Update: Yesterday CFI issued an updated statement affirming support for religious freedom and stating “CFI’s unequivocal support for the legal right of Muslims to place a community center near Ground Zero does not imply that CFI views the new center as an event to be celebrated…On balance, CFI does not consider houses of worship to be beneficial to humanity, whether they are built at Ground Zero or elsewhere. ” However, the statement makes it clear that CFI believes that there should be no prohibition against building the Cordoba House or any other religious building closer to Ground Zero, and it no longer features the language of the previous statement suggesting that it would be better if the vicinity of Ground Zero was a faith-free zone.

The original post follows:

Should lower Manhatan be a faith-free zone?

The Center For Inquiry thinks so. In a statement released today, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) affirmed its support for freedom of religion but nevertheless called for a moratorium on new faith-based institutional buildings to be constructed in the vicinity of Ground Zero:

The Center for Inquiry is troubled by the rhetoric of some of those protesting the proposed Islamic religious center and mosque near Ground Zero, and it especially deplores the growing politicization of the dispute. CFI also holds that the focus of the protests is too narrow; it would be inappropriate to build any new house of worship in the area immediately around Ground Zero, not just mosques. “The 9/11 attacks were an example of faith-based terrorism, and any institution that privileges faith above reason is an affront to those who were killed and injured in those attacks,” observes Ronald A. Lindsay, president and CEO of CFI.

I suppose that CFI thinks that this is a nuanced position on this contentious issue, but let’s get one thing straight: this is an issue that leaves little room for nuance. You either support free exercise for all religions, or you don’t. It is true that CFI affirms multiple times in the statement that they support the First Amendment and see no legitimate legal mechanism for preventing the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (actually, it’s an Islamic community center that will be two blocks away from Ground Zero), but it is still utter nonsense to declare that the area close to where the World Trade Center towers once stood should be somehow sacred or should be some kind of faith-free zone.

First, let’s make it clear that this statement is still singling out Islam above all other religions. How can that be? After all, they do state that no new religious buildings should be constructed around Ground Zero, not just Islamic religious buildings. But this is a moot point, because the only project under consideration right now, and the only one that is at the center of a contentious national debate, is the Cordoba House. Period. Therefore, any discussion of any other religion is a red herring. Sure, we could all agree that, as long as we’re opposing the Cordoba House, then we’re also opposing building a Mormon temple, or a house of Scientology, or even a Catholic Church. But all of that is meaningless, because right now no one is proposing to build any of those houses of worship close to Ground Zero. So let’s leave aside the idea that CFI’s statement is doing anything different than singling out Islam, which is what all the other organizations who oppose the project (organizations whose rhetoric CFI finds troubling) are doing.

But to the extent that CFI does try to make all of religion their target in this statement, it is unreasonable to portray all people of faith as kindred spirits to the 19 fanatics who attacked the United States and murdered thousands of people on September 11, 2001. One of the most common talking points against the Cordoba House project is that all Muslims bear some sort of special responsibility for the actions of the few murderous fanatics who claimed to commit their crimes in the name if Islam; while CFI seems to condemn painting Muslims with such a broad brush, nevertheless by condemning the construction of any house of worship in the vicinity of Ground Zero, they seem to only be making the brush even wider by pointing the finger at all people of faith. The vast majority of believers in this world hold no truck with fanatics who would use murder to advance their cause. Why should they all be punished by a sudden declaration of “no-faith zone” for lower Manhattan?

Frankly, the idea of banning all religious construction around Ground Zero doesn’t even make sense. The Cordoba House is proposed for the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory two blocks from Ground Zero. How wide, exactly, would CFI like the no-faith zone to be? How many blocks are enough to show sufficient deference to the families of the victims of 9/11, many of whom are people of faith themselves? Do we condemn them too if they make faith a part of their lives, because faith may have played a part in motivating the 9/11 hijackers? Where does this end?

Religious freedom, like any freedom, is not absolute, but neither can it be restrained in mere symbolic gestures. Declaring lower Manhattan to be some sort of faith-free zone is a non sequitur; if people of faith aren’t collectively responsibile for 9/11, why should they bear responsibility for keeping their religious institutions away from Ground Zero? And if we are meant to believe that all people of faith indeed do have a collective responsibility for the actions of terrorists, then how can we even have a meaningful discussion on religious fanaticism? How can we address the problems caused by religion without making a distinction between most people of faith and the people who are actually causing the problems? We’d be redefining the enemy to be bigger and bigger.

We live in a world of religious people and non-religious people. By all means let those of us who stand outside of organized religion make criticisms and work to counter its harmful influence when necessary. Let us advocate for our own different visions for the future of the world. But to do this most effectively we need to employ the scalpel more and the hatchet less. The 19 people (and the many more who supported them) who attacked the United States on 9/11 received a lot of their motivation from hatred and religious ideology, but they were not acting on behalf of all Muslims, and they certainly were not representing all people of faith in their actions. Making lower Manhattan into some kind of faith-free zone would be an affront to religious liberty and would make no sense in the face of the challenges that we do face today regarding religious extremism.

As a secular humanist, I dispute that ground can be declared sacred, and lower Manhattan is no exception. Cordoba House should be built right where its sponsors have the legal right to build it.

Yesterday both opponents and supporters of the Park51 Islamic community center project in lower Manhattan gathered for competing rallies. The New York Times was there and reported on some ugliness that took place:

Around noon on Sunday, Michael Rose, a medical student from Brooklyn, approached some of the hundreds of protesters who had gathered near ground zero to rally against a mosque and Islamic center planned for the neighborhood.

Mr. Rose, 27, carried a handwritten sign in favor of the mosque — “Religious tolerance is what makes America great,” it read — and his presence caused a stir. An argument broke out, punctuated by angry fingers pointed in the student’s face.

The police eventually removed Mr. Rose for his own safety.

Salon.com commentator Glenn Greenwald points to a video of another confrontation that took place at the same anti-Park51 rally. An African-American man wearing a cap that fit tightly over his head walked through, and members of the crowd quickly decided that he must be a Muslim and started shouting anti-Islamic slogans at him. If you watch the video at YouTube (warning: strong language, poor sound quality), you can see the hostile tone of the demonstration. The man who is singled out seems to be simultaneously angry and baffled. For what it’s worth, he denies he’s even a Muslim, but also expresses bewilderment that the crowd singled him out without knowing his opinion on the subject. But his very presence activates the deep hostility of the crowd in a way that looks downright frightening in the video.

