be seen arguing in favor of theft or covetous behavior. Those things are generally considered to be, what's the word again?

Oh, yes. Sins.

If practiced by the smugly unrepentant, it's rather conventional theology to assume that would be pretty much "go to hell, go directly to hell; do not pass through Purgatory."

But again, compelling as that argument is for both it's instructive and entertainment values, it does not stand particularly well in the public square. Especially when this is not a question of what Christian doctrine one may believe to be superior, or convenient or publicly acceptable, but a far more fundamental one; one critical, as I said, to all our freedoms; the right to hold opinions that many may disagree with.

Including the opinion that there is no god, and your religion is a crock.

I happen to agree with the young lady on the latter point, and tend to assume on the first that whatever God there may be (and I happen to believe there is Someone,) you wouldn't recognize Them if they set your personal bush burning - even though that would be entirely within the realm of the sense of humor associated with the Divine.

Look up "emroods."

But nonetheless, no matter how little regard I hold for the evident quality of your faith, o Citizens of Hardesty, you have the right to it. So long as and only to the extent that you do not use tactics like this to enforce and defend it.

Speaking purely for myself, though, and based on my understanding of ethics and of the Ten Commandments, if I were a Fundamentalist Christian, I would find the fact that Hardesty, Oklahoma has apparently not yet evaporated under a hail of fire and brimstone to be a challenge to my faith.

Fortunately, I am not, and I do not bother my God with such stray thoughts. Though, in all honesty - I must say that it would be far beyond my capacity for charity or tolerance to show much compassion at all should any disaster happen - and as I am an experienced believer in Karma, I 'spect it will. And as tempting as the idea of being able to own such a spread as the Smalkowski's did; I consider living downwind of that much bad juju to be unwise.

Command Rape: Unofficial Policy?

VIDEO | Military Sexual Violence: Command Rape is a compelling video presented by Truthout.org. This paragraph gives a small insight into the topic:

Three days before her actual redeployment, she was packed and ready to go, she had her car keys in her hand, and she turned to me and said, "I don't think I can do this." I was shocked but knew any type of coercion on my part would not help, so I said, "Are you serious?" She replied, "I just can't do it, Mom." She could not go back there to the misery. She told me that being separated from her family and living and breathing Army for a year at a time in a war zone was a constant source of distress for her. Where nobody cares whether you live or die as long as you do what you are told and they look good afterwards. Nor could she handle another deployment, dealing with the daily hour-to-hour sexual harassment that she endured from 99% of her male officers and fellow soldiers. The isolation and fear of being attacked, harassed, molested and raped was a huge part of her life in Iraq. She was always full of anxiety and stress just keeping herself safe when her commanding officers would show up banging on her door in the middle of the night, intoxicated and wanting to have sex with her. The intimidation and sexual harassment that our female soldiers are enduring is leading to massive stress and in some cases even death for our military women in Iraq. They are not supported but shamed when they bring these to the attention of their superiors.

I TOOK A DEEP BREATH and I told her either way she is my hero and I will support her decision. She decided that she was going to go AWOL and to leave the Army.

Now, as a retired female officer points out in the video, this crap is simple to deal with. You make it clear that if shit like this happens, or even seems to be happening, heads roll - starting with the head of the unit commander and the first Sargent.

Remember, the Army doesn't have to "prove" a goddamn thing in order to discipline an officer for failing to "maintain unit cohesion." Hell, they don't even have to give a reason for "promoting" an officer to command of a "corrosion prevention unit" in Alaska. It is an authoritarian society, and what happens happens or does NOT happen is entirely due to whether or not the Authorities wish it to occur or not.

IF you care about rape of female soldiers, you make it clear that cases, if fully proven, will result in hard time in Leavenworth, not administrative slaps on the wrist. You make it clear that if rape is suspected, but unproven, that the very least that will happen is that more effective leadership will be found for the unit in question, while the unit itself will find itself doing most unpleasant collective penance for the sins of the fellows they have chosen to shield. And you make it extremely clear that if a rape DOES occur in a unit, it had goddamn well better be brought to light as a result of command authority, not in spite of it, or heads will not just roll, they will be used as soccer balls.

The armed forces definitely do pass the word on such matters when it matters, one really has to wonder if in this case, the idea IS to drive women out of the military - along with gays and persons of insufficiently evangelical faith, persons who also have been subject to such unwelcome attentions that also seem to be "unofficial" official policy.

Why, it's almost as if the army were trying to purge itself of anyone likely to have objections to things that reasonable persons might object to, like rape and torture. Certainly if they won't defend a squadmate from rape, civilians are shit outta luck. And I betcha that's the plan and this is how you go about creating a hard core of utterly soulless followers; create situations that reasonable people KNOW they should object to - torture, rape, harrassment of all sorts - make them complicit in it, even if only by silence - and then they will be easily led down the slippery slope to complete moral depravity.

Of course, this does open the question as to why one would want an army composed of and led by white, superficially Christian, socially conservative, reflexively obedient white people.

Hm. What does the phraise "I was just obeying orders" bring to your mind?

More importantly - how DID that work out?

Such comparisons are supposedly odious. More to the point though, they are beside the point - pointing out that a sin or a stupidity is unoriginal serves little point, especially if people tend to think that UNorignal sins are somehow justified by being routine.

Ultimately, we are all accountable to ourselves and our consciences - which is for ethical persons leaves a lot less theoretical wiggle room than "being accountable before God."

But the rain falls equally on the just and the unjust - as the Bible points out. Equally are we gifted with the consequences of our own choices. So if you take only one thought from this, take this; sins that are committed wholesale are repaid retail.

Every casual injustice, every callus act, every clear violation of standards of decent behavior will be noted somewhere, by someone, and as each instance adds up, those someones add up as well. Sooner or later, statistically, one such straw will land somewhere that will cause an action or predispose a decision.

And even if no-one other than you knows of an injustice or atrocity that you will never be truly held accountable for in this life; all I can say is, "you poor motherless bastard. Without atonement there is no redemption."

That's not bible or, indeed any particular faith speaking - that's human nature. Sometimes the worst punishments are the ones we extract from ourselves for our unspoken and unspeakable sins.

This sort of stress results in what we refer to as PTSD, and we know well the toll it takes. And yet, our Lords and Masters seem obvious to the toll in human life and tortured souls their ambitions require - leaving one to be tempted to think they are not human, have no souls themselves and take dark joy in their unholy harvest.

But that, I think, would be to give them too much credit. And certainly they do not give enough credit to the potential liablity of thousands of extremely pissed off women and their mothers, as they start to realize that it wasn't JUST official embarrassment or indifference, but arguably the result of policy decisions made by grossly irresponsible men undeserving of the respect they think they deserve, much less the rank and offices they hold.

And understand this: Accountable they are, and accountable they will be. This is a fact of the universe which is apparent to any observer over time; "as you sew, so shall you reap."

Spiritual Deceptions - My first GraphicTruth.

