The American Humanist Association is at the forefront of atheist/agnostic/humanist/whatever-you-want-to-call-it advertising. Our billboard, transit, and publication advertising has been seen in cities across the country—and this is to say nothing of the work of our sister organization, UnitedCoR.

One argument against advertising that has been brought up again and again is that the money could be better spent elsewhere. Fair enough. But advertising also brings interest to our philosophy, and this is one of the stated objectives of the AHA.

The mission of the American Humanist Association is to be a clear, democratic voice for Humanism in the United States, to increase public awareness and acceptance of humanism, to establish, protect and promote the position of humanists in our society, and to develop and advance humanist thought and action.

One may disagree with the importance of this objective, but so long as the AHA’s mission contains public awareness we will continue; and we will succeed. Our advertising not only causes a press heyday, it also provokes a counteroffensive of some kind (also here and here).

But our good friends over at Answers in Genesis (AiG) have now gone a step further in Boston. Their ad is strikingly similar to our winter campaign ad. Now we could start screaming copyright, but we won’t. In my opinion they can go to town with our ad; who cares? The simple fact is that we know and admit an ad will never convert someone, so we target our ads to those already sympathetic to our message.

Looks like AiG is tying up their resources as they attempt to market to our sympathizers. That’s a foolish errand, and one we are happy to send them on.

ABC News reported yesterday that 800,000 rifle sights that will be provided to the U.S. Marine Corps will have coded references to New Testament Bible passages. The inscriptions include references to Second Corinthians of the New Testament and to the books of Revelation. Citations Trijicon, a Michigan-based company, is providing the sights under a $660 million multi-year contract.

Spokespeople for the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps said their services weren’t aware of the markings, and that officials are figuring out what steps to take now that the issue has been brought to light. Given Trijicon’s values statement, however, the revelation shouldn’t be too much of a shock. According to their website, “We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on Biblical standards throughout our history, and we will strive to follow those morals.” In addition, the group dismissed concerns about the coded sights by saying the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.”

But not only should those who embrace non-Biblical values be worried about these coded sights. If our military has any appearance of waging a religious war in the Middle East, it’s dangerous to all of us and a threat to our mission to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan—particularly considering Iraqi soldiers are being trained by our military with rifles that are outfitted with these sights. As Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation says, “It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they’re being shot by Jesus rifles,” and will play into the hands of “those who are calling this a Crusade.”

Iowa State Representative Dawn Pettengill (R) is proposing a resolution that would change the Iowa constitution to require lawmakers to say “so help me God” when being sworn into office. According to the Associated Press, Pettengill cares little about whether the proposal would offend lawmakers who don’t believe in God, saying that it’s offensive to her own faith not to require the phrase in the oath.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says he’s checking with other lawmakers to see if there’s interest in moving forward with the resolution (it hasn’t been filed yet), but if any of them are at all familiar with Constitutional law they’d be wise to advise him to drop the matter. The ACLU and other groups are closely watching this issue, and no doubt someone will sue if such a measure were to move forward. And such a legal suit is very likely to win. There are all sorts of Constitutional protections this proposed resolution would violate, such as both religion clauses of the First Amendment, as well as the Free Speech Clause (most everyone is familiar with the Constitutional prohibition on restricting free speech—well, compelled speech also counts as violating free speech rights). Moreover, Article VI clearly states that the U.S. Constitution trumps state law on these issues.

But even if under the exceedingly unlikely scenario Iowa lawmakers aren’t aware of such Constitutional law, they should eschew Pettengill’s proposal based on simple principles of fairness and common sense. Besides being Constitutionally prohibited, anyone who understands the Golden Rule also understands that it’s wrong to require a nontheist to profess faith in God—just as much as it would be to require someone of faith to profess their disbelief in God. And such a requirement would do nothing to ensure the veracity of a person’s statement or promote reverence for the propaganda promoted therein, but rather would serve to undermine respect for the very ideas such a law would ostensibly advance.

By now you’ve heard of the devastating 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday. As international aid starts to arrive, tens of thousands are feared dead, and countless more are homeless, injured, and still on their own.

As the international community responds, Humanist Charities, a project of the American Humanist Association, has established a Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund that will direct your donations to relief projects in Haiti.

For up-to-the-minute news updates on the situation in Haiti, I highly recommend that you visit Talking Points Memo’s Haiti Quake Wire. And for more information on other organizations that are providing immediate aid and relief in Haiti, I recommend visiting the Huffington Post’s continuously updated How You Can Help page, which lists several dozen organizations that are responding to the Haiti quake.

A French lawmaker is stirring up controversy with a new proposal to ban women in France from appearing in public with veils or other coverings over their faces:

PARIS (AP) — A top lawmaker from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative party filed legislation on Tuesday to bar Muslim women in France from appearing in public wearing veils that hide their faces.

The bill by lawmaker Jean-Francois Cope, who heads the UMP party in the National Assembly, or lower house, has sparked criticism from some of his political allies. The speaker of the lower house, Bernard Accoyer, called Cope’s move “premature.”

Cope’s proposed law follows in the footsteps of a 2004 law that bans headscarves and nearly all other religious clothing and accessories from French public schools.

Why would such a ban be warranted? The Associated Press tells us:

Only a tiny minority of Muslim women in France wear the more extreme covering — which is not required by Islam. However, Islam is the No. 2 religion in France after Roman Catholicism, and authorities worry that such dress may be a gateway to extremism. They also say it amounts to an insult to women and to France’s secular foundations.

Even as I am a strong believer in promoting secularism in civil society and a strong wall between church and state, as a matter of principle I am opposed to laws restricting individual religious expression, especially one so wide-ranging as to ban a type of religious clothing from any public display whatsoever. This is an affront to religious freedom, which must be guaranteed in any democratic society.

But let’s consider a little more what the consequences of a ban such as this would be. French law enforcement officers would be empowered (and indeed required) to enforce certain standards of dress on the streets of French cities, towns, and villages. And who would be singled out? Muslim women. Picture for a moment the image of French police stopping a Muslim woman and giving her a citation for wearing a veil, which is an item of clothing that she either is being pressured to wear by her culture, religion, and family, or wants to wear under her own volition. And for this religious and cultural expression, whether or not it reflects her own desires, she receives a fine that the Associated Press reports could amount up to €750 (US$1,070).

How do you think that would make her feel? How do you think that would make other members of the French Muslim community feel? Would they feel welcome in France? Would they feel like that had a greater role to play in French society? Or would they feel singled out due to their religion?

I’m sympathetic to the argument that face coverings are a sign of the oppression of women within Islam. I think that this is frequently the case, and anyway, face coverings are fundamentally unequal because Muslim men do not have to alter their appearance in such a way to appear in public. But banning face coverings is not a helpful response, because it does nothing to empower women. It removes a visible sign of France’s growing Muslim population from the streets (which, in my opinion, may be one of the author’s chief goals), but what about directly improving the lives of women?

You cannot empower women by instituting a law telling them what they can and cannot wear in public. To be truly empowered, Muslim women in France need access to the educational, cultural, and economic resources that give them the opportunity to flourish as women of their own respective cultures, their own religion, and as members of the greater society and culture of France.

One of my myriad duties at the AHA is maintaining our Facebook page. Normally this isn’t very difficult; I try to post twice a day and check the page at the same time. The holidays, however, have been tricky.  I’ve happily plugged the humanist holidays—HumanLight and the winter solstice (although what makes the solstice a specifically humanist holiday, I’m not sure)—but totally ignored the major holidays, Christmas in particular.

