Friday Reads: The Hell-to-all-ya Chorus

The most ridiculous meme to come out of the right wing recently is that the Constitution supports the right to ruin other people’s lives because of one’s narrow grasp on reality coming from one fairly narrow view of one very specific religion. Those of us that don’t want to adhere to their delusions are persecuting them!  No matter how many times these people couch their bigotry, suspension of belief in science, and greed agenda in their religious beliefs, most of us know that it’s simply an agenda of narrow minded hatred that demands conformity from all. The sad thing is that one political party in a two party state has been completely railroaded by these religious extremists who confuse the establishment clause of our Constitution with their right to ramrod everything they label the correct”religion” down every one else’s throat.

One of the worst examples of blatant pandering to this crowd comes from this speech by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal who professes to be a Catholic, has  a degree in biology from a good school, and seems to wander one day from the message of not being the stupid party to being its main spokesperson.   Why does Politico give this loser–who has no chance at ever being President and will never hold another elected office in Louisiana because we all royally disapprove of him–a voice? Which Billionaire Asshat has paid for the virtual column space?   Bobby Jindal is obviously going for the Bachmann contingent in Iowa’s weird republican caucuses.  He’s picked up Sarah Palin’s War on Christmas book and read straight from it.

In a Thursday night speech at Ronald Reagan’s presidential library, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will warn of a “silent war” on religious liberty in America and urge states to pass laws designed to block overreach by the Obama administration.

The 4,500-word address, shared first with POLITICO, touches on several hot-button issues, including same-sex marriage and contraception. Jindal, a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate trying to woo social conservatives, argues that liberals will use the mantra of anti-discrimination to force people to violate their religious beliefs.

“The American people, whether they know it or not, are mired in a silent war,” Jindal will say at the Simi Valley, Calif., event. “It threatens the fabric of our communities, the health of our public square and the endurance of our constitutional governance.”

“This war is waged in our courts and in the halls of political power,” he adds, according to the prepared remarks. “It is pursued with grim and relentless determination by a group of like-minded elites, determined to transform the country from a land sustained by faith into a land where faith is silenced, privatized and circumscribed.”

The 42-year-old governor calls the upcoming Supreme Court decision on whether government can force Hobby Lobby craft stores to cover contraception through their health insurance plans just one of the battles being fought over religious liberty.

Citing a piece of failed legislation in Illinois, Jindal suggests that liberals will eventually try to pass laws designed to pressure churches to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies against their will. He also will blast the New Mexico Supreme Court for ruling last August that a wedding photography business violated the state’s Human Rights Act by refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.

“This is the next stage of the assault, and it is only beginning,” Jindal plans to say. “Today, an overwhelming majority of those who belong to a religious denomination in America — that’s more than half the country — are members of organizations that affirm the traditional definition of marriage. All of those denominations will be targeted in large and small degrees in the coming years.”

This is pure nonsense and is obviously Jindal’s bid to get attention in the Iowa Caucuses.  No one is doing anything to any one inside their churches. This so reminds me of watching the screaming mimis in front of schools being forced to segregate.  None of us should have to endure their craziness in public spaces.  PERIOD.  No one should be treated like a second class citizen because some one selectively pulls a few lines out of a seriously edited, reedited, and badly translated bit of iron age fiction then screams it’s my right to do whatever I want to because BIBLE!  That’s just so astoundingly unAmerican it’s not even funny. In that case, I’ll just suggest we all stand out there with stones in our hands and assert our right to stone them for wearing the wrong hair style, eating shellfish and pigs, and sporting polyblend clothing.  It’s our gawdamned religious rights!!!

Unfortunately, Jindal’s delusions are the new crazy republican legislative push.  Kansas continues to be at the epicenter of insanity and hatred. Opposing  marriage equality by way of screaming religious freedom is the new refuge of the  narrow minded.  It was the same refuge used to justify slavery and stop interracial mixing and marrying back in the day.  It’s also being used on women who overwhelmingly use birth control. A few folks think all women should live within the bounds of  their weird ethos. This group that seems to have no idea that forcing you religious beliefs on birth control or abortion on your employees or your neighbors is the religious bigotry. These religious views should not get to trump every one else’s ethos.

Virtually all secularists and even the vast majority of American Catholics see no problem with the use of artificial birth control, so the issue doesn’t generate much sympathy in the public at large. Then there’s the fact that the Obama administration created a contraception exemption for churches and at least some other religiously based organizations. Isn’t that good enough?

Apparently it isn’t for the numerous groups that have filed suit in the matter. And sorry, but their concerns can’t just be waved away by linking to a column by Linda Greenhouse that expresses contemptuous condescension for the plaintiffs in one of the cases (an order of nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor). The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, but Greenhouse thinks the suit is ridiculous; therefore, the justices have been brainwashed by a seductive “story.” That’s really all there is to her argument.

