Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Sunday Thoughts:

Dear Fake Christians,

It's Halloween time! Deal with it, or should I say "Get over it!"

I present this meme today just to piss off piety-pretending pseudo-Christians everywhere. Natas, natas! See the sharp knife carve the orange face. May the blackness darken your day! Your souls are already mine! In the Grand Barbecue Pit Of Hell, I toast them like marshmallows on stakes! And, buried deep, deep down under your rotting trash heap of hates and fears, you know it. That's why you are what you are and that's why you act the way you do. Burn, baby, Burn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Crap Christians beg the Supreme Court (in an ad in the Washington Post) "not to force us to choose between the state and the Laws of God"

As Judd Legum notes (see below), the list of signatories "includes two presidential candidates, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee." (Click to enlarge -- a little.)

by Ken

One thing the Roberts Court has had to cultivate, given the number of bombshells it drops in among its major-case rulings, is a sense of theater, or at least careful planning of the way and especially the sequence in which those decisions are released. With the result that when decisions are announced, we usually can't tell the significance of the scheduling until we find out what the Court was sitting on.

It was clear that something was going to be announced today, and in addition it was established that a public "non-argument session" has been added to the calendar Thursday at 10am on what would otherwise have been just a "conference day."

There are some big decisions to come, like the ruling on the lying-crackpot -challenge -- likely to be sustained despite its bogosity -- to federal subsidies for customers buying health insurance on the federal exchange rather than state ones, and the same-sex-marriage question. In fact, all that was announced this morning was a few fairly minor rulings.

Which happily gives the Court more time to consider this ad placed in the Washington Post last Wednesday by a marauding band of Crap Christians parading their piety.

ThinkProgress's Judd Legum reports, in "44,500 People, Including Two Presidential Candidates, Vow To Defy The Supreme Court On Marriage Equality" (lotsa links onsite):

By the end of the month, the Supreme Court will decide whether there is a constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples. Most legal pundits predict that a majority of the court will rule in favor of marriage equality.

But a group led by anti-gay pastor Rick Scarborough is vowing to defy any ruling by the Supreme Court that recognizes same-sex marriage. Scarborough announced the effort in a column on WND, a website best known for relentlessly publishing conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s birthplace. In the column, published April 27, Scarborough asserts, “[t]he Supreme Court can no more redefine marriage than it can redefine gravity. Neither is in the Court’s legitimate jurisdiction.”

The group placed a full page advertisement in the Washington Post last week, stating, “we will not honor any decision by the Supreme Court which will force us to violate a clear biblical understanding of marriage as solely the union of one man and one woman.”

The group claims to have more than 44,500 signatures, which are being collected on defendmarriage.org. According to Scarborough, those who signed the document “will accept any fine and jail time to protect their religious freedom and the freedom of others.”

It would be easy to dismiss as a fringe effort, but the list includes two presidential candidates, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. (Neither appear in the ad but both are listed on the website.) Santorum was the runner-up to Romney in the 2012 Republican primary, winning 11 states. Polls currently have Huckabee in a tie for fifth in the GOP primary, less than 3 points behind leader Jeb Bush.

Other prominent signatories include Tom DeLay, the former Majority Leader of the House Of Representatives, and reality TV stars Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar.

I think certainly the signatories should be watched closely to make sure they honor their promise to"accept any fine and jail time to protect their religious freedom and the freedom of others." that may come their way. I assume this means they won't even contest the penalties? No, I actually don't assume this. They'll fight it like mad, and use every step of their religious persecution as a fund-raising opportunity.

One thing I definitely question is the signatories' concern for the religious freedom of "others." Others who believe the same things they do, yes; others who believe anything different from what they believe, they'll be leading the witch hunt. They're that kind of folks.

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Courtesy of Joseph Mitchell: These two nuns might strike you as ideal role models for the Catholic Church, but you'd probably be wrong

by Ken

For reasons that might be worth talking about some other time, I've started reading stuff by the legendary New Yorker reporter Joseph Mitchell (1908-1996), and in a 1940 nonfiction piece called "Mazie," I came across a moment that hit me so hard, and so purely and simply, that I had to share it.

By way of background, Mitchell loved the gritty side of New York City, whose often sorely pressed denizens he felt singularly at home with. "Mazie" is Mazie Gordon, a woman then in her mid-40s and a legend of sorts in her part of town, which was -- more or less -- the Bowery, the old Bowery of scraping-by and probably lost souls, of cheap entertainments and cheap intoxicants. Mazie, with her sisters Rosie and Jeanie, owned a movie theater near the Bowery, the Venice, where a dime bought "two features, a newsreel, a cartoon, a short, and a serial episode."

The theater had been built and owned by sister Rosie's late husband, a successful racing gambler and local developer, but after his death was inherited by the sisters. Only Mazie was active in the business, though, and while she could probably have afforded to hire a ticket-seller, she preferred to do the job herself -- occupying the cage out front seven days a week, from 8am till 11pm. (The theater didn't close till midnight, but I assume that by 11 it was safe to stop ticket sales.)

At the same time, Mazie involved herself -- all over the neighborhood -- in the lives of the kinds of people who patronized the Venice. Mitchell has a great deal to tell us about this, but it's when he sets about describing the way Mazie had rigged out her telephone-both-size home away from home that he eases into the story I want you to hear.

On one wall of Mazie's cage were two shelves, and on the top shelf were books. After describing some of them, Mitchell writes:

Also on her top shelf are a rosary, some back numbers of a religious periodical called the Messenger of the Sacred Heart, and a worn copy of "Spiritual Reflectons for Sisters," by the Reverend Charles J. Mullaly, S.J., which she borrowed from an Italian nun, one of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, who conduct a school in Chinatown. Lately Mazie has been reading a page of this book every day. She says that she understands hardly any of it but that reading it makes her feel good. Mazie is not a Catholic; she is Jewish, but she has been entranced by Roman Catholicism for many years. One of her oldest friends in the neighborhood is Monsignor William E. Cashin, rector of St. Andrew's, the little church back of the Municipal Building. She frequently shows up for the Night Workers' Mass, which is said every Sunday at 2:30 a.m. in St. Andrew's by Monsignor Cashin. She sits in a middle pew with her head bowed. Surrounded by policemen, firemen, scrubwomen, telephone girls, nurses, printers, and similar night workers who regularly attend the mass, she feels at home. On the way out she always slips a dollar bill into the poor box. Now and then she calls on the Monsignor and has a long talk with him, and whenever he takes a walk on the Bowery he pauses at her cage and passes the time of day.

Mazie also knows two mothers superior quite well. The rosary she keeps in her cage is a present from the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, who run Madonna House, a settlement on Cherry Street. Margaret, the superior there, has known Mazie for years and has made an attempt to understand her. "On the Bowery it's probably an asset to have a reputation for tougness," Sister Margaret once told a friend, "and I'm afraid Mazie tries to give people the worst possible impression of herself, just for self-protection. She isn't really tough. At heart, she's good and kind. We can always count on her for help. A few weeks ago there was a fire in an Italian tenement near here. One of the families in it had a new baby. It was late at night and we didn't know exactly how to help them. Two of the sisters went to Mazie, and she came right down and found the family a new flat and gave the mother some money." Mazie's favorite saint is St. John Bosco. There is a statue of him in a niche in the steeple of the weatherbeaten Church of the Transfiguration in Chinatown. At night the saint can be clearly seen by the light of the galaxy of neon signs on the chop-suey joints which surround the church. When she passes through Mott Street, Mazie looks up at the saint and crosses herself. "I asked a sister once if it was O.K. for me to give myself a cross, and she told me it was," Mazie says.

