The Wrightwing

Over on NoGodBlog, the ‘house’ Blog of American Atheists, there is a post and comment thread about an attempted railroading of an Oklahoma Atheist family because their daughter objected to being forced into a prayer circle in her tax-payer funded Public School. The story is chilling in what can happen in America today. It is not just Islam that will engage in oppression and tyranny when it gains hegemony over a community. Without a courageous attorney and the support of American Atheists, and innocent man may have been imprisoned and a family run out of a state, forced to abandon their home and business.

So far, this case has attracted little attention outside the Atheist and Freethinker community. I can find no news sources on Google that mention it. Yet the only things this family did not endure were night riders and lynchings.

Corrupt and lying school officials, police, prosecutors and judges, along with biased and bigoted attorneys seeking to exploit and cheat them. It is a story out of the Jim Crow South. All you would need to do is change ‘Atheist’ to ‘African’ and you could not tell this story from others of that era.

Which brings me to arms.

I spend a lot of time, more than I probably should, on the NoGodBlog discussing and arguing with Atheists over politics, against collectivism and gun control, which many, though far from all, seem to support. At least within that grouping.

But one fellow there had a change of heart on guns, like I did over 25 years ago:

…I used to think as you do. I used to believe that guns were evil and the people that rely on them are cowards, afraid to back up what they say and do with little else but violence.

I swore I would never resort to gun promotion.

Then I took a job that required me to be armed, to take on the responsibility of protecting others. I leared how to safely handle a firearm.

The gun changed in meaning to me. I realized that it was little more than a tool. A tool when, in the right hands, has as much potential for good as it does for evil! Gun ownership did not transform me into a criminal. It did not give me any more desire to use a firearm on another human being than I already possessed.

It made me question the reason a free nation needs such a tool at all. I had my epiphany - arms make and keep humanity free and safe. Our revolutionaries did not merely bander harsh language with a tyrranical, abusive theocracy. They took lives and gave their own because they believed in their freedom!

I know how I must sound to you. Paranoid, delusional, even insane? I assure you that I’d have held those same sentiments not so terribly long ago! But I was an idealist. I believed in our police, our courts, our laws (and for the most part still do).

But I’ve also taken the bitter pill of realism, I’ve stood face-to-face with men that threatened my very life and the live of those I love. I’ve been forced into the harsh light of the truth: we will never, as a species, stop killing one another and we will never live in the utopias we dream of. The only solution to certain kinds of people will always be violence and it can only be met with violence.

There is more. Go and read the entire post and comments. A worthy story to become familiar with.

In my mostly wasted youth I was also very anti gun. I had stickers on my car from Handgun-Control Inc. The ones with a revolver inside an international ‘NO’ symbol, the circle-slash.

Then I went into the Army, (for the wrong reasons and all too briefly), and actually used some: M-16, M-60, M1911, M2, as well as taking the Armorer course, (not intentionally, it was ‘on the way’).

I still thought they should be severely restricted, but also kept reading on the subject, (among many). Being an activist in the LP, though coming to it from the left, for reason of personal freedom such as an end to Drug Prohibition, as well as an obsessive reader, I was exposed to ideas and thinkers from a wide variety of sources.

Having read the arguments on both sides, and having experience with arms, how they operate and their capabilities and just as important, their limitations, my mind was changed.

Everything I have seen, including the tragedies, since then has only reinforced my belief, a belief based on empirical evidence.

Like drug prohibition, gun prohibition is worse that whatever social ills it is supposed to cure.

While gun prohibition is no guarantee of political tyranny, it sets the stage. Every oppression or slaughter of minorities in history has been prefaced by a disarming of the targeted group. Go back in history before firearms were invented and you will see it. Look at modern history and you will see it.

In the past century alone, disarmed populations have been slaughtered in Armenia, Germany, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Uganda, Somalia, Rwanda, more.
The banning of guns has lead to massive increases in crime in Jamaica, Britain and Australia, not to mention cities like Washington, D.C. and Chicago.

Guns in the hands of individuals can lead to tragedies, but they are tragedies limited to what a single person can do.
Guns in the hands of governments, without an equally armed populace to restrain that government, leads to tragedy on a national scale, if not outright slaughter.

Minorities of all persuasions, racial, religious, political, all of them, should always keep arms, and not let the government know it.

The day the government decrees that you must give up your arms is the day you must use them, even if it is just to flee over the border to the safety of asylum in another country.

