Month: December 2011

Pamela Geller | Professional Hatemonger Freaks Out

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Islamophobia, Jewish Fascist Pamela Geller, Pamela Geller Corruption Money, Pamela Geller Hatemonger, Professional Islamophobes, Robert Spencer Catholic Fascist

Pamela Geller Freaks Out Over ‘Bare Naked Islam’ Shutdown

And her commenters are nauseating

Via:- Charles Johnson

Hate group leader Pamela Geller is losing it over WordPress.com shutting down the “Bare Naked Islam” anti-Muslim blog: BNI SHUT DOWN AGAIN, HAMAS-TIED CAIR DOES VICTORY DANCE!!!!! – Atlas Shrugs.

After ranting about the threats she has received (as if that somehow excuses threats against other people), Geller concludes her babbling post with this:

 
Is she a SKELETOR stand in!?

I condemn all calls for killing and genocide.

I don’t know what was said at Bare Naked Islam. Some of what I see I would not host or post on Atlas. But I don’t CAIR. The difference between an exchange of ideas and an exchange of blows is self-evident.

If I had a blog on wordpress, I would pull it. I would. Because it’s only a matter of time until something you say doesn’t meet with the Muslim Brotherhood guidelines.

The fundamental principle of free speech is the protection of all speech, not just speech we like. Because who decides what’s good and what’s forbidden? The Hamas-tied thugs and enemies of free speech at CAIR?

If it can happen to BNI, it can happen to any of us. Contact support@wordpress.com.

There’s the rub. All of these freaks know they’re walking a tightrope, making alliances with thuggish groups like the English Defense League, and inciting the ugliest kind of extreme hatred — but keeping up a masquerade of “condemning” it at the same time. It’s no surprise that they’re worried by what happened to “Bare Naked Islam,” and they should be.

Here are some of the comments in Geller’s thread about the closure, just to drive this point home. The non-stop hatred has driven these people insane.

*ALL* of BNI’s comments are monitored, ALL. They just dont want the TRUTH to come out about Islam and how evil it is.

Evil hides, truth reveals.

YOU ARE EVIL, ISLAM! AND, you are for ISLAM first before America.

[…]

BNI was an amazing side , how dare they shut it down ? I guess we are allready living under sharia law , I want BNI back and I will do whatever it takes to get it back , this makes me hate muslims even more than ever before …they are pure SCUM

[…]

I’m sure the financial backers of CAIR (read sowdis) are putting pressure on WordPress. This is bigger than CAIR . I smell rats and some of them may also be in the White House.

Interesting that this should suddenly happen, while WordPress is supposedly on holidays, and the OIC has just been here and petitioned the government for silence about condemning islam. RATS, everywhere.

[…]

I say this to the cowards there:

Nothing quite like being a TRAITOR TO CIVILIZATION, is there?

Why not just post a big banner on your homepage saying:

“TELLING THE TRUTH IST VERBOTEN!”

and

“STOP TELLING THE TRUTH! (it hurts the criminals feelings)!”

Listen, jerks: we have the right to accuse the criminals (moslems) of their crimes! Especially when we use their own “holy” words, proclamations and actions to do it!

“TurdPress – Gilding The Turds for the islamic extortion racket since 2011!”

;-(

As for what constitutes free speech? Anything backed up by facts (aka the Truth)! Even Aristotle, ages ago, noticed that “slander” is ONLY pre-judice, and vice-versa! It used to be, when we had laws concerning slander (and it’s written form, “libel”) you always had the legal Defense of the Truth to fall back on. But moslems didn’t like the Truth, so they got their libtarded todaies to create “hate crimes” ‘laws,’ in stead – where they go after the symptoms and effects of ongoinf injustices (the perfectly natural human emotional response of perpetual anger, aka ‘hate’ in stead of going after the causes – the crimes) so now they pretend to make it “illegal” to HATE CRIMES (like islam)!

😉

[…]

The koran is a violent piece of fiction, it creates violent brainwashed cult members who love nothing more than blowing the limbs from themselves and others all over the streets. blood and death is all they are about. That is the truth, and without sites such as BNI they,d be operating unoppossed. Come back soon BNI, the truth still needs telling. As has already been said if we allow the death cult to silence one site, they will think they can silence them all. WordPress are feeble. Keep sending them complaints.

[…]

I have never seen a better site in this topical realm of fighting the evil death cult masquerading as one of the worlds great religions – and I seen scores of these sites. The archived material, by topic, is a clearing house for rebuttal of Islamic lies and resistance tactics in general. It’s an educational resource that will quickly bring anyone up to speed on what Islam really is. The site itself is a networking opportunity and a rallying point for those who want to get active or remain active in the crusade against the worst evil the world has ever known.

EXPOSE OF PAMELA GELLER’S links to Organised Crime, her wealth linked to proceeds from crime, corruption, fraud and murder here:-

http://pibillwarner.wordpress.com/tag/pamela-geller-wealth-from-corruption-fraud-and-murder-at-universal-auto-world-dealership-she-co-owned-supplied-cop-killer-getaway-car/

Bill Warner Private Investigator Crime Blog exposes Pamela Geller’s neo-Nazi and Euro-fascist alliance

Geller’s Wealth from Corruption, Fraud; Dealership She Co-Owned Supplied Cop-Killer Getaway Car

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/10/13/gellers-wealth-from-corruption-fraud-mayve-facilitated-cop-killing/

Pamela Geller at The Age of Blasphemy

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Alien Versus Predator

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Catholic Child Abuse, Catholic Predators

Alien Vs Predator! Sure they’re both monsters, but one claims god is on his side!

Catholic Morality: FAIL!

Catholic Sexual Abuse.

Catholic Child Abuse.

Catholic Sadism.

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Priestly Broom Brawl Forces Palestinian Police Intervention

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in God Crazies, Religious Crazies

Now what would fictional baby Jesus think?!

Palestinian Police Break Up Fight Between Priests At Church of the Nativity

CNN reports that yesterday Palestinian police in the West Bank city of Bethlehem were sent into the Church of the Nativity to break up a fight that broke out between Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests. The Church is under a complicated joint administration of Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian religious authorities.
The Church is traditionally cleaned by priests between December 25 and the Orthodox celebration of Christmas that comes in the first week of January. During that clean-up, a fight broke out between two priests who were sweeping the Church. The fight quickly escalated until 50 to 60 priests were striking each other with broomsticks. A similar incident occurred in 2007.
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Jesus “starved little children” | Ricky Gervais Provokes Abuse and Outrage

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Atheists Are Smarter, No God, Religious Fanatics, Religious Zombies

atheistsblog: RICKY GERVAIS provoked outrage yesterday after saying on Twitter that Jesus “starved little children” so they would be “thin in heaven”. And after being bombarded with abuse from fans and religious leaders, the star of The Office and Life’s Too Short caused more fury after tweeting he was being “satirical” because “Jesus doesn’t exist”.Follow @rickygervais and @atheistsblog

atheistsblog:

RICKY GERVAIS provoked outrage yesterday after saying on Twitter that Jesus “starved little children” so they would be “thin in heaven”.

And after being bombarded with abuse from fans and religious leaders, the star of The Office and Life’s Too Short caused more fury after tweeting he was being “satirical” because “Jesus doesn’t exist”.

Follow @rickygervais and @atheistsblog

(via hannahikea)

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German Higher Pay Boosts Higher Profits

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Labour, Profits

German auto manufacturers’ high profits and high pay show why U.S. labor laws need to be stronger

German car manufacturers make more than twice as many cars as American manufacturers. German auto workers earn an average of $67.14 in wages and benefits, while American auto workers earn an average of $33.77. We’re told that American auto workers need to accept pay cuts because they earn too much for the manufacturers to be profitable, yet German manufacturers are very profitable despite paying so much more. So, how does that work?

BMW

At Remapping Debate, Kevin Brown explains that:

In addition to high trade union density supporting the power of German autoworkers’ wages, the German constitution itself includes a second mechanism for keeping employees involved in the decisions of the firm for which they work. The Works Constitution Act provides for the creation of Works Councils in each factory. The Works Councils provide a mechanism through which a company’s management must work with employees, whether they are in a union or not, on issues affecting work life, such as shop floor conditions, scheduling shifts, and other issues particular to the factory. This system, according to Mund, institutionalized “direct contact for workers’ representatives with management at various levels, from lower to middle to senior management in daily affairs. So you exercise some kind of dialogue where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.”

In the United States, of course, management doesn’t have to involve workers in decision-making. They can fight to get a voice on the job by joining a union, but the deck is stacked against that happening, even in states without right to work free rider laws, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, unionizing is the only chance they have to get management to the table to talk.

In case you were in any doubt that the difference is about the laws countries have regarding workers rights and power, not about corporations in some countries just naturally being nicer to their workers than those in others, consider what happens when German auto manufacturers open up shop in the United States: They take advantage of both the cheap labor and the chance to keep their workers out of the decision-making process. They locate in free rider states and resist unions. They pay lower wages than American manufacturers.

German auto manufacturers like BMW and Volkswagen have, in other words, shown that they can be profitable while their workers make extremely good wages and benefits and have a voice in decisions that affect them. But they’ve also shown that they won’t do it if someone doesn’t make them. That’s why we need laws that level the playing field for American workers—and how we know, despite what Republicans tell us, that those laws won’t tank our economy.

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Rick Perry Embraces Sadistic Anti-Choice Fanatics

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Abortion Politics, Religious Insanity, Religious Kooks, Religious Lunatics, Religious Right, Religious Sadism, Religious Sadists, Republican Insanity, Republican Nazis, Rick Perry, Right Wing, Right Wing Crackpots, Right Wing Crazies, Right Wing Extremism, Right Wing Nuts

Rick Perry Joins the Heartless Anti-Choice Fanatics

Via Charles Johnson

It’s horrifying to hear almost all the GOP presidential candidates proudly saying that victims of rape or incest should be forced to give birth to an attacker’s child. There’s nothing that makes the utter heartlessness of this fanatical agenda more evident, and now Rick Perry (who previously supported rape/incest exceptions) has announced that he’s a monster like the rest of them: Perry changes stance to oppose all abortions.

CNN – Texas Gov. Rick Perry revealed a hardening in his stance on abortion Tuesday, telling a crowd in Iowa that he opposed abortions in all cases, including when a woman had been raped or the victim of incest.

Previously, Perry had not opposed the procedure in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother’s life was threatened.

Responding to a question about the change in position, Perry said, “You’re seeing a transformation.”

Perry told the crowd at his campaign stop that the decision came after watching a documentary on abortion produced by former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

“That transformation was after watching the DVD, ‘The Gift of Life,’” Perry said. “And I really started giving some thought about the issue of rape and incest. And some powerful, some powerful stories in that DVD.”

Perry said a woman who appeared in the movie who said she was a product of rape moved him to change his mind about abortion.

“She said, ‘My life has worth.’ It was a powerful moment for me,” Perry said.