We come now to the part I needed to share.

Mazie became interested in Catholicism in the winter of 1920. A drug addict on Mulberry Street, a prostitute with two small daughters, came to her cage one night and asked for help. The woman said her children were starving. "I knew this babe was a junky," Mazie says, "and I followed her home just to see was she lying about her kids. She had two kids all right, and they were starving in this crummy little room. I tried to get everybody to do something -- the cops, the Welfare, the so-called missions on the Bowery that the Methodists run or whatever to hell they are. But all these people said the girl was a junky. That excused themselves from lifting a hand. So I seen two nuns on the street, and they went up there with me. Between us, we got the woman straightened out. I liked the nuns. They seemed real human. Ever since then I been interested in the Cat'lic Church."

I suppose it's presumptuous of me, not only a non-Catholic but a non-Christian, to make the call, but it appears blindingly obvious that those two nuns -- who "seemed real human," and who swung immediately into action, unlike everybody else whose first impulse was to find a reason "that excused themselves from lifting a hand" -- grasped the teachings of Jesus. Which is to say, unlike the hordes of Crap Christians who pay lip service to Jesus while devoting untold energies to spitting and defecating on everything he believed and taught.

Mazie's story has special resonance today, when as we know the recently retired pope marshalled his troops for a war on the nuns who remain the best face of Catholicism. When you get right down to it, what probably drove the ex-pope batshit crazy was that the American nuns he targeted "seemed real human."


"Mazie," like most everything Joseph Mitchell wrote, appeared originally in The New Yorker. It was reprinted in his 1943 collection McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, which was itself later incorporated -- in an expanded version -- in Up in the Old Hotel, the 1992 compendium (718 pages in the hardcover edition!) of four of his books. Copies can be had for a song.

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

The Pope vs Paul Ryan

Ryan has long tried to fashion himself an image for Wisconsin voters as a sturdy conservative Catholic. He's certainly been fanatically anti-Choice but Pope Benedict's New Year mass shows the basic divergence between the Catholicism of Ryan's anti-Choice/anti-gay zealotry and the Catholicism of one of the most conservative Popes in the last century. Ryan may try to pass himself off as a loyal son of the Catholic Church but he has always picked and chosen which parts of Catholicism he embraces and which parts he discards. And his stronger loyalty to Ayn Rand's reactionary social theology is what brings up Ryan's latest problem with actual Catholicism-- the kind Jesus Christ preached, not the kind crooked hucksters like Grover Norquist, Joe Pitts and Richard Land preach.

No doubt the Pope had right-wing politicians like Ryan in mind when he talked about "hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor" and when he denounced "the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated capitalism, various forms of terrorism and criminality." That pretty much sums up the Paul Ryan wing of the Republican Party.

Even a Pope as conservative in the extreme as Benedict has been mortified with the excesses of the kind of unrestrained, unregulated greed-obsessed capitalism promoted by Ryan and his extremist colleagues. He's been calling for a new economic model and the kinds of ethical regulations for markets Ryan and the GOP oppose with all their "souls," saying the global financial crisis was proof that capitalism does not protect society's weakest members.

The Ryan wing of the congressional party led the fight against the Grand Bargain-- although in the end Ryan, a Wall Street shill at his core, voted YES with Boehner and against Cantor and McCarthy. And this was a Grand Bargain their own propaganda agents, like Charles Krauthammer, called a "complete surrender" and a victory for the Democrats (if not for the middle class, for Inside the Beltway Democratic careerists and their own agenda, which included-- in the Grand Bargain-- outrageous subsidies for favorite corporate entities from NASCAR, the railroad industry, the film industry, the oil industry and, of course, Goldman Sachs).

If "good" Christians can't separate themselves from Maryland wackadoodle Emmett Burns Jr., maybe there isn't any separation

Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo

by Ken

So you've heard about the pride of Maryland's House of Delegates, Baptist minister (and psychotic homophobe) Emmett C. Burns Jr., right? The wackadoodle who used his Delegates' office stationery to try to lean on the Baltimore Ravens to "take the necessary action" to muzzle linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo for supporting marriage equality?

Let's let our ThinkProgress colleague Zack Ford tell the story (links onsite):

Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo joined many Marylanders for Marriage Equality by posting a video endorsement last October. Ten months later, rabidly anti-gay state Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr. (D) [left] has decided to retaliate, writing to Ravens owner Steven Disciotti on Maryland House letterhead that Ayanbadejo should be sanctioned for speaking out:

I find it inconceivable that one of your players, Mr. Brendon Ayanbadejo would publicly endorse Same-Sex marriage, specifically as a Raven Football player. Many of my constituents and your football supporters are appalled and aghast that a member of the Ravens Football Team would step into this controversial divide and try to sway public opinion one way or the other.

Many of your fans are opposed to such a view and feel it has no place in a sport that is strictly for pride, entertainment and excitement. I believe Mr. Ayanbadejo should concentrate on football and steer clear of dividing the fan base.

I am requesting that you take the necessary action, as a National Football League Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employees and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions. [Emphasis in the ThinkProgress post -- Ed.] I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing.

Burns is a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage allied with the campaign to overturn Maryland’s new marriage equality law, which is being challenged at the ballot this year through Question 6. Last year, he was already trying to organize a coalition against the proposed bill. Burns has said that same-sex marriage has “nothing to do with discrimination,” but is merely the promotion of the “gay and lesbian agenda.” He also predicted that President Obama would lose the 2012 election for supporting marriage equality: “I love the president, but I cannot support what he has done.”

That's right, boys and girls, as Zack notes above, Delegate Burns is a Democrat. And as Zack points out, Burns's "I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing" is foolish:

Ayanbadejo is hardly the first NFL to take a position on a social issue. In January, six players, including quarterbacks Jay Cutler (Chicago Bears) and Rex Grossman (Washington Redskins), came out against proposed right-to-work legislation in Indiana. Several Green Bay Packers players urged Wisconsin voters to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) because of his opposition to unions. And of course, Tim Tebow ran anti-choice ads in 2010 in partnership with Focus on the Family. Just last month, the San Francisco 49ers released an “It Gets Better” video, showing their own public support for LGBT teens.

Raw Story's Megan Carpenter fills in the next parts of the story:

Ayanbadejo responded to the news on Twitter, saying “Football is just my job it’s not who I am. I am an American before anything. And just like every American I have the right to speak!!!” He then told the team’s website, “For him to be a delegate, I was kind of shocked that he would want to silence me and tell me to stick to football in a free country. People have died to have those rights to be able to voice those opinions – no matter what their opinions are.”

The Ravens, for their part, say they plan to respond to Burns, and Ravens President Dick Cass told the site, “We support Brendon’s right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment.” According to Ayanbadejo, Cass also expressed his personal support. “Dick personally told me, ‘We’re not an organization that discriminates,’” he told the site.

Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe took to Twitter last night to express his disgust for Burns’ letter in a series of posts:

Holy crap. I leave Twitter for a couple hours and I come back to find this garbage? This guy is literally an asshole.The only way I can fathom spewing that type of shit out of your mouth is if your colon reversed flow and you vomited actual fecal matter. And yes, I’m referring to the politician, though to call him that denigrates the few politicians that still deserve the name. It honestly baffles me that in this day and age, someone can think stifling another’s right to free speech is somehow ok. There’s not a lot that gets me seriously angry, but that’s one of the few things on the list. Demand better from your government. Demand better from yourself.