`Gospel of wealth' facing scrutiny - Yahoo! News Annotated

The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor's living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Fla., area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinnand a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

By their fruits you will know them.

• There isn't any reason why a Christian can't be prosperous, of course, but there's nothing in the Bible - or any other spiritual text - that highlights wealth as a special and particular blessing of faith.
  
  As for those preachers who are enjoying the fruits of their ministry to the extent of living lavish lifestyles and hob-nobbing with presidents and powerful business leaders who love to think that their aquissitive nature is a spiritual gift - "Behold, they have their reward."
  
  - post by graphictruth

The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles — the "Gospel of Prosperity," or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.

This story is very personal to me - and the connection to Oral Roberts is direct.

You see, my mother - a religious addict by any reasonable use of the term - was much taken with Oral Robert's ministry, back when I was ten or twelve, and on days when she didn't feel up to driving the thirty-odd miles it would take to get us to church, she'd watch his show.

And usually, she'd stuff whatever "love offering" he requested for whatever trinket he was selling that day.

Now, our usual church was Episcopal. Being a dutiful and very aspy child, I took my mother's obvious wish that I become "saved" and conversant with the words and works of Jesus very seriously indeed. And as it happened, that church had a very advanced Sunday school, where we really got our teeth into the word, and chewed it with the help of concordances, interlinear bibles, and various translations. I had my own Amplified Bible, which I found very useful.

To make a long story short, I was quite the little deacon at that point, although I had by that time also learned that in regards to my parents, "hiding my light under a bushel" was by far the best course.

However, when Oral Roberts pulled a "prayer cloth" with his holy blessed hand-print upon it, stated that he'd personally prayed over each and every one of these objects, and because of that, they would by some twisted transubstantiation personally connect him to you via the Holy Idiot Box if you placed your hand over his as he prayed with his own hand raised on Teevee...

Well, this little deacon exploded, and while I didn't speak in tongues - as mother really thought any believer should - for once I did not hold it. Nor was it a "word of knowledge." You don't need that when scriptural first principles are being raped before your eyes.

I pointed out that it was idolatry - both of an object and a man, and as graphic an example of a man placing himself before God, as a god-substitute as you would ever see. It still angers me to this day, that a man professing to be a Christian minister could not even get through the FIRST commandment without pissing all over it.

I say that deliberately, as a graphic and visceral illustration of the clear and mindful insult to both his followers and to the God he pretended to serve.

I was actually rather surprised the roof didn't fall in on him right then. It took a few more years, and the "fall" was metaphorical, but rather satisfying, nonetheless.

But in any case, that one time my mother listened to me and did not actually put twenty bucks in an envelope. But it didn't keep her from sending it off to Bob Schuller. Indeed, she sent hundreds, if not thousands to him. One Christmas, my major gift was a window in the Chrystal Cathedral.

Imagine my joy.



As far as I'm concerned, nothing says "transparent fraud" better than the Crystal cathedral. Although these days it's far from the worst such church. Rev. Bob Schuller was a sincere advocate of an inoffensive ministry that was based more on his blandly optimistic self-help pep-talks than on the Bible.

It was a dose of weekly feelgood that came with no strings of personal obligation, other than to buy his books and be optimistic - and all you needed to do in order to progress spiritually was just that - buy his books and be optimistic.

It wasn't nearly as offensive as the "name it - claim it" theology of Oral Roberts, and that is what my mother fell back into later on.

And just like the bitter woman in this article, my mother ended up bitter and unfulfilled, having sacrificed pretty much everything in a futile quest for sanctity and moral superiority without doing the heavy lifting involved involved in discerning Right Action.

Yes, I am informed by other religious traditions. As should you be, if you are moved toward a quest for spiritual insight. If you merely wish to belong to a church that offers a community of belief at a reasonable price, and puts some effort into doing a good job of it, though, I would recommend either a Catholic or Anglican Communion congregation, depending upon your need for governing authorities.

The important thing in my mind is that neither faith is one that encourages self-righteousness and self-involvement to the same degree as the evangelical, "prosperity gospel" mega-churches.

And that, of course, brings us back into the secular world. Indeed, since we are speaking of Oral Roberts and his Mega-church legacy of sanctified greed and the elevation of
moralism
over actual moral virtue, we have never left the secular realm!

If you have not yet grasped the thrust of my words, let me be blunt - I consider none of these televangelists, with their politicalmaneuverings and highly profitable enterprises to be anything other than entirely secular con-men, or, for the very best of a bad lot, no better than any other motivational speaker.

But the worst of them - Benny Hinn leaps to mind - are fully in the tradition of Marjoe Gortner and P.T. Barnum, but blessed with even less conscience than either of those.

Now, I have studied the Bible from front to back and back to front over the years, searching for the context and intent of the words of Christ. For the most part, I consider what I've learned to be highly personal, and not at all something I feel either comfortable or qualified to preach toward - though it would be easy to argue that my scruples are rather unusual in that regard.

One truth is obvious enough to me to share with you in context. In the times of Jesus, sheep were a vital part of the economy, and nobody could possibly have missed the subtext of Christ saying to his Disciples, "feed my sheep."

It's not a complementary metaphor. There are few animals that make a collie or Irish setter seem bright in comparison, and sheep are at the top of the list. They have been bred over thousands and thousands of years to be meek, inoffensive, biddable, stupid creatures who are incapable of finding food for themselves. They NEED to be "led to green pastures" and "to lie beside still waters."

So when Christ said "feed my sheep," nobody thought it was anything other than a thankless chore involving inherently stupid creatures who needed to gently and compassionately cared for. Jesus cared about his stupid, bleating, sheep like followers, who could as easily be led to war against the Romans as "beside the still waters."

What he did NOT say was "fleece my sheep." And that is what these mega-churches do, with their for profit banks that will helpfully accept direct deposits from your place of work and deduct a thirty percent tithe.

Oh yes. Thirty percent. Some actually take that much.

Tax free, for them. Not for you, of course. Since even if you are able to deduct all the thirty percent, you will still be paying the differential on property and other municipal taxes to allow for that corporate monstrosity.

That's not just fleecing the sheep, it's skinning them alive, and then slaughtering their lambs in front of their bleeding, soon to be corpses.

That metaphor applies to the Evangelically sanctified "war on terror."

Meanwhile, these massive edifices exist without paying property tax or any other fees to the "godless" community they take advantage of, even though the impact is similar to a large stadium in terms of traffic and environmental impact.

All of this is in return for a promise that you will get into heaven eventually, and meanwhile, due to your faith, deserve all kinds of rewards in the here and now.

Some of these churches actually take a step toward making that happen, with an entire "grey" economy wherein all the members essentially agree to do business only with other members of that church - so an illusion of prosperity, and even perhaps a little actual prosperity may occur - but of course, only for a few, who are held up as exemplars of Christian virtue, even though scandal after scandal seems to reveal intentional patterns of fraud, abuse and the worst sorts of sexual and political corruption.

