Religious Right Watch

Despite new law, Ugandan cleric ministers to gays - Yahoo News

[Anglican clergyman Christopher] Senyonjo's opposition to discrimination against gays has earned him the status of "an elder" in the eyes of the country's beleaguered gay community, said Pepe Julian Onziema, a prominent gay leader in Uganda who has known Senyonjo for many years. "Our relationship is one of giving support to each other. The backlash that we receive is equally the same," said Onziema, who added that Senyonjo has taken "a very courageous and brave stand."

Senyonjo said he lives off "gifts" from his children and friends after his pension was severed as "a kind of punishment" over his pro-gay activities.

"They (church leaders) cut off my pension," he said. "It is very difficult even for my family. But I know the truth and it has made me free."

Read the entire article: news.yahoo.com.

Also, for more information see the documentary being released on DVD in May 2014, God Loves Uganda, an examination on the role of American evangelicals in fostering anti-gay hatemongering in Uganda. View the trailer here.

How anti-gay Christians evangelize hate abroad - latimes.com via Political Research Associates

Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest and the senior religion and sexuality researcher at Boston-based Political Research Associates (PRA), which Religious Right Watch has long been appreciative of, has authored an important contribution in the Los Angeles Times. He wrote the reports "Colonizing African Values" and "Globalizing the Culture Wars."

The vitriol that has fueled U.S. culture wars for so long is now being exported, and some of our most ardent culture warriors are finding a far more receptive audience abroad.

In nations such as Uganda, Russia, Nigeria and Belize, an insidious homophobia engineered in America is taking root. I have seen this hate being spread with my own eyes.

In March 2009, while in Kampala, Uganda, researching reports of U.S. right-wing evangelical involvement in attacks on LGBTQ equality and reproductive justice, I was invited to a three-day conference on homosexuality hosted by the Family Life Network, which is based in New York. The keynote speaker was Scott Lively from Springfield, Mass., who introduced himself as a leading expert on the "international homosexual agenda." I filmed Lively over the course of two days as he instructed religious and political leaders about how gays were coming to Uganda from the West to "recruit children into homosexuality."

via www.latimes.com

Image by Daniel Zender for the Los Angeles Times, March 21, 2014.

You can follow PRA on Twitter. Their handle is @PRAEyesRight.

Russia’s Most Notorious Religious Radical

Memorably described by The New York Times as a cross between the “Grateful Dead and the Ku Klux Klan,” the Banner Bearers are currently at the forefront of the radical religious right that has emerged as a serious force since the return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin in 2012. The movement’s slogan is “Orthodoxy or Death!” and its members—like Putin—believe that Western liberalism is corrupting Russia’s “traditional values.”

via www.vocativ.com

The Iowa GOP’s Anti-Gay Pied Piper - Yahoo News

In 10 days, the Iowa GOP will elect a new party Chairman. And Danny Carroll, the man that they’re likely to choose to supervise the 2016 Republican caucuses is an ardent social conservative who gave up pumpkin farming to devote himself full-time to the fight to save heterosexual marriage in the Hawkeye State.

via news.yahoo.com

Mississippi anti-gay segregation: Discrimination bill got unanimous bipartisan support.

The bill this article concerns subsequently had its most controversial provision stripped out by a legislative committee, but it had unanimous bipartisan support when the provision was still in the bill. Take note.

In late January, weeks before Kansas’ and Arizona’s odious anti-gay segregation bills drew fury across the country, the Mississippi state Senate quietly passed its own viciously homophobic “religious liberty” measure to virtually no fanfare. The bill, which is nearly identical to Arizona’s, would have the same effect as its now-notorious counterparts, allowing any private business to turn away gays at the door. But unlike Kansas’ and Arizona’s bills, which drew fierce Democratic opposition, the Mississippi measure passed with unanimous bipartisan support.

via www.slate.com

David Mixner: Reflections From An Intensive Care Unit

Author, blogger, and civil rights and anti-war activist David Mixner offers a personal reflection on faith and the fight for social justice. Here's an excerpt:

I have to continue with the battle until I can't lift my head any longer. Not because I am special or indispensable but because I am one of you and each and everyone one of us is needed. By continuing to embrace life, I am one more voice that refuses to be silenced until our children can live in total freedom.

