Religious Right Watch

Elimination

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that there are no gay people in Iran.

Kudos to Juan Cole on exposing this existential denial as the same species of poison peddled by the religious right in the US.

"... Ahmadinejad's bigotted statement that there are no homosexuals in Iran derived from his rightwing religious commitments. What he said is very serious. He erased gays right out of existence. The ultimate in denying people their rights is to deny they even exist (the nonexistent obviously have no rights.) There could be a debate over whether the gay lifestyle exists in Muslim countries, as a matter of identity politics, of course, but Ahmadinejad is not that sophisticated. He was saying that all Iranians are straight. Of course, gays are punished very severely in Iran, in reality.

It would be nice for the US Right to have us forget that they pull the Ahmadinejad act with regard to gays every day. Denying gays the right to marry is a way of erasing them from civil society. It is a way of denying that they really love one another, as straights do. It is a way of asserting that they do not exist.

The "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the US military (so unlike the one followed by many NATO allies) is also a way of erasing gays. They don't exist unless they themselves press the case that they exist. In order to remain in their jobs, they are forced to erase themselves by their silence. The 'don't ask, don't tell' policy is a way of pretending that there are no gays in the US military. For if it could be proven that anyone is gay, he is immediately expelled. It is just as silly as what Ahmadinejad said, and just as pernicious. That policy is supported by the entire American Right, which is no better than Ahmadinejad in this regard.

October 5 release of "For The Bible Tells Me So"

For the Bible Tells Me So is released on October 5. It's a documentary in part about "how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child." It features interviews with, among others, US House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, Bishop Gene Robinson (Episcopal Church), Bishop Desmond Tutu (Anglican Church of South Africa), Reverend Peter Gomes of Harvard Divinity School, Rabbi Steve Greenberg (Orthodox Judaism) and Reverend Jimmy Creech (United Methodist Church)."

If you're in the NYC area, the film opens on October 5 at Quad Cinemas; it opens on October 12 in Irvine, CA at Edwards Westpark Cinema 8. The long list of other screenings nationwide are listed here.

PZ Meyers -- a religion is not just a moral system

From the discussion at Edge.org. PZ Myer respondes to "Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion," by Jonathan Haidt. Myer's states that in Haidt's essay, "religion is simply assumed to be a moral system;" Haidt observers that so-called "New Atheists" like "[Richard] Dawkins and [Sam] Harris criticize religion strongly; now, suddenly, Haidt starts treating the New Atheist arguments as an assault on moral systems.

Myers insists:

This is simply wrong. I'm all for moral systems, and I suspect both Dawkins and Harris would agree that a good moral system, especially as defined by Haidt, is essential.* The argument is much narrower. Is religion a good moral system? (Our answer is no.) Are there significant aspects of religion that do not represent a moral system at all, and actually make social life more difficult? (Yes.) And can we erect a better moral system that is stripped of the supernatural and much of the pathological baggage that afflicts religion? (Yes, optimistically, but the implementation remains to be done.)

(*Haidt's definition: Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.)

He concludes:

I entirely agree with Haidt that many religious people are good people, that religion has incorporated moral systems that contribute to people's well-being, and that there are kernels of wisdom in religious thought. Where I disagree is that I see the superstition and dogma and error of religion as separable from those desirable elements — that religion is not synonymous with morality and is actually an unfortunate excrescence of the human condition that does not have to be and should not be respected.

55% of US believe “Constitution establishes a Christian nation"

A recent poll shows that 55% of Americans believe that “The Constitution establishes a Christian nation.”

The Constitution established a nation in which religious liberty is to be protected by way, at least in part, of defining the republic's government as non-religious--a government of secular laws. The only place religion is mentioned in the Constitution is by way of prohibiting religious tests for office holders, that is, to determine a citizen's eligibility to hold public office.

Chris Rodda has done a lot of research on notion that America was founded as a Christian nation.

Many of the founding fathers were influenced by deism, including Thomas Jefferson, who was sometimes attacked for this.

Paul Cameron

Hat-tip to Frederick Clarkson at Talk To Action. The Box Turtle Bulletin issued a report about homophobic false scientist Paul Cameron, whose discredited statistics supposedly detailing "the gay lifestyle" (as if there is such a monolithic thing) are still routinely cited by the religious right and religio-rightwing Republicans.

(Fred also highlights in the same post this story showing, in his eloquent words, "how indisinguishable the neocon and the religious right view has become. There is no armaggedonist vision or rhetoric here -- only a vision of long-term global militarism.")

Kenneth Blackwell's new religious right gig

Kenneth Blackwell, a darling of the religio-rightwing of the Republican party has landed a gig with the Family Research Council. Bill Berkowitz over at Talk To Action has the story.

J. Kenneth Blackwell, who besides being Ohio's former secretary of state has also been the former undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, has landed firmly on his feet in the nation's capital.

Earlier this year, the Family Research Council (FRC) announced that Blackwell had been hired on as a Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at Washington's premiere right wing religious lobbying outfit.

Over the years, Blackwell has carried enough water for the GOP to fill up a good part of Lake Erie.... He is credited with being part of the team that helped double President George W. Bush's vote count among Blacks in Ohio in 2004....

Speak out

A new TypeList, "Speak Out," has been added to the lower left sidebar of this blog. It features two links: one to a site by which you can contact your members of the Congress, and the other to a site by which you can contact local media with letters to the editor.

Pro-Taliban militants try to blow up buddha carving

BBC: "Suspected pro-Taleban militants have tried to blow up an ancient carving of Buddha in north-west Pakistan."

Recall that the "world watched in shock in March 2001 as Afghanistan's then rulers destroyed the 6th-Century Bamiyan Buddhas. The Taleban said they were offensive to Islam."

Taxpayer-funded religious teaching in UK

Hat-tip to Onegoodmove. A.C. Grayling writes of how Ed Balls, the schools secretary for the Government (UK), joined with religious leaders around a proclamation endorsing religious schools as aiding social cohesion. Not only is this a ridiculous notion--that segregating children based on faith makes society more unified--but it bolsters the concept of taxpayer funding of religious education, something that the UK needs to get away from, and something we here in the US struggle to keep at bay.

Madeleine L'Engle

Salon.com published a tribute to the wonderful writer and woman, Madeleine L'Engle, who died early this month. Here is her obituary in The New York Times.