In light of all this ugliness, it disappoints me to see that Mother Jones is reporting this morning that several commissioners from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom have come out strongly against the Park51 project. The USCIRF is federally funded and was created by Congress in 1998 to monitor religious freedom around the world and advise the president on the issue. But apparently many of its commissioners lose sight of this mission when it comes to addressing religious freedom at home. According to the Mother Jones report:

In a recent piece for National Review Online, Nina Shea, one of USCIRF’s nine commissioners (who are selected by the president and congressional leaders), wrote that instead of “a cultural center for all New Yorkers,” the “mosque” project could be “a potential tool for Islamists”—suggesting it would be a hotbed of jihadism that, among other things, spreads the literature and ideas of Islamic extremism. She compared the leaders of the Cordoba House project to convicted terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman (the “blind Sheikh”) and accused Fort Hood and Christmas Day bombing coordinator Anwar al-Awlaki. (Shea’s piece, as of Monday, was no longer showing up on the NRO site.)

Mother Jones goes on to point out that at least two of the other eight commissioners also have spoken out against the project, including Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who compared the project to a hypothetical Shinto Shrine at Pearl Harbor and believes it should be moved several more blocks away from Ground Zero.

Never mind that Imam Rauf, the religious leader behind the project, indubitably holds moderate religious and political views. Never mind that the First Amendment to the Constitution is not conditional based on which religion is asking for free exercise. Never mind that one of the lead opponents to Park51 has unabashedly and repeatedly lied about the project. Nina Shea and Richard Land are here to tell you that religious freedom doesn’t exist in lower Manhattan…or that it shouldn’t.

But while many opponents of the Park51 project claim it’s a matter of the land around Ground Zero being somehow sacred, it is nevertheless evident that—as one of the project backers, Daisy Khan, stated yesterday—the opposition has to do with hatred of Muslims more than anything else. As the Washington Post reported today, Mosque construction is facing tough opposition all over the nation, including in Murfreesboro, TN, where opponents to a local Islamic center’s expansion plans carried signs that said “Keep Tennessee Terror Free.”

It is the height of bigotry to blame an entire population for the actions of a few. Mosque opponents are acting as though Islam itself (and therefore all Muslims) attacked America on 9/11, rather than a small band of violent and hateful fanatics. When they say that building the Park51 project is “insensitive” to the 9/11 victim’s families, they are acting as though the very existence of Muslims is what’s offensive.

The conflict over Park51 points to a larger battle over our country’s future. Will the USA be a nation that respects the First Amendment, that is tolerant (and even accepting) of religious minorities, that truly practices the ideal that people should be free to practice their respective religions without interference? Or will xenophobia triumph, fanned by the flames of polarizing political and media figures, leaving the nation as a sort of exclusive zone for the one chosen Christian religion?

It’s a battle we cannot afford to lose. The Park51 project must be allowed to proceed, unhindered. Now is the time for concerned citizens to speak out in favor of the universal principle of religious freedom, which benefits all of us, no matter how we may individually feel about different organized religions. Or will secular humanists one day be saying our own version of Pastor Niemöller’s famous statement? They came first for the Muslims…

Yesterday was the last day of the US Supreme Court’s 2009-2010 term, and it was a busy one. Among the four decisions reached was one of the most important church-state separation cases in recent history, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.

The case concerns a public university, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, a campus of the University of California system. Like all colleges, Hastings allows students to form organizations and officially register them with the school, which in return gives them access to certain resources, including preferential meeting room space, campus communication tools, and access to student activity funds. In return for this official status, however, Hastings requires registered student organizations to adhere to the university’s nondiscrimination policy, which forbids discriminating on a basis of, among other things, religious beliefs and sexual orientation, and requires student organizations to accept any Hastings student as a member.

And therein was the problem for the Christian Legal Society, a national organization that asked in 2004 that its Hastings chapter be exempted from the nondiscrimination policy because all its members are required to sign a statement of faith that, among other things, would forbid him or her to be gay or lesbian. Hastings declined to issue such an exemption and denied official status to the Christian Legal Society chapter, and a lawsuit shortly followed.

The Christian Legal Society’s argument that it had been discriminated against by Hastings College didn’t seem to hold any water with the lower courts: both the US District Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Hastings, finding that there had been no discrimination against the Christian Legal Society. And so it came to pass that the US Supreme Court heard the case on April 19th, 2010 and issued its 5-4 ruling in favor of Hastings yesterday, on the last day of the court’s term.

In the ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority (PDF) that (emphasis added):

In requiring CLS—in common with all other student organizations—to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations. CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings’ policy. The First Amendment shields CLS against state prohibition of the organization’s expressive activity, however exclusionary that activity may be. But CLS enjoys no constitutional right to state subvention of its selectivity.

In other words, as the nondiscrimination policy applies to all student organizations, what the Christian Legal Society was actually asking for was preferential treatment that Hastings was not obliged to give.

In a succinct concurring opinion, retiring Justice John Paul Stevens wrote:

Although the First Amendment may protect CLS’s discriminatory practices off campus, it does not require a public university to validate or support them.
…
As written, the Nondiscrimination Policy is content and viewpoint neutral. It does not reflect a judgment by school officials about the substance of any student group’s speech. Nor does it exclude any would-be groups on the basis of their convictions. Indeed, it does not regulate expression or belief at all.

In other words, the real issue here isn’t whether or not Hastings allows the CLS to discriminate, but rather, whether or not Hastings must endorse that discrimination by making the CLS an officially registered student organization, with access to all of the university and student funded benefits therein. And the answer to that question from the five justice majority was a resounding “no.”

Divided as the current court almost always is, the three other conservative justices on the court joined Justice Samuel Alito on his dissent, in which he stated:

The proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.”…Today’s decision rests on a very different principle: no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country’s institutions of higher learning.

But it is not at all clear from the case just how the freedom of expression of the CLS was hindered. At no time was freedom of speech denied for the CLS or its members. The organization was even allowed to meet on campus and hasn’t been inhibited from sponsoring events. But it will have to do so with less access to the resources provided by Hastings to official student organizations. The key is that Hastings College applies its anti-discrimination requirement equally and across the board to all student organizations, not just to the CLS, so if they refuse to comply with it, how can they then claim that they have been unfairly singled out?

Secular and civil liberties organizations all over the nation, including the American Humanist Association, Americans United, and the ACLU, applauded the ruling and celebrated this victory in such a vital separation of church and state case. To understand the significance, consider for a moment if it had gone the other way, and if the Supreme Court had ruled that Hastings was discriminating against the CLS by requiring them to adhere to the university’s anti-discrimination code. This would actually set aside religious student organizations as a special class that did not have to adhere to regulations that apply to other student organizations. It would have been a disaster for the separation of church and state, because students at Hastings would have been forced to support, through their own required student activity fees, an organization that would not even necessarily admit them as members!

