A Synonym For American Conservatism: Hypocrisy

AKA- Reverend Bukaki

The Southern Baptist Convention is made up of between 45,000 and 50,000 Baptist churches in the U.S.-- something like 15 million people. Heading it since 2010 has been stark-raving mad bigot, Frank Page, someone completing obsessed with homosexuality. He resigned Monday, trying to slither away unnoticed, and re-resigned Tuesday with this statement:

It is with deep regret that I tender my resignation from the SBC Executive Committee and announce my retirement from active ministry, effective immediately. As a result of a personal failing, I have embarrassed my family, my Lord, myself, and the Kingdom. Out of a desire to protect my family and those I have hurt, I initially announced my retirement earlier today without a complete explanation. However, after further wrestling with my personal indiscretion, it became apparent to me that this situation must be acknowledged in a more forthright manner. It is my most earnest desire in the days to come to rebuild the fabric of trust with my wife and daughters, those who know me best and love me most.

Page, a married man with two daughters, spent every day of the last decade thinking about penises. He refuses to define his "personal failing" or the "morally inappropriate relationship in the recent past" he has admitted. Everyone who knows him is wondering if he was more into sucking or being sucked, anally penetrating men or being penetrated by them... or even if the men he was having sex with were underaged boys. After all, he went to Gardner-Webb "University" in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, where that's kind of standard.

Page is best known for insisting that the New Heart Community Church be kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention because its pastor, Danny Cortez, had announced that he had changed his views on the acceptance of homosexuals in the congregation. At the time, he insisted that New Heart's "failure to condemn homosexuality breaks the heart of God."

While he was president of the SBC he was always blabbering about clergy sex abuse scandals and once told an ABC News reporter that "even one instance of sexual abuse by a minister is too much." At the first annual SBC meeting be presided over that adopted these resolutions:

RESOLVED, That we strongly recommend that Southern Baptist churches and Convention entities respond to any suspicions or allegations of child abuse in a timely and forthright manner; and be it further
RESOLVED, That we urge Southern Baptist churches and Convention entities to exercise moral stewardship by observing responsible employment practices, including performing criminal background checks on all ministers, employees, and volunteers; and be it further
RESOLVED, That we renounce individuals who commit heinous acts against children; and be it further
RESOLVED, That we renounce individuals, churches, or other religious bodies that cover up, ignore, or otherwise contribute to or condone the abuse of children; and be it finally
RESOLVED, That we pray for righteousness and justice to prevail in our land and intercede on behalf of victimized children, asking God to heal their deep emotional and physical wounds, grow them into mature and healthy adults, and stop the cycle of abuse from repeating itself in another generation.

Another sad hypocrite this week: Ann Coulter, who has been spending a lot of time publicly denigrating her old love object, Baal Señor Trumpanzee. How could she have been taken by surprise?

She’s still so bitter, but it’s not like she wasn’t warned.

Repeatedly.

Ann Coulter, the author of In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! has been having near daily hissy fits over Trump’s broken campaign promises.

In a piece in the Daily Beast today, Coulter is no less rankled, but she’s not making herself look better, either.

Coulter took part in a debate with neoliberal blogger Mickey Kaus, and said openly what some friends say she’d been saying privately for Trump’s entire first year.

“I knew he was a shallow, lazy ignoramus, and I didn’t care,” Coulter admitted to an audience largely composed of College Republicans and a few hecklers at Columbia University on Tuesday night.

“It kind of breaks my heart,” Coulter acknowledged of her disappointment with the president, and she recounted a profanity-laced shouting match she had with Trump in the Oval Office last year over what she saw as his lackluster follow-through on immigration policy. “He’s not giving us what he promised at every single campaign stop.”

If you didn’t care, why are you complaining now? Others could have (and did) told you he was full of it.

Coulter said she regrets nothing. "I’d do the exact same thing. I’d write the exact same book, with the exact same title. We had 16 lunatics being chased by men with nets running for president-- and Trump. So of course I had to be pedal-to-the-metal for Donald Trump. I’d been waiting 30 years for someone to say all these things."