Talking up the humanist holidays is easy; but ignoring Christmas is really hard. The simple fact is the vast majority of our members celebrate Christmas, albeit with all the necessary disclaimers: secularly, culturally, etc. So while I’m busy plugging a worthy holiday few have heard of (HumanLight is on the same day as Festivus and more people are familiar with that) AHA members are preparing for Christmas.This was brought home today when members reacted negatively to a “Happy HumanLight” post.

I get that people come to humanism for something different and that some feel berated by “Merry Christmas” and “the Reason for the Season.” But the AHA’s decisive and deliberate silence on the topic is not a good status quo; we clearly aren’t adequately and accurately representing the views and practices of our membership. We are, instead, actively ignoring the elephant in the room.

Now we can’t run around saying “Merry [secular] Christmas;” we would look confused. How then to straddle the line between being a Grinch and being sensitive to nontheism? I guess this is the quandary retailers, governments, and everyone else faces at the holidays. Who knew we would face it in the secular camp too?

I get it, we’re humanists and it would be inappropriate for me to post “Merry Christmas” on our Facebook Christmas morning. But I can’t ignore it any longer. So I will say it here, in a personal capacity: MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.

On Friday Mayor Adrian Fenty signed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the signing ceremony and witness a moment in history of what has become one of the most important civil rights issues of my generation. “We knew this day would come,” Fenty said at the ceremony. “I say to the world: an era of struggle ends for thousands in Washington, DC.”

Unless Congress decides to step in during their review period, same-sex couples will be able to marry in the District starting in mid-spring.

However, although the ceremony  moved me--and it moved me greatly--I couldn’t help but be uneasy about where it took place: All Souls Unitarian Church. I need to start off by saying that I have the utmost respect for the Unitarian Church and All Souls in particular. The Church has long been a proponent of civil rights in DC and has done a lot of great work in the community. But however much good the church has done, it is a church never-the-less. And holding such a ceremony in a place of worship is misguided in that it serves to further blur the distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage--a distinction that is crucial for gaining acceptance for civil marriage across the United States.

Religious marriage is based on scripture and tradition. Different churches may have different qualifications for which couples’ marriages they will solemnize (many, of course, will refuse to perform or recognize a same-sex marriage) and have varying ideas about the purpose of a marriage and the duties and roles of those entering into it. However, civil marriage is a legal contract in which the state affords the couples certain benefits, rights and privileges. Religious and civil marriage are, in other words, very different things and defined in very different ways. But it’s partly the confusion about the differing roles of the two that have caused much of the opposition to gay marriage and the misconception that a change in who can enter into a civil marriage will disrupt the “traditional” definition of religious marriage many people of faith embrace. And in fact, a lot of the work I’ve been doing through the AHA to advocate for equality in marriage has centered on education about the difference between the two--particularly emphasizing that granting same-sex couples the right to enter into a civil marriage does not mean religious congregations will be forced to solemnize or recognize them as well.

Holding the signing ceremony in a government building rather than a church would have been much more appropriate and would have helped to stem fears that granting gays and lesbians the right to civil marriage would not force churches or other houses of worship that don’t recognize gay marriage to change their own, religiously-based definitions of marriage.

The above title is the title of a Legal Times blog that appeared on December 9 (”God” was in quotes).

The blog is about an emergency motion Mike Newdow and I filed asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to refrain from starting its session on December 15 with “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”

That’s the date Newdow will argue on behalf of 250+ plaintiffs in Newdow v. Roberts that the infusion of religion into the presidential inaugural ceremonies — the oath administrator appending the presidential oath with “So help me God” and the invocation and benediction — violates the Constitution.

We based our motion on the issue of the appearance of justice. How can our clients expect justice when the U.S. Court of Appeals is engaging in similar religious practices?

While we lost the emergency appeal, Mike and I continue to explore alternatives to being coerced into listening to the court’s endorsement of religion.

Sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be. Such was the case of Salazar v. Buono at the Supreme Court today.

Attorneys from the ACLU, which represented Frank Buono in his challenge to a Christian cross atop a rock in the Mojave desert, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the AHA’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center were concerned that the Court might use this case to further restrict a person’s right to sue based on unwelcome contact with an inherently religious symbol on government property.

The good news is that the Court appears to want to sidestep this issue—thus continuing to permit such establishment clause challenges (for the present).

Instead, the Court appears poised to settle the case on the narrower issue of whether to affirm the 9th Circuit’s affirmation of an injunction ordering removal of the cross and preventing the land underneath the cross to be transferred to the Veterans of Foreign Wars under an Act of Congress.

Based on the vibrations I sensed during oral arguments and familiarity with past decisions of the Supreme Court, the outcome of the case appears to me too close to call with Justice Kennedy a swing vote, Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomajor likely to vote to enforce the injunction ordering the cross to be removed, and Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito voting to allow the land transfer to proceed so that the Christian cross may remain on the land.

In my opinion some justices, such as Justice Scalia, just don’t see Christian favoritism as a problem under the First Amendment. Clearly, they don’t enter through the front door, for high above it says: “Equal justice under the law.”

Today the Los Angeles Times contained an opinion piece by Neal Gabler, a biographer of Ted Kennedy, titled “Politics as religion in America.” In the piece Gabler argues that segments of the right have become dogmatic and zealous in their political beliefs.

According to Gabler,

For centuries, American democracy as a process of conflict resolution has been based on give-and-take; negotiation; compromise; the acceptance of the fact that the majority rules, with respect for minority rights; and, above all, on an agreement to abide by the results of a majority vote. It takes compromise, even defeat, in stride because it is a fluid system. As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once put it, the beauty of a democracy is that the minority always has the possibility of becoming the majority.

Religious fundamentalism, on the other hand, rests on immutable truths that cannot be negotiated, compromised or changed. In this, it is diametrically opposed to liberal democracy as we have practiced it in America. Democrats of every political stripe may defend democracy to the death, but very few would defend individual policies to the death. You don’t wage bloody crusades for banking regulation or the minimum wage or even healthcare reform. When politics becomes religion, however, policy too becomes a matter of life and death.

Gabler concludes by opining that “for the political fundamentalists, this isn’t political jousting, this is Armageddon. With stakes like that, they will not lose, and there is nothing democrats — small ‘d’ and capital “D” — can do about it.”

Drivel. Gabler’s argument rests on two assumptions that are simply without merit. First, he assumes that the right is unique in this “political fundamentalism”; he is wrong. Second, he believes that “political fundamentalism” is something new; it’s not.

“Political Fundamentalism” is a vague term. For Gabler it seems to refer to political beliefs that are held with religious fervor. Insofar as one truly holds a religious belief—so let’s exclude many people of faith who are, for lack of a better description, hypocritical—it inherently taints one’s political beliefs. Take Christianity as an example. The Gospels (in the broad sense of the term, the Good News) are political in nature. Jesus walked with lepers, prostitutes, and other outcasts. But most importantly, to me at least, he taught that “the poor would be poor no more” (this is a line I heard Sister Helen Prejean say at a book talk and have never forgotten). These are political messages, challenging the castes of the age and promising a better world for the downtrodden. While this isn’t directly related to health care (although he did heal), taxation (although tithes are still compulsory in countries with state-supported churches), or the place of the state (although the Romans did adopt Christianity and states made war in the name of it), Jesus was reshaping the polity; and it is undeniable that he was successful in that endeavor, even if the results were arguably malign.