After all Archbishop Romero believed that sin was simply to do nothing in the face injustice, war and poverty. My 'fellow travelers' in life always have been those who believe the Archbishop's words:

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous,
tranquil contribution of all
to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism.
Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.

Read the entire blog post at www.towleroad.com

Photo: Brooklyn Waterfront-January 2014 by aloucha

"The Missionary Supposition": evolution education doesn't work

In a recent Reports of the National Center for Science Education (PDF), historian Adam Laats, author of Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America's Culture Wars (2010), writes about the necessity of science educators to understand Creationist culture.

Americans do not get it. Nearly half of US adults believe that humans were created as is, less than 10,000 years ago (Newport 2012). Those of us who care about evolution education must confront a sobering truth: evolution education does not work. Yet since long before the days of John Scopes, most of us have simply offered more of the same.

Laats says that evolution education fails to convince creationists.

Granted, the special purpose of evolution education is not to convince creationists. Evolution education in general succeed with many students as it should. If a student is objective and intellectually curious, they will learn evolution's principles and contemplate the theory's implications, and perhaps if they do not start down a path towards a profession in the sciences, then they may--more probably--remain curious about the new discoveries and developments in the field as they encounter it in future years through popular science writing and documentaries.

But for this education to be utterly ineffective fro such a huge percentage of Americans is a significant problem.

Laat proposes that evolution science educators need to better understand creationist culture, because evidence of evolution isn't sufficient to convince creationists.

Evolution education should never become an exercise in religious conversion, but it is high time for scientists and teachers to notice that not even religious missionaries engage in the naive and blinkered missionary approach still so common among evolution educators.

In particular, Laat stresses rightly that too many evolution educators assume creationists are ignorant about evolution; in fact, they often are not. They simply reject the evidence.

Read the article here: Reports of the National Center for Science Education (PDF), pages 3–6.

It's Darwin Day. Happy b-day, Chucky D.!

Jerry A. Coyne, Ph.D is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a member of both the Committee on Genetics and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology. Today he's reintroducing his 2009 letter to Charles Darwin that was read on BBC Radio:

My letter to Charles Darwin on his birthday

In 2009, shortly after WEIT came out, I was asked by the BBC to write a letter to Charles Darwin and read it on the air. The letter was supposed to convey my sentiments to the old chap and bring him up to date on what had happened to evolutionary biology since he became food for his beloved earthworms. That letter later appeared on the Oxford University Press blog, which has given The New Republic permission to reprint it today.

If you want to read it, and what I thought important to tell the deceased sage, go to the New Republic‘s column:, “It’s Charles Darwin’s 205th birthday and people still don’t accept evolution: A letter to the man behind the theory.”  I’ll just give you the first paragraph:

My Dear Mr. Darwin,

Happy 200th birthday! I hope you are as well as can expected for someone who has been dead for nearly 130 years. I suppose that your final book, the one about earthworms, has a special significance for you these days. Are the worms of Westminster Abbey superior to the ones you studied so carefully in the grounds of your home at Downe in Kent? They’ve certainly mulched some distinguished people over the years!

There’s a lot more.

via whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com

Image: 1986 photograph of Darwin, attributed to Julia Margaret Cameron.

Religious Right Groups Plot Big Money Blitz For 2014 Elections | Americans United

This event was sponsored by the Council for National Policy, a secretive cabal of far-right groups that seeks to sculpt the Religious Right into a unified bloc. Although the event was not open to the media, Politico did some digging and reported that 25 organizations participated in the summit, among them Gary Bauer’s American Values,  Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, Americans United for Life, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage.

Representatives of various Tea Party groups and organizations affiliated with the Koch Brothers, millionaire businessmen who fund various far-right causes, were also on hand.