Why the First Amendment?

This is why:

A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit. The religion (if any) of a second family in the lawsuit is not known, because they’re suing as Jane and John Doe; they also fear retaliation. Both families are asking relief from “state-sponsored religion.”
…
Classmates accused Alex Dobrich of “killing Christ” and he became fearful about wearing his yarmulke, the complaint recounts. He took it off whenever he saw a police officer, fearing that the officer might see it and pull over his mother’s car. When the family went grocery shopping, the complaint says, “Alexander would remove the pin holding his yarmulke on his head for fear that someone would grab it and rip out some of his hair.”

In addition:

Special privileges for christian students not available to jews or other non-christians, taunts, physical harassment, deliberate, premeditated violation of law and U.S. Supreme Court rulings by both the school board and a local judge.

Sounds to me there area few folks down there that need to start looking to their Second Amendment rights. And it aint the christians.

hat tip fark

The Boy Scouts require a belief in a god or supreme being to be a member.

But how about more than one god?

The leader in a room of about 20 Scouts decides to break the ice by showing how religiously diverse the gathering is.

By a showing of hands, he asks who belongs to the Baptist Church, the Catholic Church, the Methodist Church, continuing on until two boys are left who have not raised their hands.
One of the brothers is called out to tell the group what church he attends. He replies, “I’m Wiccan.”

Little did 12-year-old Cody Brown realize how much that answer would affect his life.

They are thrown out by the local Methodist church that sponsored the troop and the Scout Master tells their father that if the boys had lied about their faith there would have been no problem. Is lying in the “morally straight” part of the oath, or part of the Scout Law they pledge to uphold?

The Methodist District Committee over-ruled the local church, but too late, the kids had been booted.

The boys father is a former Eagle Scout and an active duty Army Captain fighting and risking injury and death for the rights of the Boy Scouts. But all of that does not matter.

They are now on the list to see if they can start up a Wiccan version of scouting called Spiral Scouts.

Is this where we are going in this country? Will we need scouting organizations split along religious lines?

Christian, Jew, Muslim, Wiccan, Hindu, Atheist, Universalist, Shinto, Buddhist.

Where will it end?

How balkanized will we allow ourselves to become?

All of this because a few bigoted old men in the BSA insist on smearing the good name of the BSA, which has done so much good for so many decades. Smearing it with the stains of intolerance, bigotry and refusal to accept a diverse and changing society.

What a shame. What a sad, sorry shame.

Since last Thursday, when Andrew Sullivan noted the survey that detailed just how hated atheists are in the U.S., he has had a series of posts and exchanges with readers on religous freedom.

Today, he points to what Thomas Jefferson wrote about children being taken from parents due to lack of religion on the part of parents, as well as to a very long article Eugene Volokh and Gary T. Schwartz have written for the New York University Law Review on judicial discrimination against Atheist parents.

From the introduction, some of which A.S. also quotes:

“Percy Bysshe Shelley was a poet and a cad. He married his wife, Harriet Westbrooke, when she was 16, but left her for Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin three years later. When Shelley left Harriet, their daughter was a year old, and Harriet was pregnant with their son. Two years later, Harriet drowned herself. When Shelley decided to raise the children himself, Harriet’s parents refused to turn them over, and Shelley went to court. Though fathers had nearly absolute rights under then-existing English law, Shelley became one of the first fathers in English history to lose custody of his children. Percy Shelley was also an avowed atheist—and the Court of Chancery mostly relied on his views, not on his infidelity or unreliability, in denying him custody.2 Shelley shouldn’t be put in charge of the children’s education, the Lord Chancellor reasoned:

Shelley endorsed atheism and sexual freedom, and would teach his children the same values. Twenty years later, Justice Joseph Story likewise wrote that a father could lose his rights for “atheistical[] or irreligious principles.”

Shelley’s case may look like something out of another time and place. That time and place, it turns out, is 2005 Michigan, where a modern Shelley might be denied custody based partly4 on his “not regularly attend[ing] church and present[ing] no evidence demonstrating any willingness or capacity to attend to religion with [his children],”5 or having a “lack of religious observation.”6 It’s 1992 South Dakota, where Shelley might have been given custody but only on condition that he “will agree to present a plan to the Court of how [he] is going to commence providing some sort of spiritual opportunity for the [children] to learn about God while in [his] custody.”7 It’s 2005 Arkansas, 2002 Georgia, 2005 Louisiana, 2004 Minnesota, 2005 Mississippi, 1992 New York, 2005 North Carolina, 1996 Pennsylvania, 2004 South Carolina, 1997 Tennessee, 2000 Texas, and, going back to the 1970s and 1980s, Alabama, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska.8 In 2000, the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a mother to take her child to church each week, reasoning that “it is certainly to the best interests of [the child] to receive regular and systematic spiritual training”;9 in 1996, the Arkansas Supreme Court did the same, partly on the grounds that weekly church attendance, rather than just the once-every-two-weeks attendance that the child would have had if he went only with the other parent, provides superior “moral instruction.”