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The Crazy, Paranoid World of Ron Paul

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in John Birch Society Crazies, John Birch Society Cult, Ron Paul Conspiracy Nut

Ron Paul’s World

By JAMES KIRCHICK

Earlier this week, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said that he would not vote for his fellow presidential candidate Ron Paul should Paul become the Republican nominee. The immediate cause of this dissension – highly unusual in a party primary – was the repugnant newsletters that Paul published from the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, which contain a raft of bigoted statements. Paul has denied authorship and implausibly claims not to know who wrote them.

The story of the newsletters is not new. In 1996, Lefty Morris, Paul’s Democratic Congressional opponent, publicized a handful, and in January 2008, I published a long piece in The New Republic based on my discovery of batches of the newsletters held at the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Yet Paul’s popularity in the prelude to the Iowa caucuses, where many polls put him in first place, has renewed attention to their revolting contents.

Recent media reports have tended to focus on the newsletters’ bigotry, which was primarily aimed at blacks, and to a smaller extent at gay people and Jews. The newsletters have complicated the situation for writers who have defended Paul, who point out that there is no trace of such prejudice in his public statements. Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast, for instance, writing last week about “rethinking” his original endorsement of Paul, suggests that

A fringe protest candidate need not fully address issues two decades ago that do not in any way reflect the campaign he has run or the issues on which he has made an appeal. But a man who could win the Iowa caucuses and is now third in national polls has to have a plausible answer for this.

In a long, anguished post on the Web site of The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf wrote that “the question is complicated by facts not in evidence and inherently subjective judgments about politics, race and the norms that govern how much a candidate’s bygone associations matter.” As long as one accepts the most charitable explanation for Paul’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act (it infringes on private property rights) or re-litigation of the Civil War (the government should have bought and released the slaves instead), perhaps there’s something to that argument. Though Paul’s penchant for promoting the cause of secession puts these stances in a dubious context.

But there is one major aspect of the newsletters, no less disturbing than their racist content, that has always been present in Paul’s rhetoric, in every forum: a penchant for conspiracy theories.

Ron Paul at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Feb. 11, 2011.
Jonathan Ernst/ReutersRon Paul at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Feb. 11, 2011.

In a 1990 C-Span appearance, taped between Congressional stints, Paul was asked by a caller to comment on the “treasonous, Marxist, alcoholic dictators that pull the strings in our country.” Rather than roll his eyes, Paul responded,“there’s pretty good evidence that those who are involved in the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations usually end up in positions of power. And I believe this is true.”

Paul then went on to stress the negligible differences between various “Rockefeller Trilateralists.” The notion that these three specific groups — the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefeller family — run the world has been at the center of far-right conspiracy theorizing for a long time, promoted especially by the extremist John Birch Society, whose 50th anniversary gala dinner Paul keynoted in 2008.

Paul is proud of his association with the society, telling the Times Magazine in 2007, “I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society. They’re generally well educated, and they understand the Constitution.” In 1998, Paul appeared in a Birch Society documentary which lauded a bill he had introduced to force American withdrawal from the United Nations. With ominous music in the background and images of United Nations peacekeepers patrolling deserted streets, the film warned that the world body would destroy American private property rights, replace the Constitution with the United Nations Charter and burn churches to the ground.

Paul has frequently attacked the alleged New World Order that “elitist” cabals, like the Trilateral Commission and the Rockefeller family, in conjunction with “globalist” organizations, like the United Nations and the World Bank, wish to foist on Americans. In a 2006 column published on the Web site of Lew Rockwell (his former Congressional chief of staff and the man widely suspected of being the ghostwriter of the newsletters, although he denied it to me), Paul addressed the alleged “Nafta Superhighway.” This is a system of pre-existing and proposed roads from Mexico to Canada that conspiracy theorists claim is part of a nefarious transnational attempt to open America’s borders and merge the United States with its neighbors into a supra-national entity. Paul wrote that the ultimate goal of the project was an “integrated North American Union” — yet one more bugbear of conspiracy theorists — which “would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether.”

In his newsletters, Paul expressed support for far-right militia movements, which at the time saw validation for their extreme, anti-government beliefs in events like the F.B.I. assault on the Branch Davidians and at Ruby Ridge. Paul was eager to fan their paranoia and portray himself as the one man capable of doing anything about it politically. Three months before the Oklahoma City bombing, in an item for the Ron Paul Survival Report titled, “10 Militia Commandments,” he offered advice to militia members, including that they, “Keep the group size down,” “Keep quiet and you’re harder to find,” “Leave no clues,” “Avoid the phone as much as possible,” and “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

The closest Paul has come in his public statements to endorsing violence against the government was during an interview in 2007, when he was asked about Ed and Elaine Brown, a New Hampshire couple who had refused to pay federal income taxes. In the summer of that year, they instigated a five-month armed standoff with United States marshals, whom Ed Brown accused of being part of a “Zionist, Illuminati, Freemason movement.” Echoing a speech he had just delivered on the House floor, Paul praised the pair as “heroic” “true patriots,” likened them to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and compared them favorably to “zombies,” that is, those of us who “just go along” and pay income tax.

Finally, there’s Paul’s stance on the most pervasive conspiracy theory in America today, the idea that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were perpetrated not by Al Qaeda, but by the federal government or some other shadowy force. While Paul has never explicitly endorsed this claim, there is a reason so many 9/11 “truthers” flock to his campaign. In a recent YouTube video posted by a leading 9/11 conspiracy group, “We Are Change,” Paul is asked, “Why won’t you come out about the truth about 9/11?”

Rather than answer, say, that the “9/11 Commission already investigated the attacks,” or ask the questioner what particular element of “the truth” remained unknown, Paul knowingly replied, “Because I can’t handle the controversy, I have the I.M.F., the Federal Reserve to deal with, the I.R.S. to deal with, no because I just have more, too many things on my plate. Because I just have too much to do.”

Paul knows where his bread is buttered. He regularly appears on the radio program of Alex Jones, a vocal 9/11 and New World Order conspiracy theorist based in his home state of Texas. On Jones’s show earlier this month, Paul alleged that the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador on United States soil was a “propaganda stunt” perpetrated by the Obama administration.

In light of the newsletters and his current rhetoric, it is no wonder that Paul has attracted not just prominent racists, but seemingly every conspiracy theorist in America. The title of one of Paul’s newsletter series – the Ron Paul Survival Report – was a conscious appeal to followers of the “survivalist” movement of the 1990s, whose ideology blended white supremacy and anti-government militancy in preparation for what Paul himself termed the “coming race war.”

As Paul told The Times last week, he has no interest in dissuading the various extremists from backing his campaign, which is hardly surprising considering he’s spent three decades cultivating their support. Paul’s shady associations are hardly “bygone” and the “facts” of his dangerous conspiracy-mongering are very much “in evidence.” Paul has not just marinated in a stew of far-right paranoia; he is one of the chefs.

Of course, it is impossible to know what Ron Paul truly thinks about black or gay people or the other groups so viciously disparaged in his newsletters. What we do know with absolute certainty, however, is that Ron Paul is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who regularly imputes the worst possible motives to the very government he wants to lead.

James Kirchick is a contributing editor for The New Republic and a fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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Treat Ron Paul With Extreme Caution

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Godnuts, John Birch Society Crazies, Right Wing Nuts, Ron Paul is a Kook, Ron Paul Theocratic Fascist

Ron Paul is more than just anti-war, he's the anti-Civil-Rights-Act Republican. (photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP)
Ron Paul is more than just anti-war, he’s the anti-Civil-Rights-Act Republican. (photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP)

Treat Ron Paul With Extreme Caution

By Adele M. Stan

‘Cuddly’ Libertarian has some very dark politics. He’s anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality and anti-education, and that’s just the start.

here are few things as maddening in a maddening political season as the warm and fuzzy feelings some progressives evince for Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the Republican presidential candidate. “The anti-war Republican,” people say, as if that’s good enough.

But Ron Paul is much, much more than that. He’s the anti-Civil-Rights-Act Republican. He’s an anti-reproductive-rights Republican. He’s a gay-demonizing Republican. He’s an anti-public education Republican and an anti-Social Security Republican. He’s the John Birch Society‘s favorite congressman. And he’s a booster of the Constitution Party, which has a Christian Reconstructionist platform. So, if you’re a member of the anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality, anti-education, pro-communist-witch-hunt wing of the progressive movement, I can see how he’d be your guy.

Paul first drew the attention of progressives with his vocal opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Coupled with the Texan’s famous call to end the Federal Reserve, that somehow rendered him, in the eyes of the single-minded, the GOP‘s very own Dennis Kucinich. Throw in Paul’s opposition to the drug war and his belief that marriage rights should be determined by the states, and Paul seemed suitable enough to an emotionally immature segment of the progressive movement, a wing populated by people with privilege adequate enough to insulate them from the nasty bits of the Paul agenda. (Tough on you, blacks! And you, women! And you, queers! And you, old people without money.)

Ron Paul’s anti-war stance, you see, comes not from a cry for peace, but from the deeply held isolationism of the far right. Some may say that, when it comes to ending the slaughter of innocents, the ends justify the means. But, in the case of Ron Paul, the ends involve trading the rights and security of a great many Americans for the promise of non-intervention.

Here’s a list – by no means comprehensive – of Ron Paul positions and associates that should explain, once and for all, why no self-respecting progressive could possibly sidle up to Paul.

1) Ron Paul on Race

Based on his religious adherence to his purportedly libertarian principles, Ron Paul opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Unlike his son, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Ron Paul has not even tried to walk back from this position. In fact, he wears it proudly. Here’s an excerpt from Ron Paul’s 2004 floor speech about the Civil Rights Act, in which he explains why he voted against a House resolution honoring the 40th anniversary of the law:

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business’s workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge’s defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife.

He also said this: “[T]he forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”

Ron Paul also occasionally appears at events sponsored by the John Birch Society, the segregationist right-wing organization that is closely aligned with the Christian Reconstructionist wing of the religious right.

In 2008, James Kirchick brought to light in the pages of the New Republic a number of newsletters with Paul’s name in the title – Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report, and The Ron Paul Investment Letter – that contained baldly racist material, which Paul denied writing.

At NewsOne, Casey Gane-McCalla reported a number of these vitriolic diatribes, including this, on the L.A. riots after the Rodney King verdict: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.”

In a related piece, Jon C. Hopwood of Yahoo!’s Associated Content cites a Reuters report on Paul’s response to the TNR story, which came in the form of a written statement:

The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts…. I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.

2) Ron Paul on Reproductive Rights

The sponsor of a bill to overturn Roe v. Wade, Ron Paul’s libertarianism does not apply to women, though it does apply to zygotes. His is a no-exceptions anti-abortion position, essentially empowering a rapist to sire a child with a woman of his choosing. Although Paul attributes his stance on abortion to his background as an ob-gyn physician, it should be noted that most ob-gyns are pro-choice, and that Paul’s draconian position tracks exactly with that of his Christian Reconstructionist friends.