The years of Obama-bashing have helped bring racism, sexism, and all the other "-isms" of hate out of the shadows

"The United States has never been "post-racial" as some would claim . . . . That said, prior to the emergence of Obama, outward expressions of virulent racism had been increasingly muted and forced underground by decades of hard work. . . . What has happened in the intervening years of the Obama presidency has been nothing less than a great unleashing -- the legitimization of racism and racist expression."

-- Bob Johnson, in "Conservative demonization of Obama
allowed racists to crawl out from under their rocks" (Daily Kos)

by Ken

Last night I indicated that I meant to come back to Ian Welsh's post yesterday, "In Light of Eric Garner," in which he urged us: "Understand this, if you understand nothing else: the system is working as intended." He argued that the Staten Island prosecutor case who succeeded in getting the grand jury to bring no indictment in Garner's death --

made the decision that the system wants: police are almost never prosecuted for assault or murder and on those rare occasions that they are, they almost always get off.

Donovan did what the legal system wanted him to do.

As for the police in question, well, they did what the legal system wants them to do, as well."

Where are several points here I wanted to come back to.

(1) THE PROPOSITION THAT "THE POLICE IN QUESTION
DID WHAT THE LEGAL SYSTEM WANTS THEM TO DO"

To argue this proposition, Ian works from "a transcript of [Eric Garner's] last words":

“Get away [garbled] … for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. Why would you…? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn’t do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me (garbled) Selling cigarettes. I’m minding my business, officer, I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. please please, don’t touch me. Do not touch me.”

”I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” he said, as officers restrained him.

"Defenders of the police," Ian says, will say that Garner "was non-compliant."

Non-compliant.

If a police officer tells you to do anything, you do it immediately.  If you do not, anything that happens to you, up to and including death, is your problem.

The legal system exists, today, to ensure compliance.

American oligarchical society rests on people not effectively resisting.  All gains now go to the top 10%, with the rest of society losing ground.  Incarceration rates blossom in 1980, which is also the year that the oligarchical program is voted in and becomes official.  (Trickle down economics can be understood no other way.)

Any part of the population which is inclined to resist, must be taught that it cannot resist.  Get out millions to demonstrate against the Iraq war: it will not work. Protest against police killings of African Americans, it will not work.

Nothing you do will work.

You will comply, and you will learn that resistance is futile. . . .

What's more, society finds the right people for its front-line compliance enforcement. Ian notes that "most of what police are paid is in social coin":

[T]he right to demand immediate obedience and fuck people up; the solidarity of the blue line; the feeling of belonging and power, is what makes the job worth having for (probably most) of the people who are now attracted to it.

Being a thug; having social sanction to be a thug, is enjoyable to a lot of people. Since that’s what cops get to do, those are the sort of people who tend to be attracted to the job. The police are the biggest toughest gang around, and belonging to them has most of the rewards of gang life, without the dangers of going to jail.

(2) THE FACT THAT PEOPLE "OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM"
REALLY NEED TO LEARN THE FUTILTY OF RESISTANCE

"The more outside the mainstream you are," Ian says,

the more you will learn it. African Americans, Latinos, poor whites (in that order.) Those who are fundamentally authoritarian, but somewhat opposed to the system (like the Bundy ranch) are treated more carefully (though the militia movement has its martyrs). But the fundamental lesson of life is to do what your lords and masters tell you to, and to not protest any law or order, no matter how nonsensical, trivial, or unjust it is. . . .

Compliance when given specific orders and learned hopelessness about protest or organizing are the aims. Ordinary citizens must understand that they cannot change the system if elites do not agree with the changes they want made If they try, they will be arrested and receive a criminal sentence, meaning they can never again have a good job.

In this system the wolves or goats identify themselves. An injustice is committed, people protest and the most aggressive protestors (which doesn’t always mean violence) are arrested. Certainly the organizers are. Those people are, as a result, usually destroyed economically even if they aren’t locked up for years.

The system is doing what it is meant to do. It teaches compliance, it teaches hopelessness and it identifies those who will not obey laws that don’t make sense (marijuana possession, for example), or who will fight or organize against the system and then it destroys them economically and often psychologically through practices like solitary confinement and prison rape.