While I interpret Christianity, as do many, as requiring certain benevolent political viewpoints, I realize Gabler’s issue is not with the religious, but with those for whom politics becomes like faith. But Gabler never defines how large this group is, names a single member, or anything else; we just know that they are the fringe right. But is there not a fringe left as well? Good luck convincing a Wobblie that capitalism is anything but an evil that must be opposed even at the cost of life. Has the Animal Liberation Front not violently destroyed property and life in the name of animal rights? No matter how reasonable one argues, you will never convince half of Hollywood that the Republican Party is anything but a blight to be fought with all one’s resources.

Furthermore, such virulent political stances are as old as the United States itself. America is born out of the Sons of Liberty, and the Declaration of Independence was signed despite the fact that Britain had shown a willingness to compromise and backed down on many of the taxes. Lincoln was shot over politics, as was Alexander Hamilton. You couldn’t compromise with McCarthy, Malcolm X, or Ross Perot. Martin Luther King held his political beliefs so zealously he even had the gumption to attribute them to God.

No, Mr. Gabler, you have provided no insight into the current political discourse. What we have seen in the last decade was the over-reach stage of conservatism. Liberalism had its stage too, think of the 1968 protests in Chicago. Many of the hardcore and uncompromising members of Congress have lost their seats, Gingrich is gone, and 2006 was a “thumpin’” for republicans.  Relax Neal, it’s just politics.

Over the weekend I had the distinct pleasure of getting up close and personal with the religious right at the Values Voter Summit held in Washington, DC, on September 18 and 19. Sponsored primarily by FRCAction, the Washington lobbying arm of the Family Research Council, and co-sponsored by all the major religious right heavy hitters and also by the right-wing corporatist think tank the Heritage Foundation, the annual summit is the premier religious right organizing event of the year. This year around 1,800 people attended, including activists, pastors, journalists, and some of the leading right-wing politicos of today (not to mention of the last few decades too).

I was struck by several ideas over the course of the experience. First, as fellow attendee Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State noted in a blog entry after the event, the Values Voter Summit was an explicitly partisan affair. Obviously the religious right has never really found a welcoming audience in the Democratic Party, while at times in recent history they’ve practically held the reins of the Republicans. Even so, this movement is ostensibly nonpartisan, as it is primarily religious in nature and is presumably more attached to particular values than to particular politicians (not to mention the nonpartisan tax exempt status of all the sponsoring organizations). Nevertheless, several leading aspirants for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012 made speeches there, including Governors Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Tim Pawlenty (Governor Rick Perry made a well-received speech as well; he’s not planning a run for president, but rather is going to face a hard primary fight for another term as governor of Texas). In addition, several of the leading Republican voices in Congress, including Senator Mitch McConnell and congressional representatives Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Mike Pence, and Roy Blunt, all addressed the summit attendees.

Between all of those political speeches, it seemed to me that only about four ideas were expressed: 1) Anything President Obama wants to do, from health care reform to negotiating with America’s supposed enemies to fighting climate change, is bad. 2) Abortion and marriage equality must be stopped. 3) America has suddenly run completely out of money, and it is all Obama’s fault. 4) Values Voters need to rise up and take their country back. I think that I listened to about a dozen speeches centered around those ideas, all of them packed with pandering applause lines that kept the audience repeatedly rising and sitting, rising and sitting, until the room looked like an exercise class.

While politicians were the big stars of the show, they weren’t the only people to appear on stage. In an effort to motivate the millennial generation (Americans between the ages of 18 and 29), the summit featured several younger speakers who mainly discussed activism and outreach (although Carrie Prejean, the dethroned Miss California who became a heroine to the religious right after making a statement against marriage equality at the Miss USA pageant, decided rather to make a stunningly narcissistic speech about her experience as a fallen beauty queen). Sandhya Bathija of Americans United, also in attendance, discusses more about the youth angle in a blog post here; what really struck me, though, was the enormous elephant in the room that no one, not even Esther Fleece, the director of millennial studies for Focus on the Family (and a millennial herself) ever mentioned, not even once, which is the increased secularization of young people in the United States. While several speakers noted that the vast majority of young voters voted for President Obama, they never noted that from 30 to 40 percent of people in their twenties are now unaffiliated with any religion. Needless to say, this has some profound implications for the future of the religious right, if the younger voters in America are not only less to the right, but also less religious!

Most enlightening for me, though, out of the entire weekend, was the opportunity to hear a succinct and impassioned explanation of the religious right’s general view on the separation of church and state and religious freedom in the United States. This was delivered by Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, who presented the stunningly radical view that the First Amendment of the Constitution not only does not prevent the government from favoring Christianity (he argued that the establishment clause only prevents the government from favoring a particular denomination of Christianity over another), but also that the wording of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) indicates that it applies only to Congress and not to any other level of government. He stated:

What that means is that by the First Amendment the Founders intended to restrain only the actions of Congress…if Congress is the only entity that is restrained by the First Amendment, it is constitutionally impossible for a governor, or a state legislature, or a mayor, or a city council, or a school administrator, or a school teacher, or a student speaking at graduation to violate the First Amendment. Why? Because they’re not Congress!

Key to his interpretation is his push back against the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment applies the Bill of Rights to the actions of state governments. But without this constitutional principle, a lot of the Bill of Rights would be moot in the day-to-day lives of Americans; imagine what it would be like if the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment did not apply to state governments! I doubt that the applauding audience thought through the implications of Mr. Fischer’s ideas.

Right Wing Watch has more to add on Fischer’s extremist views. Needless to say, this is a terrifying and radical view of religious liberty in the United States.

There is no doubt that the religious right has less influence than in years past. But we ignore them at our peril. They still envision a future of Christian supremacy, where no one’s rights must necessarily be respected except for their own. And with so many leading politicians and aspiring presidential candidates pandering to the activists in attendance, it’s clear that the path to success for many aspiring national leaders still goes through the religious right, at least for now.

At stake is our vision for a more tolerant future for America, where diverse religious viewpoints flourish and everyone’s rights are respected. Progressive secular and religious people alike must push back and hasten the demise of the influence of the religious right in America.

Monday’s LATimes contained an interesting piece on the Bald Eagle. In essence, many Indian tribes have religious practices, such as the Sun Dance, that require Bald Eagle… ahem…parts. The Bald Eagle is a protected species—even more so than other listed species due to a special act of Congress—and so an obvious tension emerges; how can the federal government protect the animal while simultaneously protecting the religious rights of native Americans?

Currently, the federal government runs a depository of dead birds and has a licensing program. The licensing program has been plagued with problems—many people are apparently unaware of it—and the depository has a long waiting list for many Eagle parts. To avoid long waits, some Indians occasionally shoot birds without a license and find themselves fugitives as result of their religious beliefs.

Larger than the Indian issue, this does raise some moral and political questions for those of us who avow a separation and church and state. I think many people would agree the Indians have a right to these birds; Indians have been hunting and shooting the birds since before the Europeans arrived. Simultaneously, government has an interest in protecting all endangered species. How do we rectify these conflicting priorities?

We could make like the soviets and just outlaw religion. Problem solved. But, of course, that’s absurd. On the opposite end of the spectrum we could say any religious belief is a right, but that’s a slippery slope. The government would then be in the business of defining what is and isn’t a religion (granted they already do this for tax purposes but look at the fight it causes over things like Scientology). Also, someone could have some insane beliefs that direct them, for example, to extinguish a species that is the devil incarnate or to practice human sacrifice. Do we really want to play an even worse version of the snake-handler game?