Given the nature of the Hastings anti-discrimination policy, which is described as an “all-comers” policy, meaning that student organizations must accept as members all Hastings students who wish to join, rather than the more common university policy of disallowing any student group to discriminate based on certain criteria, it is not clear if this ruling will have far-reaching implications for universities across the United States. Ultimately the court stuck to the “all-comers” policy in its ruling, which it found to be viewpoint neutral when applied to all student organizations at Hastings, and the court did not rule on the broader question of other types of anti-discrimination policies.

Yesterday’s ruling was a great victory for the separation of church and state, and it was also a high note for the end of the final term of Justice John Paul Stevens, who is now retiring after a nearly 35-year long distinguished career of defending the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. He will surely take his place in history alongside other heavyweight rights-defenders of the Supreme Court, including Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall. He is truly a great American, and his presence will be sorely missed on the nation’s highest court.

Oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for two months now, and there still isn’t an end in sight. And day by day, the news seems to keep getting worse.

Faced with what very well may be the worst environmental disaster in US history, it is understandable that people feel frustrated, angry, and helpless, especially those who live on the Gulf Coast and are watching their livelihoods sink into the black muck that is lapping at their shores. And even as the black blob grows in the satellite photos, most people have nothing to do in response but wait as BP and the Coast Guard work to counteract the oil flowing out of the hole a mile below the surface of the ocean.

So I cannot sit here and tell people how they should or shouldn’t react to the spill and what actions they should take to try and do something about it. But still, there is something about this that rubs me the wrong way:

A resolution encouraging people to pray for an end to the BP oil spill crisis has been approved by the Louisiana Senate.

Sen. Robert Adley, a Republican from Benton, won unanimous approval of the resolution last week. The resolution made this past Sunday a state-designated day of prayer in Louisiana, during which people of all faiths in the state and around the nation will be encouraged to seek divine intervention to end the crisis.

As Senator Adley explained after the measure passed:

As the resolution details, “citizens are urged to pray for a solution to this crisis, each according to his or her own faith, to pray for God’s continued guidance and protection and to join in the observance of a day of prayer, seeking God’s blessings upon both our state and nation.” The resolution also calls upon the people of Louisiana to join together to pray for an end to the crisis which is threatening our environment, our culture and our livelihoods.

And here’s the real kicker:

“Thus far the efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail,” Adley explained. “It is clearly time for a miracle for us.”

It is true that all that mortal humans have attempted so far has failed to fully quell the massive leak from the seafloor. I can see how a believer might decide that it’s time to pray for a miracle. And while I object to state legislatures passing prayer resolutions, because I think that they’re an unconstitutional endorsement of religion, that’s not even the point I want to raise here.

Rather, I think that this prayer resolution, and other similar calls for prayer, are removing focus from where it needs to be. In short: God didn’t do this. Humans did. And only humans can fix it.

What’s happening in the gulf is not like an earthquake. It’s not a natural disaster, no matter what anyone says. The evidence for BP’s inadequate safeguards, negligence, and even recklessness, is growing. And beyond the specific instances of negligence that caused this particular disaster, it is reckless to risk such a spill occurring when it is clear that neither BP nor the US government had the tools and means to contain and control it after the well suffered a blowout.

So this call to prayer is really a request for God to save us from ourselves. And as he’s made clear in the past, all too many times, God is unable or unwilling or unavailable to do that.

So people may pray, if it makes them feel better, but at this time, it is vital that we remember what I would call one of the fundamental tenets of humanism: we should never gamble with the health of our planet, and we can’t count on anyone but ourselves to save us if we do. There’s nothing in this universe worth trading the Gulf of Mexico for, and if it is to be restored, humans will have to do the hard work (and BP better pay for it!). Over the decades ahead, we might be able to finally sop up most of the oil from the shores of the Gulf, but let’s never forget the lesson of just how much destructive power we hold in our (unclasped) hands.

Via Think Progress, I see that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) thinks he has a novel solution for the problem of discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people. The website Good As You posted the audio, which Think Progress helpfully transcribed, of a discussion between Rep. King and Tony Perkins, the head of the anti-gay religious right group Family Research Council. King was discussing how a Republican state senator from Iowa named Jerry Behn used to try and make LGBT activists guess his sexual orientation in order to make a point.

KING: And he said, ‘let me ask you a question.’ ‘Am I heterosexual or am I homosexual?’ And they looked him up and down, actually they should have known, but they said, ‘we don’t know.’ And he said, ‘exactly, my point. If you don’t project it, if you don’t advertise it, how would anyone know to discriminate against you?’ And that’s at the basis of this. So if people wear their sexuality on their sleeve and then they want to bring litigation against someone that they would point their finger at and say ‘ you discriminate.‘ …This is the homosexual lobby taking it out on the rest of society and they are demanding affirmation for their lifestyle, that’s at the bottom of this.

Rep. King unconsciously distilled the essence of what we could call straight privilege into an easily comprehensible form. He just explained how easy it is to be straight. He doesn’t have a clue how a person hides his or her own sexual orientation or what it feels like, because he doesn’t have to. He thinks that there is some insight to be gained from that story, but he is merely illustrating his blindness to his own straight privilege, along with the fact that upon first glance it may be difficult to ascertain the sexual orientation of some people.

But has he ever had a job where he had to hide a significant portion of his life from his colleagues, all the time, for fear of being fired for being gay? Has he ever had to lie or deny that he has a partner because he didn’t want his colleagues to know that he was living with another man? Has he ever had to tell his partner not to call him at work, because he didn’t want people figuring out that he had a boyfriend? Has he ever had to hide a significant part of his own identity, simply because bigoted co-workers might make his life miserable if they found out that he was gay?

This is what Rep. King is demanding that LGBT people do in order to be able to avoid discrimination in the workplace. And, as a matter of fact, this is what millions of LGBT people do at their jobs every day. Only 21 states, the District of Columbia, and over 140 cities and counties currently forbid discrimination in the workplace against gays and lesbians. Anywhere else, you can be fired from your job if your boss finds out about your partner, whom you were so desperately trying to keep secret, or finds out that you were seen walking out of a gay club on a Friday night.

Rep. King’s statement is just further evidence that federal protection is needed. The time to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is now!

One last point: Rep. King is clearly talking about LGBT living out of the closet when he refers to “people wear[ing] their sexuality on their sleeve.” But the truth is, straight people do this too. Straight people talk about their straight lifestyle, they talk about their husbands or wives, boyfriends or girlfriends, they hold hands in public, they put pictures of their families in their work spaces. Straight people are very open about their sexual orientation. Why? Because it is a part of their identity, and there are no harmful consequences in American society for being open about it. LGBT people are demanding the same thing; they want to live openly, as themselves, in America, in their jobs and in their private lives, without worrying about harmful consequences that come about from bigotry.