The system will not change until those who want it to change have the raw power to force it to change, because it does serve the interests of its masters by destroying or marginalizing anyone who is actually a danger to oligarchical control of the system.

(3) THAT RACE ISN'T AN ACCIDENTAL COMPONENT OF THIS

The paragraphs I quoted above in connection with society finding the right people for its front-line compliance enforcement, and paying them mostly "in social coin," is preceded by this:

Race is an effective tool in this system, dividing the lower classes (and almost everyone is lower class now) against each other. No matter how bad a poor white’s life is, well hey, he ain’t black. He or she can feel superior to someone, can have someone to kick down at.

In this connection, in last night's post I also recommended I also recommended Bob Johnson's Daily Kos post "Conservative demonization of Obama allowed racists to crawl out from under their rocks," which argues just what the title suggests. I doubt that many DWT readers will need much persuading of the point that "the United States has never been 'post-racial' as some would claim," notably in the context of a black president in the White House.

Bob points out during the 2008 election campaign "the ugly racists in conservative leadership . . . spent months stirring racial resentment and fear based on Obama's 'otherness.' " He offers assorted examples, including "racist fear-pandering by anyone and everyone associated with Fox News," which collectively "set the stage for what was to come: nearly seven years of unending racist attacks, both overt and subtle."

And the effect, he says, has been "nothing less than a great unleashing -- the legitimization of racism and racist expression," which has undone such progress as had been made through "decades of hard work" that came before, whereby --

outward expressions of virulent racism had been increasingly muted and forced underground by decades of hard work. The most vicious racists had crawled under rocks, spewing their loathings in private or secret among others who shared their views.

And Bob describes and documents some of the ways in which the right-wing pols and media, despite earnest protestations to the contrary, have systematically exploited the race card to expand and consolidate political power. He points out, for example:

The rise of the Tea Party during the health care debate, no matter how contrived or staged, was simply the organizing by right wing power brokers of those holding racial resentments. The Tea Party provided racists with a sheepskin, euphemistically labeled "dissent," as a way to publicly espouse their virulent racial hatred.

On the Right, it's a win-win. For the troops who support the cause, it's more of Ian's payment "in social coin" -- a class of people to feel superior to. To the part of the country already infected with the virus of racism, the "vindication" of the killer cops in Ferguson and Staten Island is cause for celebration, bringing them more proudly, confidently, and visibly out in the open.

And for the oligarchs who exploit these sumbitches, it's legions of sumbitches to exploit. As Bob puts it:

Conservatives have fostered this retreat to gain power. It's a cynical strategy laced with abhorrent consequences for us all. It may take a long time to put that genie back in the bottle.

IT'S NOT JUST RACISM THAT THE RIGHT PROMOTES

As Howie noted in an October 22 post ("At The Root Of The Republican Party War Against Women -- Primitive Southern Baptists"), I have been kind of obsessed with a piece by Thomas Powers in the October 9 New York Review of Books, "Texas: The Southern Baptists in Power."

Formally, the subject at hand is the rise of the Southern Baptists to political control in Texas, enforcing an agenda of virulent racism, sexism, and homophobia. But of course it's not just Texas, and it's not just racism. This chunk of the Powers piece that haunts me:

The goal of “the Christian Right” as it waded into American politics was not vanilla concern with good government, but something gem-hard and Bible-based. The word “inerrant” is unfamiliar to most Americans, who take a softer view of religion than Southern Baptists. Dressing up for church, helping the poor, praying for peace, the sweet hope of marriage vows, the solace of ashes to ashes and dust to dust at the graveside—that seems to cover it for most Americans. Southern Baptists have an iron spine forged in a hotter fire: they believe salvation is what the universe is all about; the way to be saved is spelled out in the Bible; you can trust the Bible because everything in it is true, and that includes the story of Eden—woman’s role in man’s fall.