I think we have all suffered enough at the hands of such "virtuous" Christian shepherds, and shoveled all the crap left behind them that we need to grasp the point that they cannot be trusted with the lives and prosperity of those foolish enough to take them at their word. We need to "shake the dust from our feet."

Matthew, Chapter Ten is pretty much the definitive instruction set and doctrinal basis for Evangelism. Inasmuch as it contradicts just about everything mega church, prosperity gospel "evangelists" say and do, you can, and SHOULD take it as Gospel.

After all, it IS Gospel. Believe it, or do not, but if you believe the Bible is true, then you must admit that such creatures are false to the core - and how much more obviously true this must be if you consider the gospels to be a variety of fable.

And as this "prosperity gospel" with it's emotional and authoritarian appeals are so deeply entwined with our current administration and it's political appointees that there is effectively no difference, I suggest that no distinction need be made. We should impeach and convict the lot of them. The righteous need to retake the churches, while those who believe in ethical, constitutional, professional and accountable leadership must retake all three branches of government.

Please do what you can to encourage Sen. Grassley toward Right Action in this regard, that in service to this action of cleansing our body politic of the pernicious influence of corrupt and deceptive churches, he should become a co-sponsor of Dennis Kucinich's Impeachment resolution, if he has not already.

After all, it's the same lot of corrupt bastards, all scratching each other's backs, swapping their private planes and fleecing the gullible sheep.

The goats need to take back their flocks.

tag: Sen. Charles Grassley, religious addiction, tax fraud, prosperity gospel, religious fraud, , Christianists, Shadow Economy, Greed, cultural warfare, Corruption, abuse of power, religous abuse, religous fraud, Cindy Fleenor, Benny Hinn

Evangelical Repents Paving Road to Hell

Chuck Baldwin, a Florida radio preacher and evangelist, has come out and said the following. And the following is why he's supporting Ron Paul.

Unfortunately, it has been the Christian Right's blind support for President Bush in particular and the Republican Party in general that has precipitated a glaring and perhaps fatal defect: the Christian Right cannot, or will not, honestly face the real danger confronting these United States. The reason for this blindness is due, in part, to political partisanship or personal aggrandizement. Regardless, the Christian Right is currently devoid of genuine sagacity. On the whole, they fail to understand the issues that are critical to our nation's--and their own--survival.

Republican candidates have learned how to "talk the language." They know that Christians are basically compassionate and trusting people, and therefore prone to being gullible and easily manipulated. They know that Christians have short memories and are desperate to be accepted at the king's table (largely a result of the church-growth movement and mega-church mentality).

It is at this point that much blame should be cast at the feet of the leaders of the so-called Religious Right. They have proven themselves to be much more interested in enriching their "ministries" (and themselves in the process) than they are in standing uncompromisingly for the truth. The infatuation with power and success has made them weak and vulnerable.

As a result, George W. Bush and Karl Rove have made mincemeat out of the Religious Right. They have shown everyone that once you win the support of the Christian Right with rhetoric, you can get by with just about anything. Christians are horrible at holding Republicans accountable.

Hence, neocon Republicans such as Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, and even Rudy Giuliani are all currently receiving fractured support from the Christian Right. However, you can mark this down: the Christian Right (with few exceptions) will eventually coalesce around whoever wins the Republican nomination--no matter who it is. You see, it's all about political partisanship. Principles are only something we talk about during off-election years.

Indeed, that HAS been the problem, Sir; the willingness to abandon principle when presented with the dangling bait of an apparent victory over the heathen, the godless, the moral relativists. Surely God must approve any means that promise to achieve such ends?

And suddenly we are all on a smoothly-paved downward slope to what, if not literal hell, will certainly do until the real thing comes along.

Now, there are a lot of folks out there who will suggest that the support of "nuts like this," for Ron Paul, people they adjudge to be religiously intolerant, even bigots and racists means that people of genuine social conscience and enlightenment should not support Ron.

For myself, I see it to people of this ilk waking up and smelling the coffee, realizing to what extent they have been led around by their noses by people even less principled, even more willing to offend the liberties of others, and realizing that perhaps, just perhaps, playing within the rules established by the Constitution is a good idea after all.

And so long as we all do that, it matters little if I think he's a religious fanatic , ideologue and pinhead, or that he thinks I'm a Godless Liberal apologist for sodomy and goat marriage. Even if we are correct in our mutual understandings and each of us is as abhorrant to the other as our first impressions might suggest, - our ambitions are limited by the compact, and he can no more force me to enter into a covenant marriage than I can force him to marry a goat.

At this point, we heave a sigh of relief realizing that the only way the beliefs of one can affect the other is through persuasion and choice, having the constitution to rule out coercive rule by any temporary majority or influential minority.

And this allows us all to enjoy a richly diverse, constantly evolving culture that is responsive to ever-changing circumstances.

At some point, people on the Right started using "diversity" as a dirty word, conveying the idea that any different idea of any sort was a visceral threat to be stamped out, not something to be tolerated in others, considered respectfully and accepted or rejected for personal use as free persons have every right do do.

By the way, that's exactly how I have treated Chuck's faith. Nice folks, most of them, but as he observes, entirely too gullible, and entirely to easily deluded by the greedy, the evil and the manipulative.

People who believe that diversity and tolerance is a social evil are - in my mind - too stupid to breed and should be retroactively aborted lest they poison the very body politic with their bigotry. And millions agree with me, even if they wouldn't put it quite that strongly.

Now do you see why we have a Constitution? None of us are entirely immune to bigotry and prejudice. Let us celebrate then our compact to keep it within decent bounds, and to let no single set of prejudices dominate us all.

Odds are, there's only a few of us that would truly prefer the results. You see, ANY exclusive vision of how things "ought" to be, what values and beliefs people "should" have or what values they should have and hold that rise above the legally required minimum of nonviolence is incompatible with liberty. If you cannot tolerate the liberties of others, you should simply admit to yourself that some honestly authoritarian philosophy would be appropriate.

In a libertarian society, you are entirely free to be a Nazi, an Old Catholic, a Stalinist, or what have you. You just have to live with the fact that your only valid source of Authority is being persuasively authoritative. The moment you start demanding followers to do as you think they ought and the right to back up that demand by force, a libertarian culture reserves the right to leave you alone.

Entirely alone.

Render Unto Ceasar

I have a serious problem with the ultimate credibility of both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, which has nothing to do with their politics. It's with what both claim to inform and shape their politics, their faith.

Both are more than willing to cite the importance of the Bible, and both are proud of their significant religious ordinations; both are hold ordinations in their respective faiths, and Romney is the equivalent of a Christian Bishop.

Furthermore, it seems to me that any fair-minded person, in reviewing the accomplishments of both men, which are honestly significant and important, than it's evident that they have, within the limits of human nature and circumstance - strived to honor the spirit as well as the letter of doctrinal guidance. These are not bad things. Indeed, in many ways, both men illustrate the impact of religious culture in society in it's best light - and I say this while taking direct issue with much of what each stands for, religiously and politically.

But if we are to praise men of faith who do their best to honor the words of Christ as they understand them in the world, we must heed Matthew 6:24 :

"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."