While mainstream media, when they’re not busy ignoring his presidential campaign in favor of the badly trailing former Utah Gov. John Huntsman, invariably focus on Paul’s economic libertarianism, Sarah Posner, writing for the Nation, noted that during his appearances leading up to the Iowa straw poll (in which Paul finished second only to Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minn., by a 200-vote margin), “launched into gruesome descriptions of abortion, a departure from his stump speech focused on cutting taxes, shutting down the Federal Reserve, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan and repealing the Patriot Act.”

3) Ron Paul on LGBT People

While it’s true that Paul advocates leaving it to the states to determine whether same-sex marriages should be legally recognized, it’s not because he’s a friend to LGBT people. Paul’s position on same-sex marriage stems from his beliefs about the limits of the federal government’s role vis-a-vis his novel interpretation of the Constitution.

In fact, a newsletter called the Ron Paul Poltiical Report, unearthed by Kirchick, shows Paul on a rant against a range of foes and conspiracies, including “the federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS,” to which Paul parenthetically adds, “my training as a physician helps me see through this one.” The passage, which also portends a “coming race war in our big cities,” complains of the “perverted” and “pagan” annual romp for the rich and powerful known as Bohemian Grove, and takes aim at the “demonic” Skull and Bones Society at Yale, not to mention the “Israeli lobby,” begins with the paranoid claim, “I’ve been told not to talk, but these stooges don’t scare me.”

While Paul denied, in 2001, writing most of the scurrilous material that ran, without attribution, in newsletters that bore his name in the title, this passage, according to Jon Hopwood, bears Paul’s byline.

4) Ron Paul Calls Social Security Unconstitutional, Compares It to Slavery

Earlier this year, in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Paul declared both Social Security and Medicare to be unconstitutional, essentially saying they should be abolished for the great evil that they are – just like slavery. Here’s the transcript, via ThinkProgress:

[“FOX NEWS SUNDAY” HOST CHRIS] WALLACE: You talk a lot about the Constitution. You say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are all unconstitutional.

PAUL: Technically, they are…. There’s no authority [in the Constitution]. Article I, Section 8 doesn’t say I can set up an insurance program for people. What part of the Constitution are you getting it from? The liberals are the ones who use this General Welfare Clause…. That is such an extreme liberal viewpoint that has been mistaught in our schools for so long and that’s what we have to reverse – that very notion that you’re presenting.

WALLACE: Congressman, it’s not just a liberal view. It was the decision of the Supreme Court in 1937 when they said that Social Security was constitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

PAUL: And the Constitution and the courts said slavery was legal, too, and we had to reverse that.

5) Ron Paul, Christian Reconstructionists and the John Birch Society

The year 2008 was a telling one in the annals of Ron Paul’s ideology. For starters, it was the year in which he delivered the keynote address at the 50th anniversary gala of the John Birch Society, the famous anti-communist, anti-civil-rights organization hatched in the 1950s by North Carolina candy magnate Robert Welch, with the help of Fred Koch, founder of what is now Koch Industries, and a handful of well-heeled friends. The JBS is also remembered for its role in helping to launch the 1964 presidential candidacy of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., and for later backing the segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace in his 1968 third-party presidential bid.

The semi-secular ideology of the John Birch Society – libertarian market and fiscal theory laced with flourishes of cultural supremacy – finds its religious counterpart, as Fred Clarkson noted, in the theonomy of Christian Reconstructionism, the right-wing religious-political school of thought founded by Rousas John Rushdoony. The ultimate goal of Christian Reconstructionists is to reconstitute the law of the Hebrew Bible – which calls for the execution of adulterers and men who have sex with other men – as the law of the land. The Constitution Party constitutes the political wing of Reconstructionism, and the CP has found a good friend in Ron Paul.

When Paul launched his second presidential quest in 2008, he won the endorsement of Rev. Chuck Baldwin, a Baptist pastor who travels in Christian Reconstructionist circles, though he is not precisely a Reconstructionist himself (for reasons having to do with his interpretation of how the end times will go down). When Paul dropped out of the race, instead of endorsing Republican nominee John McCain, or even Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, Paul endorsed Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin (who promised, in his acceptance speech, to uphold the Constitution Party platform, which looks curiously similar to the Ron Paul agenda, right down to the no-exceptions abortion proscription and ending the Fed).

At his shadow rally that year in Minneapolis, held on the eve of the Republican National Convention, Paul invited Constitution Party founder Howard Phillips, a Christian Reconstructionist, to address the crowd of end-the-Fed-cheering post-pubescents. (In his early congressional career, Julie Ingersoll writes in Religion Dispatches, Paul hired as a staffer Gary North, a Christian Reconstructionist leader and Rushdoony’s son-in-law.)

At a “Pastor’s Forum” at Baldwin’s Baptist church in Pensacola, Florida, Paul was asked by a congregant about his lack of support for Israel, which many right-wing Christians support because of the role Israel plays in what is known as premillennialist end-times theology. “Premillennialist” refers to the belief that after Jesus returns, according to conditions on the ground in Israel, the righteous will rule. But Christian Reconstructionists have a different view, believing the righteous must first rule for 1,000 years before Jesus will return.

They also believe, according to Clarkson, “that ‘the Christians’ are the ‘new chosen people of God,’ commanded to do what ‘Adam in Eden and Israel in Canaan failed to do … create the society that God requires.’ Further, Jews, once the ‘chosen people,’ failed to live up to God’s covenant and therefore are no longer God’s chosen. Christians, of the correct sort, now are.”

Responding to Baldwin’s congregant, Paul explained, “I may see it slightly differently than others because I think of the Israeli government as different than what I read about in the Bible. I mean, the Israeli government doesn’t happen to be reflecting God’s views. Some of them are atheist, and their form of government is not what I would support … And there are some people who interpret the chosen people as not being so narrowly defined as only the Jews – that maybe there’s a broader definition of that.”

At the John Birch Society 50th anniversary gala, Ron Paul spoke to another favorite theme of the Reconstructionists and others in the religious right: that of the “remnant” left behind after evil has swept the land. (Gary North’s publication is called The Remnant Review.) In a dispatch on Paul’s keynote address, The New American, the publication of the John Birch Society, explained, “He claimed that the important role the JBS has played was to nurture that remnant and added, ‘The remnant holds the truth together, both the religious truth and the political truth.'”

Is there a progressive willing to join that fold?

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Quotes from the The American Taliban

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Taliban, Religion Destroys the Brain, Religion Kills, Religious Bigots, Religious Crazies, Religious Delusion, Religious Fascisim, Religious Fascists, Religious Lunatics, Religious Morons, Religious Psychos, Religious Racketeers, Religious Right, Right Wing Fascists

Quotes from the The American Taliban

“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”

“Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”

“Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t answer to the name Mohammed'”
Bailey Smith

“With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”

“Yes, religion and politics do mix. America is a nation based on biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.”
Bob Dornan (Rep. R-CA)

“Don’t use the word ‘gay’ unless it’s an acronym for ‘Got Aids Yet'”
David Barton (Wallbuilders)

“There should be absolutely no ‘Separation of Church and State‘ in America.”

“Sodomy is a graver sin than murder. – Unless there is life there can be no murder.”
Fob James (Governor of Alabama)

“Behind this judicial wall of separation there is a tyranny of lies that will fall… I say to you, my friends, let it fall!”

“A good butt-whipping and then a prayer is a wonderful remedy.”

“If you got to castrate your miserable self with a piece of rusty barb wire, do it.”

“Hear the word of the LORD, America, fag-enablers are worse than the fags themselves, and will be punished in the everlasting lake of fire!”

“You telling these miserable, Hell-bound, bath house-wallowing, anal-copulating fags that God loves them!? You have bats in the belfry!”

“American Veterans are to blame for the fag takeover of this nation. They have the power in their political lobby to influence the zeitgeist, get the fags out of the military, and back in the closet where they belong!”

“Not only is homosexuality a sin, but anyone who supports fags is just as guilty as they are. You are both worthy of death.”
Gary Bauer (American Values)

“We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There’s a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody’s values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe.”
Gary North (Institute for Christian Economics)

“The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship.”

“This is God’s world, not Satan’s. Christians are the lawful heirs, not non-Christians.”
Gary Potter (Catholics for Christian Political Action)

“When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil.”
George Bush Sr. (President of the United States)

“I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”
George W. Bush (President of the United States)

“I don’t think that witchcraft is a religion. I wish the military would rethink this decision.”*

“God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.”

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

“This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.”

*Comment about Wiccans in the military
Henry Morris (Founder, Institute for Creation Research, died 2006)

“When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.”
J. B. Stoner (White Supremacist) (1924 – 2005)

“We had lost the fight for the preservation of the white race until God himself intervened in earthly affairs with AIDS to rescue and preserve the white race that he had created…. I praise God all the time for AIDS.”

“AIDS is a racial disease of Jews and Niggers, and fortunately it is wiping out the queers. I guess God hates queers for several reasons. There is one big reason to be against queers and that is because every time some white boy is seduced by a queer into becoming a queer, means his white bloodline has run out.”
James Dobson (Focus on the Family)

“Those who control the access to the minds of children will set the agenda for the future of the nation and the future of the western world.”

“State Universities are breeding grounds, quite literally, for sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV), homosexual behavior, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, alcoholism, and drug abuse.”

“Today’s children… They’re damned. They’re gone.”
James Kennedy (Center for Reclaiming America)

“The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ.”
James Watt (Secretary of the Interior)

“We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.”*

*Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan Admin. Responsible for National Policy regarding the Environment
Jay Grimstead (Coalition on Revival)

“We are to make Bible-obeying disciples of anybody that gets in our way.”
Jerry Falwell (1933 – 2007)

“We’re fighting against humanism, we’re fighting against liberalism…we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today…our battle is with Satan himself.”

“AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah’s chariotters.”

“The Bible is the inerrant … word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.”

“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”

“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”
Jesse Helms (Senator R-NC, 1973-2003)

“The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian.”

“All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction.”

“Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade-school classes that teach our children that cannibalism, wife-swapping and murder of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior.”

“Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches.”
Jimmy Swaggart (Jimmy Swaggart Ministries)

“The Media is ruled by Satan. But yet I wonder if many Christians fully understand that. Also, will they believe what the Media says, considering that its aim is to steal, kill, and destroy?”

“Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest.”

“Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it…Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.”
John Ashcroft (Attorney General)

“Civilized people – Muslims, Christians, and Jews – all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.”
John Whitehead (Rutherford Institute)

“The [Supreme] Court, by seeking to equate Christianity with other religions, merely assaults the one faith. The Court in essence is assailing the true God by democratizing the Christian religion.”
Joseph McCarthy (1908 – 1957)(Senator, R-WI, 1947-1957)

“Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between Communistic Atheism and Christianity.”
Joseph Morecraft (Chalcedon Presbyterian Church)

“Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody’s pseudo-right to worship an idol.”
Joseph Scheidler (Pro-Life Action League)

“I would like to outlaw contraception…contraception is disgusting – people using each other for pleasure.”
Kay O’Connor (Kansas Senate Republican)

“I’m an old-fashioned woman. Men should take care of women, and if men were taking care of women today, we wouldn’t have to vote.”
Keith A. Fournier (Catholic Way)

“We need a legal strategy which protects the rights of those of us who hold Christian convictions which will afford us the opportunity to contend once again for the mind of this culture.”
Laura Schlessinger

“I want to coin a phrase here, and I don’t mind help. What would be the communication version of “ethnic cleansing?” Because that’s what in particular the homosexual activists try to do.”
Lester Roloff (1914 – 1982)(Texas Homes for Wayward Youth)

“Better a pink bottom than a black soul.”*

*Roloff opened a chain of homes for “wayward” youth in the state of Texas; he was later jailed in 1973 and again in 1975 for child abuse due to the punitive punishment techniques used in his homes. He was then specifically given permision to re-open his homes by Governor George W Bush.
Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin

“George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God.”
Pat Buchanan (Presidential Candidate)

“Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free.”

