Sleepycatz

Happy Guy Fawkes Day

Four hundred and two years ago today, Guy Fawkes was seized outside of the House of Lords. When captured, with matches and fuse, he gleefully admitted his intention to blow up the King and his lords. Fawkes was taken to the Tower and tortured, under the explicit permission of King James I, for three days. On the fourth day, Fawkes named conspirators who had already been known or arrested. Fawkes jumped to his death at the scaffold, saving himself the gruesome punishment of being drawn and quartered.

Fawkes, and his conspirators, had planned their act because the religion and politics in England had become too intertwined. Catholics and Puritans were being heavily discriminated against by James I and his Archbishop, Richard Bancroft. The roundup and trials of Fawkes and his compatriots were War on Terror of the day.

In Defense of Ann Coulter

Usually, I pay little to no attention to the ravings of Ann Coulter. She’s crass, vapid, and incendiary: she is the Andrew Dice Clay of punditry. However, this week she instigated one of her patented kerfuffles when she was interviewed on CNBC and I couldn’t resist commenting. Ann declared that Jews are good people that simply haven’t been perfected by Christianity:

COULTER: Well, OK, take the Republican National Convention. People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America, they –

DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?
…

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?

DEUTSCH: So I should not be a Jew, I should be a Christian, and this would be a better place?

COULTER: Well, you could be a practicing Jew, but you’re not.

DEUTSCH: I actually am. That’s not true. I really am. But — so we would be better if we were - if people — if there were no Jews, no Buddhists

…

DEUTSCH: That isn’t what I said, but you said I should not — we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or –

COULTER: Yeah.

…

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

…

DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought. OK –

COULTER: No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean, [Rev. Jerry] Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is “Christ died for our sins.” We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all.

Since her appearance, Coulter has been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and other for being antisemitic or simply theologically ill-informed. Ann Coulter, ill-informed? Shocked, I am! Shocked, I say. . . But Ann, and her defenders, insist that she is not antisemitic, simply ‘pro-christian’. And they are correct; Ann is no more antisemitic then Christians have been throughout history. She is simply expressing a tenant of her faith — as a conservative evangelical Christian.

Conservative and fundamentalist evangelicals believe that they have the only inside scoop on ’salvation’ and are the only true Christians. But good conservative evangelicals understand the God singled out the Jews in his operator’s manual, the Bible, as special. Pastor Hagee, the fundamentalist founder of the powerful Christians United for Israel, has built a religious and political empire on his theology of imperfect Jews. For Hagee, Jews combined with the state of Israel form a prophetic key which opens a magic gate and allows Jesus to return. Unfortunately, this prophetic ‘happening’ doesn’t bode too well for the Jews, as Bruce Wilson has pointed out:

Many Christian Premillenial Dispensationalists — the theological persuasion Pastor John Hagee belongs to — believe that the majority of the Jews currently living in Israel will be killed in the period of warfare that follows the “Rapture,” when “believing” Christians ( fundamentalist Christians, that is ) are bodily transported up to safety in heaven. The standard interpretation is that 2/3 or more of Israeli Jews will be slaughtered during this period but that a righteous “remnant”, who have realized the error of their ways and converted to Christianity, will survive what Christian Zionists often call the “final Holocaust” or the “second Holocaust.”

I am not trying to assert that Ann Coulter shares Pastor Hagee’s theology, simply that the belief that Jews are imperfect is one which is very prevalent in contemporary conservative Christian culture. Certainly Coulter and Hagee share similar notions of America’s role in the world. Both desire America to attack Iran, both view Islam as threat to world order, and both see secular conspiracies all around them. And, it would seem, that both share the notion that Jews need to accept Christ as their savior or messiah in order to be better human beings.

What Ann Coulter did this week was to speak a tenant of her faith, one which is not usually spoken out loud. She voiced a tenant that is understood among believers, but rarely spoken of outside of prophesy. For this she should be applauded. Her honesty and childlike recitation of dogma helps others to better understand conservative evangelical Christianity. Her words have helped spread a knowledge of her faith, and we can only hope that those words reverberate so that every American can understand the faith which has asserted itself as the true American Christianity.

Expulsion from the Garden

Someone alerted me this evening to the story of Steve Bitterman, who was dismissed from teaching at Southwestern Community College in Iowa for telling his students that not to take the story of the Garden of Eden literally. Students viewing a simulcast of the class at a neighboring college complained that Bitterman had denigrated their religion and threatened to sue; the college responded by firing the adjunct professor. Here’s the irony: Bitterman was teaching a class in western civilization.

Anyone who has had to go through the intro to western civ sections as a college freshman understands that it was the re-introduction of reason and logic from the ancients which fueled the expansion of western knowledge and civilization. Even as early as the fifth century St. Augustine wrote:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are.