In context, Matthew chapter six is purportedly the direct words of Christ and is indisputably the foundation of some of the oldest and most basic Christian doctrines. In other words, it's pretty much a litmus test for people who say they are Christians, or (in Mitt's case) that their faith derives from and amplifies Christianity.

While my understanding of Mormonism is weak at best, I know of nothing in it that would dispute this passage. And aside from anything else, the words stand for themselves; they are persuasive due to them being a matter of common sense, one that is well understood within common law, which would express it as "conflict of interest."

If this were the only leg to my argument, though, it would not be worth uttering, for of course the issue goes to motive, and motive we cannot know. No, the more critical issue is this:

Both men, in taking direct ordinations and embracing certain spiritual obligations and duties, have accepted what is generally understood by persons of faith to be a higher, overriding duty. And - in the case of BOTH Mitt's Mormonism and Mike's Southern Baptist faith, there are going to be times when it will not be possible to come to an honorable compromise between the prior charge of the priesthood and the later oath of office.

The only way either could legitimately take the oath would be by renouncing their prior ordinations. But then, that would not really reflect well upon how seriously they took the duties and obligations they had sworn before their visions of God to uphold.

It seems to me that as things stand, the only way I can assume that either will "faithfully execute the office of the President" is if I assume that they were keeping their fingers crossed when they made their earlier promises, for the honorable exercise of their offices requires them to put the interests of the faithful and of their faith ahead of anything else, to a far greater and more stringent degree than is required of someone who is merely a congregate in good standing.

If I assume they are both men of faith to the degree I am expected to believe, if I assume they are sincere in their beliefs, if I assume they are faithful to their various religious doctrines which both claim overriding divine authority, I must then assume that in conscience and in practice that doctrine and faith will trump Constitution and Law every single time. And, as both support amending the constitution itself to take rights away from gays who are doctrinally excluded from marriage within either faith, we clearly see how this conflict resolves for each.

I don't ascribe this to some nefarious hidden agenda, I ascribe it to perfectly sincere faith, executed by men of conscience to the best of their ability. Believing as they both do, there is no other path of conscience.

Which means, alas, that neither man should, in conscience, be running for political office, knowing full well that they cannot and must not serve two masters.

The only question is this: which one will they choose to betray?

The President must be president for all citizens - not just citizens of a particular faith or range of faiths. The President is the safeguard of our liberties - not the figure that would impose duties upon us by fiat. We are offered two men from two very authoritarian religions who, we must assume, believe not only that it's proper that moral standards be imposed, but who each hold offices that make them responsible for doing just that.

I'd have a problem with that even if I were a member of such a faith - and I rather think that my objections would be even more profound if I held a similar ordination in a similar faith.

That is why the founders somewhat reluctantly agreed that there should be a separation of Church and State and forbade the establishment of any religion, even the rather inoffensive Deist faith.

Because a man may not serve two masters - and neither may a government.

tag: religion, faith, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, election 2008, Matthew 6:24

Alternet Leads with Porn Tease.

One thing I've learned over the years is that when there's a slug about porn or sex in the title, the odds of there being something I don't need for sale is inversely proportional to the distance between the tease and the payoff.

In this particular case, it takes three pages of this Alternet book excerpt to get to the point:

We think of the call of pornography as crass, like a carnival barker's. Like the neon lights of Times Square in its pornographic heyday. Men go to buy pornography in the "red-light" district, the "combat zone." Pornography seems to shout out at us, crudely.

But in reality, pornography speaks to men in a whisper. We pretend to listen to the barker shouting about women, but that is not the draw. What brings us back, over and over, is the voice in our ears, the soft voice that says, "It's OK, you really are a man, you really can be a man, and if you come into my world, it will all be there, and it will all be easy."

Pornography knows men's weakness. It speaks to that weakness, softly. Pornography ends up being about men's domination of women and about the ugly ways that men will take pleasure. But for most men, it starts with the soft voice that speaks to our deepest fear: That we aren't man enough.

Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity,

This is supposed to get you to cough up 12.95 for the promise of more insights into sex, porn and masculinity. And perhaps the author promises new insights, or at least a new viewpoint on an amazingly ancient and tediously commonplace reality. Perhaps you should chalk my reaction up to sheer annoyance at the thought that this fellow seems to have every reason to expect to be paid for things I've been saying for free.

Actually, I think that may have a great deal of truth to it. I find it both annoying and baffling, because for most of my life, I've been trying to figure out what possible reward there could be for "being a man" that would make it worth the depths of stupidity men seem willing to plumb - and women encourage - in order to convince themselves and others of it.

But certainly sexuality and pornography are deeply involved in this effort - and porn is very much involved in maintaining this paradigm as being both normal and unquestionable.

If you read Graphictruth, then you will have been exposed to this idea rather a lot - that pornography is an instrument and reflection of our culture, no better understood than when you examine what sorts of porn and pornographic entrepreneurs are ruthlessly oppressed - and which sorts are tolerated, or even encouraged by strangely-crafted government regulation.

Anyway, the observation that porn in general and the sex industry in particular has a great deal to do with encouraging heteronormative sexual behavior is - to an aspie blogger living in America's Great State of White Heterosexual Sin - a blinding glimpse of the blatantly obvious.

This is underlined by the fact that I spent a long stint as a reviewer of porn sites on my own pornographic link site. Why did I stop?

Well, when you get up in the morning, looking forward to another day of blatant sex and tentacle porn and realize that you'd really just rather play Sims and watch cooking shows on cable, it's time for a change. Hell, one glimpse of Ron Jeremy's ass is enough to make you question your entire life path. It wasn't JUST Ron Jeremy's ass that made me switch to politics, but it serves as a fundamental symbol of everything that did.

So, speaking as someone who has put on their hip waders and gone shoveling, there's far less that is truly depraved in the world of porn than you may fear, and far less of interest than curiosity, temptation and hype may lead you to expect.

The greater irony is this; I've found that in exploring the ethics of politics, I have not managed to avoid any significant downside of my previous concentration on the ethics of sex and porn, and as a great karmic punchline, Ron Jeremy's ass has been replaced with Dick Cheney's face. It's not an improvement.

But in comparing the two, and finding no significant distinction other than how metaphorical the nonconsentual cornholing of the underdog of the storyline may be, I have, I think, stumbled across a few useful insights along the way.

Pornography exists for the same reason as any other form of communication - to persuade you that some idea or another is worth your time, attention and donation of power and approval.

Porn is no more an end in itself than my writing this blog is. Both exist to convince you of something, and it's up to you to discern whether or not you should be convinced, and if you are, to who's benifit it is that you are convinced, and what exactly the price of that conversion will be.

Most American porn exists to convince you that you do NOT have to think about the moral and ethical consequences of living and acting like a stereotypical asshole, uncaring of the consequences of one's desires upon others. Indeed, it exists to sexualize those consequences, to validate the harm done as both just and due those who are not heterosexual white protestant assholes.