“There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The “negroes” of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours.”

“Rail as they will about ‘discrimination,’ women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism.”
Pat Robertson (Christian Coalition)

“The Islamic people, the Arabs, were the ones who captured Africans, put them in slavery, and sent them to America as slaves. Why would the people in America want to embrace the religion of slavers?”

“Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It’s no different…More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.”

“When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals – the two things seem to go together.”

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”

“You say you’re supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense, I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.”

“I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that’s the way it is, period.”

“[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers.”

“[Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism –everything that the Bible condemns.”
Paul Cameron

“I think that actually AIDS is a guardian. That is I think it was sent, if you would, about forty years ago, to destroy Western civilization unless we change our sexual ways. So it’s really a Godsend.”

“Homosexuality is a crime against humanity.”

“Causes of homosexuality include: ‘sex with animals'”*

“Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.”

*Paul Cameron was discharged from the American Psychological Association, the Nebraska Psychological Association, and the American Sociological Association due to his unethical practices and biased research regarding Homosexuals; however his work is still referenced by many fundamentalist organizations as credible.
Randall Terry (Operation Rescue)

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”

“Our goal must be simple. We must have a Christian nation built on God’s law, on the ten Commandments. No apologies.”

“I don’t think Christians should use birth control. You consummate your marriage as often as you like – and if you have babies, you have babies.”

“When I, or people like me, are running the country, you’d better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we’ll execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed.”

“There is going to be war, [and Christians may be called to] take up the sword to overthrow the tyrannical regime that oppresses them.”
Jerry Vines (Southern Baptist Convention)

“They would have us believe that Islam is just as good as Christianity. Christianity was founded by the virgin-born son of God, Jesus Christ. Islam was founded by Muhammad, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives, the last one of which was a nine-year-old girl.”
Rick Santorum (Senator R-PA, 1995-2006)

“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [Gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything!”
Robert Simonds (Citizens for Excellence in Education)

“As the church watches from the sidelines, the ungodly elect atheists and homosexuals to school boards and legislatures to enact policies and laws that destroy our Christian children and discriminate against Christian families.”

“Atheistic secular humanists should be removed from office and Christians should be elected…Government and true Christianity are inseparable.”

“We’ll take away their power and their money. Money comes from students. We’ll break their backs by taking 24 million kids out of the public schools.”

“Raising your children under Americanism or any other principles other than true Christianity is child abuse.”

“You do not have the right to be wrong, regardless of what any man-made or demonic charter says.”

“Democracy originated in the mind of a rational being who has the deepest hatred for God.”

“Do you realize that the only thing that gives democracy existence is sin? The absence of democracy is perfect obedience to god.”

“The best way to insure the earth is never over populated is for sensible and righteous governments to clear all forms of atheism and heresy.”

Ronald Reagan (1911 – 2004)(President of the United States)

“For the first time ever, everything is in place for the Battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.”

Roy Moore (Former Alabama Judge)

“If they want to get the Commandments, they’re going to have to get me first.”*

“Worship With Your Vote”

Rush Limbaugh

“Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.”

“If you commit a crime, you’re guilty.”

“There is only one way to get rid of nuclear weapons… use them”

Star Parker (Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education)

“Anybody that believes in separation of church and state needs to leave right now.”

Tony Evans (Promise Keepers)

“The demise of our community and culture is the fault of sissified men who have been overly influenced by women.”

William Rehnquist (1924 – 2005)(Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court)

“The ‘wall of separation between church and state’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.”

Michael Savage (Savage Nation)

“Oh, you’re one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How’s that? Why don’t you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it.”*

*Statement made on live national television
Related articles

Saudi ‘Witch’ Beheaded for Black Magic

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religious barbarity, Religious Cretins, Religious Terror

Saudi ‘Witch‘ Beheaded for Black Magic
Benjamin Radford, Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor

An accused witch, Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar, was beheaded in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. She had been convicted of practicing “witchcraft and sorcery,” according to the Saudi Interior Ministry. Such a crime is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia, and so Nassar was sentenced to death. Nassar’s sentence was appealed — and upheld — by the Saudi Supreme Judicial Council.

Nassar, who claimed to be a healer and mystic, was arrested after authorities reportedly found a variety of occult items in her possession, including herbs, glass bottles of “an unknown liquid used for sorcery,” and a book on witchcraft. According to a police spokesman, Nassar had also falsely promised miracle healings and cures, charging ill clients as much as $800 for her services.

Many Shiite Muslims — like many fundamentalist Christians — consider fortune-telling an occult practice and therefore evil. Making a psychic prediction or using magic (or even claiming or pretending to do so) are seen as invoking diabolical forces. Fortune-telling, prophecy and witchcraft have been condemned by Saudi Arabia’s powerful religious leaders. There is some question as to whether Saudi law technically outlaws witchcraft, though in a country where politics and religion are so closely aligned the distinction is effectively moot.

Just last year a Lebanese man named Ali Sabat, who for years had dispensed psychic advice and predictions on a television show, was accused of witchcraft. Sabat was arrested in Saudi Arabia by the religious police, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. His crime, like that of Nassar, was practicing sorcery, and Sabat was condemned to death in April 2010, though it’s still unknown if his sentence has been carried out.

Accusations of witchcraft and sorcery are not unheard of around the world, especially in political campaigns where they are used as a smear tactic. Close associates of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were accused last year of using witchcraft and summoning genies by influential clerics in that country. According to news reports, about two dozen of Ahmadinejad’s close aides have been arrested and charged with being “magicians.” One man, Abbas Ghaffari, was reportedly accused of summoning a genie who caused a heart attack in a man who was persecuting him.

Even the United States is not immune; Christine O’Donnell, the Republican who ran a failed bid for a Senate seat in 2010, had to answer political questions about whether she had practiced witchcraft. For centuries, accusations of (and laws against) witchcraft have been used as a tool by those in power to silence dissenters; whether that was the case with Nassar is unknown, but her death is a reminder that belief in magic is taken very seriously in many parts of the world — and can have grave consequences.

This story was provided by Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. His website is http://www.BenjaminRadford.com.

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Court Rules Against Crazy Anorexic-Looking Religious Zealot In Her Attempt to Coerce University

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religion is anti-Science, Religious Bigots

Jennifer KeetonSad face for Jennifer Keeton, who won’t be able
to pretend to be a scientist anytime soon.
(Alliance Defense Fund)

Jennifer Keeton failed in 11th Circuit Federal Appeals Court last week in her attempt to coerce Augusta State University (ASU) of Georgia into awarding her a master’s degree the school contended she was refusing to earn.

Keeton, a psychology student, refused to do coursework associated with LGBTQ population, which rendered her unable to participate in the required practicum of one-on-one counseling. She was ordered to participate in a remediation plan. From the ruling (pdf) in Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley:

Rather than completing the remediation plan, Keeton filed this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that requiring her to complete the remediation plan violated her First Amendment free speech and free exercise rights. Along with her verified complaint, Keeton also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that would prevent ASU’s officials from dismissing her from the program if she did not complete the remediation plan.

So, rather than do the coursework, she filed a lawsuit, with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). According to Southern Poverty Law Center,ADF “trains other attorneys ‘to battle the radical homosexual legal agenda’ in free, week-long National Litigation Academies, whose participants commit to ‘provide 450 hours of pro bono legal work on behalf of the Body of Christ.'” ADF President Alan Sears claims that the ultimate goal of the gay-rights movement is to “silence” Christians.

It was Plaintiff-Appellant’s contention that Keeton’s views on LGBT people were protected as religious freedom and she was not obliged to consent to ASU presenting her with materials that were challenging to her worldview. The ruling includes this background (emphasis added):

In her brief, Keeton describes herself as a Christian who is committed to the truth of the Bible, including what she believes are its teachings on human nature, the purpose and meaning of life, and the ethical standards that govern human conduct. She holds several beliefs about homosexuality that she views as arising from her Christian faith. She believes that “sexual behavior is the result of personal choice for which individuals are accountable,not inevitable deterministic forces; that gender is fixed and binary (i.e., male or female), not a social construct or personal choice subject to individual change; and that homosexuality is a ‘lifestyle,’ not a ‘state of being.’”

ASU’s officials became aware that Keeton held these beliefs when she expressed to professors in class and fellow classmates in and out of class that she believed that the GLBTQ population suffers from identity confusion, and that she intended to attempt to convert students from being homosexual to heterosexual.

Keeton also said that it would be difficult for her to work with GLBTQ clients and to separate her views about homosexuality from her clients’ views. Further, in answering a hypothetical posed by a faculty member, Keeton responded that as a high school counselor confronted by a sophomore student in crisis, questioning his sexual orientation, she would tell the student that it was not okay to be gay. Similarly, Keeton told a fellow classmate that, if a client discloses that he is gay, it was her intention to tell the client that his behavior is morally wrong and then try to change the client’s behavior, and if she were unable to help the client change his behavior, she would refer him to someone practicing conversion therapy.

These may well be Jennifer Keeton’s views and she certainly has a Constitutional right to hold and express them.

But they are very far from the mainstream views of the medical or psychiatric profession, and also of the psychological profession which she is seeking to be an accredited member. Keeton’s faith in “conversion therapy” is among the most glaring antithetical views she holds. The American Psychological Association passed a resolution in 2009 by a vote of 125-to-4, saying psychologists should not tell patients they can “become straight” by therapy or any other means. APA added “efforts to produce change could be harmful, inducing depression and suicidal tendencies.”

It is an unfortunate reality that one can lead a student to the class, but one cannot make them learn. Keeton was always free to take the courses and completely disregard all the science and studies that inconveniently contradicted her Christian Fundamentalist worldview. She was free to chew her gum, play with her Blackberry, doodle on her notebook and pass the time disengaged and uninterested, as many, many a college students do with required courses that they’d rather not have to sit through. And having passed the course, degree in hand, there was little that could compel Keeton not to totally disregard the lessons she’s been “forced” to endure. She could have gone on to be an ineffective, and even destructive and harmful counselor to LGBT people in crisis with few mechanisms in place to stop her.

But she and Alliance Defense Fund staked out a position that she had the right to the degree, while not complying with the established curriculum that ASU required of her. The very act of requiring she merely be exposed to the knowledge base of her chosen profession was an affront to her religious freedom, they contended.