While I have faced some discrimination and bigotry for my atheism, it has been rather minor and easily borne and deflected.

But to lose your child? That is an outrage worthy of armed defiance. Why these judges still draw breath is testament to the peaceful nature of most Atheists. Or perhaps to their compete subjugation by the religious hegemony in this country.

Yet sources such as Fox News and conservative commentators have been flogging a ‘war on christianity’ meme for the past few years. I would ask them, if there is such a war, where are the christians that have had their children seized due to their faith? Where are the laws discriminating against christians? Where is the government funding for atheist or even non-christian monuments and public displays?

We Atheists may not be under threat of summary execution here in the U.S., as we are in some mohammedan countries, but there is still work to do towards true equality under the law, and religious neutrality in the government.

This is important work. Anyone with concern for religious freedom in this country should take the time to read it. Atheists involved in custody suits should print it out and give it to their lawyers.

If only more christians did this, instead of demanding it be imposed on other people property, there would be no problems with displaying the decalog.

The retired Aurora artist just hopes motorists driving on Lawrence County K are inspired by the massive Ten Commandments sculpture under construction on his property, one he hopes is the world’s largest.

Luce was compelled to erect the monument — two stones more than 15 feet tall and weighing more than 11 tons — after surviving a May 2003 tornado that destroyed his property. Two stone tablets grace the 16-acre property where horses grazed before the storm.

Display if on your lawn, in your church yard, in you store window, no one cares. When you demand it be displayed on MY property, is when I, and others object.
Yes, MY property. The town square, the county courthouse, the local school are just as much my property as they are yours. As such, only things we all agree to should be displayed, should be, if anything is to be displayed.

The ruling in the Dover School (un)Intelligent Design case has been issued. The judge issued a ruling so severe in it’s criticism it takes the breath away.
Opinion: KITZMILLER v. DOVER AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT.

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts
of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the
Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the
seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and
moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious,
antecedents.
Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock
assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory
is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in
general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the
theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the
scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the
existence of a divine creator.
To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not
be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in
religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific
propositions.
The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the
Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals,
who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would
time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID
Policy.
With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID
have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor
do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As
stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an
alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an
activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court.
Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction
on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a
constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the
Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which
has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers
of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal
maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

This ruling is to the Religious Right, what rulings in the cynical and misguided suits against gun manufacturers have been to the Gun-banning Left.

Both are severe slaps in the face to social activists for trying to convince courts to impose by judicial dictate, what they have failed to achieve through the political process. Both sought to redefine well accepted terms, such as ‘theory’ and ‘liability’, and in all cases where a disinterested judge has sat in judgment, they have lost, and lost badly.

It is too bad that it is the taxpayers that will foot the bills for all of these suits. The idiots that allow or cause these suits, by attempting to impose religious instruction in schools, or attempting to make third parties liable for the actions of criminals, are the ones that should have to pay. Each school board member, mayor or city councilman that sets these things in motion should be made to pay the costs out of their own pocket. Short of that, they should be summarily removed from office, as the voters of Dover, PA., have done with their ignorant and foolish school board.

Also via the CoNJB I find xpatriatedtexan hitting back at Bloviating Bill O’Reilly on the supposed ‘War on Christams’ he is peddling nowadays:

Happy holidays isn’t just an inclusive greeting for Jews and Buddhists and Pagans and Muslims and Hindus and whoever else wants to be non-Christian. It is actually a reflection of a deeper Christian faith; one that calls for personal responsibility, social action, and eternal humility. That is the real attack on religious faith in America - that a shallow throw-off phrase is of such prominence that it can separate brother from brother, father from son, and red states from blue.

Well worth the time to read.

