What doth it profit religious demagogues to gain direct mail millions and lose their souls?

Last updated on: July 3, 2012 at 7:16 pm By Fred Clark

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker profile of culture warrior Bryan Fischer — the American Family Association’s professional hate-dispenser — is worth reading in full for it’s portrait of this frighteningly influential bigot. But I want to highlight this brief tangent, in which Mayer cites religious right strategist Paul Weyrich’s explanation of why the anti-gay agenda has become so important to the culture warriors in the last 10 years. Weyrich confirms what I’ve often argued here: It’s about money. The religious right... Read more

Dreams, actions, and DREAM actions

Last updated on: June 22, 2012 at 8:13 pm By Fred Clark

Radley Balko: “That Big Thing Everyone Is Talking About Today“ The president said that if you were brought to this country at a young age, by no choice of your own, which is to say that if the United States has been your home for as long as you can remember … we will no longer put you handcuffs, put you on a bus or plane, then dump you in a country where you might have been born, but that... Read more

NRA: The best coffee at O’Hare

Last updated on: June 22, 2012 at 3:58 pm By Fred Clark

Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist, pp. 11-17 Rayford Steele is racing to escape the chaos and random violence of the war-torn Midwest, fleeing to the safety of Iraq. That sounds like it ought to be exciting. Particularly when you add in the fact that he’s traveling with Nicolae Carpathia, the individual epicenter of World War III. Nicolae is either the source or the target of all the perhaps-nuclear violence erupting across the world, so Rayford’s adventure here ought to be... Read more

Oblivious to Oceans

Last updated on: June 21, 2012 at 4:12 pm By Fred Clark

They’ve bought the bullets and there’s no one left to shoot … “Oblivious,” Aztec Camera “Obsession,” Animotion “Occasionally,” Melissa Etheridge “The Ocean,” The Choir “The Ocean,” Tegan & Sara “Ocean and Atlantic,” Mayday Parade “Ocean Breathes Salty,” Modest Mouse “Ocean Size Love,” Leigh Nash “Oceans of Venus,” Dengue Fever This is a pretty narrow range, so let’s also include every “Ocean” song we’ve got, whether or not it’s the first word in the title. For me that adds: “1000 Oceans,”... Read more

Pope Jim Garlow I joins the Münchhausen martyrdom brigade

Last updated on: July 3, 2012 at 7:16 pm By Fred Clark

Jim Garlow is a silly, silly man. We’ve written here before about the Münchhausen martyrs — privileged people who prefer the self-congratulatory fantasy of persecution. And, as Kyle Mantyla reports, Garlow is an extravagantly ridiculous example of this. Speaking at the Family Research Council’s “Watchmen on the Wall” conference (the name of which is, itself, a gloriously pompous example of Münchhausen-martyrdom fatuousness), Garlow denounced same-sex marriage. In doing so, he also unwittingly denounced a host of biblical heroes, saying that... Read more

‘Bible Believers’ who do not know, or care, what the Bible says

Last updated on: June 21, 2012 at 2:25 pm By Fred Clark

Joe Jervis relays a Twitter exchange between Anderson Cooper and some other Joe: For those who can’t read that image, the guy tells Cooper that “Jesus calls homosexuality sin and calls them [sic] to repent.” Cooper replies, “actually, Joe, factually speaking, Jesus never mentioned anything about gays.” It’s disappointing that some folks who want to call upon a Bible vs. Gays appeal to authority don’t realize that. Many do, of course — plenty of anti-gay conservatives are extremely well-versed... Read more

Smart people saying smart things

Last updated on: June 21, 2012 at 11:48 am By Fred Clark

Samir Chopra: “Misery Needs Company: The American Worker’s Hostility Toward Unions“ The correct response to this from a non-unionized worker should be, “Damn, that sounds like a sweet deal; how do I get a piece of the action?” At which point, he responds favorably the next time a union organizer contacts him, fills out the election card, and welcomes the NLRB to make sure the NLRA is properly implemented in his workplace. Of course, none of that happens. The average... Read more

Omphalos theory fan fiction

Last updated on: July 3, 2012 at 7:16 pm By Fred Clark

The “Omphalos hypothesis” discussed in the previous post is horrifying as theology. The idea that the Creator is also the Great Deceiver suggests some rather appalling aspects of the character of God. But it does make for fertile ground for some potentially fascinating, or at least amusing, storytelling. Think again of that 28,000-year-old Australian rock art or of the 30,000-year-old paintings in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave in France. Now, for the sake of our story, let’s accept the premises of the... Read more

Creationism requires a global conspiracy of lying scientists and/or a lying God

Last updated on: July 3, 2012 at 7:17 pm By Fred Clark

The results from the annual Gallup survey on creationism are out, with the numbers right about where they’ve been for the past 30 years. Finding yet again that 46 percent of Americans do not “believe” in evolution remains, to me, “dismaying.” (The link there is to my post responding to a similar survey in 2009. The results of the survey haven’t changed much, and neither has my reaction to them.) Kevin Drum tries to console himself by exploring the idea... Read more

Evangelicals and health care for the poor

Last updated on: July 3, 2012 at 7:17 pm By Fred Clark

During the 1990s, I worked for a parachurch nonprofit called Evangelicals for Social Action. We tried to get American evangelicals to share with and to advocate for the poor and the powerless. As you may guess, that wasn’t easy. Our message was often met with suspicion or even with outright hostility. Some people and some churches could almost grasp the value of “social action” to meet the needs of the needy, but only if it were explicitly a tool for... Read more