Obviously, then, the answer lies somewhere between these two extremes. At some degree between zero and 180 is where we have been situated throughout history. The attempt to move the needle slightly one way is why groups like that AHA exist. Even though we claim to be proponents of religious liberty we cannot sit here and seriously say all peoples with a religious need have a right to shoot Bald Eagles at will. Defining that need is the purpose of the licensing program. To eliminate that is to open a can of worms so messy as to all but sign an extinction warrant for the Bald Eagle.

The current Bald Eagle services provided to the Indians by the federal government are pretty reasonable; they are by no means perfect, but the only other option I can see is to farm raise the birds. We do it with fish, why not birds? Is it even feasible, or will it devolve into the shame that is poultry production? Does a farm-raised bird even have the same essence as a wild one? Is that better, is that worse?

I hope that this doesn’t fall under the category of too good to be true (hat tip to Feministing):

Operation Rescue, one of the nation’s highest-profile groups in the anti-abortion movement, has told its supporters it is facing a “major financial crisis” and is very close to shutting down unless emergency help arrives soon.

The group’s president, Troy Newman, blamed the economic downturn for its money woes in a desperate plea e-mailed Monday night to donors. But the Wichita-based organization has also been under attack from both fringe anti-abortion militants and abortion rights supporters since the May 31 shooting death of Dr. George Tiller.

The Associated Press goes on to report that, according to Troy Newman, donations to the organization are down 30 to 40 percent this year.

Why could that be? Could it be that people have had enough of the violent anti-abortion rhetoric that may have emboldened Tiller’s assassin, Scott Roeder? Could it be that more people have come to realize that Operation Rescue represents the most extreme elements of the anti-choice movement? Or perhaps people were put off by idiotic stunts like this?

The Associated Press makes a note of how Operation Rescue was linked in the media to the assassination of Dr. Tiller:

Tiller’s killing has also been a public relations nightmare for the group — despite its public condemnation of the slaying — since the name and phone number of the group’s senior policy adviser was found in Roeder’s car when he was arrested. A television crew zoomed in on the scrawled note inside the car in images that made their way to the Internet.

Furthermore, the president of the National Abortion Federation, Vicki Saporta, noted in the article that there is no way that Operation Rescue can be separated from Tiller’s murder, especially since the organization moved itself to Wichita, Kansas, in order to maintain a constant level of harassment at Tiller’s clinic, and because Roeder obviously had dealings with Operation Rescue’s staff.

Time will tell what this will spell for the anti-choice movement in the United States. But I welcome the possibility that Operation Rescue will fade from the scene. While I doubt that all of us will ever reach consensus on reproductive rights, I do hope that this is a sign that Americans are becoming less tolerant of open harassment and violent rhetoric on the part of the anti-choice movement.

The current Utne Reader (their 25th Anniversary issue) features an article by Tom Jacobs called “Liberals Aren’t Un-American. Conservatives Aren’t Ignorant” (excerpted from the magazine Miller-McCune), which highlights the theories of Jonathan Haidt. Haidt, a University of Virginia Psychology Professor, believes both conservatives and liberals skew the moral argument and demonize each other even though they are interdependent. Haidt believes, perhaps correctly, that conservatives strive to uphold authority while liberals challenge it. He believes that if conservatives ran the world we would resemble North Korea and if liberals ran the world it would be chaos.

Haidt believes that morality is built on “five foundational moral impulses.” These impulses are

• Harm/Care: It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.
• Fairness/ Reciprocity: Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.
• In-Group Loyalty: People should be true to their group and wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty, and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.
• Authority/ Respect: People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.
• Purity/ Sanctity:The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination, and associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.

In the broadest sense, a moral entity would be one that contains all the above categories to some extent. According to Haidt, liberals are focused on the first two while conservatives are focused on the last three. He may be onto something; his website, YourMorals.org, allows you to take a quiz and see the results for not just yourself but also other self-identified liberals and conservatives. According to his results, in the aggregate liberals do emphasize the first two and conservatives the last three.

I’ve heard conservative/liberal morality arguments before; George Lakoff’s Moral Politics comes to mind. I’ll say exactly what I said in my review of that book in college, it’s all bunk. Haidt’s questions are so devoid of context and so complex as to be stupid. Here are a few examples:

• Respect for authority is something all children need to learn
• People should not do things that are disgusting, even if no one is harmed
• People should be loyal to their family members, even when family members have done something wrong
• If I were a soldier and disagreed with my commanding officer’s orders, I would obey anyway because it was my duty

After each of these questions, and more, you are given the choice to strongly, moderately, or slightly agree or disagree. These are complicated questions, how on earth are you supposed to answer with a bubble sheet?

Children do need to learn to respect authority but they should also learn to challenge authority and call a teacher out when they say something wrong. Where on the agree/ disagree scale is that choice?

Should people do disgusting things? Who is going to answer that people should? And individuals might disagree, for example, on just how disgusting it would be to defecate in the woods out of necessity.

Should people be loyal to their family? What exactly does this mean, do I not turn my sister into the cops for a triple homicide, or do I act civilly the day after we have a fight? These are very different things with different answers and you cannot express it on the agree/disagree scale.

Would you follow orders if you were a soldier? Yes and no. If my commanding officer told me to hook electrodes to a guy’s testicles for fun I would have him court marshaled. If he decided to enter a town from the south as opposed to the north I would shut my mouth and do it. It depends on the context, it depends on the order, and it depends on your relationship with that officer.

All of these questions have a lot of context and complicated answers that this test does not allow for. All Haidt is really measuring is responses to key words that appear throughout the questions: authority, harm, loyal, duty, and more. So self-identified conservatives react more favorably to the word loyal, I fail to see what that has to do with morality or politics.

Politics is a complicated area. It does derive from people’s morality, I don’t deny that. But it is so much more complicated than Heidt’s test allows; there is the cult of personality, self interest, and parental party affiliation all playing into how people vote. Politics is much more about who gets what, when then it is about legislating morality. Haidt’s research is interesting, I give him that, he has shown that self-identified conservatives and liberals react differently to loaded words, but it is a mistake to believe that anyone’s politics, much less their morality, can be measured.

Columnist Bob Herbert has a must-read piece in today’s edition of the New York Times about what happened when justice failed and an innocent man was put on death row in Texas.

Referencing an article appearing in this week’s New Yorker (which can be read here), Herbert reports that on December 21, 1991, Cameron Todd Willingham was at his home in Corsicana, Texas, asleep. His two-year-old daughter and twin one-year-old daughters were in another room. He awoke when he heard the cries of his oldest child, and he quickly found that their room was being engulfed by fire. Herbert tells us what happened next:

Willingham said he tried to rescue the kids but was driven back by smoke and flames. At one point his hair caught fire. As the heat intensified, the windows of the children’s room exploded and flames leapt out. Willingham, who was 23 at the time, had to be restrained and eventually handcuffed as he tried again to get into the room.

There was no reason to believe at first that the fire was anything other than a horrible accident. But fire investigators, moving slowly through the ruined house, began seeing things (not unlike someone viewing a Rorschach pattern) that they interpreted as evidence of arson.

Even though investigators couldn’t determine any motive for Willingham to kill his own children, nevertheless he was arrested and charged with capital murder. Willingham declined a plea deal that would have spared his life and maintained his innocence for the twelve years that he sat on death row. He was executed on February 17th, 2004.