(Megan goes on to point out that Kluwe "expanded on his thoughts in an open letter to Burns published on the sports site Deadspin.")

One would like to think that all those "good" Christians who whine constantly about how oppressed they are will be rising to separate themselves from Delegate Burns's ranting. One would like to think it, but one isn't holding one's breath.

That's because all those "good" Christians only get worked up about their own freedom of religion. Anything that conflicts with their beliefs is fair game for suppression. When it comes to anyone else's freedom of religion, well, they're just outraged.

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Punch A Gay Child? Beat Him Up? Kick Him Out Of The House? Is That What Jesus Teaches? Or Is That Satan's Work?

You may be aware that there's a major anti-bullying campaign going on across the country, a campaign that discourages kids from antisocial behavior towards classmates perceived as "The Other," and thereby a legitimate target for abuse. That campaign wasn't bolstered last week when some Satan-worshipping phony minister in North Carolina, Sean Harris of the Berean Baptist "Church," urged fathers to punch and beat their sons who show signs of being gay. Listen to Harris in the clip above. To a normal person he sounds like someone in serious need of psychiatric help and spiritual counseling. To the Satan-worshippers in his coven... well listen to them yelling "Amen" when he works himself up into a violent tirade against 4 year olds with limp wrists. Jesus has a lot of work to do with impostors like Harris running around pushing Satan's message to morons who wouldn't know Jesus if the GOP was crucifying with on their front lawn today.

Judging by recent studies of homophobia, Harris and many of his most vocal supporters are repressed-- or closeted-- homosexuals who just can't come to terms with who they are. It's ugly. But it isn't new. I was reading some reminiscences of Pansy Division drummer Luis Illades in the new issue of Out that struck a chord.

A couple times, especially in the Midwest and South, kids wanted to run away with us. One kid ran away from the home of his super-Christian family and came to our show. He had all of his belongings with him, and he came to see Pansy Division because there was nowhere else for him to go. He asked us to give him a ride to wherever we were going next. He was 15, and it was heartbreaking. He had come out to his family, and his father tried to beat him up and kicked him out. He wanted to escape with the gay circus.

Yes, heartbreaking. It makes me realize how lucky I was when I finally figure out I was gay. I was living in Amsterdam at the time and hadn't seen my family in 4 or 5 years. I flew home for a visit to share the news. What I found was love and unconditional acceptance (well... one condition-- my mother said I couldn't borrow her wigs). A lot of homophobia stems from authoritarian parents, many of whom may themselves have same-sex desires, albeit undercover ones.

"Sometimes people are threatened by gays and lesbians because they are fearing their own impulses, in a sense they 'doth protest too much,'" Ryan told LiveScience. "In addition, it appears that sometimes those who would oppress others have been oppressed themselves, and we can have some compassion for them too, they may be unaccepting of others because they cannot be accepting of themselves."

...In all of the studies, participants who reported supportive and accepting parents were more in touch with their implicit sexual orientation, meaning it tended to jibe with their outward sexual orientation. Students who indicated they came from authoritarian homes showed the biggest discrepancy between the two measures of sexual orientation.

"In a predominately heterosexual society, 'know thyself' can be a challenge for many gay individuals," lead author Netta Weinstein, a lecturer at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "But in controlling and homophobic homes, embracing a minority sexual orientation can be terrifying."

Those participants who reported their heterosexuality despite having hidden same-sex desires were also the most likely to show hostility toward gay individuals, including self-reported anti-gay attitudes, endorsement of anti-gay policies and discrimination such as supporting harsher punishments for homosexuals.

The research may help to explain the underpinnings of anti-gay bullying and hate crimes, the researchers note. People in denial about their own sexual orientation, perhaps a denial fostered by authoritarian and homophobic parents, may feel a threat from other gay and lesbian individuals. Lashing out may ultimately be an indicator of the person's own internal conflict with sexual orientation.

This inner conflict can be seen in some high-profile cases in which anti-gay public figures are caught engaging in same-sex acts, the researchers say. For instance, evangelical preacher and anti-gay-marriage advocate Ted Haggard was caught in a gay sex scandal in 2006. And in 2010, prominent anti-gay activist and co-founder of conservative Family Research Council George Rekers was reportedly spotted in 2010 with a male escort rented from Rentboy.com. According to news reports, the escort confirmed Rekers is gay.

"We laugh at or make fun of such blatant hypocrisy, but in a real way, these people may often themselves be victims of repression and experience exaggerated feelings of threat," Ryan said. "Homophobia is not a laughing matter. It can sometimes have tragic consequences," as was the case in the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay man.

And that brings us to another Ryan, one of Congress' most virulently homophobic members, Paul Ryan. The Wall Street-owned Beltway media goes to great lengths to paint Ryan as a reasonable, mainstreamish conservative. But he's voted against every single bill that has pushed equality-- or even life itself-- for the LGBT community. His voting score on gay issues is a 0.00-- the exact same record of hatred and bigotry as outré sociopaths like Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Steve King (R-IA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and self-loathing closet queens Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Trent Franks (R-AZ). Look, I'm not trying o insinuate that Ryan is returning the affections of silly little Peoria hypocrite Aaron Schock (R-IL), who's always glancing at his ass and talking about it breathlessly. But... who knows what goes on between those two gym bunnies. Interestingly, the gay-friendly Gap just washed Ryan right out of it's hair over his homophobia, canceling a fundraiser just over a week ago. A spokesperson from the Gap denied that the company was ever hosting a fundraiser for Ryan-- although I'm suspicious about the veracity of that and fear they're just trying to weasel out of their association with Ryan because it was made public.

“Gap Inc. is not hosting or organizing a fundraiser for Congressman Ryan.  The fundraiser is a private event, and the location of the event has been moved.  To say that Gap Inc. was or is hosting a fundraiser for Congressman Paul Ryan is factually incorrect.”
“Gap Inc. and our brands have a very strong record on LGBTQ community issues as shown by our perfect rating by the Human Rights Campaign annual Corporate Equality Index for seven years in a row.  In addition, we are proud of the “Be One” Gap brand ads featuring a gay couple sharing a Gap t-shirt. This ad is part of a “Be Your Own T” campaign which expresses different personalities, heritages, styles and passions. (Incidentally, the men in the ad are a real couple).”

Constantly bringing up stuff Jesus actually said, or didn't say, is unfair to"good Christians" struggling to keep paying lip service to him

Plus: Gearing up for this year's Day of Silence to fight to fight anti-LGBT bullying and harassment

Update: Wacky Waynesville schoolfolk say student can have free-speech rights, for one day only

Today's DWT News Quiz Stumper:
What's wrong with these T-shirts?

"No representatives from the school returned multiple requests for comment."

-- Lila Shapiro, in a HuffPost post about
an Ohio high school's banning of the T-shirts

by Ken

You've seen the T-shirts. Now here's the question: Why would good Christians go ballistic over a T-shirt worn by a high school student saying "JESUS IS NOT A HOMOPHOBE"?

(a) Those "good Christians" hate Jesus and everything he stood for like poison, with every fiber of their beings, and it makes it harder for them to pay their customary service lip to him when people -- especially, God help us, teenage people -- have the gall to bring up stuff he actually said and did, or in this case didn't say or do.

(b) Those "good Christians" are kind of sketchy about what this Jesus fellow said and did but are pretty sure he must have hated all the stuff that they hate.

(c) Those "good Christians" know for damn sure that Jesus was too a homophobe and damn proud of it; he just never happened to get around to mentioning it. Probably it was always on the tip of his tongue. But of course he hated the homos! How could he not when he devoted his short life to laying the groundwork for an authoritarian institution that would blossom into a worldwide sociopathic cult of ignorance and hate-mongering?