Good essay on Atheists in foxholes and religious discrimination against non-believers in the military by Gaurd officer recently returned from Iraq:

The United States military has gone to great lengths to accommodate soldiers from a variety of religious backgrounds. They provide dietary alternatives, a variety of chaplains and printed materials from every major religion. They have gone as far as accommodating Wiccan rituals and allowing open Satan worship on military bases and ships. But there is one group of soldiers that the military has turned its back on.

Atheists are still openly disparaged by chaplains in today’s military. Chaplains continue to perpetuate the myth that there are no atheists in foxholes despite the fact that atheists are serving honorably right now in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The military’s response has been to simply ignore it.

Recently, evangelical christians, feeling flush with power over their connection with the current Republican administration, have started to complain about both the call by secularists to remove religious symbols from government property, AND that many stores have ‘Happy Holidays’ signs instead of ‘Happy Christmas’ signs. They are complaining, along with conservatives like Bill O’Reilly and Sean ‘hamitup’ Hannity, that there is a ‘War on Christmas’, that there is an attack on religion in the public square, and they call for boycotts of stores with ‘Happy Holidays’ signs that do not reference their particular christian holiday.

There are secular and atheist groups that are complaining about religious symbols on government property. But I do not know of any that are complaining of religious symbols on PRIVATE property, nor any complaints about stores that display signs that say ‘Happy Christmas’, ( or ‘Merry Christmas’) or ‘Happy Hanukkah’ or that reference any specific holy day.

There are evangelicals/fundamentalists in all camps. I understand antipathy towards fundamentalism on both ends of the argument over religious displays.

Disclosure: I was BRIEFLY an assistant state director for American Atheists, but I am not suited to a role like that, and it quickly folded.

I will use the term ’secularist’ in general, and use ‘atheist’ only should it apply to something specific.

Yes, we secularists are irritated by IGWT on money, but why is it there? How would a theist react to seeing ‘In No God We Trust’ on money? Turnabout is fair play. If one phrase is permissible, so is the other. Should the majority opinion switch, as it has in most of the rest of the world, could we secularists change our currency to say ‘In No God Do We Trust’? Could we change the Pledge of Allegiance from ‘One Nation Under God’ to ‘One Nation Without God’? Could we place displays on government property saying ‘Celebrate Atheism’?

Who is in the majority should not make any difference in what the government does regarding religion, because if the government were truly neutral regarding religion, there would be no difference no matter who the majority is, religious, secular or atheist.

When secularists object to religious displays such as creches on government property, we are not objecting to the display, but to the venue and who is paying for it. It is on a venue that we secularists are as much owners of as the religious are, that we pay for as well as the religious do.

We are not irritated by every religious display we see. Only the ones we are forced to pay for at the point of the tax mans gun. We see creches and crosses and other displays all the time. On peoples front lawns, on church property, in stores. We do not care. We even admire the craftsmanship and artistry that goes into some of them.

We are not objecting to religion in the public square, only to religion that we are forced to support in the public square. If a church across the road from a town commons puts up a religious display, we do not care. But if it is across the street on the common, only 50 feet away, that is a different story. Why do religionists demand that their display be on the commons, when the church lawn is equally visible, equally on, or in, ‘the public square’? Why do they demand that all citizens pay for their private beliefs? This is what secularists object to, not the display itself, but who is forced to support it.

We do not care if a politician speaks of religious convictions and how they inform their opinions any more than most people do. Though if they start to sound like some fanatical mullah in Iran, we would, as I hope all would. Both George Bush and Joe Lieberman spoke of their faith during contentious election of 2000, one from a conservative view, one from a liberal view. We did not care, about that. Like most citizens, we cared about the content, not the source of that content. If we cared about the source, we would have condemned both of them equally. (I did, but not for the religious speech, for the content. I voted for neither of them).

I find this to be true of all but the most extreme atheists I know. We can admire what someone says, whatever the source, just as we can enjoy religious music without believing the content. Mozart’s Requiem is truly sublime, but enjoying it does not make me a christian any more than enjoying a dish of beef with broccoli from my local Chinese restaurant makes me a Mandarin.

We also do not care that a store says ‘happy whatever’. We will patronize a store with a ‘Merry Christmas’ sign, a ‘Happy Hanukkah’ sign or any sort of sign such as those. I think stores that avoid signs mentioning specific holidays, are overreacting to protests over government displays, as well as making an economic decision.
They seem to think people will be offended if a store has a sign recognizing a single holiday. They are assuming that we secularists would object to such a sign at their venue as we do to at the government venue. Not a single secularist I know cares what a store has on its sign, provided it is not directly offensive. A sign that says something like ‘We will go to heaven, the rest of you will go to hell’ would be offensive in a store, and I think all will agree that many would be justified in being offended and avoiding that store. There may be some offended by a simple ‘Merry Christmas’ sign in a store, but I do not personally know any.