Many people’s anti-LGBT attitudes won’t change over night, but a huge step in the right direction would be passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to ensure that no one can be legally penalized at work simply for their sexual orientation. To learn more, and to see what you can do, visit the Human Rights Campaign’s action page on ENDA.

Happy National Day of Reason! Today we commemorate that most vital of human faculties, the ability to reason, while maintaining vigilance against encroachment on the separation of church and state here in the USA. And it is not a coincidence that today also falls on the National Day of Prayer, the congressionally mandated prayer day that was instituted in 1952 and is implemented every year by presidential proclamation. While this year was no exception, hopefully the National Day of Prayer is not long for this world.

For this National Day of Reason, which is being celebrated around the nation with commemorative events, city proclamations, and even a visit to Robert Ingersoll’s grave, I wanted to consider for a minute an idea put forth in a Los Angeles Times op-ed by the writer Marc Cooper, a contributing editor to The Nation magazine. He humbly suggests, in light of the impending retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, that rather than agonizing over the lack of protestants on the court, President Obama should do something completely different (and what some may even regard as radical):

Though the court without Stevens will be left with six Catholics and two Jews, the open seat should not go to either domination. Nor should it go to a Presbyterian, a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Muslim or even a Zoroastrian. If it did, that would make nine people who all have one religious principle in common: a belief in religion.

Clearly, the next person to take the bench should be an atheist.

An atheist on the high court? Is this guy crazy? Who would ever have supported such a thing?

While few sitting politicians have the political courage to name a declared nonbeliever, it is something that Thomas Jefferson (and several others among the founders) might well have done.

In an 1823 letter to John Adams, Jefferson was forthright about his views of religion, and Christianity specifically. “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter,” Jefferson wrote. “But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.”

In other words, Jefferson liked what Jesus, the man, stood for, but could definitely do without the rest of the bunk.

For those who do not support the separation of church and state, it is one of the most supremely uncomfortable facts in U.S. history that so many of our nation’s founders were skeptics on matters of religion. Besides coining the phrase “wall of separation between Church & State” in his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson also edited his own version of the Bible, with all supernatural elements excised (perhaps this is why the religious-right dominated Texas State Board of Education recently demoted him within the state social studies standards). So I think Mr. Cooper is on pretty solid ground here when he asserts that President Jefferson would have considered such an appointment to the court.

So why appoint an atheist to the Supreme Court? Cooper says:

Having an atheist justice, however, would not primarily be a matter of identity politics and some sort of equal representation. Rather, a nonbeliever justice would be a mighty blow in favor of the secular principles of “reason and freedom” of which Jefferson spoke.

Heaven knows we could use some more of that stuff. Religion plays far too influential a role in our political and civic life as is. I personally don’t care what sort of superstition makes you sleep better at night, but I think we would all benefit if you left it behind closed doors and kept it as far away as possible from public policy. How about a policy of don’t ask, don’t tell?

Consider how many of the cases that go in front of the court directly impact atheists and other freethinkers and nonreligious people. For example, a stark reminder was provided last October as to just how obtuse a Supreme Court justice could be on the question of whether or not a large Christian cross on a government land preserve (ostensibly there as a memorial to the dead of World War I) actually constituted a religious symbol. At the oral arguments for the Salazar v. Buono case, the following remarkable exchange took place between Justice Antonin Scalia (a conservative Catholic) and the attorney representing the American Civil Liberties Union, Peter Eliasberg:

JUSTICE SCALIA: The cross doesn’t honor non-Christians who fought in the war? Is that — is that –

MR. ELIASBERG: I believe that’s actually correct.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Where does it say that?

MR. ELIASBERG: It doesn’t say that, but a cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity and it signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins, and I believe that’s why the Jewish war veterans –

JUSTICE SCALIA: It’s erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. It’s the — the cross is the — is the most common symbol of — of — of the resting place of the dead, and it doesn’t seem to me — what would you have them erect? A cross — some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Moslem half moon and star?

MR. ELIASBERG: Well, Justice Scalia, if I may go to your first point. The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew. (Laughter.)

MR. ELIASBERG: So it is the most common symbol to honor Christians.

JUSTICE SCALIA: I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.

MR. ELIASBERG: Well, my — the point of my — point here is to say that there is a reason the Jewish war veterans came in and said we don’t feel honored by this cross. This cross can’t honor us because it is a religious symbol of another religion.

Consider the implications of a Supreme Court Justice actually arguing that the Christian cross represents all Americans! As if it were identical to our national flag or otherwise served as some sort of universal symbol!

This isn’t to say, of course, that a justice on the Supreme Court must be a nonbeliever in order to respect and promote the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. As Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has documented, Justice Stevens, a protestant, has been one of the nation’s greatest friends to religious freedom and the separation of religion from government.

But with this new vacancy coming up on the court, isn’t it time, as Marc Cooper argues, to ensure that the large number of American nonbelievers are represented? Isn’t it time to install a voice for reason and secular judgment on one of the most powerful institutions in the United States? Isn’t it time for President Obama to nominate a nonbeliever?

I know, I know…I’m not going to hold my breath. But times are changing and the power of atheists, humanists, and other nonbelievers is growing. We’ll get there. In the meantime, happy National Day of Reason!

On May 4, 1970, several thousand students gathered at midday at Kent State University in Ohio to protest the invasion of Cambodia and the presence of National Guard troops on campus. The demonstration followed several days of tension and violence on campus and in downtown Kent following President Nixon’s April 30th announcement of a major incursion into Cambodia by American and South Vietnamese troops. In the days leading up to May 4, riot police used tear gas to disperse demonstrating students, the ROTC building was burned down, and the governor of Ohio ordered Kent State to be occupied by Ohio National Guard troops.

By noon the National Guard commander had issued an order for the demonstration to disperse, and guardsmen began to use tear gas to break up the demonstrators (some of whom had been throwing stones or throwing the tear gas canisters back). Oddly, by the time the actual killings took place, many of the students thought that the main action of the afternoon was over and had started to walk to class. But about a dozen members of Troop G of the National Guard suddenly turned and fired into the crowd of student demonstrators. Many bullets met their mark; four students lost their lives, and nine more were wounded. The guardsmen later asserted that they felt threatened by a mass of protesters, and no one was ever punished or held accountable for the killing of the four unarmed students, all of whom were several hundred feet away from the guardsmen who fired.

The killings at Kent State galvanized a national student protest movement, with demonstrations and student strikes on hundreds of college campuses across the nation in the following days. And over time the public support for the war in Vietnam and Cambodia crumbled.

Today Kent State University is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the attacks. A New York Times reporter spoke to freshmen on campus, and found that many of them don’t feel a strong historical connection with what happened at their university forty years ago.