The court didn’t see it that way. They concluded:

Just as a medical school would be permitted to bar a student who refused to administer blood transfusions for religious reasons from participating in clinical rotations, so ASU may prohibit Keeton from participating in its clinical practicum if she refuses to administer the treatment it has deemed appropriate. Every profession has its own ethical codes and dictates. When someone voluntarily chooses to enter a profession, he or she must comply with its rules and ethical requirements. Lawyers must present legal arguments on behalf of their clients, notwithstanding their personal views. Judges must apply the law, even when they disagree with it. So too counselors must refrain from imposing their moral and religious values on their clients.

The ACLU, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of ASU, has this to say:

As this decision makes clear, while we’re all entitled to our own religious beliefs, schools like ASU can mandate that counseling students adhere to professional standards and not use their religion to discriminate against students who come to them for help. This is especially important for LGBT students in crisis, who may have already faced rejection and judgment from their community, and who may not have any other trusted adult to talk to.

Georgia? This doesn’t make up for Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain, but it helps.

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Vladimir Putin Says John McCain May Be Nuts and US Drones Killed Gaddafi

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in John McCain is Nuts, Vladimir Putin US Drones

 

Vladimir Putin dubs John McCain ‘nuts’, says US drones killed Gaddafi
Posted by TooDamnEZ

 

Vladimir Putin has lashed out at John McCain over his threats that the PM may face same fate as the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Russian premierspeculated that the US senator has been traumatized by his POW experience.

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Scary! Robots Will Control Us All!

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in AI, Rise of the Robots, Robotics, Robots

Perhaps the scariest article you’ll read all year (robots will soon control us all)

Robots, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, AI, Rise of the Machines, Rise of the Robots:-

If this is the fu­ture of war­fare and in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, rest as­sured it won’t only be Wash­ing­ton doing it.

Last month philoso­pher Patrick Lin de­liv­ered this brief­ing about the ethics of drones at an event hosted by In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s ven­ture-cap­i­tal arm (via the At­lantic):

Let’s look at some cur­rent and fu­ture sce­nar­ios. These go be­yond ob­vi­ous in­tel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance, and re­con­nais­sance (ISR), strike, and sen­try ap­pli­ca­tions, as most ro­bots are being used for today. I’ll limit these sce­nar­ios to a time hori­zon of about 10-15 years from now.

Mil­i­tary sur­veil­lance ap­pli­ca­tions are well known, but there are also im­por­tant civil­ian ap­pli­ca­tions, such as ro­bots that pa­trol play­grounds for pe­dophiles (for in­stance, in South Korea) and major sport­ing events for sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­ity (such as the 2006 World Cup in Seoul and 2008 Bei­jing Olympics). Cur­rent and fu­ture bio­met­ric ca­pa­bil­i­ties may en­able ro­bots to de­tect faces, drugs, and weapons at a dis­tance and un­der­neath cloth­ing. In the fu­ture, robot swarms and “smart dust” (some­times called nanosen­sors) may be used in this role.

Ro­bots can be used for alert­ing pur­poses, such as a hu­manoid po­lice robot in China that gives out in­for­ma­tion, and a Russ­ian po­lice robot that re­cites laws and is­sues warn­ings. So there’s po­ten­tial for ed­u­ca­tional or com­mu­ni­ca­tion roles and on-the-spot com­mu­nity re­port­ing, as re­lated to in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing.

In de­liv­ery ap­pli­ca­tions, SWAT po­lice teams al­ready use ro­bots to in­ter­act with hostage-tak­ers and in other dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. So ro­bots could be used to de­liver other items or plant sur­veil­lance de­vices in in­ac­ces­si­ble places. Like­wise, they can be used for ex­trac­tions too. As men­tioned ear­lier, the BEAR robot can re­trieve wounded sol­diers from the bat­tle­field, as well as han­dle haz­ardous or heavy ma­te­ri­als. In the fu­ture, an au­tonomous car or he­li­copter might be de­ployed to ex­tract or trans­port sus­pects and as­sets, to limit US per­son­nel in­side hos­tile or for­eign bor­ders.

In de­ten­tion ap­pli­ca­tions, ro­bots could also be used to not just guard build­ings but also peo­ple. Some ad­van­tages here would be the elim­i­na­tion of prison abuses like we saw at Guan­tanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This speaks to the dis­pas­sion­ate way ro­bots can op­er­ate. Re­lat­edly–and I’m not ad­vo­cat­ing any of these sce­nar­ios, just spec­u­lat­ing on pos­si­ble uses–ro­bots can solve the dilemma of using physi­cians in in­ter­ro­ga­tions and tor­ture. These ac­tiv­i­ties con­flict with their duty to care and the Hip­po­cratic oath to do no harm. Ro­bots can mon­i­tor vital signs of in­ter­ro­gated sus­pects, as well as a human doc­tor can. They could also ad­min­is­ter in­jec­tions and even in­flict pain in a more con­trolled way, free from mal­ice and prej­u­dices that might take things too far (or much fur­ther than al­ready).

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Science News

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Science News

TITANIC MOON

Hazy Titan and icy Dione, two of Saturn’s many moons, pose in front of the giant planet’s rings. Full Story NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Inst.
More SN:-

seperator

seperator

Wasps airlift annoying ants
In a scrap over food, being big and able to fly is an advantage
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Are Muslim Crackpots More Anti-Science Than Their Loony Christian Counterparts?!

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Islamic Anti-Science, Islamic Fundamentalism, Islamic Kooks

Muslim Medical Students Boycotting Lectures on Evolution
By , About.com Guide   December 21, 2011

Steve Jones emeritus professor of human genetics at university college London has questioned why such students would want to study biology at all when it obviously conflicts with their beliefs. He told the Sunday Times: ‘I had one or two slightly frisky discussions years ago with kids who belonged to fundamentalist Christian churches, now it is Islamic overwhelmingly.

‘They don’t come [to lectures] or they complain about it or they send notes or emails saying they shouldn’t have to learn this stuff.

‘What they object to – and I don’t really understand it, I am not religious – they object to the idea that there is a random process out there which is not directed by God.’

Source: Daily Mail

This is not the only example of anti-science and anti-evolution activity among Muslims in Britain:

Earlier this year Usama Hasan, iman of the Masjid al-Tawhid mosque in Leyton, received death threats for suggesting that Darwinism and Islam might be compatible.

Sources within the group Muslims4UK partly blame the growing popularity of creationist beliefs within Islam on Turkish author Harun Yahya who, influenced by the success of Christian creationists in America, has written several books denouncing Darwinist theory.

Yahya associates Dawinism with Nazism and his books are and videos are available at many Islamic bookshops in the UK and regularly feature on Islamic television channels.

It’s noteworthy that the anti-science activity from Muslims in Britain is influenced to a large extent by anti-science evangelical Christians in America. Most of their arguments, ideas, and positions come from evangelical Christians. The more fundamental idea that religious ideology should be preferred over scientific fact, though, isn’t something they needed to import.

Students who refuse to come to class and learn the material should fail that class. Students who are in any sort of medical program should be denied a medical license of any sort. If you can’t accept the reality of evolution, then you are so disconnected from reality that there’s no way you can be an effective physician and I don’t think that you’ll have anything to offer any other scientific field either.

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Sadistic Preacher Assaults Girl in Church

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Christian Sadist, Religious abuse, Religious Sadism

“Nigeria’s Wealthiest Preacher” Bishop David Oyedepo Slaps Girl in Church

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Richard Bartholomew

As is being widely reported, Bishop David Oyedepo has come under fire after a video was posted to YouTube showing him slapping a young girl across the face during a public “deliverance” service at his Faith Tabernacle mega-church in Ota, a suburb in Lagos.

The video shows the young girl telling Oyedepo that she was a “witch for Jesus”, and this – along with the fact that she’s a young girl unlikely to respond in kind – was what provoked Oyedepo to violence. It’s not clear what she meant by her self-identification: perhaps she’s a member of some syncretic religious group (unlikely), or perhaps she’s developed her own ideas based on the cultural mix around her. However, it’s also possible that she’s simply someone who was accused of being a witch and was acting out the role expected of her – I’ve noted other incidents of this. A follow-up video shows Oyedepo boasting that the girl had later come to him to ask for his forgiveness for being a witch.

Oyedepo’s behaviour is particularly troubling given the context of on-going violence against children accused of witchcraft in Nigeria and elsewhere and his status within African Neo-Pentecostalism. Oyedepo is not just another successful evangelist: according to Forbes he is “Nigeria’s wealthiest preacher”, and he enjoys international connections. In particular, he is close to Kenneth Copeland, who is a major player in the US Christian Right; Copeland has spoken at Oyedepo’s church, and Oyedepo has addressed Kenneth Copeland Ministries in the USA. According to Copeland’s newsletter,

In 2008, David Oyedepo was an honored speaker at KCM’s Ministers’ Conference. “I give glory to God for Kenneth and Gloria Copeland,” Oyedepo says. “The revelation through their books taught me how to walk in kingdom prosperity, and now countless thousands are walking in that revelation as well.”

Oyedepo also attends events in London (where his son has a franchise church) – about a year ago, I saw an advert for him on the side of a taxi passing along Aldwych.

 

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Strong Evidence That Ron Paul Really Did Write Those Racist Newsletters

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Conspiracism, Conspiracy Crackpots, Conspiracy Crazies, Conspiracy Loons, Racists, Ron Paul, Ron Paul Theocratic Nut

Strong Evidence That Ron Paul Really Did Write Those Racist Newsletters
Far right dishonesty, in your face
 Charles Johnson

In New Hampshire today, Ron Paul denied that he had anything to do with the blatantly racist newsletters sent out by his organization in the 1990s, despite undeniable evidence to the contrary: Ron Paul Denies Writing Past Newsletters Featuring Racial Slurs.

“Everybody knows I didn’t write them,” Paul said during a Tuesday campaign stop in New Hampshire. “It’s not my sentiment, so it’s sort of politics as usual.”

“Everybody knows I didn’t write them.”

Maybe Ron Paul should explain why this 1992 edition of his newsletter cites a magazine that only a professional gynecologist (like Ron Paul) would be expected to follow: Contemporary OB-GYN.

Notice also the comments attributed to Ron Paul about chess champion Bobby Fischer:

Spaasky vs, Who?

When the champion chess match between Bobby Fischer and Spassky got underway, it was called the game of the century. Major newspapers had hotlines for updates. Daily 1,000-word essays chronicled every move.

Then something happened. Fischer began to lay waste to Spaasky, and the the press attention nearly disappeared. What happened?

It turns out that the brilliant Fischer, who has all the makings of an American hero, is very politically incorrect on Jewish questions, for which he will never be forgiven, even though he is a Jew. Thus we are not supposed to herald him as the world’s greatest chess player.

Here are some of the things Bobby Fischer said about Jews, that Ron Paul’s newsletter described as “politically incorrect:”

They’re lying bastards. Jews were always lying bastards throughout their history. They’re a filthy, dirty, disgusting, vile, criminal people.