Considering that there are many religious days around this time of year, christian, jewish, mohammedan, shinto, kwanzaa, and many more, rather than have a bunch of signs for every day, changing them as the calendar progresses, and keeping track of those that are on a lunar calendar and therefore move around on our solar calendar, using a generic ‘happy holidays’ sign makes sense from an economic standpoint. If the proprietor of a store, whether an individual or a corporation, is devoutly religious in any faith, and wants to display signs specific to that faith, we do not care. We won’t boycott or fail to patronize them for thats sign. It is their store, their property, their choice, we do not care.

There is even a meme going around that people can not say ‘Merry Christmas’ to others, for fear of giving offense. Nonsense. That is an invention of theocrats seeking to enrage supporters into action. If it has ever happened, where someone is offended by that, they were probably off their medication.

If someone says ‘Merry Christmas’ to me, I will smile and say thank you, or maybe respond with ‘Happy Solstice’. There have been times that the context of where and how it is said have been offensive to me, and was intended to be offensive the one saying it to me. But I am a big boy, I can handle it, as can the vast majority of secularists. There may be a few people that will complain about having ‘Merry Christmas’ said to them by anyone at any time, but they are probably the sort that complain about everything, and can not be pleased no matter what.

This is a fight over who is forced, by the awesome power and threat of government, to support christmas, or ANY other religious display or ceremony, jewish, mohammedan, wiccan, any of them.

A banning of faith in the public square? That is another invention of extremists seeking throw a monkey wrench into the public debate over mixing government and religion, seeking to use emotion over reason, seeking to justify their restrictions on freedom and liberty just as cynically as those on the left who use the phrase ‘for the children’ to justify their chosen restrictions on freedom and liberty.

But here is no War On Christmas.

What was that about christianity being the basis of peaceful Democracy?

A college professor whose planned course on creationism and intelligent design was canceled after he derided Christian conservatives said he was beaten by two men along a rural road early Monday.

University of Kansas religious studies professor Paul Mirecki said the men referred to the class when they beat him on the head, shoulders and back with their fists, and possibly a metal object, the Lawrence Journal-World reported.

His first mistake was stopping instead of finding a cop. His second mistake was getting out of the car. When threatened like this, NEVER stop, NEVER get out of the car.

If a couple of IDiots attacked me, an atheist, libertarian, gun-rights absolutist, like this, they would very quickly find out whether their god really exists, courtesy of SIG Sauer.

But being a college professor this fellow is almost certainly a liberal, if not a progressive-socialist, which means he is an arrogant, self-centered fool, who thinks his rights are the responsibility of the state, and are protected by calling 911. He is probably anti-gun-rights as well. So being armed was probably as much an option for him as supporting NARAL would be for Pat Robertson. These creationists cretins certainly took advantage of that.

Oh, I forgot. This happened in Kansas-stan, which oppresses the right to self defense. I wonder if there is a connection? A movement towards an oppressive religious theocracy and oppression of the peoples right to arms. Hmmmm.

An armed society is a polite society, even for the majority that choose not to be armed. And that politeness extends even to lonely back country roads in the early morning.

Via noGodBlog.

What a BRILLIANT concept. Trading in old, outdated smut, for new, modern smut! Cheeky, satirical, performance art in the tradition of student republican clubs mischievous bake sales.

A group of atheists at UTSA was asking students to exchange bibles for porn magazines Wednesday, and that has made some religious leaders angry. News 4 WOAI first broke the story at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

From the groups site:

Porno for Bibles and comments smut-for-smut-2

Via boingboing

It is one thing to be respectful of all in government policy requiring neutrality in religious matters, it is another to target personal, private religious practice.

high school has rescinded a rule that prohibited students from wearing rosary beads a week after administrators prohibited them as symbols of potential gang involvement.

Schools and government in general should certainly refrain from religious activity, but they should also refrain from interfering in private religious activity and expression. Some times they do so out of genuine misunderstanding of the rules, sometimes out of malice.