Fourteen of 15 freshmen interviewed on the campus said they did not feel any connection with the lives of the students who were protesting the United States’ invasion of Cambodia at the time.

The university requires first-year students to watch a historical video of what happened that day and the events leading to it: the violent confrontation between protesters and local police and the burning of the R.O.T.C. building near the Commons.

Freshmen attribute their lack of interest to the time span.

“Our generation doesn’t necessarily really care because it happened so long ago none of us were alive,” said Ethan Moore, a freshman majoring in nursing. “Though it definitely shouldn’t be forgotten because they were people, too.”

Of course, the opinion he expressed was not universal; another student that the reporter spoke to said that had she been there forty years ago, she would have been out there with the Kent State demonstrators. Nevertheless, I wonder if freshmen at Kent State (or at any university) can truly conceive of what it must have felt like to students and antiwar demonstrators all over the United States to know that soldiers had used live ammunition on their fellow Americans, leaving four unarmed people dead. The division between state and civil society must have felt complete and irreconcilable—at least, that’s what I always thought Neil Young meant when he sang “We’re finally on our own” in the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song “Ohio.”

Forty years have passed since the day the National Guard gunned down the students at Kent State. And yet, eerie parallels exist between 2010 and 1970. Today the United States is engaged in two intractable and long-asting wars on the Asian continent. But where is the anti-war movement? While there was a mass uprising in 2003 against the war, it climaxed during the February 15, 2003, pre-war demonstrations. Ever since then, the anti-war movement has gradually but surely diminished.

Why has this happened? Journalist Chris Hedges, who recently participated in an anti-war teach-in in Washington, DC, at the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill (an event that was co-sponsored by the Humanist magazine), believes that not enough anti-war liberals in the United States are actually affected by the wars. He writes:

The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military.

In contrast to 1970, when young men were being drafted to serve in the front lines of Southeast Asia, today a very small number of Americans are being called upon to actually bear the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, as Hedges points out, many of those who do serve in the military come from the economic class that has less access to power, less visibility in the media, and less access to the institutions that can be used as a springboard into wider action against the war, such as universities. The result is a diminished anti-war movement.

I would suggest, too, that fatigue and confusion have both taken their toll. By fatigue, I mean that the war in Afghanistan has lasted nearly a decade, and the war in Iraq has lasted more than twice as long as American involvement in World War II. It is difficult to keep up the energy and momentum that the anti-war movement built up in its initial days for all of those years. And by confusion, I mean that the election of President Barack Obama has engendered a lot of bewilderment on the part of those who took strong stands against the wars over the last decade. After all, President Obama spoke out forcefully against the war in Iraq when he was a state senator in Illinois and the war was just on the horizon. He received the vast majority of the anti-war vote, and he promised to bring a more peaceful presidency. Yet even as we’re told that the war in Iraq is winding down, President Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan (an action that was also, contradictorily, part of his platform as a candidate). So the anti-war movement is left with a president who does not galvanize them like President Bush did, even as he takes actions that many still consider to be belligerent.

The anti-war movement today may be smaller, but that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. For just one example of what we could be doing, right now, to make a difference, Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), an outspoken anti-war member of Congress, made the call at the Capitol Hill event for a new series of teach-ins across the country to educate people about the wars and the need for peace.

Will we heed Rep. Kucinich’s call to challenge “the deficient orthodoxy that war is inevitable”? Let us rededicate ourselves to the idea that those four students gave their lives forty years ago today for a worthy cause, the cause of peace in this world, and honor their legacy by living our lives for peace.

This is a big week for marriage equality in North America. First, same-sex couples can now start applying for marriage licenses in Washington DC:

D.C. Superior Court began accepting marriage license applications from same-sex couples Wednesday morning, a historic milestone for gay couples and activists that was made possible by the city’s new gay marriage law.

About 45 couples with their coffee, newspapers and blackberries — many dressed in blazers and slacks as they planned to go to work after filing an application — were waiting in line when the court’s marriage bureau opened its doors at 8:30 a.m. Employees allowed 10 couples to enter at a time, and had extra personnel on hand to accept the applications.

Licenses take up to three days to process, so early next week will see the first same-sex marriages in the District of Columbia.

This follows a barrage of attempts by opponents to stop the marriage equality law passed by the DC Council in December by any means possible. Local anti-equality activist Bishop Harry Jackson had attempted to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States after the DC Court of Appeals declined to intervene, arguing that District residents deserved the opportunity to vote on marriage equality before it took effect. His effort failed.

And in Mexico City, a marriage equality law will takes effect today, after being passed in December of last year by the city’s leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD)-dominated government.

The Catholic Church has been, predictably, up in arms,
as is the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), the party of Mexico’s president Felipe Calderón::

“The family is under attack,” warned Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera, saying that the “perverse” measure would inflict psychological damage on “innocent children.”

…

“Marriage, as it was originally conceived, as a union between a man and a woman, guarantees the future of the state and of Mexican society,” Mariana Gómez del Campo, PAN’s leader in Mexico City, told a radio interviewer.

But opinion polls on the subject show widespread support among resident’s of Mexico’s capital city:

An opinion poll by El Universal newspaper in November found that 50 percent of Mexico City respondents accepted gay marriage and 38 percent opposed it. Residents ages 18 to 39 were more likely to be supporters.

Marriage equality is moving forward. While neither the United States nor Mexico currently have it on a national level, the symbolism of the national capitals of each nation enacting equality laws in the same week surely will not be lost on the world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Apparently some people believe that denial of an exorbitantly expensive government resource for exhibition purposes to a previously favored religious group somehow amounts to religious discrimination. Or at least that’s what I gather from reading this story from the Idaho Press-Tribune (hat tip to Crooks and Liars):

NAMPA — Organizers of the God and Country Family Festival say the Pentagon denied a military flyover, which the celebration has featured for 42 years, because of the event’s emphasis on Christianity.

“Basically, we applied to have a military flyover,” Director Patti Syme told the Idaho Press-Tribune Thursday. “We were given (Federal Aviation Administration) approval, and then had to apply through the Pentagon. When we applied they denied our request because, as the gentlemen stated, our Web site specifically stated that this is a Christian event.”

Upon first reading this, I was genuinely shocked. Not shocked that the Pentagon had denied the flyover this year, but that the Department of Defense had been providing military planes and pilots for a flyover of this event for the past 42 years!

Writing on Daily Kos, Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation explains that the denial of the flyover might reflect increasing responsiveness to the MRFF’s demand that the Pentagon follow the First Amendment:

MRFF began exposing these events, which included flyovers on the five holidays when flyovers at civilian events are permitted, and even a few at National Day of Prayer events, and began to see some decline in their frequency, but we weren’t sure if the number of flyovers at these events was really decreasing, or if the military and organizers of these events were just being more careful not to make the nature of the events so obvious.