By rejecting the idea that reason should trump doctrine, Bitterman’s students are rejecting the very core of the class they are taking. They are telling their college that knowledge should not challenge their preconceptions or beliefs. By firing Bitterman the college has sided with this ignorance. Instead of telling the offended students that they should grow up — or perhaps find a different class — the college has said all students now must bathe in the ignorance of the few. They have sacrificed Bitterman to the modern inquisition of fundamentalism.

It is very apparent that if the complaining students have their way there would be no western civilization, and certainly no study of it. For they have decided to reject the fruit of the tree of knowledge and embrace ignorance. Unfortunately, they want to drag the rest of us to their fairy tale land with them.

Jap Awareness Week

Ok, not quite that bad, but close. The David Horowitz Center for Freedom is sponsoring Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week on college campuses throughout the country in October. According to their guide this will be the “biggest conservative campus protest ever.” — meaning more then 100 people will participate.

The organizing guide for the event makes the agenda fairly clear:

If you are looking for a challenge this fall, if you want to break through the barrier of politically-correct doublespeak that prevails on American campuses, if you want to help our brave troops who are fighting the Islamo-Fascists abroad — bring Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week to your campus this October.

The list of planned events include:

1. A showing of Suicide Killers, Obsession, or Islam: What the West Needs to Know or the ABC mini-series The Path to 9/11
2. A panel on the Oppression of Women in Islam or any facet of the Islamo-Fascist threat
3. Distribution of materials on Islamo-Fascism including the pamphlets The Oppression of Women in Islam, The Islamic Mein Kampf, Why Israel is the Victim, Jimmy Carter’s War Against the Jews, and What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad.
4. A “sit-in” outside the offices of the Women’s Studies Department protesting the silence of feminists over the oppression of women in Islam

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that these conservatives actually care about the rights of women in the Middle East , or anywhere else. Rather, for these people the plight of women around the world becomes just another rallying cry for their race-baiting.

The real problem with all of this, aside from the dehumanization, is that these kinds of demonizations actually harm the security efforts of our country. America has not suffered from the disaffection of Arab or Muslim youth seen in Europe because we have not ghettoized these groups of immigrants. America has treated these immigrants no differently then others. By demonizing them we risk loosing their cooperation and isolating them from the rest of society. In general, isolation breeds radicalism. Mr. Horowitz and his followers don’t see this as a problem, the see it as a goal: they seem to like their Muslims as charactictures: bearded, turbaned, and bomb throwing. And the goal of an event like this is to get the rest of us to see the Muslim world with the same hateful stare that they have.

Blessed are the hateful

As I was poking about the nutty side of the blogosphere today , I came across the following invocation:

Father God,

In our hearts we believe that you will hear our prayers and will put all these curses upon our enemies and on those who hate us, who persecute us. We will keep not silence, for the mouths of the wicked and the mouths of deceit are opened against us; they have spoken against us with lying TONGUES. They have compassed us about also with words of hatred, mockery, and deciept; and have fought against all that is Holy without a cause. In return for our agape love they are my adversaries, but we now resort to prayer. They have rewarded and laid upon us evil and slander for good, and hatred for love. Set a wicked man over them as judge, and let a malisious accuser stand at their right hand come Judgment Day.

When Liberal talk show host Randi Rhodes and her followers; when the wicked and mockers at Democratic Underground are judged, let them be condemned, and let their prayers for leniency be turned into sins. Let their days be few; and let others take their offices and charge. Let their children be parentless and their souses become widowed. Let their children be continual vagabonds as was Cain and beg; let them seek their bread and be driven far from their ruined homes.

IN JESUS NAME, I BIND UP EVERY DEMON COMING ACROSS THE COMPUTER LINES, AND I RETURN THEM AND ANY CURSES.

In Your Name, Amen.

As an example of an imprecatory prayer, or curse, it’s pretty mediocre, but the mere idea of such a prayer would strike many as anti-christian. We can easily imagine that muslim fundamentalists pray for similar retributions� against American citizens. The barbarity of religion begins when hate turns to prayer and then prayer turns to action. It seems that we are two-thirds there.

Do No Harm

Some time ago, I wrote about whether or not health care workers should be allowed to withhold services or treatment due to moral or religious beliefs. My belief remains that health care providers should not be allowed to assert their own morality on to the patient — as long as the patient has expressed informed consent. This has come to mind again with Guadalupe Benitez’s appeal to the California Supreme Court. In 2000, Benitez was refused artificial insemination by her fertility doctors because she was a lesbian. In the first legal action, the court held that the doctor’s religious beliefs took precedence over Benitez’s desire for a child.