Evey time I hear of a school or other government facility banning students private religious displays, like emblems on neck-chains and such, I wish church-state separation activists, like American United or American Atheists, would step up to the plate. It would only add the their credibility. Instead they are silent, which only damages them and the cause, and lends credence to those that seek to impose religion on captive children when they claim that neutrality is an attempt to impose atheism, when it is not.
Remember: Politics rarely has anything to do with truth and reality, except when convenient.

Pat Robertson has admitted publicly, in a petulant rage, that his god is actually too weak to withstand the onslaught of voters outrage at that actions of god-supporting school board members. The god-supporting board members were voted out in a landslide.

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city,” Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, “The 700 Club.”

“And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there,” he said.

Robertson was last seen jumping up and down with his fists clenched shouting “It’s not fair, it’s not fair!” and squealing in a high, girly-man voice.

An Atheist activist in RUSSIA is suing the national governemnt for imposing religion through the national anthem, and for building a church within a ministry building at government expense, and for a new state holiday that just happens to also be a church holiday:

An atheist activist has brought a lawsuit to challenge the word “God” in the lyrics to the Russian national anthem, The Moscow Times reported Wednesday.

We have a First Amendment for many reasons. Two of them are: To protect us from religious tyranny and to protect our religious freedom.

A Chinese court on Tuesday sentenced a Protestant minister, his wife and her brother to prison terms of up to three years for illegally printing Bibles and other Christian publications, one of their lawyers said.

This illustrate the other side of the coin of imposing religion on people, including in school.

The difference between China and us.

Or maybe you say it IS a christian country. Or you say the founders intended it to be that way.

Be careful what you wish for:

“Ma’am, you did what?” the male deputy inquired.

“I just killed my boys.”

For 38 minutes Laney calmly answered the deputy’s questions. At the same time, she spoke to officers sent to investigate.

“Are the boys breathing now?” the operator asked, according to a recording of the call played for the jury.

“No,” Laney said.

“You said you killed your two boys?” the officer asked. “Why did you do that, ma’am?”

Laney replied matter of factly, “I had to.”

According to prosecutors, Laney put her sons, Joshua, 8, Luke, 6, and Aaron, 14 months, to bed and then went to her own room. Her husband, Keith Laney, followed. Laney awoke later that night, tried to lock her sleeping husband in their bedroom and then went to Joshua and Luke’s room.

She escorted Luke to a rock garden in the front yard of their home, which is encircled by a white split-rail fence. Laney told her son to lie down with his head on a rock and she took another large rock, raised it over her head and brought it down onto his skull.

She then killed Joshua in the same manner. Both children were found with large stones lying on their chests.

Aaron was attacked with a rock in his crib but did not die.

Deanna Laney was taken into custody after calling police and telling them what she had done.

As the deputy and Keith Laney attended to Aaron’s injuries, Deanna Laney remained on the phone outside with the 911 dispatcher. “What’s going on? Are you upset about anything?” the operator asked.

“I just did what I had to do,” Laney said.

“You did what you had to do? Why do you say that ma’am?”

“That’s just what I was told to do,” she said.

“Who told you to do that?” the dispatcher continued.

“God,” Laney said.

Of course, people that read history know that the founders were a mix of christian, jew, deist, freethinker and non-religious. They had seen the troubles mixing religion and government brings, both in Europe and in the various colonies.

So before you demand we become a christian country, remember that mohammedans are not the only ones with harsh religious laws, such as sharia, or deranged fundamentalist beliefs. Christianity has these also, in abundance.

Drudge pointed to the headline, but here is a registration free link:

One of the state’s largest and most liberal churches could lose its tax-exempt status because of an anti-war sermon that a former rector delivered two days before the 2004 presidential election, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

In his sermon, the Rev. George F. Regas did not urge parishioners at All Saints Episcopal Church to support either George Bush or his opponent, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. But he was sharply critical of the Iraq war and Bush’s tax cuts.

The IRS in a June 9 letter warned the church that its tax-exempt status was in jeopardy because the federal tax code prohibits such organizations from intervening in political campaigns and elections. The church’s current rector, J. Edwin Bacon, told his congregation about the problem on Sunday.

Fine by me, but why are churches such as those headed by Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, et al, not under the same threat?
Oh, I forgot, it’s Bush World, right now.

I hope this does happen. Maybe it will start a move towards stopping this tax exempt nonsense for churches. The Dems can then pursue SOB’s like Dobson et al.

It is a fiction that churches refrain from political activity in exchange for tax exempt status, or that taxing them would be an entanglement. All of that is just a beard to give religion special rights in our society.