Well, needless to say, the following letter denying, for the first time in 42 years, the request for a flyover at one Christian rally, released on many websites in conjunction with a Christian Newswire article titled “Pentagon Denies Flyover of Patriotic ‘God and Country Rally’ in Nampa Idaho Because of its Christian Content,” was the best 4th of July present MRFF could have asked for.

The organizers of the God and Country Family Festival and their sympathizers see it a little differently, however. The Idaho Press-Tribune tells us:

Christian activist Brandi Swindell sent a text message about the lack of the flyover from Wednesday night’s event at the Idaho Center amphitheater. She followed up with another message Thursday.

“This is unbelievable and deeply troubling,” Swindell wrote. “The Pentagon does not have the authority to discriminate against Christian groups or events. This type of religious bigotry is unconstitutional. How sad to see this lack of respect and level of blatant bias surrounding the 4th of July celebration.”

Perhaps in the space of a text message Ms. Swindell was unable to elaborate on the nature of discrimination. But I really would have liked to hear her explanation of how denying a costly flyover by military aircraft to a sectarian religious event is unconstitutional. Or does the U.S. Constitution guarantee all U.S. citizens the right to a military flyover?

Religious discrimination does exist in this country, but people like Ms. Swanson muddy the discussion when they throw around the term, well, indiscriminately. By no measure is the Pentagon discriminating against Christians. Now, if she could point to an instance of the Pentagon granting flyovers to a Buddhist or Muslim festival but still denying the Christian festival, then she indeed would have a case.

Lest anyone doubt the real purpose of the God and Country Family Festival, I direct you to their mission statement found right on their own website:

Our mission is primarily about spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ. We believe this Festival, started in 1967, is an incredible tool to share this Good News by strengthening the fabric of our society through our connection to family and country.

We want to encourage believers everywhere to get out in their communities, not just to strengthen each other, but to encourage family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers to learn more about who Jesus Christ is and what He’s done for each and every one of us.

We have religious freedom in this country. That means that they are free and welcome to hold such a festival. But we have a secular government that is prohibited from endorsing or favoring one religion over any other, and that means, sorry, no costly taxpayer funded flyovers for religious events. Unless we all get them! In which case I would like to sign up right now for a flyover for the next humanist conference.

Frankly, I would prefer to see the Pentagon be rather parsimonious when granting such a huge and expensive privilege as a flyover by military aircraft to any event, whether it be religious or not.

In the aftermath of the tragic assassination of Dr. George Tiller, we need to remember what is at stake in the debate over abortion. Indeed, we don’t need to use our imaginations to envision what our nation would be like without legalized abortion; we only need to look at countries like Tanzania, where women suffer and die from policies that religious fanatics are trying to impose in our own country right now. The New York Times reports (h/t to Hullabaloo):

Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus.

Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality — at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll.

Maternal mortality is high in Tanzania: for every 100,000 births, 950 women die. In the United States, the figure is 11, and it is even lower in other developed countries. But Tanzania’s record is neither the best nor the worst in Africa. Many other countries have similar statistics; quite a few do better and a handful do markedly worse.

Even more stunning is the effect that backroom abortions have on maternal mortality around the world:

Worldwide, there are 19 million unsafe abortions a year, and they kill 70,000 women (accounting for 13 percent of maternal deaths), mostly in poor countries like Tanzania where abortion is illegal, according to the World Health Organization. More than two million women a year suffer serious complications. According to Unicef, unsafe abortions cause 4 percent of deaths among pregnant women in Africa, 6 percent in Asia and 12 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Is it clear now what we’re talking about when we talk about choice? Is it clear now that when we talk about access to safe and legal abortion, we’re talking about saving tens of thousands of lives and preventing millions of hospitalizations and crippling aftereffects every year?

Keeping abortion outlawed does not actually reduce the number of abortions; rather, it reduces the safety of those performed. The Guttmacher Institute reports:

Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions.

Where abortion is legal and permitted on broad grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is illegal in many circumstances, it is often unsafe. For example, in South Africa, the incidence of infection resulting from abortion decreased by 52% after the abortion law was liberalized in 1996.

The anti-choice movement won’t paint this picture for you, but this is what they’re advocating: a world where women do not have legal rights over their own bodies and are injured or die due to lack of access to safe and legal abortion. It is a horrifying vision, but it’s one that some anti-choice people are willing to kill for. The best response to the terror waged by Dr. Tiller’s murderer and the hatred of the anti-choice movement is to rededicate ourselves to expanding access to safe and legal reproductive health services and ensure that clinics receive the support and security that they need to operate safely. And we need to ensure that freedom of choice in the United States rests on more than Supreme Court rulings by codifying a right to reproductive choice into law.

The Washington Post reports today on how pro-marriage equality organizations have recently been targeting the Mormon Church with advertisements and campaigns:

As more states take up the debate on same-sex marriage, some advocates of legalization are taking a very specific lesson from California, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominated both fundraising and door-knocking to pass a ballot initiative that barred such unions.

With the battle moving east, some advocates are shouting that fact in the streets, calculating that on an issue that eventually comes down to comfort levels, more people harbor apprehensions about Mormons than about homosexuality.

In particular, the article mentions web ads sponsored by the anti-Proposition 8 organization Californians Against Hate. The ads (which can be viewed, along with their accompanying documentation and campaign information, here), appeared on newspaper websites in three states on the East Coast but were apparently rejected by at least some newspapers for being insulting against the Mormon Church.

Why is the Mormon Church in particular being targeted by pro-marriage equality ads? The Washington Post explains how it may have played a big role in the narrow margin of passage for Proposition 8:

A torrent of last-minute contributions from church members across the country financed well-framed TV ads in the final weekend of the campaign. Opponents’ analysis of campaign-contribution reports indicated that Mormons contributed more than half of the campaign’s $40 million war chest.

The Mormon Church seems to be reluctant to actually take public credit for working for the passage of Proposition 8. The Washington Post notes that the Mormon Church was involved with an anti-marriage equality campaign in Hawaii in 1998 and spent $400,000 of church money but requested that the Catholic Church take the lead when it came to the public image of the campaign. This may have something to do with Mormons’ overall low favorability ratings with the American public in general, which declined to 37 percent last year. Perhaps, for this reason, the Mormon Church doesn’t feel that the most effective public face for the anti-marriage equality movement would be a Mormon one.