(d) Such a T-shirt is "sexual in nature and therefore indecent and inappropriate in a school setting."

ANSWER: Although (a), (b), and (c) are all obviously true, while (c) is just as obviously, even moronically false, the official answer appears to be -- you got it! -- (c)! (Are "good Christians" generally speaking morons?) I say "appears to be (c)," however, because there's confusion among the objectors as to the actual nature of the objection. More on this in a moment.

The student in question, 16-year-old Maverick Couch, was told by Waynesville (Ohio) High School principal Randy Gebhardt back in April 2011 (as recounted by Lila Shapiro on HuffPost) that:

he would have to remove the shirt because it "had to do with religion" and "religion and state have to be separate," Couch recalled. Gebhardt later told Couch's mother Tonya that the T-shirt was "disrupting the educational process," according to the lawsuit.

"The lawsuit," against principal Gebhardt and the Waynesville school district was filed on Maverick Couch's behalf yesterday by Lambda Legal. There is, apparently, no organizational support in Maverick's community for gay and lesbian students, so it's only since his case became highly public that orgs like Lambda Legal and the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) have come to his aid.

Now on the one hand we have this story about the T-shirt being inappropriately "sexual," which is obvious nonsense. On the other hand, going back to that fateful day in Apriil 2011 when Maverick was summoned to principal Gebhardt's office,

Gebhardt said he would have to remove the shirt because it "had to do with religion" and "religion and state have to be separate," Couch recalled. Gebhardt later told Couch's mother Tonya that the T-shirt was "disrupting the educational process," according to the lawsuit.

The "religion and state have to be separate" argument is adorable, given that probably 99.9 percent of the "good Christians" who support principal Gebhardt's, er, position, and quite possibly principal Gebhardt himself, believe the exact opposite: that atheistic liberal commies are trampling on their God-given freedom to rub other people's noses in their religion any goddamn place they choose, and more than anyplace else right there in the schools.

The part about "disrupting the educational process" is pretty cute too, because it appears that the only one doing that was principal Gebhardt. In fact, one of the most interesting things about young Maverick's story i the un-disruptiveness that resulted when he decided to participate in GLSEN's annual April Day of Silence, "a day of action in which students across the country vow to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools."
Lila Shapiro writes:

At [Maverick's] school, which lacks any organization devoted to the gay community, he is one of few openly gay students. So, he alone was marking the day, wearing the T-shirt and a "No Hate" message written on his cheek in marker. He carried a white board so he could write messages (in lieu of talking) to communicate with teachers and classmates.

And he was surprised by the response.

All day long, Couch was pleased and surprised by how supportive his classmates and teachers were, he said. "Some people I don't even talk to on a daily basis came up to me and said, 'It's really cool you're wearing that shirt,'" Couch told The Huffington Post. "I did get a couple of negative comments like, 'You're a faggot,' but that happens. The support is what mattered." . . .

[N]egative reaction to his shirt came from only a couple of students and did not disrupt his classes, Couch maintains. The school has remained silent about the issue in press coverage.

Lambda Legal staff attorney Christopher R. Clark stressed to HuffPost that in the absence of significant disruption, there isn't even any legal issue.

"This isn't a gray area where we're trying to develop new law; it's really relying on law that has been settled for decades," Clark said.

Pointing to cases in which the Supreme Court has ruled favor of students' freedom of expression, "Students have the right to express themselves," Clark said. "The law doesn't consider it a substantial disruption if other people don't like the message."

Clark told HuffPost that 95 percent of cases like this are resolved just by sending a letter to the school.


WE'RE IN COUNTDOWN MODE FOR THIS
YEAR'S DAY OF SILENCE: FRIDAY, APRIL 20

The goal is to break the national silence on anti-LGBT bullying and harassment. GLSEN has loads of "Info + Resources," including guidance on the associated legal issues, and there's all kinds of information available online, including "Organize your own Day of Silence Action in 6 Easy Steps!"

Here's the TO LEARN MORE link, but if you want to win the T-shirt for your video, or to have your story of what the Day of Silence means to you chosen as one of three to be featured on the GLSEN website (for which the winners also get free "Day of Silence gear"), you'll have to act fast -- though I can't tell you exactly how fast, as the deadlines are given online as "11:59PM on Friday, April 8th," but April 8 is Sunday. (This Friday is the 6th.) There's more time to win a T-shirt by tweeting what the Day of Silence means to you during the "2 Weeks of Tees on Twitter," which runs through April 13.


UPDATE: THAT WACKY WAYNESVILLE SCHOOL DISTRICT SAYS
MAVERICK CAN EXPRESS HIS OPINION -- BUT ONLY ON THE 20TH!

This just in from Lambda Legal, which is representing Maverick Couch:

(Cincinnati, OH, Wednesday, April 4, 2012) -- Today, in a status conference with Judge Barrett of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Ohio, the Wayne Local School District agreed to permit Maverick Couch to wear his T-shirt bearing the slogan "Jesus Is Not a Homophobe" on one day only, GLSEN’s National Day of Silence, while the case proceeds. The Wayne Local School District made this concession after Lambda Legal filed suit and a motion for a temporary restraining order on Tuesday on behalf of Maverick, an openly gay junior who was threatened with suspension if he wore the T-shirt.

"We're glad that Maverick is able to wear his shirt on April 20th," said Christopher Clark, Senior Staff Attorney for Lambda Legal. "However, a student's First Amendment rights are not restricted to one day of the year -- we will continue to fight until Maverick is allowed to express who he is on any day he chooses." . . .

Here's the Lambda Legal website link for the case.

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A Final Thought About Xmas

Xmas is, after all, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. The head of the Roman Catholic Church-- one of the wealthiest institutions in the world, and with a history of exploitation of the masses that is unrivaled-- decried "materialism," but his operation is built on it. He may feel very uncomfortable about how obviously it betrays the essence of God's will ("It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" -- Matthew 19:24), but the realpolitik that has long ruled the Roman Church chose sides long ago, and it wasn't Jesus's.


In fact, for Jesus's teachings to be accepted by the rich and powerful, the Church had to find ways to tone down all the stuff that Jesus says to make them feel bad about exploiting the poor. It was never hard to find false prophets to explain away his words and make up nonsense about what he really meant to say. Much of America's peculiar brand of Christianity is based almost entirely on these false prophets, clearly servants of Satan-- if you believe that kind of stuff-- or, less abstractly, servants of self. American fundamentalism is based on fleecing the flock. They're working for the other side. That's why they're so cozy with the 1%, Satan's people, and why they're part of the backbone of Satan's political party, the GOP.

Christmas found Pat Robertson delivering a message of hatred, bigotry and Republican Party politics. Remember, he once even ran for the Republican presidential nomination, the Michele Bachmann of his day.

On The 700 Club, the Christian Broadcasting Network's flagship news program, Robertson also made a point of re-iterating his view of LGBT people not being "born this way," noting: "Normally speaking, a person who has acquired this can un-acquire it. We've had many people who have indeed left the homosexual lifestyle and gone into a heterosexual relationship and have been very, very happy. But all I can say is love the son, love the son, and show him what you consider a better way."

Earlier this month, Robertson sounded off on the Obama administration's pledge to use U.S. foreign aid to promote LGBT rights abroad, noting, "This country cannot continue to violate God's principles and to make a mockery of His laws and think we're gonna get away with it."