Much of what has been written on this case focuses either on the right to procreate, or the physician’s right to invoke objection of conscious. Neither of these arguments address the real concerns for society which underlines the case. For instance, what if Benitez was seeking a prosthetic leg and the doctor refused, either because he did not treat lesbians or because he felt that the injury which took her natural leg was a punishment from God, and he cannot in faith interfere with divine judgment? Certainly, one can live without either a prosthesis or a child, and obviously the right to a prosthesis is less personal then the right to procreate. However, in both cases the physician declares a Benitez less worthy of his or her medical care. The natural extension of this is a fractured society in which balkanized groups of citizens are unable to interact due to “moral objections”. If a doctor can refuse elective treatment based upon his religious judgment of the patient, why can’t a Muslim professor refuse to allow an atheist in his class? Why can’t a Baptist lawyer refuse to represent a Catholic? Why can’t a Mormon optician refuse to fit anyone other than Mormons? All of these are of median value when compared to medical care.

Doctors and nurses hold a special place in our society. They are charged with caring for their fellow women and men with the primary charge of first doing no harm. To allow them to pick and choose treatments and patients based upon their religious faith irreparably harms our society. It allows them to designate a class of citizens as less worthy then others. It fosters an inherent conflict between people of differing religious beliefs and values: the same type of conflict which has ravaged nations since the first prophet appeared from a desert. If we are going to abandon the notion of a pluralistic society then we must be prepared for the bigotry and violence that will eventually ensue. The doctors who refused to treat Guadalupe Benitez placed their moral outrage over the sworn duty of their profession: to first do no harm.

Hate Crimes

Nearly two months ago Kenneth Cummings Jr disappeared outside of Cypress, TX. His burnt remains were discovered recently on property linked to Terry Mark Mangum, who had used Mr. Cummings credit cards on the night of the disappearance. Mr Mangum was arrested and confessed to murder:Mangum, who described himself as “definitely not a homosexual,” said God called on him to “carry out a code of retribution” by killing a gay man because “sexual perversion” is the “worst sin.”

Mangum believed Cummings to be gay.

“I planned on sending him to hell,” he said.

There can be little doubt that Mr. Mangum is a bit touched in the head; yet, what is the difference between a man who brutally murders another because he is inspired by ‘god’ and a man who blows himself up in a crowded bus because he is inspired by ‘god’? Ultimately, the only difference lies in the volume of lives maimed and killed. Mr. Mangum may have only barbarically snuffed out one life, but he left behind the maimed lives of Mr. Cummings’ friends and family. Mr. Mangum’s act was designed to do more then kill one man, like a jihadi bomber, the act was framed to carry out divine justice.

I have written previously that the hate filled rhetoric of conservative christians will, eventually, lead to acts of violence. Many will dismiss Mangum as an extreme case, an aberration, but in fact Mangum was following the religious principles he was taught. He was following the literal Word of God, and as a principle of faith the Word cannot be questioned.

Mangum’s faith in the Word cannot really be questioned but his actions, and those who will follow him, should be treated most harshly. Conservative christians have been fighting the passage of HR.1592 (The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007) for the past several months on the grounds that the law represents infringement upon their religious speech. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the present hate crimes statutes (see 18 U.S.C. § 245 and § 247) include religious belief and race among the protected classes. The current bill before congress simply adds gender identity and sexual orientation to the existing classes, as well as expanding local resources and federal jurisdiction. It is completely disingenuous to suggest that this law would somehow prevent religious leaders from criticizing homosexuality. Existing laws have stopped no one, including myself, from criticizing religious belief or behavior; I know of no atheist arrested under these laws for mocking religion or speaking out against God.

HR.1592 adds additional penalties to existing crimes committed for reasons of bias. Some will argue that a ‘crime is a crime’, and no additional prosecution is needed. As a society we separate classes of the same offense all the time — the rape of a child is treated vastly differently then the rape of an adult. In a pluralistic society it seems prudent that we should treat some crimes as more heinous than others because they seek to undermine the fabric of our civil society. A murderer, for instance, targeting Jews simply for their religious beliefs commits a worse crime then a murderer who targets individuals for their money. This is because our society values religious diversity and it is cognizant of the historic tragedy of anti-semitic crimes. Sexual preference and gender identity are as core to ones identity as race or religious belief. There exists mountains of historical evidence to show that crimes based upon these two classes are prevalent and and often under prosecuted. The cold blooded murder of Mr.Cummings is simply the most recent, public, testament to this fact.

As Tom, at PurpleScarf, has pointed out: conservative christians seem to believe the entire notion of hate crimes is a joke. At the same time they argue that additional penalties to crimes motivated by the hatred of a victim’s sexual orientation constitute a burden upon their religious rights. The only conclusion that can be drawn by this argument is that conservative christian leaders seek to promote some level of violence. There is really no other explanation: we tolerate abhorrent speech regularly but action is prosecuted. As a society, we tolerate — and even accommodate — groups such as the Klu Klux Klan, neo-nazis, as well as numerous other supremest groups. Legal prosecutions of these groups have only occurred when criminal action was taken on behalf of the group. Ultimately, this is what concerns these religious leaders: that either they will be deterred from inciting criminal violence, or that their bigotry will be relegated to the same acceptance levels as that of the Klan. In either case, civil society wins, and perhaps the the brutalization that Mr. Cummings suffered won’t be repeated.