• “Evangelical pick-up lines.” (Good column from Norris Burkes but, alas, not an actual list of evangelical pick-up lines. So please feel free to suggest some in comments.)
• A note regarding that FFRF ad about RFRA. (That sentence reads like I’m transcribing my dog barking.)
Yes, Indiana and other states have passed laws that borrow the name of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, but just because those laws go by the same name doesn’t mean they share the same substance or the same intent. Any state law that was actually based on the federal RFRA would either be redundant or unconstitutional (or both) — so this false packaging is absurd as well as untrustworthy.
Also, yes, the federal RFRA was the statutory excuse for the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision. But the pretext of RFRA was just the excuse for the real basis for that decision — the idea that “corporations are people, my friend.” So, yes, Congress could fix Hobby Lobby by screwing over religious minorities and repealing RFRA. But it would be far more just to simply amend the law to forbid its application to corporate persons.
Some mischief-making theocratic corporatist will eventually try to argue that the court’s ruling in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah means that Exxon/Mobil should be exempt from anti-fracking laws. We could defend against that by trying to outlaw Santeria, but that’s probably not the best way to respond.
• Speaking of the FFRF … someone named J. Christian Adams went on Fox News to rail against the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Adams’ rant included this indefensible claim: “There’s a lot of reasons why Christians or Jews might not want to hire an atheist. … In fact, it’s in the New Testament.”
In fact, it’s not in the New Testament. Chapter and verse, buddy. (That’s evangelicalese for “pics or it didn’t happen.”) Most of the New Testament assumes that its readers will be wage-earners, peasants or slaves, not CEOs, so it’s pretty thin on corporate hiring advice. But it does include this bit of advice: “His master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”
• Infrastructure is boring. Until it’s not.
• Nooooo! I’m a big fan of Samantha Field and her blog, Defeating the Dragons, and on one level I’m happy to see that she’ll be turning her attention to a review of Tim LaHaye’s execrable and harmful book How to Win Over Depression.
But on another level, it saddens and worries me to read that poor Samantha owns a copy of this book because “it was one of the ‘oh, you should totally review this on your blog!’ gifts” she sometimes receives. One day you suddenly realize that you’ve become someone to whom others cheerfully give horrible old Tim LaHaye books as gifts and, well, that doesn’t always bode well for your personal future. Or so I’ve heard.
• Season 5 of Game of Thrones arrives on Sunday. Here’s proof that Game of Thrones has arrived as a pop-culture landmark:
“It looks like you choked, Joffrey,” Grover says. Phew. This was definitely a sketch for the parents.
But then Game of Thrones is actually more appropriate for children than the supposed “children’s game” played in that Sesame Street bit. Musical chairs is evil. It is instruction in evil. Pretty much the definition of evil is going about life like it’s a game of musical chairs.
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