That kink is not just out there, it's out there with corporate sponsors, jumping up and down with it's fake boobs bouncing, along with single-click access to army.com.

Now, despite my obvious contempt for unthinking assholes and my lack of sympathy for the inevitable consequences to those who insist on acting as if they have a right to fuck up and fuck over anything that disputes their self-image as King o' da World, it should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer that asshole upon asshole fratricide is so commonplace that it's no longer news.

I have absolutely no problem with genuine sociopaths removing themselves from the gene pool, and to the extent that they can be encouraged by sex or adreneline to make some contribution along the way, I can only applaud. But, alas, the sociopaths have taken over the asylum and have convinced a lot of people that sociopathy is synonymous with masculinity; even with Christianity.

Well, the only cure for such offensive pornography is, as the saying goes, "more and better pornography." We must not abandon the most reliable handle upon the future behavior of our youth to those who would wank them to destruction.

Me, I much prefer lesbian porn. And I don't mean two hot chicks making it while each keep an eye on my designated representative, the camera, to see if their artful antics please their vicarious master. Not that I'm immune to that, or even feel particularly embarrassed about not being immune to hot theatrical simulated sex between professionals. It's like a corn dog at the fair - you know it's not very good for you, and you know that it has no place in a regular diet, but hell, it's fair food and it doesn't count.

The economy of my entire state rests upon this whole premise, and as I enjoy our attractively low tax rate, I will not sneer - save at those Californians who are far too Liberal to approve of such things, except for one or two weekends a year.

But I have seen real lesbian porn, and not a corn dog - it's an entirely different and far healthier cuisine. It's only "lesbian porn" by virtue of the fact that lesbians were the first (that I'm aware of) to seriously explore the idea of "what would porn that didn't automaticly validade a partiachal, heteronormative, white ethnocentric worldview look like?" Another term that you might run across is "alternaporn" or "alt-porn;" it's all pornography with explicit counter-cultural themes.

Some pioneering women - like Ducky Doolittle, for one - found that it was a lot more interesting and fun to create good porn that demonstrated good sexual ethics and views toward other women than stridently against bad porn that perpetuates destructive ideas and the oppression of women, and along the way, the idea that it was possible to have hot recreational sex with the persons of agreeable sexuality and gender without feeling like you needed a shower and a shriving afterwards.

Or in other words, if sexual shame is an essential part of what you think is "hot" about sex - maybe you should think about that in terms of it's moral and ethical implications.

Andraea Dwarkin and Cynthia Makinnon may well have revealed a great deal that was wrong with heteornormative porn, society and men accultured by it, but they offered little or nothing nothing other than "just keep your legs crossed" as an alternative vision. I wager neither was any fun at parties. The Catholic church has long advocated a militant asexuality as the alternative to approved sexual behavior - I don't really see a feminist restatement of the same dramatically futile and destructive moralism as a great contribution to the ethical evolution of humanity.

Anyway, to get to the point that the book is trying to get you to absorb by luring you in with the potential of possible vicarious tittiliation; "King of the Hill" mentality has not served our culture, our society or our planet well. It has not even well-served the interests of those who would be good kings capable of holding a hill wisely and well.

You see, one of the great surprises and ironies of my life was finding out that I am something of a patriarch.

I suppose none of us can really evade our childhoods, or the necessity to at least try to make things work out better now than they did then. I'm neither the typical patriarch nor am I much interested in expanding my sphere of influence beyond my household, because I lack the required kink almost entirely. The lust for power over the lives of others has no attraction for me, but in some curious way, I'm able to provide security for those who are compatible with my other twitches. Indeed, I think that having those twitches and flaws to a cater to is part of my attraction. It's possible to make a positive difference in my life, validating those who do it. But I know my limitations and am unwilling to be such a living example of the Peter Principle as so many of those who are briefly showcased upon the cover of Forbes. And, given the insight into State Mandaded patriarchalism as recently demonstrated by Saudi Arabian "justice" - I would never stoop to benefit from such a culture.

If I were born Saudi or Wahabi, at this point I'd feel honor bound to publicly renounce both citizenship and sect - for whatever government, religion or culture that exists solely to blow smoke up my ass and tell me what a big strong manlyman I am does me no great service in my role as safekeeper and guardian for those who need it - while forcing upon me the distractions who do not need me in the slightest.

In sexuality and life, it's far better to trade upon who you really are than try to claim to be what you are not, if for no other reason that you will lose out to those who either do not have to fake it at all, or who can fake it more convincingly.

Those who seek power over others - sexually, in politics, in commerce, in life - do it because that is a visceral need for them. It's not because they deserve it, or because they can be assumed to be able or willing to do anything useful with that power when they have it. Using power wisely and well is a skill, as well as an under-acknowledged responsibility. Understanding and acceptance that there IS a price to power is, sadly, almost never something that comes with the kink itself. And yes, folks, the need to hold power over others is a psycho-sexual kink, to the point of being a disastrous character flaw if not admitted. (CF. George W. Bush; Hillary Clinton, Wahabism.)

If those who need power like vampires need blood are not trained and guided to seek power wisely and use it well, they will fail - and it will almost by definition be a cascade failure of catastrophic proportions. (CF. George W. Bush; Hillary Clinton, Saudi Arabian Justice)

But most people do not have that kink, and it's both foolish and self-deceptive for us to accept that it is the definition of a "real man" to seek dominance over others and to be fulfilled by expressing that domination - without any question of "why, and to what end?"

In football, there can be only one quarterback - and a quarterback without a defensive line is what you call "roadkill." To extend the metaphor, a QB who calls stupid plays and embarrasses his team will be without his defensive line for every single play until he either gets a plan, or gets the hell off the field.

The fact is, those who think they "clawed their way to the top" by virtue of their own efforts, who define themselves not by what they have won, but how many others lost out to them are fools. Fools, and very often useful tools. (CF George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Conservative Muslim Clerics and domestic Dominionist Christian Clerics.)

The real secret to gaining and holding the hill is building a consensus that you look good up there, and accepting the quid pro quo that you must serve the ends of those who feel that way in order to remain there. That's true of Patriarchs, Presidents and all those entrusted with power and influence. The MOMENT you start believing that you have the right to the power you havem or at least argue to that effect based on a presumption of Divine Right, you deserve, at the very least, the derisive mockery of those you would exploit with negative responses up to and including a shotgun blast to the testicles in degrees measured according to your unwillingness or inability to deliver on your obligations.

Life is a power exchange - you will be given this power to use by those who judge you able to use it to their benefit for just so long as you do that. They can take it away at any time - and they don't have to climb the hill themselves. All they have to do is politely step out of the way of the next ambitious tool who wants to take everything you have away from you - not realizing that it was never yours and will never actually be theirs.

Dear King Abdullah - do you think it wise to allow a situation in your nation, your culture and faith where it would be to the benefit of half your population to seek the support and protection of men and women of another faith and more just culture? Do you think the Prophet would be sympathetic to your plight, or would he dryly observe that in getting in the car with Wahbiists, your kingdom deserves whatever it gets?