By not taxing them, we allow them greater financial resources than they would other have. Wealth is power in any human society. Churches then use that wealth for political activity. The catholic church has recently become even more active, threatening catholic politicians with denial of communion or excommunication if they support pro-choice laws concerning abortion.

I have no problem with churches or ministers expressing political views. I do have a problem with exempting them from the same responsibilites to shoulder the costs of those views that the rest of us must bear.

The hideous Powerline points to a pair of book reviews at the Claremont Institute, and at the same time repeats the calumny that Communism and Nazism were attempts to create Atheistic societies.

Atheism was a part of the Communist philosophy, just as mohammedist religion is a part of the sharia based rule in the islamic prison camps countries of the world, and as christianity was a part of the mass murder that occurred during the inquisition and other European religious cleansing. But atheism was not the driving force of communism. Communism instead replaced faith in an omnipotent and benevolent god, with belief in an omnipotent and benevolent state, and quickly devolved into a cult of personality everywhere it was tried, whether by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Castro.

But nazism was a religious cult as much as a political and socialist cult. The monster Hitler repeatedly refers to god, (over 20 times) in that roll of toilet paper he named ‘Mein Kampf’. His chosen supermen, the SS, had “Got mit uns”, (God is with us”), embossed on their uniforms. They were enamored of the prophesies of biblical revelation, Nostradamus, and aryan mythology. They believed in, and promoted, an incredible number of fantastic mythological fables. While they were, to a large extent, anti-clerical, they were far from atheistic. There are christian sects that are anti-clerical as well, that does not make them atheistic. Judaism no longer has priests, they have rabbis, (teachers), they choose to follow or not. Rabbis are not clerics in the sense they are ordained by an ecclesiastical authority, but judaism is certainly not atheistic.

Now I know the religious right is grossly ignorant of the history of religion as a whole, and in particular the history of the various christian sects. But this particular slander about the nazis being atheists is a premeditated, viscous, attempt to convict atheists, using guilt by association, of responsibility for what many consider the most evil event in the twentieth century. It is something that needs to be condemned as sternly as the blood libels against judaism are, and as sternly as examples of christian sects like ‘the church of the creator’ are used to smear all the christian faithful.

Both Scott Johnson and Andrew Klavan should be ashamed of their blatant revisionism of history. They, among many in religious culture, engage in the same tactics that the liar Michael Bellesiles did in his propaganda war against gun rights. Made up facts, false statements and slander.

A couple months ago I was talking to a cow-orker about various issues, such as European tolerance. I predicted that the intolerance of muslims in European nations would lead to mass deportations before long, and predicted that France would be the one to start, with the U.K. and the Netherlands in the vanguard as well.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the hideous assassination of Theo van Gogh. Most reports suppress the hideous nature of the murder, but at least they mention it.

As well, muslims are rioting in Paris over the deaths of two teenagers, who climbed over a fence around a power station and touched a transformer:
The riots have highlighted the division between France’s big cities and their poor suburbs and frustrations simmering in housing projects to the north and northeast of Paris, heavily populated by North African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children who struggle with high unemployment, crime and poverty.

Though most reports dance around the fact that it is muslims doing the rioting, and that non-muslims and non-muslim areas are peaceful. At most, they mention, as above, that it is a muslim populated area.

The problem in these cases, and others, is not a lack of tolerance on the part of the nations involved. It is a lack of tolerance on the part of the mohammedans that have migrated to Europe, taking advantage of, if not abusing, liberal immigration laws, and refusing to assimilate into the societies they move into. Instead, they agitate to have the governments impose sharia in schools that their children goto and have their mullahs state goals that include the subjugation of all Europe under mohammedans sharia law.

Those who object, no matter how politely, are targeted for abuse, both verbal, social and political. Physical attacks have started to occur the past few years, as van Gogh’s grisly slaughter demonstrates.

The question the governments of these liberal, (in the good sense), tolerant nations now face is:

Do you tolerate those that seek to kill you?

In your home, do you tolerate a guest that assaults another guest or a member of the family? No matter how welcoming your home may be to guests, I think anyone will agree that you would ask that unpleasant guest to leave, forcefully if need be, and physically remove them if they refuse to leave.

I think before too long they will realize the answer must be ‘No’, if they wish to continue to exist as a a liberal, tolerant society.

And just as most ‘reformed’ people, that reformation will be vehement and adamant. That is when the deportations will begin. And unlike the U.S., most of these countries do not consider children automatic citizens just because they are born within their borders, the children inherit the citizenship of the mother.