More serious theologians had other concerns around Jesus's birthday. Saturday I was tweeting about the inspiring message of Christ being delivered by the Archbishop of York:

We all have a duty to support and care for others, through good times and bad. We also have a duty to strive for a better society that is fairer and more equal.

Let us work hard to be part of the transformation in our society, fighting injustice wherever it arises. Our personal misfortunes ought to spur us on to help change the unfairness around us.

Despite the bleakness and uncertainty, we should not give up trying to be a force for good.

The British are renowned as a nation of battlers, people who stand up for what they believe in and will never give up in the face of adversity. We should remember our history and unite in troubled times, and not crumble under the strain that economic and social pressures put us under.

When we look at an overcast sky, we should not forget that the sun is still there shining with full strength. It is simply temporarily hidden by the clouds. As people of goodwill, we may not be able to stop rain clouds from forming, but we can help by providing cover for people who are most exposed: the young, and older people.

...Can it be right that public sector workers, and those who work in British industry, face losing their jobs when those high earners in the banking sector who helped cause the economic crisis not only keep their jobs but rake in massive bonuses?
Also, how can we have a situation where someone will suffer the devastation of unemployment while others in our society remain so overworked?

It’s not just a problem restricted to the job market. Look at the housing situation. Homelessness grows while estimates suggest that around a million homes are empty because they remain unlet or unsold – and this is without taking into account people who have second homes they rarely live in.

Young people and those on low incomes are effectively priced out of the housing market, and in many cases have no option but to pay high rents in the private sector because of a shortage of affordable housing.

We have created a situation where many people live in relative poverty, while others have far more than they can ever hope to spend. In fact, the divide between the wages of the rich and the poor is growing in nearly all of the world’s leading economies.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Surveys show that people do not feel that consumerism is necessarily a good thing, but they do it, knowing that it reduces time for more valuable things like time for friends, family and community. Let us not be a society that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Let us value the contribution that every individual can make, not only in the workplace, but also at home and in the public square.

While we hope and pray for change, it seems that in the meantime we must have hope and courage that a number of years with little or no economic growth can be turned into a time when we think creatively about how we could move towards a different kind of society.

I recently sponsored a Fairness Commission in York that looked at the importance of prioritising essential services to protect the most vulnerable at a time of cuts locally and nationally.

While there is no doubt that we need more sharing within our society, it is also clear that we need a more sustainable steady economy in which the emphasis is placed on greater equality, where all participate for the wellbeing of all.

Difficult choices have to be made, but people and justice must be at the centre of all decision-making in our country. When we forget the importance and worth of every single member of society, we have forgotten what it means to be human.

And in his Christmas Day sermon the more senior Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, had a similar message-- as far from what you'll hear from phony-baloney American "Christian"-conservative (Satanic) preachers of the rich as you can possibly get. He spoke of "broken bonds and abused trust" and "mutual obligation."

Speaking of this year's Austerity riots in the U.K., the archbishop said, "Whether it is an urban rioter mindlessly burning down a small shop that serves his community, or a speculator turning his back on the question of who bears the ultimate cost for his acquisitive adventures in the virtual reality of today's financial world, the picture is of atoms spinning apart in the dark."

He backs a "Robin Hood tax" on banking transactions. See how many "Christian" conservatives in this country you can find who would ever in a million years go along with that. As many, no doubt, as the camels passing through eyes of needles on their way to God's Kingdom.

What Will Happen To Paul Ryan If The GOP Really Does Provoke A Revolution?

I never thought the OccupyWallStreet/99% Movement could actually lead to revolution... until this morning when I watched the sickening video above. Those are our kids, the best of our kids, being pepper sprayed like roaches by that slob with the mustache. Combine it with the self-entitled and willfully ignorant attitude from this grotesquely corrupt-- but never arrested or punished-- congressman at a public hearing and the response from the American citizen... and you see the breaking point is getting closer and closer.

When Alaska crook Don Young attacked distinguished history professor Dr. Douglas Brinkley's work as "garbage" and called him "Dr. Rice," Brinkley reminded him that he works at Rice University and that his name is Brinkley. Young, who is clearly senile, flipped out. "I can call you whatever I want to if you sit in that chair. You be quiet," he hissed. Professor Brinkley wasn't intimidated by the foolish old congressman. "You don’t own me. I pay your salary. You work for me."

The good professor's statement clashes with the divine right attitude-- fueled more by raw cash this time around than anything else-- that is now 100% prevalent among conservatives. The cop in Davis doesn't work for us anymore than does Don Young. They work for the 1% and their job is the same: holding down the 99%.

That's why Krugman was right the other day when he said the SuperCommittee would fail-- and that we're lucky it will fail. The 1% want it all-- everything-- and they believe that that is their right. The institutions of the state are in their hands-- whether the pepper-spraying cop in Davis, the corrupt, reactionary congressman from Alaska, the SuperCommittee or, for that matter, the entire Inside the Beltway set up and that of most of the states. It's now just a matter of time before people won't take it any more.

A House Democratic leader said a U.S. deficit-cutting agreement can’t include the extension of Bush-era tax cuts, while an influential Republican said his House colleagues won’t back a deal calling for new tax revenue.

The disagreement underscores the crux of the problem facing a congressional panel seeking to meet a Nov. 23 deadline to trim at least $1.2 trillion from the deficit over the next decade.

Representative Jim Jordan, head of the Republican Study Committee, which pushes for deeper spending cuts, said any deficit-cutting proposal that includes a tax increase is unlikely to clear a majority of the House’s Republicans.

Representative James Clyburn, a Democratic member of the supercommittee, said if Republicans demand an extension of the tax cuts won by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 the chances of an agreement are dim.

“It would be difficult” to win passage of a supercommittee plan that includes more taxes, said Jordan, of Ohio, on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend.

“If it’s a net tax increase, this is the most fundamental principle within the Republican Party,” Jordan said. “This is a sacred trust I think we as Republicans have with voters.”

Sacred? Really? Sacred? Can you even be a Republican these days without absolutely loathing the message of Jesus Christ? I can't see how it would be possible to embrace Jesus and the GOP message. Their actual object of worship-- Ayn Rand and her adolescent philosophy of selfishness and greed-- is the basis of the religion of Republicanism and... Christianity it's not. Paul Ryan, more than most, has been willing it publicly embrace it-- and it's reflected in his hate-the-poor legislative agenda.



In yesterday's Washington Post moderate Ezra Klein examined Ryan's latest thrust against ordinary working families on behalf of those who have financed his political career and have promised to make him president. Klein views Ryan's "Inequality Report" charitably and treats it as a serious policy statement-- even finds some worthwhile points.

But more broadly, Ryan’s paper tries to create a false choice between reducing income inequality, encouraging economic mobility and accelerating growth. Toward the end, Ryan actually says the debate over inequality breaks down into two groups:

1. Is the problem simply that some households make more than others, in which case policymakers should be focused on closing this income gap by any means at their disposal, indifferent as to whether government policies aimed to close relative inequality result in lower absolute levels of income?

2. Or is the problem that incomes for households in the middle- and lower-quintiles are not rising fast enough, in which case policymakers should focus first and foremost on creating the conditions for income growth and job creation?

If there actually is anyone out there who believes we should be focused on closing the income gap no matter the cost to growth, I’ve never met them. Conversely, there actually are people who focus on what they think to be pro-growth policies without heed to the income gap. People like, say, Paul Ryan.

In 2010, the Tax Policy Center released a detailed analysis of the tax provisions in Ryan’s Roadmap for America. If you were in the top 1 percent, they found, Ryan’s plan would save you $350,000 a year. If you were in the middle of the income distribution, it would cost you $152 a year. And if you were in the bottom 20 percent, it would cost you $393 a year. That would undoubtedly increase inequality.