One thing I know about the Prophet - aside from any religious teachings - is that he was a man of profound ethics, one who believed in justice. So, what would he have to say about a religion based upon his good name being used to commit injustice?

Just a little rhetorical question. I'd ask the same of any Christian, sir; indeed, I often do.

I'll tell you a little secret about me and my particular kink. I find no romance in the tale of King Author; I find nothing attractive at all about sitting anywhere on the outside of the Round Table.

My archetype is Merlin - and like Merlin, I will continue whether or not Aurthur succeeds or fails. Because, well, there's an Aurthur born every minute.

Grand Old Perverts : Outed in the Worst Way.

State Representative Richard Curtis says he's not gay, but police reports and court records indicate the Republican lawmaker from southwestern Washington dressed up in women's lingerie and met a Medical Lake man in a local erotic video store which led to consensual sex at a downtown hotel and a threat to expose Curtis' activities publicly. KXLY4's Jeff Humphrey reports.(video)

Cross-Dressing Republican Caught With Male Hooker Resigns, But Still Won't Admit He's Gay: resigned. From "I'm not gay" to "I resign" in 24 hours is pretty good... for a Republican.

"Today I submitted my letter of resignation to Governor Gregoire effective immediately. While I believe we've done some good and helped a lot of people during the time I served in the Legislature, events that have recently come to light have hurt a lot of people. I sincerely apologize for any pain my actions may have caused.

"This has been damaging to my family, and I don't want to subject them to any additional pain that might result from carrying out this matter under the scrutiny that comes with holding public office."

It hardly seems worth adding anything to this, but it's my blog and I gotta. But I'll keep it pithy and to the point; is it not remarkable how much "Republican Family Values" seems to represent repression and screaming denial?

And just as a cross reference (ehheh), here's a cogent post linking Dominionist and Evangelical Conservative religious upbringing with tortures at Abu Ghrab. And no, it's not a stretch.

The friend of my enemy is my... friend?

There's a famous unattributed quotation from WWII, alleged to be uttered by a Peer of the Realm: "This Hitler fellow makes it impossible for a gentleman to be an Anti-Semite."

That quotation leaped to mind as I read the reactions of socially-conservative voters to the news of San Diego's Mayor Jerry Sanders' tearful reversal of his stance on Gay Marriage.

He began by explaining his refusal to veto the council's decision, saying his beliefs had “evolved significantly” since 2005, when he established his stance on civil unions during his first mayoral campaign.

In the time since, he said he realized he could not accept “the concept of a separate-but-equal institution.” Because of that, he continued, he was unwilling to send the message to anyone that “they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage.”

The mayor, now crying openly, noted that he has close family members and friends in the gay and lesbian community, including staff members and “my daughter Lisa.”

“In the end, I couldn't look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships, their very lives, were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife, Rana,” said Sanders, who quickly thanked reporters and dashed from the room.

Now, as an Aspie/autistic, I have the unusual tendancy to take statements such as this at face value. I even take the emotional context at face value. If an issue causes a bluff old conservative police chief to break down in tears over what he plainly states to be a crisis of concience, I'm inclined to take him at his word, and indulge in the delusional procedure of supposed mind-reading about his "real" motivations.

But the comments on this article reveal that that is one of the most common - and possibly least offensive - assumptions made about him and the "gay agenda" he has "betrayed" the people in "condoning."



But the overwhelming majority of the outrage reveals a depth of hatred, bigotry and ignorance about law, constitution, spelling, grammar, logical construction, evidence, rational argument, ethics, reason and most especially the Bible that I suspect that the supporters for his former stance were as persuasive to him as those he'd been arguing against.

Here is one such argument, actually, one of the more articulate ones; penned by one "Faithful on 09/20/2007 at 8:51 a.m.

"I don't know where, in our constitution, it says marriage is a "right".

The fact that you do not know something does not mean that that which you are ignorant of does not therefore exist.

US Constitution, Bill of Rights:

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

Faithful continues:

I highly doubt that the Founding Fathers were thinking about queer relationships when they penned it. That said, the same argument goes for heterosexual marriage. It is a privilege granted by the State.

More precisely, it is a right arrogated by the states; originally to deal with the "Plague" of interracial marriage. That's why "marriage licenses" were first issued by various States.

Then, of course, the advantage of it from revenue and record-keeping standpoints became obvious to cash-strapped states. But Constitutionally speaking, there's no argument that any form of permission for civil marriage is or should be required. Whether or not there is a compelling state interest in regulating marriage, much less giving substantial advantages to married people is a separate argument, but if such advantages do exist than the equal protection clause states that it should be given and withheld without arbitrary distinctions between persons over matters irrelevant to the goals of the state, or for goals that would be unconstitutional if they were admitted aloud.

In fact, the "granting of privilege" was one of the great issues for our founders and one thing they did their best to eradicate from and forbid to government. One expression of said intent was the so called "Equal Protection Clause -" which to paraphrase, states that all laws must apply equally to all, or be judged unconstitutional.

The term "marriage" is derived from the scramental institutution promoted by Judeo/Christian (and others) religion. I suppose one way to resolve the whole thing is for the State to quit calling it "marriage" and calling it "civil union" available to both heteros and homos, with only the individual religions permitting (or not) the sacramental term, marriage.

Putting the hilarity of an argument based on the authoritative nature of English word derivation aside, so what? If anything, that is a persuasive argument, given the Constitutional protection of religious practices, to stay out of the matter entirely. In fact, legal recognition for marriage comes out of English Common Law, which addressed the rights and responsibilities of those who chose to live together "without benefit of clergy."

This is a simple issue of citizenship, inheritances and transmission of rights, privileges and duties, when said matters had not already been defined by church records.

Would this make gays happy? Probably not, because it is the word "marriage" that they want applied to them. They also want to force religion to accept their unions as godly and "normal". They want homosexuality promoted in the schools as "normal" and "healthy" and have succeeded to a great degree in the public school system. They have plans to extend this "education" to the private education system. This is what I object to.

As the Mayor stated, any "separate but equal" solution has a particular stench of inequality to it in our culture.
By contrast, you want their relationships portrayed as "abnormal" and "unhealthy," and have up until now succeeded in that goal to a great degree in the public school system.

Personally, having for no other reason other than my appearance and personality been identified by my peers as "gay" in grade school, I think teaching acceptance of differences to be a good thing, and the rejection of persecution of others for transparently false religious rationalizations to be also a good thing.

So yes, there is a gay lobby. And no, one isn't a bigot because one doesn't accept homosexuality as "normal" and "healthy".

No, one could merely be totally ignorant and willfully misinformed. But the venom in your tone strongly suggests bigotry, as well as a suspicious fixation upon the sexual practices of others that could be reasonably presumed to represent either repression or envy of the "sexual license" and "immoral lifestyle" you clearly presume all homosexual people practice. I presume neither, since I care nothing about why you would choose to act so intolerably toward others. I don't need to hear your excuses for evil thoughts and evil deeds, whatever they are, they will be neither original nor enlightening.