Please read the entire article at www.au.org

Here's The Simple Reason Why The Religious Right Isn't Finished - Forbes

In other words, while it is losing a big battle (same sex marriage), the Religious Right still hasn’t lost its most important one (abortion) and on a host of other fronts (heterosexual marriage, inequality, criminal justice, religion in the public square), it is having to reconfigure in more productive ways–in ways that are more “seamless garment”, to use a Catholic expression. This is all to the good. Under a microscope, reform can look like defeat. But at the scale of history, things often end up very different.

via www.forbes.com

Creationism in public schools, mapped. Where tax money supports alternatives to evolution.

Thousands of schools in states across the country can use taxpayer money to cast doubt on basic science.

By Chris Kirk

A large, publicly funded charter school system in Texas is teaching creationism to its students, Zack Kopplin recently reported in Slate. Creationist teachers don’t even need to be sneaky about it—the Texas state science education standards, as well as recent laws in Louisiana and Tennessee, permit public school teachers to teach “alternatives” to evolution. Meanwhile, in Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, taxpayer money is funding creationist private schools through state tuition voucher or scholarship programs.

To see the full 50-state map, go to: www.slate.com

via www.blogfordarwin.com

How the Right’s State-Based Think Tanks Are Transforming U.S. Politics | Political Research Associates

A great article by Frederick Clarkson:

The Democratic Party’s wins in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, and its modest successes in recent Congressional elections, have obscured a series of setbacks for the party in the states. As National Journal put it, the GOP “wiped the floor with Democrats” in the 2010 midterm elections, setting a record in the modern era by picking up 680 seats in state legislatures. The next-largest harvest of legislative seats was the Democrats’ 628-seat gain in the Watergate-dominated election of 1974. The 2010 landslide gave the GOP the upper hand in the subsequent Congressional redistricting process, allowing Republicans to tilt the playing field in their favor and shape U.S. elections for years to come. In the meantime, conservatives have used friendly, GOP-dominated state legislatures to ram their agenda through legislatures—in “red” states and even some states that lean “blue”—on a range of issues: imposing harsh voter restrictions in North Carolina, for example, and passing dramatic anti-labor legislation in Michigan.

The roots of this debacle go far deeper than one or two election cycles and cannot be explained by the normal ebb and flow in electoral fortunes of the two major parties. The seeds were actually sown in the late 1980s, when strategists in the conservative movement came to an important realization.

Please read the rest of the article at www.politicalresearch.org.

Read more about the SPN in a 2013 Guardian article about: "State Policy Network rejects climate change, opposes workers' rights – and is backed by some top US tech and telecoms firms."

Indiana Religious Right's New Anti-Marriage Video | The Bilerico Project

I'm always amazed at the logical loops the religious right tie around themselves. Here's the latest pep talk video for Indiana's proposed marriage amendment and, of course, it's all about the "right to vote."

via www.bilerico.com

Texas megachurch pastor: Obama is paving the way for the Antichrist | The Raw Story

In his new book, Perfect Ending, fundamentalist Christian pastor Robert Jeffress said that President Barack Obama may not be the Antichrist, but that he is paving the way for the Antichrist’s arrival.

According to the Sacramento Bee, Jeffress wrote in Perfect Ending that Obama’s policies are readying the U.S. to embrace the Antichrist, particularly the president’s endorsement of same-sex marriage.

“Although President Obama is certainly not the Antichrist, his policies are paving the way for the Antichrist,” wrote Jeffress in a press release for the book.

via www.rawstory.com

The 2014 Election Sees The Return Of United In Purpose | Right Wing Watch

AU's ever-vigilant Right Wing Watch has spotted the return of United In Purpose:

United In Purpose announced its return with an email alerting activists that it is organizing a "Voter Mobilization Strategy Summit" to take place in Dallas in March that will feature the likes of Jim Garlow, Rick Scarborough, David Barton, and Glenn Beck

via www.rightwingwatch.org