“Face away from the camera when attempting to pocket the undocumented campaign contribution, Senator.”

photo credit: AP Photo/Elise Amendola

Greetings Otherwhirlders! Here I am, the “new kid” on the “otherblock” and a religious one at that.

Some of you know me, some of you don’t. You can learn more about me by picking your way through the rants over at my blog should you be so inclined. Feel free not to.

So, despite my Catholicity I somehow got to blog over here with the Commander. Smell me for a week! Whoo hoo. Finally - I can roll with the cool kids.

Oh… you mean Commander Other is not a cool kid? Maybe I have been duped!

In all seriousness, I can barely keep up with my blog. Plus other bloggers have extended invites to me to blog at their place. I have always come up dry with the guest blogging in general.

Somehow I have an idea for this place. Yes indeed I do! It will be explored in the next two – three posts I write.

That is presuming the Commander lets me stick around and that you all do not pelt me with virtual rocks and garbage.

Disclaimer – I am a practicing Catholic with a very open mind. I would self-define as a very liberal Catholic who would not be welcomed with open arms by that German man with the red shoes.

For the record, I do not find him grandfatherly and I don’t think his visit was a success, not that I paid much attention to it. Beyond that, many of you and I probably disagree beyond that, so let’s not get into right here, ok? In fact I am here to write about pretty much the opposite of Catholicism.

But we are not here to discuss that today.

One last disclaimer. I could care less what you believe in readers. Worship God, a rock, a tree, a pencil sharpener or nothing at all. Flying Spaghetti Monster? No problem Whatever makes you happy. I do want to say, please don’t go hatin’ on me, as I am not hatin’ on you. OK? OK.

More about that at another time.
What I would like to discuss today is based on my reading the words from this study recently:

The survey shows that a significant number of Americans would be reluctant to vote for a well-qualified candidate if he or she were a member of a particular religious group, especially a Muslim (38%). But many more express reservations about voting for a candidate without religion than one with a specific faith (52%). In all, 64% of Americans admit that a candidate’s religion, or lack thereof, could lead them to vote against a well-qualified candidate from their own party.

What kind of f*ckery is that? Holy crap. Let me repeat - direct from the study - what really got me going:

In all, 64% of Americans admit that a candidate’s religion, or lack thereof, could lead them to vote against a well-qualified candidate from their own party.

Excuse me? Oh, I forgot - Atheists just don’t love America. What crap! Frankly, I think the current administration just does not love America. It infuriates me!

The fact that people will not vote for an agnostic or atheist is 100% prejudicial! If someone were qualified but not practicing a faith, 64% of Americans would not vote for them? It shocks and upsets me.

That is so wrong. This just shows the utter superficial inanity that in a majority of Americans. So much for land of the free and all that horseshit.

As for me, me - believer in Jesus and attender of daily mass, I want a qualified candidate. Please. Please. Their gender, race, nationality, faith - it matters not. An intelligent person is just that. Can we have one please?

In addition, I heard this interview with Greg Epstein and the same study comes up. Greg Epstein, in case you did not click into the link, is the Humanist chaplain at Harvard. He is an atheist who works tirelessly to promote the idea that you do not have to worship a diety to be a good human being. More about him in a future post.

Imagine that? I can.

So let’s talk about that for a minute as I think many of you are indeed atheists.

Why do people hate atheists?

Well let us turn back the hands of time to that ancient epoch called the 1950’s. The evil convergence of the Cold War era and Joseph McCarthy were major contributors.

Oh yeah – and the Kennedy family and the Catholic Church. It is true- it must be said. The forces of communism (which if you really read and study Scripture from the early church, was kinda sorta socialista i’m just sayin’…) were of such a paramount evil that they had to be vilified.

You will hear me say a lot about the whole notion of vilification in the next few days, and in all directions.

The idea then was to create non-separating distinctions. This is pretty common in power structures like churches and governments. It is also the use of fear to control thoughts. It sucks.

Then fast forward to Ronald Reagan’s Evil Empire Speech in 1983 and you find some evidence of the same thing. Communism bad! Evil! Godless! As if evil is not alive and well in every single religious practice and denomination.

Does it surprise anyone at all that May 1 is Worker Day - equated with Communism and in our fine (ick i taste the throw up in my mouth) nation today we celebrate this day.