I've known a lot of Gay people - because gay people do accept differences, and so it's always been my practice to hang with the lesbigay crowd even though I prefer sex heterosexual style from an aesthetic perspective and in the "missionary position" for the sake of my dignity and my sadly defective joints.

To quote one strong advocate of what you would call the "gay agenda," "Don't call me a gay activist. I don't get laid that often." This is not a "gay" issue. It's a human rights issue on the most basic level - and you are presuming the "majority right" to decide who gets to be "human."

I assert the first and second amendment rights to contest the idiocies of the majority, with as much force as is needed to penetrate their skulls with a useful degree of enlightenment.

The fact is, the majority of gay people have as good moral character as any heterosexual; actually, they tend to have a better grasp of right and wrong. Being exposed on a regular basis to the evil of stark, evident hatred and persecution will tend to clarify your values big time.

"That which is hateful to you, do not do unto others."

Clearly, you find the "homosexual agenda" hateful... but yet you are perfectly comfortable forcing the "Right Wing Socially-Conservative Cultural Christian" agenda upon everyone. Furthermore, you claim a religious right to express this through force - state violence and even occasionally the justification of individual violence against gays and all sorts of other people you find "freaky" and "abnormal."

Me, for example. There are entire institutions devoted to eradicating the entire autistic spectrum, pre-birth, with no other justification than a parent's "right" to have a "normal" child. But we shall save the rest of this related rant about xenophobia for another day. Today, we are speaking of specific sins, not the more mental, moral and social failures our currently dominant social class are beset with.

In order to say that a certain behavior or attraction is "unnatural," you are absolutely stating that it doesn't occur outside of an artificial context, never occurs in nature, only occurs within the human species and as a result of deliberate, willful choice AFTER exposure to the behavior.

Provably and totally, the above assumptions are false. Homosexual preference occurs in many species, does occur outside of our society, in all cultures everywhere, regardless of social approval or moral stricture. It's recorded in history as far back as history occurs, both with and without exposure to "influence." And as far as we can tell, it was no MORE prevalent in societies that held it to be a virtue than in cultures that held it to be a vice. All it did was change who got to strut publicly.

Frankly, we are born attached to the parts that primarily influence us. All sexual morality and most reasoning is rationalization and regulation after the fact, in order to keep those parts from leading to do foolish, dangerous and evil things. I don't know about you, but in my experience, it is far, far more dangerous to pretend to be what I am not and try to apply moral standards which have no direct application to me or my needs, than to admit what I am and then try to act ethically towards others based in a sound and honest appreciation of what moral and ethical pitfalls exist for me.

I've found it quite dangerous to my safety, my mental health and my good self-opinion to pay much attention to what others think of as the "most important sins." I'm not particularly vulnerable to sexual temptation - I can wade through porn for days on end, with the greatest risk being either nausea or uncontrollable laughter. But I am daily beset by the temptation of arrogance. While self-righteousness is not my particular pitfall, it's a related failing, and clearly, that's your issue. It is also a sin your religious faith directly encourages you to indulge in the face of everything Jesus had to say about that particular vexation.

The bottom line is this: "Sin" is not about what other people do. It's about what YOU do to other people. By the tenants of your OWN faith, you will not be judged on what you prevented others from doing, or what you forced them to do, you will be judged on that which you did to others, and your rationalizations will not matter. For emphasis on the futility of human rationalizations, consult any dour Presbyterian you know.

As your religion clearly has not helped you identify and cope with your particular tendency toward the evil of self-righteousness, may I suggest your efforts might be better employed in finding a religion that emphasizes personal humility a bit more?

I'd also gently suggest that the besetting sin of Self-Righteousness is an even greater threat to Christianity itself, but that, my dear Faithful, is YOUR problem.

I've always felt that the question of what faith I have should come up in the context of "what is it you believe, to lead you to act as you do?"

Now, in your case, Faithful, that answer does not reflect well upon either Christianity - or your discernment of it's essential teachings.

Selah.

tag: constitution, San Diego, Mayor, Mayor Jerry Sanders, Family Values, patriarchy, evolutionary biology, Religious Fundimentalism, Clash of Cultures, Conservatism, Christianists, religious persecution, defamation, liberty, California, critical thinking, ignorance, evil, Bizarre Sex Habits, Sexual Sins, Sublimation, Right-Wing Hypocrites, Individual Rights, Individual Liberty, Freedom of Choice, church-state, moralism, abuse of power, bullying, prejudice, christian fanatics, dominionists, theocracy, sexuality, public policy, Religious Ethics, Social Obligations, Smear Tactics, Right-Wing Propaganda, Religious Intolerance, Hate Speech., fundimendalism, oppression, Freudian References, Paranoid Fantasies, Right Wing Talk, blogmockery, Ridicule, ethics of government, Gay Marriage, gay agenda, gay rights

Peace and the power of Intent.

I just got a note from my good friend, Jim Wallis, and I'd like to share it with you. It touches me that we seem to be on a first-name basis.

Ok, it's a mass mailing, but he has a point and I'd like to share it with you.

Dear Bob,

Jesus said to them, "This kind can come out only through prayer." (Mark 9:29) Let Congress know you're praying for them to end the war in Iraq.

Next week, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report to Congress on the troop "surge," in which the Bush administration has escalated the war in Iraq by sending an additional 20,000 American combat troops.

As people of faith, we believe in the power of prayer to soften the hardest of hearts and open the way to peace and reconciliation. So, as General Petraeus testifies, we're planning to match his surge with one of our own–20,000 prayers for Congress to bring an end to this war.

Click here to share your prayer with Congress–let them know that you're praying for their courage and wisdom to end this war.

We are at a critical moment, as the House and Senate decide on our nation's continued involvement in Iraq amidst a frenzy of swirling accusations and partisan rhetoric.

But while the Bush administration has frequently abused the language of scripture to justify this disastrous war, a growing number of Christians from across the theological and political spectrum are coming together to oppose it.

And our nation's political leaders are listening–in fact, we've spoken to several members of Congress who are considering reading a selection of your prayers for peace into the Congressional Record.

Like many of you, I've opposed this war from the start, and together we've raised a prophetic voice against it–marching in the streets, writing letters, and much more.

We'll continue to do all of that, but I believe it will also take faith to end this war. It will take prayer to end it. It will take a revolution of love to end it, because this endless war in Iraq is based ultimately on fear, and the Bible tells us that only perfect love will cast out fear.

Will you be a part of this surge of prayer for peace? Click here to let your Senators and Representative know that you're praying for them.

In times such as these, we ought to remember the words of the Apostle Paul:

Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

Blessings,

Jim Wallis and the rest of the team at Sojourners/Call to Renewal

P.S. To reach 20,000 prayers by next week, we'll need your help. Can you share this message with 10 of your friends, family, and congregation members, asking them to join us in this campaign?