And there’s good evidence that increasing inequality is, ultimately, bad for growth. Over at the International Monetary Fund, Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry recently published a paper looking at the relationship between inequality and growth across the world. In a sense, they were testing Ryan’s proposition exactly. “Some dismiss inequality and focus instead on overall growth-- arguing, in effect, that a rising tide lifts all boats,” they write.

Berg and Ostry found that “high ‘growth spells’ were much more likely to end in countries with less equal income distributions.” Moreover, “the effect is large .?.?. closing, say, half the inequality gap between Latin America and emerging Asia would more than double the expected duration of a ‘growth spell.’?” And it was robust: “Inequality seemed to make a big difference almost no matter what other variables were in the model or exactly how we defined a ‘growth spell.’?”

Ryan also plumps for his Medicare reforms as a solution to inequality. As you’ll remember, his budget proposes converting Medicare into a voucher system where seniors would be given a check and sent into a regulated private market to purchase insurance. The plan saves money because the check would grow at the rate of inflation, while health-care costs often increase three times faster than inflation, so, quite quickly, the check would cover only a small portion of an individual senior’s costs.

For rich seniors, this wouldn’t much matter. They could easily afford the cost of private insurance. For middle-income seniors, or lower-income seniors, it would be a disaster. Ryan offers them some subsidies, but not nearly enough. The cost of coverage would quickly outpace the resources many of them have to pay for it.

I mention this because Ryan’s paper emphasizes the difference between “absolute” and “relative” inequality. “A century ago,” Ryan writes, “the average American lived a life that was dramatically different, in terms of what he or she could experience and obtain, from an elite like Rockefeller. In many important respects, the difference between ultra-elites and average Americans is less pronounced today.”

But that difference is less pronounced in large part because of programs like Medicare, which ensure that poor and middle-class seniors have access to health care of similar quality to that of richer seniors. So where Ryan’s analysis suggests the need to means-test Medicare and control health-care costs to ease inequality, the core of his health-care plan, the very plan he touts in the conclusion to his paper, would dramatically increase absolute health-care inequality for seniors.

So it’s good that Ryan has started thinking hard about inequality. But it would be better if he thought harder about what policy could do to address it, or at least to avoid making it dramatically worse.

Speaking of the Crap Christian Right: Is it possible to be too stupid even to be guilty of hypocrisy?

(As you can see, the YouTube head is a lie)

Are the nutters really so stupid that they don't

know what's truly meant to offend them?

by Ken

We all find ourselves on e-mail lists from the Other Side -- the Dark Side, the Utterly Loony Side -- and it's usually more trouble than it's worth trying to get off. (Not to mention, does one really want to make contact with those people?) Earlier this week I was privileged to receive such a communication from a crypto-journalist who chronicles the outrages of us lefties. This week he was in a high state of outrage over a moment from last week's Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. That's right, ladies and gints, the nutters have seen the enemy, and it's, uh, Larry David???

I could be wrong, but I think that our earnest nuttier was claiming that in a scene in the episode Larry urinated on a bible. If so, he was totally detached from reality. ("Quelle surprise," as certain Old Europeans might say.) Today I finally watched the episode, which is hilarious, and the simple fact is that absolutely nothing is "urinated on." What happens is that, because Larry's drug-conditioned urinary flow is now achieving rocketlike potency, a drop splashes rocketlike out of the john and up onto a cheesy image of Jesus posted on the bathroom wall right beside the john, such that the residents think it's a miracle: Jesus weeps!

The reason I'm assuming my nuttier says that Larry urinates on a bible is the form his withering outrage takes: Can you imagine the outrage if there were a depiction of urinating on a Koran? And surely he couldn't be suggesting any sort of equivalence between a tacky fake-Jesus picture and a Koran, could he? Could he???

So you get the train of the outrage, right? Christian religious artifacts, says our nuttier, can be violated without consequence, whereas the slightest disrespect shown to a Muslim holy book would bring down, well, I don't know, the wrath of Allah?

Every time I think my mind can't be more boggled than the Doodyhead Right has already managed, I'm set up for further boggling. This loon has got the whole thing backwards. After all, here he is screaming bloody murder over absolutely nothing, while the fact is that he and his evil Crap Christian hypocrite zealots not only wouldn't care if a Koran was defiled, they would cheer.

For God's sake (and I hope He's listening in on the bullshit being slung in His name), does this moron truly not recognize his own reference to urinating on a Koran. For once in his fervid pursuit of snares and delusions, he's not making something up. He's remembering one of the categories of behavior we were (too reliably) informed was perpetrated in our names by our representatives in the torture halls of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo?

Well, maybe the chump really doesn't recognize it. Consider just how hard lying sacks of ignorant doody like him have to work to block out all vestiges of reality from intruding on their lack-of-consciousness. They still will refuse to deal with the illegal as well as immoral behavior committed in their name under the watch of those agents of Satan Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, and not even God can make them.

Of course, what this fulminating asshole doesn't seem to notice (again, I only glanced at his screed) is that the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode is far from harmless in its view of the Crap Christian corporate enterprise. It's being suggested that the poor sad people who are the victims of the Crap Christian wizards in fancy dress are so abject, so beyond hope or help, that they actually tack fake-Jesus images on the wall beside their johns, and then believe their lives have been touched -- finally! -- by grace when all it is is an errant splash of urine.

In other words, with a certain amount of pity as well as derision, Larry seems to think those people are even more abject than he regularly portrays himself.


POSTSCRIPT: TO REVISIT REALITY FOR A MOMENT . . .

As a matter of fact, I loved that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. As Larry and Jerry Seinfeld work on their supposed Seinfeld reunion show, while neither of them seems (at least yet) to have slipped fully into spontaneous conversation, we are getting our first direct glimpses of the mind-meld that produced Seinfeld. Fabulous! On to tonight's episode!

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With 91 cosponsors, the Respect for Marriage Act (is that a great name or what?) is introduced to repeal and replace DOMA

UPDATE: THE LATEST ON DADT (see below)

"Today, in supporting this act, I am an arch conservative. Why is that? Because when you think about it, what have the conservatives said for all time about government's role? That government's role is to stay out of people's personal lives.

"This will allow people privacy and the right to make decisions that are most important to them. But most of all, it is about respect for what they decide to do with their own lives as long as they're not hurting anyone else. So what, I would ask, is a more intimate, more important, more critical decision, a more sacred decision than who we love -- and how we express that love?"

-- IL Rep. Mike Quigley, speaking yesterday at the introduction of the Respect for Marriage Act (at right is NY Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a prime mover of RMA)

"Whether this takes a year, six months, three years, what we're accomplishing here today is getting the ball rolling."

-- CO Rep. (and RMA sponsor) Jared Polis, at yesterday's press conference

by Ken

I know I keep making the point, but maybe I haven't made it enough: If the institution of marriage is in need of defending, there's nobody it needs defending from more than the people who pushed through the infamous Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a piece of raw sludge and loathing which had no purpose other than to satisfy the boiling inner loathing of all those hate-mongers who seek relief from their own poisoned existences by trying to enforce their misery on others.

How many more "Christian pillars" of their tight-assed slave communities have to be revealed as closet sex maniacs (if not outright sociopaths)? How many more fire-and-brimstone clergymen revealed as wife- and child-beaters, and little-boy-molesters for good measure? The American Crap Christian institution of marriage is basically a warehouse-factory for the preservation and development of raging sociopaths (usually male) and their immediate-family victims (usually female). (Male offspring of course start out as victims, but that's how the system shapes them into into full-fledged wife- and child-beating sociopaths.)