As a praying person it makes me ill and deeply uncomfortable.

In the toxic mixing of Communism and Atheism, you all got a very bad rap indeed.

At age 50 and having grown up in the heart of the rhetoric about the evils of communism (we feared it like today’s germs or terrorism is feared) this was the very bottom pit of hell.

Which is just stupid.

So that is it for today. More will follow as we explore the theme of how atheism in this country has become vilified.This will be my theme for the next couple of posts as we explore how atheists have been decried and that apparently many “thinking” Americans still would not want one as president.

To be continued…

Because I’m an egotistical son-of-a-dork. But in case you were wondering, or in case you weren’t, yes, this is the singular subject on which I have somehow managed to communicate coherently over the past year-plus. The Bat seriously makes me wish I had more time to actually write. Well, maybe that’s changing, and maybe that’s a good thing.

It all started last year:

· Why A Theocratic State Isn’t Necessary
· how sciolism defeats discourse (also on MPS)
· the roots of sciolism (also on MPS)

I missed the mid-year blogswarm last year. I was rather bummed about it. Life sometimes has ulterior motives, and I neglected to do something responsible like post-date a post.

And then there was this past blogswarm:

· The Blogswarm Against Theocracy Begins (also at Synthaetic Synapse) (also on perpetual dawnne)
· Revisiting Sciolism
· An Otherwhirledly Easter!
· BAT: The Visual Problem with Religion in Politics (also on MPS)
· What Really Gets My Goat…
· Imaging Against Theocracy (1)
· Imaging Against Theocracy (2)
· Imaging Against Theocracy (3)
· Because Theocracy Leads to Permissible Extremism, THAT’s Why! (also on MPS)

Yeah, maybe I care just a little bit about this subject? Or obsess, anyway….

The Blogswarm Against Theocracy supports the same ideals promoted by First Freedom First. If you’re not familiar with First Freedom First, I encourage you to visit their website and learn more about the need to protect our first freedoms. Sign the petition, and don’t be afraid to make it clear to your congressional representatives and local politicians that legislation that exclusively benefits religious organizations undermines our First Freedoms. Be an active participant in protecting everyone’s First Freedoms and the Bill of Rights. The future of our country IS at stake!

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I cannot recall how many people I’ve spoken with, either via blogs or in-person, who reacted with the word “But nobody wants a theocracy in America” whenever I bring the subject up. And indeed, until recently, there wasn’t really a specific push to alter our Constitution in any formative way, and the only reason the American public has come to recognize that there are some minority movements in that direction is because of the thankfully-failed presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee. Thanks to his “charming” southern style and disarming smile, however, even given the suddenness of the our coming to understand that conservative fundamentalists DO want to turn this nation into a Christian Nation, many still don’t realize the true threat that impetus represents. And since nobody in that campaign ever used the term “theocracy”, these very same people who were “a bit put off” by Huckabee’s stance on altering the Constitution still don’t believe that anyone is creating, or has ever made any attempt to create, a theocratic state.

Head in the sands, their worldview is written on the backs of their eyelids, and its name is sciolism. But I’ve already spoken enough about that.

When the Buddha was destroyed in Bamyan by the Taliban back in 2001, everyone here in America seemed taken aback. But at least on the part of some of us, that incredulity was largely feigned. After all, we already live in a society which unapologetically and unabashedly forces galleries and museums not to display works of art that are uncomplimentary to the Christian Deity and Its Holy Progeny. We already live in a society which disallows admittance to certain schools to those who are openly homosexual, refuses military service to the same and withholds benefits to service men and women whose homosexuality becomes known. We already live in a society where religious-sponsored abstinence-only education is taught in public schools, where religious-sponsored “alternatives” to centuries-established science are required to be taught alongside the scientific curriculum, and where educators must mark as correct responses from students whose religious doctrine define the Universe as a 6,000-year-old mechanism created and overseen by the Christian Deity. We already live in a society in which the government sets up programs exclusively available to religious organizations, and subjectively requires candidates for political office to publicly hold at least some form of religious belief that is not Muslim, Wiccan, Satanist, or Pagan.