At the SBC’s annual meeting in Kansas City in 1984 the fundamentalists pushed through a resolution barring the ordination of women “because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall.” With this measure the fundamentalists closed a perfect loop. Women were not allowed to be “over” men, which means they cannot teach men where religion is concerned, which means they cannot be ordained and serve as pastors, which means they cannot challenge the interpretation of the biblical verses that confine them to a secondary status. Driving the resolution was a fear held in common with their fundamentalist brothers in the Muslim and Jewish worlds—fear of the loss of control of women.

Increasingly, now, the "mainstream" world that Ian Welsh sees the oligarchs defending so relentlessly looks very much like the primitive view of mankind Thomas Powers describes in his piece. And it's open season for all the "-isms" that target the groups that stand defiantly outside their mainstream. From the hate-mongerers' standpoint, the cool thing is that different "-isms" have stronger appeal to different target groups, and they happily reinforce one another. Once you're free to hate one group, you've got a free pass to hate any other one.


WE'RE SEEING THE RESULTS IN THE FORM OF
"ABHORRENT CONSEQUENCES" ALL AROUND US

We see the results in the form of "abhorrent consequences" all around us. It's been a while, notably, since contempt for and hatred of women could be expressed as openly as it has once again come to be. Does anyone believe that the orgy or rape happening all around us -- on campuses and in the military, for sure, but everywhere else as well.

Which is why it seemed to me at the time important to try to correct the nearly universal misunderstanding of what poor Todd Akin mean with his clumsy reference to "legitimate rape." It was obvious to anyone who looked at what he actually said that he wasn't saying that rape itself is in any way "legitimate." He was, instead, distinguishing what he takes to be an extremely small number of real, or "legitimate," rapes relative to the large number of claimed or supposed rapes. This is an increasingly prevalent view on the Right: that all those women who are crying "rape" weren't really raped. They're just trying to get back, for disturbed reasons of their own, at men being men (and boys being boys), doing to women just what God created women to have done to them.

This is also why, incidentally, the apparent fiasco of the Rolling Stone University of Virginia gang-rape story is a disaster. Among people looking for proof that the vast majority of claimed rapes aren't "legitimate" rapes, it will be taken as final proof.

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At The Root Of The Republican Party War Against Women-- Primitive Southern Baptists

Yesterday, inspired by George Will's latest kvetching about the anti-women record of his boy Cory Gardner (R-CO), we took another look at the Republican Party War on Women. Ken sent me a fascinating article by Thomas Powers in the New York Review of Books, Texas: The Southern Baptists in Power and rather than update yesterday's post, let me share a couple of paragraphs that pertain to American women's Southern Baptist problem. We'll start with the 1980 evangelical conference in Dallas when Reagan won their hearts by declaring, "I know you can’t endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you."

Reagan and his advisers sensed that Texas Baptists were at the heart of a major change brewing in America. Talk about red states and the Tea Party suggests something new in the world but Reagan was joining the Baptists to reject pretty much everything "modern" to emerge in American culture and society over the last two centuries. The three that most disturbed the Bible Belt South were the end of slavery, the "theory" of evolution that cast doubt on the literal truth of the Bible, and the emancipation of women.

The goal of "the Christian Right" as it waded into American politics was not vanilla concern with good government, but something gem-hard and Bible-based. The word "inerrant" is unfamiliar to most Americans, who take a softer view of religion than Southern Baptists. Dressing up for church, helping the poor, praying for peace, the sweet hope of marriage vows, the solace of ashes to ashes and dust to dust at the graveside-- that seems to cover it for most Americans. Southern Baptists have an iron spine forged in a hotter fire: they believe salvation is what the universe is all about; the way to be saved is spelled out in the Bible; you can trust the Bible because everything in it is true, and that includes the story of Eden-- woman’s role in man’s fall.

At the SBC’s annual meeting in Kansas City in 1984 the fundamentalists pushed through a resolution barring the ordination of women "because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall." With this measure the fundamentalists closed a perfect loop. Women were not allowed to be "over" men, which means they cannot teach men where religion is concerned, which means they cannot be ordained and serve as pastors, which means they cannot challenge the interpretation of the biblical verses that confine them to a secondary status. Driving the resolution was a fear held in common with their fundamentalist brothers in the Muslim and Jewish worlds-- fear of the loss of control of women.