Jim is speaking to fellow Evangelical Christians, and so in a way, he's "speaking in tongues." But it's not that hard to translate, so let me just say that it matters little what, if any religion or faith you follow. What matters in efforts like this is intent.

As it happens, I grew up in the usual way in these United States - Sort of Christian. Between my mother's religious quest for simple answers and my father's dedication to the path of personal selfishness, I was exposed to both credulity and cynicism about spirituality. Naturally, I rejected both and made my own explorations, finding that when examined, there is a great deal to be said for Christian faith - if you ignore most of those most willing to provide ready reference cards to make it "easier to understand."

It's really not that complicated. Indeed, it's taken over 2000 years and the lives of thousands of dedicated theologians to obscure the Bible's ethos to the extent we see to day, where it's a matter of faith that God approves of blowing up random brown people in His Or Her Name. But this is not so much about faith or ethics as it is about ritual and intent - and for ritual and intent, there are no good Protestant sources, other than the Episcopal Church - and even there, the idea that there is a point and intent to the ritual has largely been lost. This is true for many Catholics as well. The reform of the Catholic liturgy was... well, it needed reformation. But it was apparently reformed by people who didn't really understand why you do rituals in the first place.

But when you wish to gather people together in a shared intent to effect a change in the course of things through pure intent, that is done by means of a ritual that defines and focuses that intent. By the by, we now have a scientific understanding that such focused intents can effect probability and appearently causation on a subatomic level. It really does change reality. (in wikispeak, citation needed.)

But in order to do that, the ritual must be precise. It's best to fit the current intent into an existing, well-practiced formula, which is why ditching liturgies wholesale is a bad idea.

But there are few books of ritual more familiar and well-worn than The Book of Common Prayer, and it would be profitable to study it's composition, and the way it can be used to build a full ritual from various paragraphs.

Now, I know Evangelicals are suspicious of ritual and it's trappings - although I've been to enough Evangelical, "spirit filled" events to wish they respected it more. Spiritually speaking, certain rituals are sensible - much like reflexively "safeing" your gun before putting it away. If you believe - as do I, and apparently as Jim Wallis does, that prayerful intent can have a real-world effect, it should be intuitively obvious that it can have a less than ideal result if you do not consider and carefully state the intent so that everyone shares the exact SAME intent.

Otherwise, the very best result is that nothing much happens. And indeed, if the only intent is political - simply getting a large number of people to send a message, that intent will be met simply by doing as Jim suggests. However, what Jim does NOT do is exclude the other intents that individuals may have, and therein lies the rub. There are potential pitfalls involved in simply "praying for peace," and praying at people to "make the right decision." Coercion is Unchristian - and unethical. Aside from that, it leads to most unpredictable outcomes.

Of course, the reason for formulaic prayers is to create templates for such occasions, so that potential pitfalls are avoided automatically. The risk is that the existence of those pitfalls will be forgotten as the price of having avoided them for so long.

I had thought to include an example within this post - but it seems that it's not so easy as it might appear; I'm sure there are suitable rituals - but most likely one would have to seek out Pagan and Wiccan sources and work from that point. Wiccans and other Pagans are on the forefront of ritual design these days because it's an article of their faiths - whatever else they may not agree upon - that ritual is the key to the expression of what they believe and what they wish to accomplish. This has been generally discounted within the greater Church - even the Anglican and Catholic branches have de-emphasized the importance of proper ritual.

And now we reach MY point: There can be no real or lasting peace without justice. I am unwilling to return to a state where we accept the largely nonviolent exploitation and oppression of people, with only isolated tragedies here and there as a consequence of brutal economic and class warfare as "peace."

Peace is not a general absence of outright warfare. It is not just the cessation of military adventures - it is also the abandonment of the intent behind them, to unjustly control the destenies of other persons, while holding them accountable for the costs of their own compliance.

Peace is just that; it is peace. It is the absence of the will to impose one's will on others - by whatever means.

And THAT is what you must seek - or you will simply be agitating for war by more comfortable means, with fewer disturbing images on television and casuaties measured only in relative standards of living.

So long as you are praying, in part, to maintain "our American Way of Life" as it has been within living memory, you are praying for what has been a state of constantly smoldering potential violence that occasionally breaks out into open aggression. And that is what I refer to above as an "unexpected outcome."

You see, in order to properly craft an intent, you must be brutally honest with yourself about what it is you seek, and what it will cost others should the result be "positive" from your point of view. Otherwise, while there may be a short-term shift in direction, the fundamental change many of us feel long overdue will come, not with hosannas, but with cries of outrage as the world re-aligns against OUR will and our interests.

Because, well, that's Karma, baby.

Israel's Soldiers breaking silence.

I have long avoided saying anything about Israel's domestic and military policy because I did not consider myself well-informed enough to comment. But when any government, anywhere has foreign and domestic policies that are clearly causing irreparable to persons both in and out of their legitimate jurisdictions, that government is acting in a way that is clearly unethical. As clearly unethical actions always bring consequences, unethical policies always end up with a very large and painful mess that needs to be confronted, which the following excerpted paragraphs illustrate.

"Preach to Your Own People" Annotated

Mikhael Manekin, discharged from the IDF in 2002 is now the Foreign Relations Manager of Breaking the Silence www.breakingthesilence.org.il which documents former IDF soldiers testimonies about the occupation and oppression of Palestinians, "I am a practicing Jew and in two weeks we go into the month of repentance; which requires acknowledging our sins. We cannot change things until we acknowledge our culpability.

"A few years ago, the soldiers you have encountered at the checkpoints would have been me. Soldiers like myself who served during the second intifada, got our education on the job. You all have visited more places [the past nine days] than most Israelis ever have. Israeli's have no idea what is happening in the occupied territories. But, so far in 2007 we have given more Israeli's a tour through Hebron than we did in 2005 and 2006 combined. Hebron is a ghost town, the settlers are unbearable and every soldier who is stationed there understands the 600 settlers there are psychotic; insane.

"I became very opinionated while in the army, but I kept it all to myself. Nobody talks about it in the army and I was the commander and did not know until after I got out that one of the other soldiers in my unit was feeling the same way, until he gave his testimony. Israeli society wants you to believe you are a bad apple for speaking out because unless you trust the system, it will fall apart. Most Israelis who get out of the army leave the country and are probably all drugged out. They suffer post traumatic syndrome but we are the victimizers. My age group is getting the hell out of here or walling themselves off from society and are not involved in anything.

"Over 450 former soldiers have now given their testimonies and we don't publish any stories without the corroboration coming from another former soldier and the testimonies are kept anonymous.

"We all served in the territories. Some served in Gaza, some in Hebron, some in Bethlehem and the rest served in other places. We all manned checkpoints, participated in patrols and arrests and took part in the war against terror. We all realized that the daily struggle against terror and the daily interaction with the civilian population has left us helpless. Our sense of justice was distorted, and so were our morality and emotions.

"The reality we experienced was made of: Innocent civilians being hurt, Kids not going to school because of the curfew, and parents who can't bring food home because they can't go to work.

The article goes on to state that young people a