[…]

My main interest right now is to expose the Jews. This is a lot bigger than me. They’re not just persecuting me. This is not just my struggle, I’m not just doing this for myself… This is life and death for the world. These God-damn Jews have to be stopped. They’re a menace to the whole world.

[…]

The Jews have been hardened against Christ, against decency for thousands of years… They’re gonna have to be annihilated, Eugene.

(Speaking to Eugene Torre, Radio Interview, May 24 1999)

[…]

Hopefully the Jews will get it in the neck soon. They have a lot of enemies all over the world. These biological weapons are getting very cheap and easy to deliver. I’m optimistic, I’m hoping that Washington DC will be wiped out.

[…]

They are subhuman. They are the scum of the Earth. When you talk about Jews, you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel of humanity.

[…]

I don’t think there’ll be any (world) peace until these Jews are dealt with, Eugene. These people are animals, they’re just bastards, y’know. Absolute animals.

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The False Equation: Religion Equals Morality

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Anti-Reason, Atheists, Atheists Are Smarter, Cowering to Superstition, David Cameron is an idiot, Freedom From Religion, Neo-Con, Neocon Crazies, Religion Destroys the Brain, Religious Bloviate, Religious Delusion, Stupid People, Superstition

The False Equation: Religion Equals Morality

by Gwynne Dyer

In the United States, where it is almost impossible to get elected unless you profess a strong religious faith, it would have passed completely unnoticed. Not one of the hundred US senators ticks the “No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic” box, for example, although 16 percent of the American population do. But it was quite remarkable in Britain.

Last Friday, UK Prime Minister David Cameron urged the Church of England to lead a revival of traditional Christian values to counter the country’s “moral collapse”.Last Friday, in Oxford, Prime Minister David Cameron declared that the United Kingdom is a Christian country “and we should not be afraid to say so.” He was speaking on the 400th anniversary of the King James translation of the Bible, so he had to say something positive about religion – but he went far beyond that.

“The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today,” he said. “Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend.”

Where to start? The King James Bible was published at the start of a century in which millions of Europeans were killed in religious wars over minor differences of doctrine. Thousands of “witches” were burned at the stake during the 16th century, as were thousands of “heretics”. They have stopped doing that sort of thing in Britain now – but they’ve also stopped reading the Bible. Might there be a connection here?

Besides, what Cameron said is just not true. In last year’s British Social Attitudes Survey, conducted annually by the National Center for Social Research, only 43 percent of 4,000 British people interviewed said they were Christian, while 51 percent said they had “no religion.” Among young people, some two-thirds are non-believers.

Mind you, the official census numbers from 2001 say that 73 percent of British people identify themselves as “Christian”. However, this is probably due to a leading question on the census form. “What is your religion?” it asks, which seems to assume that you must have one – especially since it follows a section on ethnic origins, and we all have those.

So a lot of people put down Christian just because that is the ancestral religion of their family. Make the question more neutral – “Are you religious? If so, what is your religion?” –and the result would probably be very different. There were attempts to get that more neutral question onto the 2011 census form, but the churches lobbied frantically against it. They are feeling marginalized enough as it is.

Why would David Cameron proclaim the virtues of a Christian Britain that no longer exists? He is no religious fanatic; he describes himself as a “committed” but only “vaguely practicing” Christian.

You’d think that if he really believed in a God who scrutinizes his every thought and deed, and will condemn him to eternal torture in Hell if he doesn’t meet the standard of behavior required, he might be a little less vague about it all. But he doesn’t really believe that he needs religion HIMSELF; he thinks it is a necessary instrument of social control for keeping the lower orders in check.

This is a common belief among those who rule, because they confuse morality with religion. If the common folk do not fear some god (any old god will do), social discipline will collapse and the streets will run with blood. Our homes, our children, even our domestic animals will be violated. Thank god for God.

Just listen to Cameron: “The alternative of moral neutrality should not be an option. You can’t fight something with nothing. If we don’t stand for something, we can’t stand against anything.” The “alternative of moral neutrality”? What he means is that there cannot be moral behavior without religion – so you proles had better go on believing, or we privileged people will be in trouble.

But Cameron already lives in a post-religious country. Half its people say outright that they have no religion, two-thirds of them never attend a religious service, and a mere 8 percent go to church, mosque, synagogue or temple on a weekly basis. Yet the streets are not running with blood.

Indeed, religion may actually be bad for morality. In 2005 Paul Gregory made the case for this in a research paper in the Journal of Religion and Society entitled “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look.”

Sociological gobbledygook, but in a statistical survey of 18 developed democracies, Gregory showed that “In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, (venereal disease), teen pregnancy, and abortion.”

Even within the United States, Gregory reported, “the strongly theistic, anti-evolution South and Midwest” have markedly worse crime rates and social problems than the relatively secular North-East. Of course, the deeply religious areas are also poorer, so it might just be poverty making people behave so badly. On the other hand, maybe religion causes poverty.

Whatever. The point is that David Cameron, and thousands of other politicians, religious leaders and generals in every country, are effectively saying that my children, and those of all the other millions who have no religion, are morally inferior to those who do. It is insulting and untrue.

<!–

–>

Gwynne Dyer

Gwynne Dyer has worked as a freelance journalist, columnist, broadcaster and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years, but he was originally trained as an historian. Born in Newfoundland, he received degrees from Canadian, American and British universities. His latest book, “Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats“, was published in the United States by Oneworld.

New Report Details Catholic Child Abuse In The Tens of Thousands – In Netherlands Alone!

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Catholic Abuse, Catholic Child Abuse, Catholic Sex Crimes

New Report Documents Widespread Abuse in Dutch Catholic Institutions

The atheist blogosphere is understandably buzzing with news of Christopher Hitchens‘ death. Take whatever time you might need to deal with this loss, but please don’t overlook the other big news of the day: a new report detailing widespread child abuse by Catholic clergy and others associated with the church has been released by an independent commission in the Netherlands.

The report by the an independent commission said Catholic officials failed to tackle the widespread abuse “to prevent scandals.” The suspected number of abuse victims who spent some of their youth in church institutions likely lies somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000, according to a summary of the report.

The commission received roughly 1,800 complaints and identified 800 perpetrators, including clergy and lay people working with them.

Once again, I call on Catholics to stop supporting this institution.

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“Family Values” Republican Bought Gay Sex Shop Wares With Taxpayer Money

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Gay Republicans, Greg Davis is Gay, Republican Homosexuals

Family-Values Politician Bought Gay Sex Shop Wares With Taxpayer Money
By Lauri Apple
Family-Values Politician Bought Gay Sex Shop Wares With Taxpayer Money

Family-Values Politician Bought Gay Sex Shop Wares With Taxpayer Money

For those of you who keep track of America’s conservative family-values Republicans who are caught doing sexy gay things, here’s a new name to add to your lists: Southaven, Mississippi mayor and failed Congressional candidate Greg Davis, who allegedly billed taxpayers $67 for purchases at a Canadian gay sex shop called Priape.

Davis made his purchase during some sort of romantic business trip involving warehouse developers:

The auditor’s office confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday that Davis billed the city for the $67 purchase at Priape, which describes itself on its website as “Canada’s premiere gay lifestyle store and sex shop.”

Davis declined to comment on the expenses, saying his attorney had told him not to talk.

“I can’t say anything,” Davis told the AP on Friday.

Davis doesn’t remember what the purchase actually was, but publicly admitted that he’s gay after news of the purchase—and $170,000 worth of alleged food and liquor purchases made on the public dime—became public. His expensive eating and drinking habits have made him the subject of a criminal investigation. Rough week!

We must cut Davis a bit of slack for a. not trying to come up with some sort of BS to hide his homosexuality, and b. awarding huge tips to the servers of his fancy meals, as though he were running his own secret welfare program for America’s beleaguered food service industry workers. “[D]uring a dinner for legislators and attorneys at the Mint Restaurant in Ridgeland, Miss., Davis left a $1,000 tip on a $2,509.43 bill that included two bottles of Opus One wine for $415 each,” reports the Commercial Appeal. If you overlook the fact that frivolous fish dinners purchased with public funds can be a crime, and that supporting workers completely goes against his party’s fiscally conservative values, his generous acts are downright admirable.

[Boston Herald, via Buzzfeed. Image via AP]

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Yet Another “Family Values” Republican Caught Cheating

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Family Values Hypocrites, Religious Bigots, Religious Hypocrisy, Right Wing Hypocrites

Another Republican ‘Family Values’ Politician Quits Over Affair

Protecting the sanctity of marriage
 Charles Johnson

Minnesota Senate majority leader Amy Koch has been a determined foe of same-sex marriage, pushing a state constitutional amendment to ban it outright. According to Koch and the other Republicans touting this amendment, its purpose is to “protect the sanctity of marriage.”

But Koch, like so many other “family values” GOP politicians caught cheating, doesn’t seem to apply the same standard to the sanctity of her own marriage: Sen. Koch quit over ‘inappropriate’ relationship.

Michel and other senators said they had heard from several staffers over the past two weeks that Koch was having a relationship with one of her direct subordinates. They said that when they confronted Koch on Wednesday night, she didn’t admit to the relationship or deny it.

“Her response to the conversation was …’I think I need to consider resigning,’ ” said Assistant Senate Majority Leader David Hann, R-Eden Prairie.

However, Koch gave no indication she would do so right away.

Not long after the news conference, Michel announced that Michael Brodkorb, who was Koch’s powerful communications chief, was no longer employed as a Senate staffer, effective Friday.

Senate leaders didn’t return calls late Friday to determine whether Brodkorb’s resignation was related to Koch’s.

Via:-

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39632_Another_Republican_Family_Values_Politician_Quits_Over_Affair

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World NUT Daily Crazies See Signs of God’s Destruction of America in Pine Trees

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in World Net Daily, World Nut Daily

WND: Pine Trees at Ground Zero a Sign that God Will Destroy USA
Posted on December 14, 2011 by Richard Bartholomew

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has found a new enthusiasm – a book entitled Harbinger, by Jonathan Cahn of the Jerusalem Center-Beth Israel Congregation in Wayne, N.J. Cahn has found examples of a couple of (Democratic) politicians using a Bible verse out of context, in a way that Farah believes (or purports to believe) is of wider spiritual significance:

“…I am persuaded God is trying to tell America something and Rabbi Cahn has found the key to unlocking the message.”

The misused text is Isaiah 9:10:

“The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.”

These words were first uttered by leaders in Israel and in response to a limited strike by Assyria on the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali – an attack the prophet makes clear is actually part of a limited judgment by God against apostasy. It wasn’t meant to destroy the nation, but to awaken it, according to most commentaries.

But, says Cahn, Israel didn’t take the cue. Instead, the response from the people in Isaiah 9:10 is one of defiance. The brick buildings were toppled, but they vowed to build bigger and better. The little sycamore trees may have been uprooted, but they vowed to plant bigger and better cedars in their place.

In the wake of 9/11, the verse was quoted by Tom Daschle, and three years later by Senator Jonathan Edwards:

“Like Daschle, Edwards thinks he’s invoking inspirational and comforting words from the Bible, but he’s actually inviting judgment on America,” says Cahn. “He’s repeating the vow that provoked God to bring calamity on ancient Israel.”