The war over women, heating up through the 1970s as the Equal Rights Amendment moved state-by-state toward ratification, brought conservative Baptists into national politics, something they had traditionally avoided. [Author Robert] Wuthnow cites a crucial moment in November 1977 when two contending groups of politically active women met in Houston to battle for and against the ERA. The conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly had been accusing liberals of "trying to cram the Equal Rights Amendment down our throats with federal money." She called it "a grab for power" and vowed to defeat the ERA-- something that appeared almost impossible in 1977, when ratification by only a few additional states was needed to add the amendment to the Constitution.

In Houston the liberals were full of confidence and open to everything, not just the ERA. At the Pro-Life Rally in Houston where Schlafly was a keynote speaker she felt an instant change in public mood: the left went too far, she argued, and "sealed its own doom by deliberately hanging around its neck the albatross of abortion, lesbianism, pornography and federal control." Schlafly proved right; the percentage of American women backing the ERA fell from 67 in 1976 to 48 two years later, when Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler were organizing their coup in the Southern Baptist Convention. Citing polls as he goes, Wuthnow charts the rise of the Republican right in Texas, eroding and then erasing support for the rights of women and minorities on a host of issues. Sometimes the right stumbled, as Clayton Williams did with a throwaway remark about rape during his campaign for governor against Ann Richards in 1990-- "As long as it is inevitable you might as well lie back and enjoy it." Williams lost but noted later that his campaign had a lasting effect-- "I made it OK for Bubba to vote Republican."

Running on a Southern Baptist platform, George W. Bush, with the support of Bubba, beat Richards in 1994 and helped turn Texas as red as a Communist flag. Powers reminds us that, more than almost any other state in the Union, "Texas is a state of dramatic inequalities-- between white and black, between Anglo and Latino, between rich and poor, between men and women. White male non-Hispanics with money run the show and have a history of vigorous action to retain control... Texans fought a civil war to keep their slaves, then excluded African-Americans from the vote with physical violence, poll taxes, intimidating literacy tests, and a legally sanctioned, whites-only Democratic primary. Voter ID laws enacted in recent years have the same transparent purpose-- to intimidate and exclude. Votes for women were resisted for decades and efforts by the state to discourage, limit, or ban abortion have been unrelenting and appear close to success."

Powers wraps it up that Wuthnow, in his book, Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State, is quite clear about what's roiling Texas in particular and the Bible Belt-- or Old Confederacy-- in general: "questions of political and social control. In the South, he finds, the new Republican Party wants exactly what the old Democratic Party wanted for a hundred years-- power to control people of color, Latinos, women, tax policy, who judges the law, who issues the regulations, who maps voting districts, and, oh yes, whether it’s okay to put a Nativity scene on the State House lawn."




UPDATE: A Few Words From Ken On Primitive Religions

One of the thoughts that has been percolating in my head from Tom Powers's piece is:

You take your Southern Baptists and your Catholics and your Mormons-- three gangs that through history were united only in their consuming hatred for one another-- and they now form a sort of United Front for Primitivism. Whether their religions are being used for justification or pretext, they have merged religion and politics in the interest of upholding the Ancient Verities of sexism, racism, and any other kind of social "other"-ism.

Is it possible that Crap Christianity -- based on ignorance and savagery -- is finally on the defensive?

"Millions of American evangelicals are absolutely shocked by not just the presidential election, but by the entire avalanche of results that came in," , said in an interview. "It's not that our message -- we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong -- didn't get out. It did get out.

"It's that the entire moral landscape has changed. An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them."

-- R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary (in Louisville, KY)

by Ken

I've been nursing this story for more than a week now, waiting for an opportunity to explore and augment it, and speculate and counterspeculate, but it doesn't look as if any of that is going to happen anytime soon, so let's just go with this NYT report by Laurie Goodstein, "Christian Right Failed to Sway Voters on Issues," the source of the quote above from R. Albert Mohler Jr., which I for one can hardly believe I'm hearing from the mouth of the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The NYT piece actually goes a good deal further than the timid headline suggests, providing grounds for thinking that:

(1) The Religious Right, which for so long now has seemed impervious both to reality and to challenges to its rampaging immorality, is kind of shook up over what happened on November 5.

Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide -- especially on gay issues -- has shifted against them.

They are reeling not only from the loss of the presidency, but from what many of them see as a rejection of their agenda. They lost fights against same-sex marriage in all four states where it was on the ballot, and saw anti-abortion-rights Senate candidates defeated and two states vote to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

It is not as though they did not put up a fight; they went all out as never before: The Rev. Billy Graham dropped any pretense of nonpartisanship and all but endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Roman Catholic bishops denounced President Obama's policies as a threat to life, religious liberty and the traditional nuclear family. Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition distributed more voter guides in churches and contacted more homes by mail and phone than ever before.

And: (2) Noncrazed voices from the world of faith are finally starting to be heard pushing back above the roar of Crap Christian craziness.

Meanwhile, religious liberals are gradually becoming more visible. Liberal clergy members spoke out in support of same-sex marriage, and one group ran ads praising Mr. Obama's health care plan for insuring the poor and the sick. In a development that highlighted the diversity within the Catholic Church, the "Nuns on the Bus" drove through the Midwest warning that the budget proposed by Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, would cut the social safety net.

Oh, reporter Goodstein quotes a healthy share of eternally implacable voices of the Crap Christian Right -- dunderheads like Bob Vander Plaats and Ralph "Sure, I'm a Crook, but So What?" Reed declaring that while something-or-other seems possibly to have happened in this election, it's just a technical glitch, and nothing will deter them from the lifelong struggle to see the triumph of ignorance, hatred, and indecency.

And she quotes "Christian leaders" who "pointed to other factors that may have blunted their impact in this election." You know, stuff like the shocking outrageousness of buttholes like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. The problem with this "defense" is that it ignores how overwhelmingly the Crap Christian Rightists believe exactly the same things but are merely more tactful about saying so. As we know, on matters of sexual policy, there is no difference whatsoever between, say, Akin and Great White Hope Young Paul Ryan.

What happens to the pillars of Crap Christianity if American Christians figure out that there's no difference between the beliefs of acknowledged crackpots like Todd Akin (right) and closet cuckoo Young Paul Ryan (left)?

However, even those "religious leaders," says Goodstein,

acknowledge that they are losing ground. The evangelical share of the population is both declining and graying, studies show. Large churches like the Southern Baptist Convention, which has provided an organizing base for the Christian right, are losing members.

"In the long run, this means that the Republican constituency is going to be shrinking on the religious end as well as the ethnic end," said James L. Guth, a professor of political science at Furman University in Greenville, S.C.

And Goodstein takes pains to indicate that the problem extends beyond the evangelical twits to their new peas-in-a-pod allies, the bedrock of Crap Christianity, the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

The election outcome was also sobering news for Catholic bishops, who this year spoke out on politics more forcefully and more explicitly than ever before, some experts said. The bishops and Catholic conservative groups helped lead the fight against same-sex marriage in the four states where that issue was on the ballot. Nationwide, they undertook a campaign that accused Mr. Obama of undermining religious liberty, redoubling their efforts when a provision in the health care overhaul required most employers to provide coverage for contraception.

Despite this, Mr. Obama retained the Catholic vote, 50 to 48 percent, according to exit polls, although his support slipped from four years ago. Also, solid majorities of Catholics supported same-sex marriage, said Dr. [Robert P.] Jones, the pollster [chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute].

I'm strictly an observer on Catholic issues, but I've been shocked by how far, how insanely and openly far, the U.S. bishops have lurched to the right -- clearly under heavy pressure from the recent run of devil-popes, John Paul II and his successor, Pope Cardinal Ratguts. They have given themselves over so wholeheartedly to insanity, hatefulness, and blind immorality that if I were an American Catholic, I would "just say no" to any word that comes out of their debased mouths.

Goodstein has noticed.

Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, who serves on the bishops' domestic policy committee, said that the bishops spoke out on many issues, including immigration and poverty, but got news media attention only when they talked about abortion, same-sex marriage and religious liberty. Voters who identify as Catholic but do not attend Mass on Sunday may not have been listening, he said, but Catholics who attend Mass probably "weigh what the church has to say."