This is something we may face soon as well, we should start thinking now, so we act deliberately, with consideration for individual rights, and not hysterically.

Recently, Marcus Borden, a high school football coach for East Brunswick, NJ, resigned after being told he could no longer make ritual prayer a standard part of the teams activities.

While the manner of his resignation is such that you can admire his integrity for doing so, it raises a question.

Why is the line between free exercise of religion and coerced exercise of religion so hard to see, for so many people?

Many are able to see this, as seen in many stories and editorial around the state. Here is an example.

Others seem not to be able to see this, or refuse to admit it exists. Examples Here.

Others claim he was fired for prayer, trying to incite self righteous outrage in religious conservatives.

There are many examples of all of the above, from various perspectives, if you care to search for them.

We can see the outrage from some, claiming their right to pray is being oppressed. It isn’t. What is being stopped is the IMPOSITION of prayer on others, without their consent.

Remember: The right to do anything does not include the authority to force others to go along with you.

The right to speak does not include the authority to force others to obey you, or pay for your paper, It does not include the right to tell deliberate lies without consequence. or force people to listen to you.
The right to peaceably assemble does not include the authority to force others to march with you, or get out of your way, or riot.
The right to keep and bear arms does not include the authority to force everyone to buy a gun, or the authority to shoot people that do not agree with you.

The right of free exercise of religion does not include the authority to tell others when to pray, how to pray or what to pray. It most certainly does not include the authority to tell anyone that they must pray at all.

Now, don’t get me wrong, his many awards attest to his skills and dedication as a coach. (Examples Here and here).

But does being a good coach, even an excellent coach, mean that he understands the difference between consent and coercion? Does it mean he even questioned or considered these things?

Apparently, no. He is not alone: Let us pray? Coaches unsure of boundary between prayer and team camaraderie

Now some say he was just continuing a tradition he inherited:
Grid coach had inherited prayer custom.

But there are many things we have inherited from our past that we have discarded.

In our journey to perfect and improve upon the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, from which the Founders of our nation gathered much of the wisdom enshrined in their writings and documents, including The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we have made compromises with ideals in order to continue that journey, to later refute those compromises.

We originally granted the right to vote only to property owning males, almost all of them white.
We originally allowed only males to hold property in their own names, women could do so only under the authority of male family members or husbands.
We originally allowed slavery to exist, counting them as only three fifths a human, and gave only grudging acceptance to former slaves as freedmen.

We have discarded these conventions and more, as we have grown in our understanding of the concepts of freedom and liberty.

Allowing women and non-propertied males the right to vote did not affect the rights of those that already held the franchise.
Allowing women the right to hold property did nothing to the rights of males, except, perhaps, to diminish their power over women. A good thing, I think.
And anyone that thinks ending slavery, at the cost of over 600,000 lives, was in any way a bad thing,,, well, I have no words for them.

Enforcing the line between religious coercion and religious freedom falls within that same ideal.

When anyone that has the authority of the state, uses a state function for religious activity of any kind, no matter how mundane or inconsequential it may seem, they have stepped over the line that is drawn by the First Amendment, that separates freedom from tyranny. They have stepped over the same line the Second Amendment defines, when supporters of gun registration and the various National Firearms Acts enact their various schemes.

So another question: Does he want to be a coach or a cleric?

Coach Borden has resigned. Does he believe that religious observance is so much a part of coaching that one can not be a coach without also being a cleric? If so, why?
So far as I am aware, religious observances are not a part of the training offered at the U.S. Olympic Training Center, where athletes that are among the worlds elite train and compete. While each athlete and coach there is perfectly free to pray and make religious observances, they may not do so if it interferes with the business of the Center, or with others training there. You will often see an athlete or coach make a small genuflection or other gesture before attempting an event, but you will not see group prayer led by an official.

This is as it should be. Everyone is free to observe, while being considerate of others. Everyone is free to ignore, without insulting others.

If he can not separate coaching from religion, perhaps he should be coaching for one of the numerous religious high schools in the state, where such activity is part and parcel of the curriculum. Or even seek ordination somewhere.

It is truly a pity that he can not separate his coaching duties from religion. He clearly is loved and respected by his players, both current and former. For him to abandon them for this seems harsh.

I hope he reconsiders and realizes that respecting others rights is not a denial of his own. Beyond law, it is just common courtesy.