WND helpfully provides footage of both quotes, overlaid some with brooding Philip Glass music for extra sinister effect.

Of course, quote-mining the Bible in a way that does violence to authorial intent and context is a commonplace vice (indeed, Farah is himself a frequent offender), although it’s depressing to see such a howler from supposedly well-educated public figures. One could make a sensible point about the shallowness and self-serving nature of what passes for a good deal of public religion. However, Farah and Cahn tell us that it’s more than that, as they read occult significance into a couple of details around the redevelopment of Ground Zero:

There was actually a very famous sycamore tree felled in the attack on the World Trade Center. It was replaced by trees in the same genus as the cedar. There have been many plans made to rebuild the twin towers bigger and better and a large “hewn stone” was actually quarried out of the Adirondack Mountains in New York and brought to Ground Zero as a cornerstone.

The new trees at the site are pines are rather cedars, and it’s unclear how they “replace” the famous sycamore that stood near St Paul’s Chapel, but apparently we can dispense with literalism when it suits.

Via:- http://barthsnotes.com/2011/12/14/wnd-pine-trees-at-ground-zero-a-sign-that-god-will-destroy-usa/

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Mitt Romney Panders to The American Taliban aka American Religious Right Crazies

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Right, Mitt Romney, Religious Right, Religious Windbags, Republican Anti-Science, Theocon, Theocon Fascists, Theocons, Theocracy

Romney Blasts Secularism, Endorses Mixing Church and State
Wearing God on his sleeve
by Charles Johnson

How do you know when the Iowa Caucuses are approaching?

When Mormon Mitt Romney starts sounding like Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum, all rolled into one ranting Christian fundamentalist: Romney talks ‘war on religion’ in Iowa.

“I know there are some people who would like to make this nation a secular nation, who want to take God out of everything that exists in this country. They try to say it’s unconstitutional,” Romney said. “I trust in God, and I know you do, and I believe it’s appropriate for us to recognize in the public square that we do indeed have a creator and that we trust in our creator, particularly at this time of year.”

Romney was responding to a question about celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday, particularly in schools. The question offered Romney a chance to contrast with fellow Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who is running an ad on Iowa TV that accuses President Obama of waging a “war on religion.” American children cannot “openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school,” Perry says in the ad.

“How do you take God out of America when the declaration points out it’s God that gave us those rights in the first place?” Romney said. “I believe that we should be able to have religious ornamentation and celebration in the public square. Whether that’s a manger or a menorah, or representatives of other faiths, it is important for us as a society to recognize that we look to God for many of our blessings.”

There’s a reason Romney cited the Declaration of Independence in his pandering statement, instead of the far more important US Constitution. The Constitution goes out of its way to avoid any hint of endorsing religion, but the Declaration uses the words “endowed by their Creator.”

This is a religious far right talking point, originating among people who actually want to turn the country into a theocracy — and Mitt Romney is now parroting their propaganda.

It’s a measure of how thoroughly this craziness has spread throughout the Republican base.

Via:- http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39630_Romney_Blasts_Secularism_Endorses_Mixing_Church_and_State

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Science News

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Science News

NAKED BUT SHIELDED

Naked mole rats don’t feel the sting of acid. Scientists have discovered the molecular basis for the rodents’ ability to withstand acidic environments without discomfort. Full Story Image © Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine
Science News:-
seperator

 

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The Muslim conspiracy theory and the Oslo massacre

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Islamophobia, Islamophobic Conspiracies, Right Wing Conspiracies

The Muslim conspiracy theory and the Oslo massacre

Abstract

Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the Norwegian massacre, was motivated by a belief in a Muslim conspiracy to take over Europe. Extreme and aberrant his actions were, but, explains the author, elements of this conspiracy theory are held and circulated in Europe today across a broad political spectrum, with internet-focused counter-jihadist activists at one end and neoconservative and cultural conservative columnists, commentators and politicians at the other. The political fallout from the circulation of these ideas ranges from test cases over free speech in the courts to agitation on the ground from defence leagues, anti-minaret campaigners and stop Islamisation groups. Although the conspiracy draws on older forms of racism, it also incorporates new frameworks: the clash of civilisations, Islamofascism, the new anti-Semitism and Eurabia. This Muslim conspiracy bears many of the hallmarks of the ‘Jewish conspiracy theory’, yet, ironically, its adherents, some of whom were formerly linked to anti-Semitic traditions, have now, because of their fear of Islam and Arab countries, become staunch defenders of Israel and Zionism.

http://rac.sagepub.com/content/53/3/30.abstract

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Jewish Fanatic Arsonist

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Failed Messiah, Jewish Arsonist, Jewish Fanatic

Judge Refuses To Toss Charge Against New Square Arsonist

Saul spitzer mug shotShaul Spitzer, the 18-year-old butler of the Skvere Rebbe who was arrested in May after allegedly trying to burn down New Square dissident Aron Rottenberg’s home while Rottenberg and his entire family slept, failed in his attempt to have a criminal contempt charge against him dropped.

 

Saul spitzer mug shot
Shaul Spitzer

Judge Refuses To Toss Charge Against New Square Arsonist
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Shaul Spitzer, the 18-year-old butler of the Skvere Rebbe who was arrested in May after allegedly trying to burn down New Square dissident Aron Rottenberg’s home while Rottenberg and his entire family slept, failed in his attempt to have a criminal contempt charge against him dropped, the Journal News reported today.

Spitzer allegedly violated an order of protection on October 4 when he walked in front of the Rottenberg’s home. The order of protection requires Spitzer to stay away from Aron Rottenberg and his family, the Rottenberg family home, and Rottenberg’s business.

Rottenberg and his family faced months of harassment before the attack. His property was vandalized and the family was threatened.

Rottenberg became a target of Skvere enforcers after he organized a Shabbat minyan (prayer service) at the Friedwald nursing home located just outside the village. Rottenberg reportedly did this because an elderly Holocaust survivor who was too ill to leave the nursing home to go to nearby synagogues wanted a minyan so he would be able to say Kaddish, the memorial prayer, for a deceased relative.

Rottenberg and a small group of other Skvere hasidim would walk from New Square to the nursing home each Shabbat.

The Skvere religious community was ordered by its previous leader, or rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky, to exclusively pray in the hasidic village’s synagogue, and the order was reaffirmed by his son, Rabbi David Twersky, who became rebbe in 1968 after his father died.

The second-degree criminal contempt charge against Spitzer is a misdemeanor. His trial is scheduled for Feb. 6, 2012. He is also charged with attempted murder and arson in connection with the attack on Rottenberg and his family.

Rottenberg, who was seriously burned over more than 50% of his body in the May 22, 2011 attack, is recovering after spending weeks in a hospital burn unit. He has limited only use of one arm. No other Rottenberg family members were hurt in the attack.

Dispelling Christian Nation Myths

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Theocracy, Christian Nationalism, Religious Fascisim, Secular United States

Dispelling Christian Nation Myths
by Ed Brayton

In the comments on a previous post there has been a conversation about separation of church and state and the Christian Nation myth that is worth moving up here to its own post. All comments in blockquotes are from commenter James Goswick, coupled with my responses.

Then why did the framers allow prayer in schools and themselves pray in Jesus’ name? Obviously, modern separation doctrine is wrong.

They didn’t allow prayer in schools; they had nothing at all to do with public schools at the time. The establishment clause did not originally apply to the states at all. The states were even free to have official churches and many of them did. That changed with the passage of the 14th amendment.

How could the framers design a secular govt. when the States mandated Christianity for office holders:

Because they were designing a federal government, which had almost no power over the state governments at the time. The federal government was explicitly secular and religious tests for office were specifically forbidden at the federal level.

Modern separation is wrong. TJ himself said modern separation is wrong.

No he didn’t. There are two separate questions here: how the establishment clause should be interpreted and whether it should be applied to the states or only to the federal government. At the time it was applied only to the federal government. But Jefferson’s interpretation of the establishment clause was pretty much identical to the modern judicial interpretation. He was opposed to all government endorsement or support for religion, even when entirely non-coercive and merely suggestive.

The framers believed in separation as a national church ruling the state as in the Church of England. That is the context. Now, it’s all whacked out. TJ left States to establish whatever religion they wanted.

And for the second time, that changed with the 14th amendment, which applied the Bill of Rights to the states. You see, constitutions can be amended. And those amendments change reality.

If adminstrators lead prayer, it was mandated until the 1961 SC decision.

1963, actually. And again, the federal constitution had nothing to do with what state-funded public schools could and couldn’t do until after 1868.

None of the States had state religions. The point is all Christian sects were equal–others were not. If the federal laws contradict TJ’s et al. words, they are wrong, and the Supreme Law of the Land (the Constitution) has been subverted–which it has.

Actually, many of the states had state religions at the time. The letters between Jefferson and the Danbury Baptists was all about the fact that Connecticut had an established church — Congregationalist. Virginia was officially Anglican until Jefferson and Madison led the fight to disestablish the church with the Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. Massachusetts was officially Puritan. Only Rhode Island lacked an official church originally. After the passage of the Virginia act, which formed the basis for the First Amendment, the states disestablished their state churches one by one, the last one (Massachusetts) being removed in 1833.

The very fact you brought this up proves my point. The founding fathers executed homosexuals, which proves the bill of rights did not protect them.

And as wingnuts always do, you continue to ignore the 14th amendment as though it didn’t exist.

It is the founding fathers you are opposing, which they said you weren’t supposed to do. The Constitution is only to be amended not contrary to Christianity. They set up the Christian nation, not me.

Please provide a single provision of the U.S. Constitution that establishes a Christian nation. Your ancestral wingnuts at the time were opposed to the passage of the Constitution precisely because it didn’t do that. They railed against the ban on religious tests and the lack of a declaration of belief in God in the document, claiming that this would bring down the wrath of God on the nation. They tried and failed to amend those things in the state ratification conventions and they tried and failed more than a dozen times to pass amendments over the course of the next hundred years to do the same thing. Then suddenly, in the early 20th century, the argument changed. After a century of arguing that the Constitution was a godless document that had to be amended to make us officially Christian and avoid the wrath of God, they suddenly started arguing that it was intended to be a Christian nation all along.

The Father of the 14th Amendment, Sen. Bingham from Ohio, makes it clear in the ratification debates, the 14th referred only to giving rights to slaves. How its applied now is disgraceful–flying in the face of TJ’s “religion is left to the States.”

This is false. Bingham repeatedly said during the debates over the amendment that the purpose was to apply the first 8 amendments in the Bill of Rights to the states. On Feb. 27, 1866, he said that the amendment was intended to “arm the Congress … with the power to enforce this bill of rights as it stands in the Constitution today.” In a similar statement he said that the amendment would “arm Congress with the power to … punish all violations by State Officers of the bill of rights.” More importantly, the language of the amendment is clear. It was not limited to former slaves, it was much broader. It says that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Those privileges and immunities were those found in the Bill of Rights.