"I think good Catholics can be found across the political spectrum," Bishop Soto said, "but I do think they wrestle with what the church teaches."

I'd like to believe that American Catholics were as shocked and appalled as I was by the U.S. bishops' savage organized assault on American nuns, the only group inside the walls of Catholic officialdom which is demonstrating an understanding of and commitment to real Christian values -- you know, the kinds of things that Jesus preached. (See Garry Wills's remarkable April NYRB blogpost "Bullying the Nuns." My post about it seems to have disappeared, but not the May follow-up, "Bullying the nuns (cont'd).")

Like the rest of the modern-day Right, the Crap Christians have become so divorced from reality that they really appear to believe they can have their way no matter how far over the edge of sanity and decency they plunge. If they had as much as one working brain amongst the whole lot of them, they would be on their knees to the nuns, begging them to save them -- from themselves.

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Paul Ryan Ready For Real People? Probably Not... But Tampa Should Be Fine

After having banned most Republican stars from the Tampa convention stage-- from Palin, Bachmann, New and Santorum to Ron Paul, who's retiring and practically begged Romney twice for a chance to say good-bye-- the Romney campaign announced yesterday that Chris Christie will give the keynote and that Marco Rubio will introduce Mitt. A Koch brother is a delegate and will mingle with his subjects. This is shaping up to be a real snoozefest-- although Tampa health officials are bracing for a possible outbreak of sexually transmitted diseases.

Prostitution in the Tampa Bay area is expected to increase during the Republican National Convention. But will that lead to the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases?

We asked that question of a county health official, a high-end escort, and an academic expert. The answer is complicated.

..."Mary" isn't taking any chances. The high-end escort from Tampa has a plan.
Before she even meets her clients, she has a good idea of who they are.

"I want to talk to these people. I want to know who I'm seeing, why I'm seeing them," she says.

But what a simple screening doesn't reveal is whether they have a sexually transmitted disease-- a risk factor that is not lost on Mary. 

"There is no safe sex, there's safer sex, I mean you can get sick from drinking after someone, let alone kissing them!”

It's a job hazard that has her taking steps to keep herself safe. 

"I get tested. And a lot of my girlfriends do too," she says.

But long before it even gets to that point, she protects herself. 

"Condoms, condoms, condoms, condoms, condoms, condoms, female condoms, male condoms, dental dams, condoms…what else? Condoms," she says.

Back to that question-- do political conventions lead to the spread of STDs?

Researcher Scott Cunningham, a professor at Baylor University, says the risk seems to depend on the type of prostitute sought and who is seeking them.

"It would be like saying there is such thing as a car, and you treat the car market as if there is just one thing," he says.

First of all, clients at the RNC may be different than at an event like the Super Bowl.

"That's where the public health question becomes a little bit more complicated,” he says, “if you are bringing in a lot of young men who are drinking a lot to a sports event, I think you have more reason to think they might be transmitters of STDs.”

He says that’s because these men are more likely to contact higher risk prostitutes-- women who may take on more clients and be less likely to use protection.

Through his research, Cunningham has found that the clients at political conventions tend to be older men who are more likely to hire high-end escorts.

And Tampa's 50 strip clubs are expecting a bonanza from Republican delegates, who, the club owners say, drop three times more cash on hookers and booze, etc than Democrats do.

“The average was $150 for Republicans and $50 for Democrats.”

As further evidence of the clubs’ nonpartisan appeal, Don Kleinhans, the owner of the 2001 Odyssey, said when the Promise Keepers, a male evangelical group, came to town years ago, business was rollicking.

“We had phenomenal numbers all weekend, and they walked in wearing badges and name tags and weren’t shy at all,” he said.