When it comes to marriage equality, is it fair to target the Mormons? While I am certainly against stigmatizing any particular individual based on his or her religion, the institution of the Mormon Church is fair game for criticism for its strong support for the suppression of LGBT civil rights. The institution has inserted itself into this issue to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of funding and resources for anti-gay campaigns. This is a campaign of bigotry, and the institution must be held accountable for it in the court of public opinion. In particular, Californians Against Hate has been working to illuminate areas that the church seems to prefer keeping quiet, such as the participation of top Mormon leaders in the creation of the the National Organization for Marriage, the national anti-marriage equality organization that drew attention for its laughably poor attempts to frighten people about same-sex marriage.

My one caveat is that I do not want to see this particular focus on the Mormon Church come at the expense of looking at the broader picture of anti-LGBT bigotry. In the end, for a successful campaign to reinstate marriage equality in California and to bring it to other states, the religious and non-religious alike are going to need to understand marriage equality as an issue that is fundamentally about civil rights and equality. This will require massive outreach, but it can be done; indeed, a movement to repeal Proposition 8 is already under way.

Inspired by the film Milk, a California sixth grader prepared a presentation for a class assignment on the life of slain gay rights pioneer and San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk. But apparently discussing the life of a gay politician and civil rights leader was too much for her school, and now the ACLU of San Diego County may sue on her behalf (hat tip to Atrios):

The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday threatened to sue a San Diego County school that refused to let a student present a report on slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk until her classmates got permission from their parents.

David Blair-Loy, legal director of the ACLU of San Diego County, said the principal of Mt. Woodson Elementary School in Ramona violated the free speech rights of 6th-grader Natalie Jones, who was the only student in her class prevented from giving an in-class presentation.

According to Blair-Loy and Natalie’s mother, Mt. Woodson Principal Theresa Grace concluded last month that the subject of the girl’s project triggered a district policy requiring parents to be notified in writing before their children are exposed to lessons dealing with sex.

Lessons dealing with sex? Was she going to discuss Harvey Milk’s sex life? I doubt it. Any in-class presentation about the sex life of a historical figure would probably be inappropriate at that grade level.

But that’s not the real issue here. The issue is that this student was going to discuss a historical figure who made a name for himself by making the argument that gays and lesbians should have full civil rights. He led a statewide campaign against Proposition 6, a 1978 initiative that went in front of California voters and would have banned gay and lesbian teachers from working in California schools. His leadership helped lead to Proposition 6′s defeat at the ballot box and also went a long way towards mainstreaming the gay rights movement and presenting the LGBT community to America as a legitimate part of our nation’s cultural fabric. Harvey Milk’s courageous legacy resonates to this day in the marriage equality movement, and he is a model for activists all over the world.

So what’s the controversy? Why did the school implement it’s sex discussion policy when dealing with the student’s presentation? It’s because he was gay and spoke up for the LGBT community. It’s as simple as that.

This school needs to join the 21st century. Even though some parents may have complained, the school cannot accommodate everyone’s religious sensitivities on this. Indeed, it would be to confer second class status upon gays to say that a remarkable historical figure cannot be discussed in class without an additional layer of permission from parents — simply because he was gay.

Let’s hope that this will be a learning experience for this school and others. Parents may teach their children at home whatever they would like about homosexuality, including that it is wrong or some kind of religious sin. I strongly disagree, but it is their right to believe so and teach this to their children. But schools do not have to accommodate such nonsense.

James Dobson is such a pessimist these days. From God and Country, this is what Dobson recently told his radio listeners (hat tip to PZ Myers):

I want to tell you up front that we’re not going to ask you to do anything, to make a phone call or to write a letter or anything.

There is nothing you can do at this time about what is taking place because there is simply no limit to what the left can do at this time. Anything they want, they get and so we can’t stop them.

We tried with [Health and Human Services Secretary] Kathleen Sebelius and sent thousands of phone calls and emails to the Senate and they didn’t pay any attention to it because they don’t have to. And so what you can do is pray, pray for this great nation… As I see it, there is no other answer. There’s no other answer, short term.

He sounds frustrated.

I was skeptical the last time James Dobson’s pessimism was on full display — it seemed to me that he was just trying to energize his supporters with a little doom and gloom. But his words now express more of a sense of capitulation. He’s not even asking his supporters to take action, just to pray (I suppose that they might consider that to be taking action, but the Dobson has never been shy about demanding much more worldly acts from his followers).

I am extremely reluctant, however, to ever count the Religious Right out of the political picture. What do you think? Will the Religious Right make a comeback? Or are Dobson and his ilk destined for permanent marginalization in an increasingly secular America?

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam recently spoke at the Pew Forum on Faith in Public Life about his latest research on religion in America. He discussed the increasing lack of affiliation with any religion amongst younger generations in the United States, saying that the percentage of Americans in their 20s that declare no affiliation is now between 30 and 40 percent.

This comes on the heels of the recent news from the Pew Forum’s US Religious Landscape Survey that over 15 percent of Americans now report themselves to be unaffiliated with any religion. But looking at Putnam’s recent work, it is clear that there is a generational divide: young people are more secular than ever.

Why? Writing about Putnam’s speech, former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post op-ed columnist Michael Gerson characterizes the trend this way:

The politicization of religion by the religious right, argues Putnam, caused many young people in the 1990s to turn against religion itself, adopting the attitude: “If this is religion, I’m not interested.”

And as ABC news reported on Putnam’s speech:

This movement away from organized religion, says Putnam, may have enormous consequences for American culture and politics for years to come.

“That is the future of America,” he says. “Their views and their habits religiously are going to persist and have a huge effect on the future.”

For just one example of this, look at the generational divide on support for marriage equality (found via Daily Kos)

Fifty-four percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday say marriages between gay or lesbian couples should not be recognized as valid, with 44 percent suggesting they should be considered legal.

But among those 18 to 34 years old, 58 percent said same-sex marriages should be legal. That number drops to 42 percent among respondents aged 35 to 49, and to 41 percent for those aged 50 to 64. Only 24 percent of Americans 65 and older support recognizing same-sex marriages, according to the poll. (emphasis added)

With full marriage equality in five states now and New Hampshire poised to soon be the sixth, it is clear that the political landscape for marriage equality is shifting. The current generation of young voters are less likely to support future efforts to limit or repeal marriage equality. Hopefully Proposition 8 in California will be one of the last of its kind – while two-thirds of voters over the age of 65 supported it, the measure failed to gain a majority in any other age group.

While some of the political implications of this increase in lack of religious affiliation among young Americans are clear, another major question is, will it stick? Are young Americans going to be secular for good? As reported by Gerson::

Putnam regards the growth of the “nones” as a spike, not a permanent trend. The young, in general, are not committed secularists. “They are not in church, but they might be if a church weren’t like the religious right. . . . There are almost certain to be religious entrepreneurs to fill that niche with a moderate evangelical religion, without political overtones.”