In many ways, America is already not very far removed from being a theocratic state. Hence this blogswarm and the absolute important it holds to those of us who recognize the potential impact of the things I detailed in the paragraph above. And of other things, I’m sure. One of the things that frightens me the most about the permissiveness with which religious bigotry is handled in our society is the impact it has on our children. Even in what has become a largely progressive society on many levels, these children still grow up thinking that only members of their religious denominations will share the “Kingdom of Heaven”—in some cases, only members of their particular congregation. Children are being home-schooled in higher numbers, and this only produces more insularity, more misunderstanding, and a greater sense of that misplaced entitlement that is already so pervasive in our world today. I do honestly look upon this treatment of our children as a form of child abuse. They are not prepared for the world at large whenever they do leave home, and that is the gravest error any parent can make: worse even than the rote teachings of intolerance, bigotry, self-righteousness, and duplicity they are given before they leave the house. And as adults, these children live in a society in which their intolerance and bigotry is tolerated, even encouraged, by the news media, by politicians, and of course by the company they keep in their insular segments of the society. In turn, those who do not eventually see the silliness (or perhaps the abject cruelty) of their ways, will start the cycle all over again with their own children.

What the Taliban did to Buddha in March of 2001 in one brazen act is no different than what conservative fundamentalists in America do each day to our nation as a whole through a measured, implacable series of legislation. The reason why we blog against these acts is to make people more aware that they even exist. Since ours is a society largely defined by convenience, attempting to recognize the patterns left behind by the religious fundamentalists takes work, and work is awful inconvenient. Even those who recognize these issues largely feel that anything they could do about them would be too limited, too small of a scale, to have any impact. That’s not true.

This is just the third blogswarm on the topic of theocracy, and if I’m not mistaken, sometime during yesterday, we surpassed the number of posts from the last one. We blog, people read, people begin to understand. We are not helpless in our fight against theocracy, for our readers begin to recognize that the theocratic movement has many faces, many subtle nuances, and the most recent public expression of that desire was probably communicated out of sheer ignorance on behalf of Huckabee. The fundamentalists like to work in the dark, behind closed doors, sending hand-picked groups out into the open to whine and complain and argue and fight, knowing that they cannot be trusted to reveal the true mission, couching it instead in the simple terms of “Freedom of Expression”—the very same Freedom, in fact, they would hope to deny so many others.

So, over this weekend we have blogged again. But we are reaching a point where blogging, helpful as it is, is by no means enough. I believe it is time to do more than blog. I believe it is time to actively, even proactively, fight the elements of theocracy in our courts, our schools, our universities, and yes, even our churches, synagogues, and mosques. Religion has no formative place in our government. We can be proud of the fact that many religious people fought and died to earn this country its independence without having to hold every election under a cross. We can celebrate this country’s Judeo-Christian roots without turning every courtroom into a prayer service. And we can remind our friends and neighbors who have no problem with the efforts to make this a Christian Nation exactly where such ideas got the people of Afghanistan. Help them envision what life would be like without the Freedom of choice, the Freedom of expression, the Freedom of Art.

Here are some helpful questions you can ask those who don’t think this is a real issue:

1. Would you love your God if the Law said you had no other choice but to do so?
2. Would you want your children to attend a public school where Baptism was the first pre-requisite?
3. Would you be excited to go to Church on Sunday if you were required to sing praises at work each day?
4. Would you uphold the Law and stone your child to death for disobedience?
5. Would you want to live in a Democracy where all the candidates were ministers? or priests? or rabbis?
6. Would you want to live in a society where “choice” amounted to whether you go to mass on Saturday or Sunday?

Our freedom is at stake. Let’s not just leave it to a collection of postings once or twice a year.

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cross-posted to Mock, Paper, Scissors

“Yo! The King’s Got Yer Happy Meal right here, MuthaFuckah!”

photo credit: Getty Images

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“Heh-heh. Waitaminnit! Ag gets where ta light it, but where do Ah suck?”

photo credit: AFP/Pool/Alessandra Tarantino

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Before we get started today, let’s review:

1. While pointedly about the infestation, for lack of a better word, of Christianity into our political and legal cultures, I believe that this post does adhere to the standards set forth in the Blog Against Theocracy. I am specifically addressing Christianity today because of its pervasiveness in American government, and Easter happens to be one of the easiest examples of this.
2. It is of note that under Christian concepts, only this mythological “Jesus” and The People He Supposedly Raised are allowed to be resurrected. Applied to everyone else in the world, to Christians, resurrection is a ludicrous concept, appalling in consideration, and harkening back to all the things that are considered evil about Hallowe’en.
3. The tradition of the “Easter Bunny” has the interesting origin of the rabbit’s (and hare’s) use as a fertility symbol in many pagan religions. Consider that next time you let your kids sit on the Easter Bunny’s lap.
4. The word “Easter” is actually derived from the Old English name, Eostre (German Ostara). Worship of Eostre by Anglo-Saxons fell to disuse sometime before the year 899, but it was to her that various celebrations of the vernal equinox are attributed. And celebrations of the vernal equinox were always pretty kinky.
5. Eggs are also a fertility symbol. Certainly, since we either use ones where the life has been boiled out of them and color them in gaudy hues and fanciful patterns has absolutely no correlation to young teenagers who wear too much makeup. And just as assuredly, the plastic ones filled with candy and other surprises certainly bears no striking resemblance to the superficial state of our culture today.
6. The hijacking of celebrations of the vernal equinox—okay, let’s say it plainly, the hijacking of orgiastic celebrations of human sexuality—and turning it into the “recognition” of the resurrection of Christ is really quite charming. The innuendo of “rising up” from the grave is, quite frankly, religious comedy at its finest. That later-day Christians have turned it into a fairly commercialized permissive fondling of various fertility symbols (in Jesus’ name, Amen), is a Freudian slip of Jungian proportions.
7. And lastly, considering the fact that Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox should serve as clarity enough that this was hardly “the day” when anyone rose from the grave. So, very early on, I was always somewhat amused by my parents’ admonishments for me to watch my behavior on such a “holy day”.

Wow, that was a lot of prelude for a simple anecdote. I noticed this last year, but failed to put it into words in a timely fashion for the blogswarm.

Each year in March, we get the schedule for next year’s school calendar. Mrs. Other and I now have one child in the Harrisburg School District and one in the Sioux Falls School District, so this year we got two calendars. This is also the same time of year we soccer referees get our schedules for the Spring season, so I spent about half a work-day earlier this week getting major events on the school calendars and my referee assignments entered into my electronic calendar, complete with alarms for early-release days and notations on the school holidays. For planning purposes, it’s quite nice to have all this information entered in well in advance. And it ties in nicely with my client-services schedule, which already has bookings out to August of 2009.

Now, when we moved out here in August of 2004, it didn’t take long for us to realize just how incredibly conservative of an area we live in. And the elections of that November bore that observation out, if in no other way than in the number of conversations I had with moderate Democrats who chose to vote for John Thune, thus putting an untimely and unfortunate end to Tom Daschle’s service as a US Senator. Let me say that again in more clear terms: The vast majority of registered Democrats out here would be identified as moderate conservatives anywhere else. The right is so far right out here that moderatism looks liberal.

However, even given that, Sioux Falls is noticeably more secular than other communities throughout the State, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s the largest city in South Dakota. I found it amusing to find this fact exemplified on the receipt of these school calendars this year. The kids both had no school yesterday, nor will they on Monday. Next year, the same is true for the Friday and Monday surrounding Easter weekend. In Harrsiburg, the Friday holiday is for “Good Friday”, and the Monday holiday is for “Easter Monday”. In Sioux Falls, however, the Friday holiday is their one-day allotment of “Spring Break”, and Monday is a “Compensatory Day”. And also of note, October 13 of this year is “Native American Day” in Sioux Falls, but students in Harrisburg will have “Columbus Day” off, and while the Harrisburg School District will enjoy a “Christmas Vacation”, Sioux Falls School District will enjoy a nice “Holiday Break”.

And yes, I’ve had conversations with other parents in Harrisburg, who are not very amused by teachers explaining what Good Friday is and why it’s an important holiday in a classroom that contained at least two Jewish children.

Thank you, Sioux Falls School District. I think I’m going to like living in town after we finish this move. It’s still a rather conservative atmosphere, and the Sioux Falls School Board does a lot of stupid stuff, especially where Abstinence Education is still taught, but at least that first formative step has been taken not to specifically offend those of us who avail ourselves of certain National Holidays to do good things for and with people we love and respect, instead of requiring everyone to consider those days in the limited view of their religious origins.

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