There's even a Sarah Palin impersonator, Lisa Ann (from the popular porn flic, Who's Nailin' Paylin?), appearing at a top strip club, Thee Dollhouse on August 24 and 25. And the gigantic Republican closet case contingent-- from relatively open gays like Lindsay Graham, David Dreier and Aaron Schock, to deeply closeted freaks like Patrick McHenry and Trent Franks. Words of wisdom from Republican pedophile and former Florida Congressman Mark Foley:



But political junkies are much more interested in knowing what went on behind the scenes in Romney's terrible running-mate choice than what goes under between the sheets between hypocritical Family Values Republicans. For example, the NY Post reported that keynoter Christie could have had the VP nomination... if he was only willing to resign as governor. That doesn't ring true but Joe Hallett 's analysis/Op Ed in Sunday's Columbus Dispatch about how Portman lost the nomination does. Hallett, the dean of Ohio political writers, thinks Romney may have blown the election by passing over Portman for the more controversial Ryan.

[I]n bypassing Portman for Ryan, the Republican presidential candidate made a big mistake. Paul Ryan doesn’t get Mitt Romney anything he already won’t get.

Portman, after all, made so much more sense as the GOP veep candidate. He could have been announced during Romney’s bus tour through Ohio this week.

It appears, though, that Romney kowtowed to his party’s far-right flank, selecting Ryan to appease the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and the ultra-right-but-rarely-right William Kristol of the Weekly Standard. They pulled hammies last week doing cheerleading jumps for Ryan.

Romney, they opined, needs an uncompromising advocate for conservative principles such as Ryan to consolidate the GOP’s base and present an economic vision totally different from President Barack Obama’s. Never mind, they argued, that Obama would use Ryan’s draconian budget proposal to scare seniors-- he would do that whether or not Ryan was on the ticket.

Rest assured now that Obama will tie Romney to the budget Ryan proposed as House Budget Committee chairman, including unpopular cuts to Medicare, and try to demagogue his way to a second term.

Memo to Journal editors and Kristol: Romney doesn’t need a far-right running mate to consolidate the base. The base is consolidated. It is fired up. Obama does that for Romney. Get out of NYC and D.C., come to Ohio, and see for yourselves.

...Portman is not Mr. Excitement, but he exudes a warmness and competence that would have allured presidential-election voters. After evaluating his congressional experience and White House service under both Presidents Bush, voters would have felt comforted knowing that Portman is a No. 2 ready to be No. 1. Ryan doesn’t inspire that confidence.

The last time Ohio had a vice presidential candidate was in 1944. Republican Gov. John W. Bricker helped Thomas Dewey carry the state against Franklin D. Roosevelt by a 0.37 percentage point. Romney just might become president if Portman were to do that for him. Instead, Romney might have blown his best chance to win the most crucial state in the election.

Romney just made becoming president harder for himself.

Jimmy Carter: Male religious leaders have "overwhelmingly chosen" to "subjugate" rather than "exalt" women

Authentic Christians: Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter

"Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it."

-- former President Carter, in an op-ed in The Age

by Ken

When Jimmy Carter's in a funk, you don't want to mess with him. Apparently the Southern Baptist Convention still hasn't gotten the message.

The former president left the church in which he was raised very publicly in 2000, saying, "I have been disappointed and feel excluded by the adoption of policies and an increasingly rigid SBC creed, including some provisions that violate the basic premises of my Christian faith." The press release he issued said that he and Rosalynn preferred to associate with "other traditional Baptists who continue to share such beliefs as separation of church and state, servanthood and not domination of pastors, local church autonomy, a free religious press and equality of women." He stressed his objection to the SBC's rigid enforcement of its objectionable new doctrines, to the point of excluding those who resisted.

At that time, though, the Baptist Standard reported, "He said he will remain a deacon and Sunday school teacher at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains and support the church's recent decision to send half of its missions contributions to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship."

President Carter wrote about this latest crisis of conscience for, of all venues, the Australian national newspaper The Age. That remarkable op-ed piece has gotten some attention, but not nearly enough. At a time when the country is choking on our epidemic of Crap Christianity, it's both startling and in the deepest sense reassuring to hear the authentic voice of "a practising Christian."

THE AGE

Losing my religion for equality

Jimmy Carter
July 15, 2009

Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.

I HAVE been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices - as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. We have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: "The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable."

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world's major faiths share.

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

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