Putnam’s book on this research is yet to be published, but I’ll be interested to read it when it comes out, because his discussion with the Pew Forum seemed to mainly focus on politics and the negative impact of the Religious Right on religious affiliation amongst younger Americans. But political and social views are only part of the picture. What else influences younger people’s lack of religious affiliation? In their report Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S., the Pew Forum provided additional research on this very subject, examining the reasons why Americans in general change affiliations or leave their former religious affiliations without adopting a new one. From the executive summary of the report:

Two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated and half of former Protestants who have become unaffiliated say they left their childhood faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, and roughly four-in-ten say they became unaffiliated because they do not believe in God or the teachings of most religions. Additionally, many people who left a religion to become unaffiliated say they did so in part because they think of religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, because religious organizations focus too much on rules or because religious leaders are too focused on power and money. Far fewer say they became unaffiliated because they believe that modern science proves that religion is just superstition. (emphasis added)

I initially thought that the increase in the number of people that are unaffiliated with organized religions would be driven in large part by increased scientific literacy. But even if this is happening, it’s not a very conscious process; as the Pew Forum reports, not many people credit science for their changes in religious outlook. Rather, the changes take place in light of what the report calls “disenchantment with religious people or institutions.” This is similar to Putnam’s characterization of the younger unaffiliated being driven away by intolerant religious conservatives.

Also significant is the age range at which the Pew Forum found people make their most monumental religious changes:

The survey finds that religious change begins early in life. Most of those who decided to leave their childhood faith say they did so before reaching age 24, and a large majority say they joined their current religion before reaching age 36. Very few report changing religions after reaching age 50.

So the religious decisions that people make in their younger years often end up staying with them. Nevertheless, the report points out that the unaffiliated population is one of the most dynamic religious populations in the United States, with over half of people who are raised without any affiliation later joining one.

I will be very curious to see how Putnam’s research fits with the picture painted by the Faith in Flux report. I certainly feel that humanists should not take for granted that the younger, less affiliated generation is going to automatically join our ranks. The Pew Forum reveals a dynamic religious population that may get disgusted with the politicization of religion or the frailty of human institutions but isn’t necessarily going to march in step with organized non-religion. The key, of course, will be humanist outreach to this population: we have to offer something of value, something beyond a critique of the institution of religion, something that offers the sense of community and togetherness that people are seeking, even as they decide that religious institutions are not serving their needs.

The Washington Post, on its On Faith website, recently asked panelists representing different religious points of view to address the question, “Is torture ever justified?” The responses are by no means representative of all religious viewpoints on torture (the humanist viewpoint of which I have addressed previously), but nevertheless it was enlightening for me to read some of the different viewpoints and how these commentators feel torture and religion relate to each other.

Christian theologian and philosopher John Mark Reynolds is initially direct on the question, writing, “Torture of any human being is incompatible with the Christian faith.” I hope he’s telling that far and wide, because it appears that not everyone has received the message. However, he goes on to spend most of his short essay wondering whether or not what the United States did actually was, in fact, torture:

A general condemnation of torture does not mean that we already know that what the Bush administration did was torture. Reasonable people can disagree about exactly what torture is and some believe that what the Bush administration ordered in prosecuting the War on Terror was not torture. They should be heard and not ignored, but so far the arguments advanced have not been persuasive.

He does believe, though, that John McCain’s condemnation of the techniques that were employed by the United States during the Bush years indicates that they were probably unacceptable. I have to admit that I have a hard time understanding how anyone can equivocate at all on whether or not pouring water into someone’s lungs, slamming a person into a wall, or any of the other methods that were approved constitute torture or not.

Another Christian theologian, Gabriel Salguero of the Princeton Theological Seminary, also condemns torture and says it is incompatible with Christianity. He points out that great people in history have chosen not to meet the violence of their adversaries with equal violence:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr never used violence although violence was constantly used against him, his home, and the many people in the Civil Rights movement. Did the millions of people who partook in the non-violent marches not understand terror? Nonsense. They chose a different way…Did Jesus not understand the way of terror when he was being crucified on an imperial cross? Nonsense. He chose a different way.

I find it very compelling that, in history, great figures and brave groups of people have stood up to injustice and tyranny without resorting to the techniques of their oppressors. They have held the moral high ground without conceding the battle. I wish that the USA had taken this approach in the face of terrorism rather than quickly employing torture and secret prisons, disregarding the rule of law as if it were an impediment to safeguarding our nation in the face of danger, rather than central to the task.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield wants everyone, on all sides of the issue, to examine it a little more closely:

It’s easy to say that torture is wrong and that whatever tradition we hold dear forbids it. I wish it were that simple. Imagine for a moment that you knew the life of someone you loved; your child for example, would be saved by information extracted by torture. Are you really certain that you might not suddenly find some justification which allowed it “just this once”? Anyone answering “no” too quickly is either kidding themselves or doesn’t know the meaning of loving someone close to themselves.

Although this sounds like he is defending torture, he quickly states that he isn’t; rather, he says:

I am more concerned about the endless moralizing around tough issues which makes them seem too easy too fast. In fact, that’s the style of argument which typifies those who defend the use of torture.

Their arguments pose the question about saving a life as if we could know with certainty beforehand that the torture for which they advocate would save a life in immediate danger. I wish it were that simple, but it rarely, if ever, is.

It’s true that the circumstances under which the Bush administration committed torture were ambiguous, something which the pro-torture side seems loathe to admit. No matter how many times the torture advocates talk about it, we have yet to encounter a so-called “ticking time bomb” scenario where the deactivation code to the bomb needs to be tortured out of some single suspect in custody before an entire city explodes (or something along those lines). Television shows like 24 aside, under the Bush administration torture was committed with much more dubious and certainly less noble goals than extracting the location of a bomb located under the city.

Rabbi Hirschfield’s point about these over-simplistic arguments being used to justify torture is well taken. Nevertheless, I feel that he is trying a little too hard to be balanced here with his consideration for why someone might support torture. Surely, if the life of my child was at stake, I would probably justify any number of horrible things to be done if it might save my child’s life; this hypothetical situation, however, doesn’t add very much to a discussion on human rights. It may provide some perspective on how we react to the idea of torture, but the actual laws that codify the preservation of human rights must be written under more level-headed circumstances than how you would feel if your child’s life was immediately at risk.

The preponderance of opinion from the different religious commentators on On Faith is that torture is wrong. But beyond that point is less agreement over what actually constitutes torture and how the United States should move forward from this point. This level of disagreement is indicative of why we need to rely on secular documents to guide how we move forward on torture. For all the room for discussion in the arena of religion, US and international law is not at all ambiguous on this subject.