Herbert points out that in the weeks leading up to Willingham’s execution, a leading chemist and fire expert named Gerald Hurst reviewed the arson investigator’s case against Willingham and knocked down key pieces of evidence. This didn’t persuade the state to spare Willingham’s life. Nevertheless, as part of an official review of the state of Texas’s mishandling of forensic evidence, another fire expert named Craig Beylor reviewed the Willingham case and recently released a report on the evidence that sent Willingham to his death. Herbert writes:

The report is devastating, the kind of disclosure that should send a tremor through one’s conscience. There was absolutely no scientific basis for determining that the fire was arson, said Beyler. No basis at all. He added that the state fire marshal who investigated the case and testified against Willingham “seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires.” He said the marshal’s approach seemed to lack “rational reasoning” and he likened it to the practices “of mystics or psychics.”

It looks like Willingham was completely innocent of murder and the house fire that claimed the lives of his daughters was a tragic accident. His execution by the state of Texas is irreversible. And it was the scientifically unsound testimony of an incompetent fire investigator (along with a jailhouse informant who was later shown to be unreliable) that put Willingham in the death chamber.

Now, there are some obvious lessons to be learned here. First, the justice system absolutely must be adapted to keep up with the latest advances in forensic science, even after a prisoner is convicted. Like any science, forensic criminal investigations are subject to rapid advances, and older techniques may no longer be reliable or represent the best interpretation of the evidence available. With a prisoner sitting on death row for twelve years, it is likely that advances made in forensic science during that period of time may affect his case. And while opponents to this idea will point out that the courts may be tied up reviewing evidence in settled cases, nevertheless, in a case like this, where a man’s life is at stake, the state can do no less. The protection of innocent life is always paramount. If previously heard scientific evidence is called into doubt by new discoveries or advances, then it must be heard again.

Furthermore, proceedings involving forensic evidence must be infused with a healthy sense of skepticism. As Beylor’s report makes clear, there is no guarantee that investigators will use the latest or most credible scientific methods in their investigations. Beylor stated in his report that the lead fire investigator in the Willingham case based many of his conclusions on personal beliefs and that he had no real understanding of fire science. Investigators must testify based on sound science and not just sway the jury by dint of their position of authority.

Finally, Willingham is gone, and although being exonerated post mortem may give some measure of comfort to his family, it will not, of course, bring him back. This is another argument in favor of abolishing the death penalty once and for all. Does anyone believe that the legal system in the U.S. is infallible? If it isn’t, then it was inevitable that at least one innocent person would be put to death. And Willingham was by no means the only person wrongfully convicted of serious crimes in this country. While others may eventually be released from prison, Willingham’s case is emblematic of the inherent danger of implementing death as a punishment. Nothing can be done for him now.

To learn more about taking a stand against the death penalty, I recommend visiting the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, DC-based organization dedicated to collecting and disseminating accurate information about how the death penalty is applied in the United States. Once you’ve learned more about the death penalty, including how 135 people have been set free from death rows around the USA since 1973 after being proven innocent, I’ll bet that you’ll turn against this horrific punishment too.

Apparently Jack Waldvogel, treasurer of the Petoskey, Michigan, school board, was being “tongue-in-cheek” when he demanded in an e-mail sent to district staff and board members that the wording of the school calendar be changed from “Winter holiday break” to “Christmas break.” Yes, I suppose I can see the irony in the following passages:

We are, in spite of what the Obamessiah proclaims, STILL a Christian nation, founded on Judeo Christian principles.

Two choices here for our school district…either agree to change the “December vacation” back to “Christmas Break,” in ALL future publications (including the school calendar) voluntarily, or I will make such a stink, and bring out every redneck Christian Conservative north of Clare, to compel the District to do so. The press will love this one…

Our children need to know that we are a Christian nation and taking all reference to a higher being out of our educational vocabulary is wrong. Let the Ramadamians and the Kwanzanians bring their celebrations to school too…to share with our Christian children, but don’t cut God out of the school completely.

And possibly also when he wrote, “Don’t assume this is a joke…I’m being as serious as I possibly can here.” Only, I don’t think his irony was intentional–particularly because what’s ironic about all this is that his ranting e-mail proves why it’s important to keep  church and state separate: so the Waldvogels of the world can’t impose their radical religious (and historically inaccurate) ideas onto others.

Waldvogel refers to Muslims as “Ramadamians” and seems to have absolutely no understanding of or care about the Establishment Cllause. To borrow from the inimitable Barney Frank, trying to have a conversation with this guy would be like trying to argue with a dining room table (except that the dining room table would probably be far more stable). And I have no interest in doing it.

There’s an article in the New York Times this morning that serves as an appropriate followup to my post yesterday. Because this level of deception and fraud is so vast that it makes fortunetelling seem inconsequential (hat tip to Friendly Atheist):

FORT WORTH — Onstage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God.

Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds.

Because isn’t that what the Bible is all about?

But seriously, there really is no charitable interpretation of what the Copelands are doing: they are running an enormous scam that is preying on people that simply can’t afford it. They’re parading their own wealth in front of the very people that provided that wealth for them — in order to inspire them to make further donations. This is naked exploitation:

Many in this flock do not trust banks, the news media or Washington, where the Senate Finance Committee is investigating whether the Copelands and other prosperity evangelists used donations to enrich themselves and abused their tax-exempt status. But they trust the Copelands, the movement’s current patriarch and matriarch, who seem to embody prosperity with their robust health and abundance of children and grandchildren who have followed them into the ministry.

“If God did it for them, he will do it for us,” said Edwige Ndoudi, who traveled with her husband and three children from Canada for the Southwest Believers’ Convention this month, where the Copelands and three of their friends took turns preaching for five days, 10 hours a day at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The Copelands certainly do embody personal prosperity: the New York Times reports that their Newark, TX based ministry has 481 employees and an annual budget around $100 million. They passed the collection buckets at least five times a day at the Fort Worth convention. Despite being under Senate investigation, they seem to be doing quite well!

But what about their followers? They’re not quite in as good a shape. The NYT reporter spoke to a few:

Stephen Biellier, a long-distance trucker from Mount Vernon, Mo., said he and his wife, Millie, came to the convention praying that this would be “the overcoming year.” They are $102,000 in debt, and the bank has cut off their credit line, Mrs. Biellier said.

And even though they are so deep in debt, it turns out that they have given thousands of dollars to the Copelands over the years:

The Bielliers were at the convention a few years ago when a supporter made a pitch for people to join an “Elite CX Team” to raise money to buy the ministry a Citation X airplane. (Mr. Copeland is an airplane aficionado who got his start in ministry as a pilot for Oral Roberts.) At that moment, Mrs. Biellier said she heard the voice of the Holy Spirit telling her, “You were born to support this man.”

She gave $2,000 for the plane, and recently sent $1,800 for the team’s latest project: buying high-definition television equipment to upgrade the ministry’s international broadcasts.

Let’s get this straight: They are now into six figure debt but still have given thousands to the ministry in recent years to buy a private plane and high definition broadcasting equipment!

That offends me to my very core as a human being. These people may be gullible, but that still doesn’t justify their exploitation by the Copelands. After all, faith is still very strongly built into American society. Even though the United States is now trending more secular than in the recent past, most people are still raised in households where they are taught that religious belief must ultimately hinge on faith rather than critical thinking. Indeed, I think that many believers and nonbelievers alike would agree that faith and critical thinking have many incompatibilities. The nature of God is supposed to be ineffable, right?