I then added another comment:

Yeah, this notion that religious freedom is a Biblical idea simply couldn’t be any more ridiculous. How many times are slaughters justified in the Bible because the targets of the attack worship different gods? There isn’t a single verse in the Bible that even suggests the concept of religious freedom. And it was the long history of officially Christian governments destroying religious freedom, including in the original colonies, that prompted the push to disestablish the churches and forbid the federal government from establishing Christianity. This is what Jefferson was talking about when he wrote:

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned: yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

And one thing I forgot to add to my previous comment was that the notion that the only thing the Establishment Clause was intended to prevent was the official establishment of a national church is clearly contradicted by history. During the debates over the Bill of Rights, Congress considered and rejected several alternate wordings for the religion clauses of the First Amendment that would have done exactly that. Here’s one:

Congress shall not make any law, infringing the rights of conscience or establishing any Religious Sect or Society.

Here’s another:

Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination of religion in preference to another, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor shall the rights of conscience be infringed.

Here’s a third:

Congress shall make no law establishing one religious sect or society in preference to others.

If they had wanted only to prohibit the official establishment of a specific sect or denomination, they could have done so but they voted such wordings down in favor of the much broader one that was ultimately ratified, which forbids any even “respecting” an establishment of religion.

There were disagreements over the exact requirements and boundaries of that prohibition, of course, but none of the men involved believed that it only prevented the official establishment of a specific denomination. There was famously a split between the first four presidents. Washington and Adams believed that the government could give rhetorical support to religion in general (not to Christianity specifically; they always used broader theistic language) as long as it was non-coercive and they issued many proclamations of thanksgiving and urging people to fast and pray. Jefferson and Madison argued forcefully that the First Amendment forbid the federal government from saying anything at all on the subject, even if it was merely rhetorical and suggestive. Madison, the man in charge of actually writing the First Amendment, believed that it even forbid the military from having chaplains unless they were paid for by the churches rather than the government (a position not taken even by the ACLU today).

And a third round:

Ed, since the Bible was mandatory reading to promote religion in schools, do you have proof the Founding Fathers prohibited prayer?

I didn’t say they prohibited prayer. I didn’t say anything like that. I said they didn’t have anything to do with the subject. Because the First Amendment didn’t apply to the states and the federal government had nothing to do with public schools at the time, what public schools at the time did or didn’t do has no bearing at all on how the First Amendment should be interpreted (which, again, is a separate question from whether it should be applied to state and local government actions — interpretation and application are distinct issues that you insist on combing).

And incorrectly so as you yourself claim, “The establishment clause did not originally apply to the states at all. The states were even free to have official churches and many of them did.”

WTF are you talking about? You do realize that later amendments supercede the previous text, don’t you? The 14th amendment is obviously not in line with what the founding fathers intended; that’s why it was necessary. If it had been consistent with what was originally intended, there would be no need to have the amendment. So no, the 14th amendment didn’t apply to the states “incorrectly” — it changed the nature of the Constitution and asserted the Bill of Rights as binding on the states as well as the federal government.

The framers prayed in Jesus’ name.

Some of them undoubtedly did. Thomas Jefferson certainly didn’t because he didn’t believe Jesus was anything but a man. But this has nothing at all to do with what the government can do. Like all wingnuts, you confuse personal practice with the meaning of constitutional provisions.

I wrote:

And for the second time, that changed with the 14th amendment, which applied the Bill of Rights to the states.

And you replied:

Violating every branch of govt, including the Judiciary:

These amendments demanded security against the apprehended encroachments of the General Government — not against those of the local governments. In compliance with a sentiment thus generally expressed, to quiet fears thus extensively entertained, amendments were proposed by the required majority in Congress and adopted by the States. These amendments contain no expression indicating an intention to apply them to the State governments. This court cannot so apply them –Chief Justice Marshall. Barron v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833)

Holy crap, you are a moron. You cited a Supreme Court decision from 1833 explaining that the Bill of Rights did not originally apply to the states — which is true, of course — as evidence that a later constitutional amendment “violated” that ruling. But as I said, amendments change the constitution itself. That’s the whole point of amendment. The 14th amendment didn’t “violate” Barron v Baltimore, it changed its result. In 1833, the Bill of Rigths did not apply to the states; after 1868, it did. The 14th amendment changed that, quite intentionally.

Which ones? No State had an established religion. All Christian sects were provided equal protection.

No they didn’t. In Connecticut, for example, all people, regardless of their religion, had to pay taxes to support the Congregationalist church. Until the early 1700s, it wasn’t even legal for any other church to exist. After 1708, the state would exempt certain churches from that law — ones they called “sober dissenters” — but not others. This is not equal protection by any coherent definition.

I wrote:

Please provide a single provision of the U.S. Constitution that establishes a Christian nation

And you replied:

The Constitution leaves religion to the States and the States formed non-denominational Christianity as their religion. Moreover, The Constitution neither abolished nor replaced what the Declaration had established; it only provided the specific details of how American government would operate under the principles set forth in the Declaration.

So much stupid in one paragraph. yes, the constitution originally left religion to the states. For the millionth time, the 14th amendment changed that. And some of the states had established religions, but following Virginia’s example they removed them one by one. And the Declaration of Independent didn’t establish anything. While I’m among those who think the Declaration is an important document for interpreting the Constitution (many disagree, even on the right; one of the big distinctions between Justices Scalia and Thomas is that Scalia rejects the Declaration as an interpretive tool while Thomas thinks it is a necessary one. I agree with Thomas), it had and has no actual legal force. It did not create a government, or even attempt to create one. But even so, bear in mind that it was written by a man who explicitly rejected Christianity.

Jewish human rights group condemns mosque burnings

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Mosque Burnings

Jewish human rights group condemns mosque burnings

“The Jewish State has a sterling record of providing an environment in which people of all religions can worship freely and in safety. Whoever is responsible for this recent vandalism, attacks also that core principle. The houses of worship of every religion should be considered sacrosanct.”

“We condemn the mosque burnings that have taken place in recent days and urge the authorities to use all resources to find those responsible,” said Frank Dimant, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada.

TORONTO, – B’nai Brith Canada has condemned the recent mosque burnings in Jerusalem and the West Bank and called on the Israeli Government to ensure that the perpetrators are apprehended.

Israel is in the midst of a culture war

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Israel, Israeli Right Wing Nuts, Israeli Theocracy, Israels Fascists

Israel is in the midst of a culture war

The right has been in power for a long time now, and now, in its 35th year in government, in the 64th year of the state, it has turned to the task of reshaping the country’s character and faces almost no opposition.

By Gideon LevyTags: KnessetIsraeli ArabsHaredimJerusalem

Anyone who says this is a matter of a few inconsequential laws is leading others astray; anyone who claims a reversible procedure is being deceptive; anyone who states reassuringly that this is a passing phase is trying to put one over. Even the person who thinks it’s just an attempt at regime change is under a delusion. What we are witnessing is w-a-r.

This fall a culture war, no less, broke out in Israel, and it is being waged on many more, and deeper, fronts than are apparent. It is not only the government, as important as that is, that hangs in the balance, but also the very character of the state. Our way of life is about to change, from cradle to grave. For this reason, it could be the most pivotal battle in the country’s history since the War of Independence.

We always knew that a few years without an external threat could strain the delicate seams: When the guns go silent, the demons roar. But no one predicted such an outburst of demons of every kind, all at once. The assault on the existing order is an all-out war, on every front; a political tsunami, a cultural flood and a social and religious earthquake, all still in their infancy. Those who call this an exaggeration are trying to lull you to sleep. The defeats and the victories up to now will determine the course of events: In the end, we will have a different country. The pretension of being an enlightened Western democracy is giving way, with terrifying speed, to a different reality – that of a benighted, racist, religious, ultranationalist, fundamentalist Middle Eastern country. That is not the kind of integration into the region we had hoped for.

The ferocious combined assault is highly effective. It targets women, Arabs, leftists, foreigners, the press, the judicial system, human rights organizations and anyone standing in the way of the cultural revolution. From the music we listen to, to the television we watch, from the buses we ride to the funerals we attend , everything is about to change. The army is changing, the courts are in turmoil, the status of women is being pelted with rocks, the Arabs are being shoved behind a fence and the labor migrants are being forced into concentration camps. Israel is barricading itself behind more and more walls and barbed-wire fences as if to say, to hell with the world.

There is no single guiding hand mixing this boiling, poisonous potion; many hands stir the revolution, but they all have something in common: the aspiration to a different Israel, one that is not Western, not open, not free and not secular. The extreme nationalist hand passes the antidemocratic, neofascist laws; the Haredi hand undermines gender equality and personal freedoms; the racist hand acts against the non-Jews; the settler hand intensifies the hold not only on the occupied territories but also deep into Israel; and another hand interferes in education, culture and the arts.

You can’t see the forest for the trees, and the forest is dark and deep. Take, for example, Friday’s paper. The news pages of Haaretz reported on a few such rotten trees: the managers of dozens of businesses in Sderot have begun requiring their workers to dress modestly; in Mea She’arim, the polling places are gender-segregated; nonobservant Jews in Jerusalem have been asked to wear a kippa at work; Carmiel’s Palmach School has been turned into a religious school; discrimination against Sephardic girls at schools in Jerusalem, Modi’in Ilit, Betar Ilit and Bnei Brak; withdrawal from a physicians’ training program for Palestinians as a condition for tax relief; the government’s new plan to fight illegal immigration. And one final touch: The foreign minister gave his imprimatur to the Putinist election in Russia. All in a single day, one ordinary day.

In 1948 the state was established, and in 2011 a war is being waged for its never-crystallized character. In between these two years, the state has been rocked by waves of immigration, by different governments and by contradictory trends, and throughout loomed the threat of war and other external dangers. Various islands formed, some of them beautiful, and sometimes it seemed as if an open, enlightened country was taking root. Now that belief is on the verge of being shattered. The right has been in power for a long time now, but it lacked the self-confidence to launch this crucial assault. But now, in its 35th year in government, in the 64th year of the state, it has turned to the task of reshaping the country’s character and faces almost no opposition.

We’ll meet again in a few years, in that other Israel, that will be different and distorted beyond recognition.

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Conservatives Dumping on Loony Newt Gingrich

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Crazy Newt Gingrich, Political Whore Newt Gingrich

We like to take the piss out of a self-serving buffoons like Newt Gingrich – the ‘family values’ politician who has none – but it seems that conservatives prefer to take a piss on him!  
National Review Devoting Entire Issue To Bashing Newt Gingrich
Ooh. This promises to be fun:

From TPM:

It wasn’t enough for the National Review’s editors to just write a scathing anti-endorsement warning Republican voters that Newt Gingrich is a general election Hindenburg. No, they’re devoting an entire issue to tearing down the frontrunner.

The cover depicts Gingrich as Marvin The Martian, a shot at his longtime obsession with big-ticket space exploration projects, and features a cover story by Mark Steyn on his “Big Government Follies.”

If Newt wins the nomination, the DNC won’t have to do anything except point at the National Review and thank them for doing all the work.

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