If these people had a shred of sanity or honesty, they would acknowledge that allowing same-sex couples to marry if they wish has absolutely nothing to do with the survival of marriage either as conventionally understood or as they understand it -- as a breeding ground for hatred, social maladjustment, and domestic violence. The more rigorously right-wing and fundamentalist the "defenders of marriage," the more horrific the stories of the women and children who escape from their clutches, or in vastly greater number are swallowed up by it.

The screeching tyrants of Crap Christianity go bonkers anytime anyone suggests as much as tinkering with DOMA, one of their proudest accomplishments, and at the same time a lingering source of shame for the sane people who let themselves be cowed into enacting and signing the thing (about some of whom more in a moment). This is why I find myself in need of a heckuva lot of hats for tipping to the people responsible for this news yesterday:

Nadler, Baldwin and Polis Introduce the Respect for Marriage Act to Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO), along with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) and Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), with a total of 91 original co-sponsors to date, introduced the Respect for Marriage Act in the House of Representatives. This legislation would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law which discriminates against lawfully married same-sex couples.

The 13-year-old DOMA singles out legally married same-sex couples for discriminatory treatment under federal law, selectively denying them critical federal responsibilities and rights, including programs like social security that are intended to ensure the stability and security of American families.

The Respect for Marriage Act, the consensus of months of planning and organizing among the nation’s leading LGBT and civil rights stakeholders and legislators, would ensure that valid marriages are respected under federal law, providing couples with much-needed certainty that their lawful marriages will be honored under federal law and that they will have the same access to federal responsibilities and rights as all other married couples. . . .

The Advocate's crackerjack Washington correspondent, Kerry Eleveld, has a thorough post on advocate.com on the announcement and the reaction to it, including the conspicuous absence among the bill's supporters of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank (who's not on board for various technical and practical reasons) as well as varying views on the content of the bill and its prospects. Not surprisingly, this is fine, likely indispensable reporting (what are the chances any infotainment-news reporter will bother to talk to the people Kerry did?). If you care about the nuts and bolts not to mention the ins and outs of the battle to come, read it.

Just now, however, I'm not -- for once -- in a nuts-and-bolts mood. I just want to take a brief look at the bigger picture.

First off, I have to say that "Respect for Marriage Act" is a brilliant name for a bill that, unlike the monstrous DOMA, really does show respect for marriage. The name might even put the loony opponents on the defensive. As a colleague pointed out, who could oppose something called the Respect for Marriage Act?

Not, for one, former President Bill Clinton, who signed DOMA into law in 1986. He sent a statement that was read at yesterday's announcement by New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, one of the prime movers of RMA:

“Throughout my life I have opposed discrimination of any kind. When the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, gay couples could not marry anywhere in the United States or the world for that matter. Thirteen years later, the fabric of our country has changed, and so should this policy.”

Of course we know who'll oppose RMA. In fact, they're already on the job. I don't know what the bill's prospects are, but I think 91 cosponsors is a pretty darned good start, and I want to offer a hat tip to each.

At least one of the 91 is a story in his own right. Oregon Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer told that story yesterday in a HuffPost piece, "Proudly Changing My Position on DOMA," which began:

On July 12, 1996 I cast the worst vote of my political career. Having served in public office since 1973, that says something. While I've made other mistakes, this was different: it was a deliberate vote that I knew to be poor public policy and was against my values. I've been a strong champion of civil rights and protections based on sexual orientation since I chaired the first legislative hearing on anti-discrimination legislation in 1973. Even worse, this vote was cast after careful consideration.

Having given it much thought, I was convinced that by voting for this one federal statute against the recognition of same-sex marriage, it would somehow take the steam out of the Newt Gingrich-Tom Delay Congress, which was using the homophobic right-wing agenda to mobilize their base at the expense of millions of gay, lesbian, transgendered, and bisexual Americans. My hope was to simply move on and get to more pressing business at hand, including smaller steps for equality based on sexual orientation, like legislation against employment discrimination.

Since I was an outspoken supporter of anti-discrimination, I assumed that my calculations would be understood by my friends in the community and that we would lay this obnoxious political vendetta to rest. Wrong on all counts.

It should have been obvious to me that we would not be able to quell this assault based on sexual orientation. Far from stopping it, this vote fed the bigotry. Once Congress had put its imprimatur on DOMA, it was a logical step for the homophobes and political cynics to intensify their efforts and make permanent a ban on gay marriage in both the U.S. and state constitutions -- spawning many state initiatives and intensifying the assault.

Barney Frank may have been correct "that there is zero chance of this bill becoming law in the near future," but Colorado Rep. Jared Polis, a leading RMA sponsor, was just as right when he said at yesterday's press conference, "Whether this takes a year, six months, three years, what we're accomplishing here today is getting the ball rolling."


UPDATE: WHAT ABOUT "DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL"?

Meanwhile, Kevin Naff reports for the Washington Blade that Pennsylvania Rep. Patrick Murphy has 166 cosponsors for his previously announced DADT repeal bill:

Murphy expects House hearings on DADT repeal
in early 2010

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) said he expects the House to hold hearings on a bill to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in winter or spring of 2010.

Murphy, speaking to the Blade at a Wednesday event sponsored by the Raben Group, a D.C.-based public affairs firm, also said he has 166 co-sponsors lined up for the measure and commitments from another 10 lawmakers to vote for the bill but not sponsor it.

Murphy took over as lead sponsor of the repeal effort in the House after Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) resigned her seat to take the job of undersecretary for Arms Control & International Security at the State Department.

Meanwhile, on the Senate side, prospects for ending the military's gay ban appeared to take a hit following the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who was expected to introduce a repeal bill in that chamber.

But earlier this summer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) announced plans for a fall Senate hearing on the policy.

Gillibrand issued a press release in July thanking Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for agreeing to the hearings. Levin has said he supports repeal.

Murphy said he is confident that other senators will step up to champion repeal in that body.

"It looks like we have the votes in the Senate," Murphy said, adding that Levin's support is critical to passage.

The winter-spring timetable for House hearings is consistent with public comments by gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) this summer that he expects Congress to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 2010.

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Wth the National Day of Prayer approaching, feel free to pray--as long as you do it the way the commandos who hijacked the day say you should

"I call upon every citizen of this great Nation to gather together on that day in homes and places of worship to pray, each after his or her own manner, for unity of the hearts of all mankind."
--President Ronald Reagan, proclaiming 1983's National Day of Prayer

It happens that next Thursday, being May 1 and therefore also the first Thursday in May, is the National Day of Prayer, as set forth by Congress in 1988. The day has existed in some form for much of the nation's history, but has been celebrated annually since the last year of the Truman administration, 1952.

In his 1983 proclamation of the National Day of Prayer, President Ronald Reagan argued that since 1952--

the National Day of Prayer has become a great unifying force for our citizens who come from all the great religions of the world. Prayer unites people. This common expression of reverence heals and brings us together as a Nation and we pray it may one day bring renewed respect for God to all the peoples of the world.

From General Washington's struggle at Valley Forge to the present, this Nation has fervently sought and received divine guidance as it pursued the course of history. This occasion provides our Nation with an opportunity to further recognize the source of our blessings, and to seek His help for the challenges we face today and in the future.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Thursday, May 5, 1983, National Day of Prayer. I call upon every citizen of this great Nation to gather together on that day in homes and places of worship to pray, each after his or her own manner, for unity of the hearts of all mankind.