When you couple that with the fact that religions are interpreted here on earth by other human beings (emissaries direct from Heaven don’t actually show up at the Fort Worth Convention Center to preach, at least, as far as I know), then that is a recipe for exploitation by charismatic people acting with guile. Excessive credulity plus a pleasing message that simultaneously taps both people’s self interest and their desire to give and be charitable is toxic for the financial health of people like the Bielliers.

What’s the answer? As the NYT article mentions, the Copelands may be abusing their tax exempt status as a ministry, and if that is found to be true, then they need to be stopped. That is a short-term solution that may save some of their followers some money. But in the long term, we need to work hard to make critical thinking a centerpiece of education at all grade levels. A little healthy skepticism is the antidote to the prosperity gospel.

From today’s Washington Post comes the story of a “self described Gypsy” who is challenging a ban on fortunetelling businesses in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Nick Nefedro didn’t need to have his palm read or look to Tarot cards to know that his plan to work as a fortuneteller in Bethesda would fail. His fate was already written: Montgomery County says it is illegal to make money from forecasting the future.

But Nefedro, who says he is a Gypsy, is determined to change that. He has enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union in his year-long fight to overturn the law that calls his livelihood fraudulent. He argues that fortunetelling is part of his heritage and that prohibiting him from working as a fortuneteller amounts to discrimination.

Mr. Nefedro characterizes the Montgomery County ban as “persecution against Gypsies,” which he ties into the historic persecution that the people commonly called Gypsies (also known as the Romani) have suffered across Eastern and Central Europe. He points out that Romani were often regarded to be thieves and con artists wherever they traveled. And he argues that this ban inhibits his rights under the First Amendment.

Does the ban against fortunetelling businesses in Montgomery County inhibit Mr. Nefedro’s freedom of speech and religion? Or is this a different issue because he wants to make this practice into a business and charge people money for it? After all, it is not the fortunetelling itself but rather the practice of charging for it that is banned. Mr. Nefedro is fighting for his right to run a business rather than the basic right to practice his religious beliefs at all.

Indeed, it seems that, to a certain extent, his status as a religious practitioner is entirely wrapped up with his status as a business proprietor:

Like his father, who had been a fortuneteller in the District [of Columbia] in the 1980s, Nefedro turned the practice into a business. With family members, he has owned and operated a half-dozen fortunetelling businesses in the Los Angeles area and in Key West, Fla.

But he wanted to move closer to home. Born in the District, he spent much of his youth with friends and family in Bethesda.

It’s understandable that he wanted to return home and open a business. But, leaving aside the obviously cynical answer to this question for the moment, can a for-profit business be a protected religious practice as well? And should Montgomery County have the right to ban businesses of this nature if the goal is to protect consumers from fraud?

The ACLU of Maryland argues that prohibitions against fraud are enough, without the additional blanket prohibition against fortunetelling businesses, and that even if Mr. Nefedro’s speech is mainly commercial in nature, it should still be protected. From the ACLU of Maryland’s press release on the case, discussing their role in helping him appeal the original ruling against him by the circuit court:

Contrary to the ruling of the Circuit Court in this case, courts across the country have consistently held that fortunetelling is protected speech, and restrictions on it, like the Montgomery County law, are equivalent to absolute bans and therefore unconstitutional. In addition, the Supreme Court has held repeatedly that merely because speech is for profit does not reduce the level of protection it is due.

In defending the law in the Circuit Court, the County argued that it is a legitimate exercise of police power, aimed at preventing fraud. While the interest in preventing fraud is legitimate, the County already has a law accomplishing that goal. A separate provision of the County Code prohibits persons from intending to or engaging in fraud in any consumer transaction. Accordingly, the ban’s only effect is to prevent individuals from engaging in constitutionally protected activity.

In other words, since the county already bans fraud, then why ban fortunetelling? Any fraud that he may commit during the course of operating his business would already be illegal. But, the ACLU argues, a broad ban on fortunetelling only serves to prohibit government protected speech.

I’ve never gone to a fortuneteller, and I don’t think that I’m alone in my suspicion that many of them are trying to scam people. However, Mr. Nefedro insists that he can see the future, and he may very well believe that he truly can. There is no way to judge the sincerity of this belief; we’ll have to take it at face value. Rather, to me the appropriate questions to ask are: does he have a First Amendment right to operate a for-profit business based on his religious beliefs? And is for-profit fortunetelling a form of protected speech? Or should local governments be empowered to protect consumers against the fraud perceived to be inherent in such businesses?

What do you think?

If there is one common element to the many atheist billboards that have been put in recent months, it seems to be the universal reaction of condemnation from the religious community.  Slogans such as “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone,” and “You can be good without God” have been met with reactions that range from casual indifference, to mild offense, to outright hostility.

Most recently, in response to the potential bus ad in Iowa with the “Don’t believe in God?” message, Iowa Governor Chet Culver said, “I was disturbed, personally, by the advertisement and I can understand why other Iowans were also disturbed by the message that it sent.”  In reaction to the same message on a billboard in Florida, a woman who goes by the nickname “Big Mama” led a small protest (of children who undoubtedly did not know what they were protesting) against the ad, and said, “I don’t know the reason for putting this sign up. It says ‘Do not believe in God.’ How are we going to make it? Look at our schools, everyday. Everyday there’s something going on. Kids are out here killing each other, kids are here using drugs. Who else are they going to believe in?” For a truly bizarre reaction to an ad by the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign that reads “You can be good without God,” watch this clip from the Fox News show “Fox and Friends.”

Let me first acknowledge that there are some atheist ads that can understandably be called offensive by religious people, just like there are some religious-themed ads that can be called offensive by…well, anyone with a conscience.  But to me, the statement “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone,” is little more than an objective fact. Essentially it says that some people do not believe in God, which, regardless of what you believe about anything, is objectively true. It is as true as a statement claiming that Christians exists. The same for the “You can be good without God;” you don’t have to be atheist to be good, but some people are. To me this seems as offensive as a hypothetical billboard that says “Don’t like Lobster? You are not alone.” It says nothing about the merits of eating lobster, or the taste, or really anything about lobster other than some people don’t like it.

I genuinely do not understand why this is offensive to anyone. This is about as uncontroversial as you can get. An ad that says “You are stupid and gullible for believing in God” is understandably offensive. This is not. The ads quoted previously are little more than objective statements of fact. That we are being offended by statements of fact is truly cause for concern.

Such reactions by these people suggest a deep insecurity about their belief in God, so much so that a mere mention of the word ‘God’ outside of the normal context in which God is praised in some way, immediately puts one on the defensive.  Are they in some way threatened by the mere presence of people who do not believe in God, or billboards that reflect this fact? Perhaps they didn’t even read the message correctly.  Just look at what Big Mama said: “I don’t know the reason for putting this sign up.” Don’t know the reason? Then why are you so angry? Big Mama claims that it says “Do not believe in God,” which, without the question mark, appears to be a command, equivalent to “Stop believing in God.” But it doesn’t say that, and anyone who takes 30 seconds to think about its meaning would see that.  Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends obsessed over a similar misinterpretation, asking why INABC used the word ‘God’ if they are atheist. Did he even bother reading the ad? His stunningly ignorant comments evoke the sort of jaw dropping bewilderment (rivaled only by Steve Harvey) that leaves me unable to even begin explaining what a ridiculous question that is.

If you think that one single comment is not an accurate representation of the way religious people have reacted, you have obviously not spent any time reading the “comment” section of any newspaper article that discusses this. This is truly an exercise in futility, so don’t bother.  Trust me that the comments there are far more hate-filled and vitriolic that Big Mama’s, but equally ignorant of the point.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it is that everyone needs to take a deep breath and try to understand each other a little better before we start shouting, lest we resort to some truly despicable behavior. Freedom of speech is good, but I would argue that the ability to comprehend what’s being said is even better. Once you have taken a moment to understand someone’s position, then you can start shouting.

File this story from Florida under “you can’t make this stuff up.” Except, apparently in this case, they could (h/t to Friendly Atheist):

A Hillsborough public policy group whose Christian platform included a push for a state ban on gay marriage has embraced a new attack on an old target: the separation of church and state.

Ten billboard advertisements against what activist Terry Kemple called the separation “lie” are being put up across Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Seven or eight of the billboard messages already are in place, and the rest will be by the end of this week, Kemple said.

What do the billboards say? They have quotes from our founding fathers, of course, each explaining why we shouldn’t separate religion from government. For example, the photo included with the article shows a billboard, black with white text, that says, ‘”Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle” – George Washington.’

Apparently, though, there is a dearth of anti-separation quotes by the founding fathers — the billboard sponsors admit that some of the quotes that they use are completely fabricated!

Others carry the same message but with fictional attribution, as with one billboard citing George Washington for the quote, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”

“I don’t believe there’s a document in Washington’s handwriting that has those words in that specific form,” Kemple said. “However, if you look at Washington’s quotes, including his farewell address, about the place of religion in the political sphere, there’s no question he could have said those exact words.”

Pardon me? Fictional attribution is a rather diplomatic way of saying that the quote is a lie. Making up a quote out of whole cloth, no matter if it’s plausible or not, and then attributing it to George Washington is a complete lie.

Certainly doesn’t put Christianity’s best foot forward, does it?

They may feel justified by some sense that their anti-separation cause is best served by lying. But I think it’s safe to say that most of us, whether we follow the Ten Commandments or secular morals, believe that lying is wrong, even for marketing purposes.

Their willingness to put lies on their billboards is ultimately a matter for their own consciences (some might say that it is between them and their respective god, which is another way of saying the same thing). Remember this, though, the next time a humanist billboard campaign is denounced for being somehow immoral — I promise you that it won’t feature fabricated quotes!

The State of Oregon’s longtime prohibition against the wearing of religious clothing or adornment by public school teachers while on duty has returned to the spotlight. Why? Because recently passed legislation, the Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act (PDF), now guarantees the right of every Oregon state employee to wear religious garb or accessories while on the job, with the notable exception of public school teachers, who will continue to be prohibited from doing so.

There has already been an outcry from a variety of religious organizations against the continuation of the ban for teachers. Organizations including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund have objected strongly and are asking that the ban be rescinded.

Why would such a ban be necessary? The Oregonian newspaper quotes a spokesperson for the state Department of Education explaining it like this:

“The underlying policy reflects the unique position that teachers occupy,” said Jake Weigler, spokesman for the state Department of Education. “In this case, the concern that a public school teacher would be imparting religious values to their students outweighs that teacher’s right to free expression.”

Is this true? Would students be influenced by a teacher who is wearing a turban, hijab, yarmulke, or a Christian cross while teaching? Is it reasonable for the state to protect students from such influence by prohibiting personal religious expression by teachers?

I don’t believe that it is. While any given student will most likely take note of a teacher’s religious adornment or clothing, this presents an opportunity to learn about religious diversity and pluralism in the United States and around the world. There are right ways and wrong ways to deal with religion in the classroom, and while teachers should always be prohibited from proselytizing to their captive audience of students, nevertheless they do not have an obligation to check their personal identity at the door of the classroom. Indeed, the religious and cultural identity of a teacher can present a learning opportunity for students if it is handled the right way.

I believe that an important part of professional behavior for teachers is ensuring that his or her own personal life does not become too big a part of the discussion in the classroom. But nevertheless, classes are not taught by robots who must present a neutral identity. Religious identity, including personal adornment, is an important part of a person’s identity, and it’s not helpful to make teachers pretend as though their personal religious beliefs don’t exist while they are on duty. This is a far cry from the more reasonable requirement that teachers must always respect the rights of their students by refraining from inappropriate religious content in lessons and activities.

In addition, this prohibition overall doesn’t pass First Amendment muster. State institutions are prohibited from adopting a religious identity or favoring one certain religion over another. However, this prohibition should not extend to the passive religious expression of state employees. This is reflected in the fact that the new legislation reinforces the protection of religious expression for Oregon state employees in every sector other than the public school classroom. But I fail to see how public schools should be a special case.

The Oregon state legislature should rescind this ban and create much less stringent regulations that respect the First Amendment rights of teachers. Having teachers from different religious backgrounds could provide valuable lessons in diversity and pluralism for Oregon students. Otherwise the state is attempting to smooth over religious differences by pretending that they don’t exist.

Yesterday Judge Sotomayor was questioned about her Free Exercise jurisprudence by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD). Here’s a snipped version of the exchange:

CARDIN: Well, let me conclude on one other case that you ruled on, where I also agree with your decision. That’s the Ford v. McGinnis, where you wrote a unanimous panel opinion overturning a district court summary judgment finding in favor of the Muslim inmate who was denied by prison officials’ access to his religious meals marking the end of Ramadan.

You held that the inmate’s fundamental rights were violated and that the opinions of the department of correction and religious authorities cannot trump the plaintiff’s sincere and religious beliefs…

[snip]

SOTOMAYOR: In the Ford case that you just mentioned, the question there before the court was, did the district court err in considering whether or not the religious belief that this prisoner had was consistent with the established traditional interpretation of a meal at issue, OK?

And what I was doing was applying very important Supreme Court precedent that said, it’s the subjective belief of the individual. Is it really motivated by a religious belief?

It’s one of the reasons we recognize conscientious objectors, because we’re asking a court not to look at whether this is orthodox or not, but to look at the sincerity of the individual’s religious belief and then look at what the state is doing in light of that. So that was what the issue was in Ford.

It’s reassuring to see Sotomayor recognizes that what is important in deciding a person’s right to free exercise of religion is not whether an establishment thinks a particular tradition is necessary or unnecessary to the practice of an individual’s religion, but whether that individual perceives it to be. Sotomayor has a good record of upholding that standard, and her rulings have maintained government neutrality between all faiths—whether mainstream or nontraditional.

However, I would like to see a member of the Judicial Committee ask Sotomayor her opinion on government neutrality between faith and non-faith. Is my right to any aspect of my humanist philosophy the same as any Christian’s right to any aspect of their faith? Or, to use an example cited by Sotomayor, would she recognize an atheist as a conscientious objector?

I’m sure you’ve heard of Randall Terry, who for years was the face of the anti-choice movement in the United States. Even though he hasn’t been the head of Operation Rescue, an organization that he founded, since 1989, he has managed to keep his name out there as a prominent anti-abortion and anti-reproductive choice activist. Although his star has faded in recent years, he is trying harder than ever to make a comeback to national prominence.