"Each after his or her own manner."

"For unity of the hearts of all mankind."

True, President Reagan wrote as if "all mankind" is religious. But that's a discussion for another day, as is the question of whether we even ought to have a National Day of Prayer in a country whose founders had the wisdom to foresee that both the state and religion would prosper best if the state was kept the hell out of religious affairs and religion was damned well kept out of affairs of state. Foolish people have always tried to break down that ingeniously planned separation, and they win occasional battles, but so far they've never come close to winning their war against the Founders' shrewd idea of separating church and state.

The legality of the National Day of Prayer has withstood all challenges, and I really don't see much reason for the nonreligious among us to worry overmuch. It's a day, after all, for those who do believe, and it's hard to quarrel with the goals outlined by President Reagan.

Somewhere along the line, though, something happened, and it's hard to describe it as anything other than a hijacking of the National Day of Prayer by the most dictatorial and controlling elements of the Evangelical movements. As Bruce Falconer blogged yesterday in his post "Holy Wars: Evangelicals Attempt to Exclude Non-Christians From National Day of Prayer" on Mother Jones' MoJoBlog:

Shirley Dobson, wife of James Dobson, the conservative founder of Focus on the Family, is this year's chairperson of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a non-governmental organization based in Focus on the Family's offices in Colorado Springs and charged with organizing various events. According to Jay Keller, national field director of the Interfaith Alliance, Dobson has made a point of "excluding Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists, and even mainline Christians" from the National Day of Prayer.

Thanks to Dobson, this year's task force volunteers are required to sign pledges, stating: "I commit that NDP activities I serve with will be conducted solely by Christians while those of differing beliefs are welcome to attend." Volunteers must also affirm that they "believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God" and that "Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God." Such oaths violate the non-sectarian nature of the National Day of Prayer and clearly align "a government-sponsored event with a particular Christian denomination, in violation of the basic provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution," says Keller.

Now we come to the true horror. "Dr. Ravi Zacharias, the honorary chairman of this year's event, has refused to invoke the name of Jesus Christ in his official prayer, so as not to offend the faithful of other religions."

Pow! No mention of the name of Jesus Christ! You can imagine the effect this has had on the Fake Christians who plaster Jesus' name all over the place despite their obviously total unfamiliarity with any aspect of either Jesus' spirit or his teachings, which directly contradict pretty much everything our Fake Christians work so hard to shove down everyone else's throat.

Christian Newswire issued a fatwa, "Ashamed of Jesus at the National Day of Prayer," going after not just Zacharias but Mrs. Dobson for allowing Jesus' name to be bypassed. Blogger Falconer quotes this excerpt from the press release:

According to the truth of God's Word, the entire counsel of God, we do not pray in "God's Holy Name" to God the Father. We pray to God the Father in the name of His only Son, Jesus Christ, who alone provides us access to the Father. It is appalling that Dr. Zacharias is willing to capitulate to the un-Scriptural, interfaith ecumenism and discard the name of Jesus. NDP Chairwoman, Shirley Dobson, owes a biblical explanation to Christians around the nation as to why the name of Jesus is absent from the official prayer. We are not here as Christians to appease those of other world religions. We cannot come to God except through His Son's righteous merits. To pray as "Christians" in any other way is both a farce and a mockery. While other believers around the world are dying for that name, in America, Dr. Zacharias will not even breathe that name in his official public prayer because it might "offend".

If evangelical leaders want God's help in the midst of America's deepening national crisis, we must come to Him on His stated terms, not ours. Either God's Word is truth, or it is not. There is no middle ground. There are no special interfaith prayer models in Scripture for evangelical activists hoping to maintain conservative political coalitions. Such tacit denial of Jesus Christ will court God's righteous wrath, not His blessing. Dr. Zacharias owes an apology to those throughout history who have paid the ultimate price for their fealty to King Jesus. May God grant repentance to those pragmatic evangelicals who place cultural concerns before Scriptural truth.

Now of course these people are entitled to pray however they wish, and they are entitled to believe that they are the only ones who know how to pray correctly. There is, at the same time, not the slightest possibility that Jesus would be anything but horrified by their authoritarian and impositional beliefs, which are wholly unrelated to anything he believed or preached. He wouldn't have turned his back on them, of course. I imagine he would have tried to explain the errors of their ways, and prayed for them. But it seems impossible to believe that he would have been anything but appalled by their belief that they own this day of prayer.

Note that no one is telling, suggesting, or even in the teeny-tiniest way hinting to them how they should pray. In accordance with the religious freedom that we as Americans cherish, they have absolute, uncontested freedom to make their trashy mockery of the teachings of Jesus in any way they wish.

But of course this has nothing to do with their freedom of worship--or, really, with their worship in any sense. It has nothing to do with their free exercise of their religious beliefs, which remain totally unimpinged upon. They are totally free, as President Reagan put it, to gather in their places of worship to pray after their own manner, "for unity of the hearts of all mankind."

No, what the people who hijacked the National Day of Prayer are about is just about power, and coercion--their ability to bully everyone else, to make them cower, tremble, and cringe before the imagined majesty of their imagined piety.

A key thing to notice here is that the Fake Christians aren't just excluding non-Christians from the right to participate in the day of prayer--though it shouldn't be forgotten that they are unequivocally and forcefully doing that. No, they seem if anything more outraged by other Christians who deviate in any particular from their Jesus-trashing dogma.

As I always have to say when religion is up for discussion, I'm not categorically against it. There are lots of religious people whose faith inspires them to lead lives of admirable, even enviable humanity, purpose, and fulfillment. Jesus would have no trouble "getting" them, whatever the terms of their specific faith.

As regular readers know, my go-to guy in religious matters is Pastor Dan of the religion-and-politics blog Street Prophets, one of the clearest-headed and most humane thinkers I know. When the subject of the Evangelicals' gleeful exclusion of non-Christians from the National Day of Prayer was raised, he observed:

It's not just non-Christians. It's gotten so bad that Catholics and mainline Protestants feel quite alienated as well. I haven't had anything to do with it for years, and won't support my congregations' involvement.

Which, come to think of it, is probably just the way the Fake Christians who hijacked the prayer day want it. When there's "official" praying to be done, folks can just pray their way or the highway.

Pastor Dan comments more fully in a Street Prophets post:

It used to be that the NDP was an excuse for the church ladies to get together with their cronies from other denominations. In recent years, it's been getting more and more conservative. I personally won't have anything to do with it, nor will I support my churches' involvement in it. There's plenty of ways to work across faith lines that don't involve empowering the narrow-minded.

Pastor Dan quotes Randall Balmer quoting Barack Obama addressing the subject of religious absolutism at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania:

Obama suggested that the danger in the political realm is a kind of religious absolutism, and the danger to the faith is self-righteousness. “And it is important for us not to try to kill the debate by saying, ‘Well, God tells me I’m right, and so I’m not going to listen to you.’ Rather, we’ve got to translate whatever it is that we believe into a language that allows for argument, allows for debate, and also allows that we may be wrong.’”

"We have got to get serious about this stuff," Pastor Dan concludes.

The National Day of Prayer might sound like an irrelevant observance of no importance. But if people like Shirley Dobson have their way, their religion will choke out all others, leaving us with a weakened monoculture. It's not good for faith, and it's certainly not good for our politics. Obama may be pathologically addicted to dialogue, but in this case, he's got a point. Politics can't work without some difference of opinion, and faith . . . well, unless you're not telling me something, ain't nobody hearing the voice of God these days.

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