The Washington Post has an article today about some of Terry’s recent efforts to stay relevant and keep his face on the national anti-abortion brand. It begins with the startlingly creepy image of Terry and his acolytes smearing fake blood all over their hands and copies of the Roe v. Wade ruling while standing outside the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor. And it’s all downhill from there, as Terry tells the journalist that using fake blood for his protests came to him in a “vision” (is that what he vaingloriously calls having a thought?) while he was planning ways to disrupt the hearings.

It turns out, though, that this was not his first vision; as the Washington Post article states, in reference to the founding of Operation Rescue:

Terry, 50, was in his 20s when he founded Operation Rescue — the result, he said, of a vision from God that appeared before his eyes at a prayer meeting. The vision was, he said, a scroll with instructions to stop abortion. Along with the scroll, he saw thousands of people gathered in front of abortion clinics to save babies, and he saw himself being interviewed on “Donahue,” the popular TV talk show hosted by Phil Donahue.

After serving as a primary spokesperson in favor of federal interference in the Terri Schiavo case in 2005, the Post states that Terry had more or less faded from view for several years. But he is on the upswing once more, getting his name back in the press for the demonstrations against President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame University and his unbelievably hateful comments after the assassination of Dr. George Tiller. (Amongst other things, he said, “George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God…Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God.)

And now he is attempting to lead the charge against President Obama’s middle-of-the-road Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Adele M. Stan of AlterNet attended Terry’s demonstration this past Sunday on the steps of the US Supreme Court, and reported on Terry’s demand that the anti-abortion senators filibuster Sotomayor’s nomination:

Terry made the camera operators move forward and adjust their mikes. “Pro-life senators have a moral obligation to filibuster Sotomayor,” he began. “Pro-life Republicans, pro-life Democrats seduce us with their words. They use our money, they take our man-hours, they take our votes, and then throw us away like a used-up mistress after an election. It’s disgusting! If Sen. [Sam] Brownback and Sen. [John] McCain and Sen. [Knute] Nelson and Sen. [Bob] Casey believe that Roe v. Wade must be overturned, then they must filibuster Sotomayor. You can’t say you want to overturn Roe on the one hand, and then vote for somebody who will uphold Roe on the other. It is treachery, hypocrisy, laziness and betrayal.”

He certainly sounds frustrated! Perhaps this ties into Amanda Marcotte’s assertion in the Guardian that Republicans overall have not made abortion front and center in Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, opting to focus on race and gender-based attacks against her instead. Says Marcotte:

Anti-choice activists used to own the issue of Supreme Court nominations so thoroughly, they were able to bully George Bush out of nominating Harriet Miers, despite her anti-choice views, in no small part because they simply don’t trust women not to stick by their own. Obviously, with Republicans out of power, anti-choice activists can’t block the nomination, but now they can’t even get Republicans to consider their demands a top priority.

The most obvious reason is that gender has been demoted to a second-tier issue so that Republicans can work more efficiently with arguments over race against Sotomayor, playing off anti-Hispanic sentiment and rightwing folk beliefs about a Latino “takeover” to inculcate resentment in their base. Anti-choicers are feeling the sting of falling out of fashion in the circles of rightwing nastiness and resentment.

Marcotte goes on to say that she also believes Republicans may be a little more toned down on anti-choice rhetoric this time around because of the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller. Perhaps they don’t want to be associated with a movement that is so violent in the eyes of many Americans. She’s not optimistic, though, that this distance will last.

I would be shocked if the Republicans filibuster Sotomayor, and I’m sure she’ll sail through confirmation. So the real question here is, what does the future hold for Randall Terry after his stunts at the Capitol are over? The Post notes that some anti-choice activists are less than enthusiastic about his desire to be a more public figure once again:

Leaders of the antiabortion movement are cringing at Terry’s sudden return. They say his incendiary rhetoric and showy tactics turn off ordinary Americans and reflect Terry’s struggle to regain his glory years.

“It’s sad in a way,” said Fredericksburg antiabortion activist Patrick Mahoney, who was close to Terry at one time but, like others in the movement, is now estranged from him. “It’s almost like a heavyweight boxer who’s past his prime. The movement has gone by him.”

While I fear the harmful consequences of his horrific rhetoric and stunts, particularly because they could inspire further violent acts, nevertheless I do feel that Randall Terry serves a useful function for those of us that favor reproductive rights. With his stunts, his jugs of fake blood, his followers disrupting Senate Judiciary Committee meetings, and his references to having “visions” that guide how he organizes his protests, he does represent one idea very well: that his anti-choice position is on the outer fringe. He makes it clear that his strong belief that women should not have control over their own bodies is in fact an extremist position to be defended by fringe and even dangerous characters such as him, operating on the margins of society. His extremist tactics lay bare the extremist nature of the entire anti-choice stance. Even so, we cannot discount the constant threat that Terry’s ugly and explosive language poses. He represents the worst of the intertwining of religion and social activism, when a fanatic believes that he speaks on behalf of his god and that his actions bear a holy endorsement. And we certainly know what kind of trouble that can lead to.

I’ve been watching the confirmation hearing for Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She’ll be replacing Justice David Souter, who was one of the staunchest defenders of the separation of church and state, but we don’t yet know her views.

I perked up when I heard someone mentioning prayer during the hearing. Turns out it was Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). I tracked down his prepared statement, and it turns out to have been this gem:

We have seen federal judges force their own political and social agenda on the nation, dictating that the words “under God” be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance[2] and barring students from even silent prayer in schools.[3]

I’m dying to know what those footmarks are, because I can’t find them actually citing anything.

Regarding [2], I assume he’s referring to Michael Newdow’s famous case against Elk Grove. It’s a bit of a stretch to say that judges’ interpretation of the Establishment Clause is “forcing their own political and social agenda on the nation,” but at least I know what he’s talking about. I think he’s wrong, but he’s in this version of reality.

But on [3], I really have no idea what Sessions is talking about. I certainly haven’t heard of any cases of federal judges “barring students from even silent prayer in schools.” Know why? Because there are none.

My co-worker made a good point to illustrate how false it must be: how would they enforce it? I can just envision a teacher saying, “You! You look thoughtful and distant. You’d better be daydreaming and not praying!”

Sigh. This is just another example of people spreading misinformation. Except that this time it’s a senator making public comments on record. Senator Sessions has a background in law, so one would expect him not to misrepresent court cases. Wonderful.

On Wednesday, July 8, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts filed suit against the Federal Government. Massachusetts alleges the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) “exceeds the powers granted to Congress and violates the United States Constitution.”

On state sovereignty grounds, Massachusetts petitioned the court for an injunction prohibiting the enforcement of DOMA’s section 3 within the Commonwealth. The petition argues DOMA “creates two separate and unequal categories of married couples” and “commandeers state employees into implementing federal policy that contradicts state law.”

Essentially, Massachusetts argues, Health and Human Services funds and services are improperly distributed in the Commonwealth and in violation of Massachusetts law. It is a little crazy to say federal funds need to be distributed in accordance with state law before federal law, but in this case Massachusetts may have something.

As a rule of thumb, federal law trumps state law. The Constitution, however, states that any powers not delegated to the Federal Government remain with the states or the people. Historically certain clauses of the Constitution have been read quite liberally, for example the interstate commerce clause, and allowed for federal involvement in matters the Constitution did not foresee. Massachusetts argues DOMA is a historical anomaly and does not comport with past understandings of federal power and that the federal government has no legal jurisdiction to define marriage within Massachusetts borders.

Whether or not the judiciary agrees with Massachusetts remains to be seen.