As Lyle Denniston explains in a helpful post at SCOTUSblog, the issues raised by the case — and by the other mandate-related cases before the court this term — are real, though they will inevitably appear to be trivial to those who regularly view religious truth claims as trivial.

As for gay marriage and anti-discrimination, Chotiner appears not to recognize that his own flippant views — which are very widely held among secular liberals — pose a very real threat to the religious freedom of millions of his fellow citizens. As countless liberals have done before him, Chotiner breezily equates those believers who once appealed to Scripture in defense of racism and those who currently reject gay marriage. The first position has been socially, morally, and legally marginalized with no negative consequences for faith, Chotiner asserts, and the same will soon be true about the second. So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that strictures against homosexuality are rooted far more deeply in the Judeo-Christian tradition than racism ever was. Yes, slavery is found throughout the Scriptures and comes in for criticism only, at best, by implication. But race-based slavery — and the racism that made it possible and continues to infect ideas and institutions throughout the West to this day — receives no explicit endorsement from the Bible.

Which isn’t to say that those seeking to justify race-based slavery or racism couldn’t, and didn’t, twist biblical passages to make them provide such justification. But the Hebrew Bible and New Testament clearly do not teach (either explicitly or implicitly) that buying, owning, and selling African slaves is next to godliness.

Yes, folks, separate and unequal may become the law in Kansas if the religious kooks get their way.

Denying services to same-sex couples may soon become legal in Kansas.

House Bill 2453 explicitly protects religious individuals, groups and businesses that refuse services to same-sex couples, particularly those looking to tie the knot.
It passed the state’s Republican-dominated House on Wednesdaywith a vote of 72-49, and has gone to the Senate for a vote.

Such a law may seem unnecessary in a state where same-sex marriage is banned, but some Kansas lawmakers think different.

They want to prevent religious individuals and organizations from getting sued, or otherwise punished, for not providing goods or services to gay couples — or for not recognizing their marriages or committed relationship as valid.

This includes employees of the state.

The law claims to protect the rights of religious people, but gender rights advocates such as Equality Kansas are dismayed.

“Kansans across the state are rightly appalled that legislators are spending their efforts to pass yet another piece of legislation that seeks to enshrine discrimination against gay and lesbian people into law,” state chairwoman Sandra Meade said.

“HB 2453 is a blatant attempt to maintain second-class citizen status for taxpaying gay and lesbian Kansans.”

Despite the blowback, its chances of passing seem pretty good.

Republicans dominate the state’s Senate and Gov. Sam Brownback is a conservative Christian known for taking a public stand against same-sex marriage.

Brownback has already praised the bill in an interview with a local newspaper.

“Americans have constitutional rights, among them the right to exercise their religious beliefs and the right for every human life to be treated with respect and dignity,” he told The Topeka Capital-Journal.

Yes.  If you offend some one’s religious “sensibilities” in Kansas, it is perfectly alright for them to persecute you, deny you service, and basically turn you into third class citizen.  How can any of this be remotely legal let alone put into law? How can your employers religion or the religion of the Subway franchise owner on the corner trump your right to avoid their prescriptions and proscriptions?

Let’s start, though, with the argument most people have focused on during the run-up to the contraceptive-mandate cases—that being for-profit corporations, the challengers cannot assert a “free exercise” claim at all. It’s a strong argument, but one that takes more subtlety to assert than most published comments seem to display.

That’s because it is routine to say that free exercise is an individual right, and that “corporations are not people.” But in this context, the argument is flawed at the outset. Free exercise is actually primarily a group right, extended to religious bodies, in corporate form or other wise. The term “free exercise” in fact originally referred to a right held only by groups. It dates back at least to the 17th Century, and is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the right or permission to celebrate the observances (of a religion)”—that is, a privilege granted by monarchs to specific faiths to hold their services in public.

Religion, Emile Durkheim wrote, is primarily a set of “beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” Most religious “exercise” can’t be done alone. One of the earliest—and most embarrassing—cases brought under the Free Exercise Clause was entitled Late Corporation of the Presiding Bishop v. United States, which upheld an Act of Congress dissolving the Mormon Church and seizing all its property ($3,000,000 in 1887 dollars). The Mormons argued that punishing their church for polygamous beliefs violated the First Amendment, but the Court ridiculed the idea. “No doubt the Thugs of India imagined that their belief in the right of assassination was a religious belief,” the justices briskly reasoned, “but their thinking so did not make it so.”

Can anyone imagine this case coming out the same way in 2014, on the grounds that a corporation has no religious rights? Or that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ parent company, The Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Inc., has no rights except the individual rights of its members?

The important distinction here, of course, is that Hobby Lobby and the other challengers are for-profit corporations. The Mormon Church, like a lot of religious bodies, is a religious corporation. And despite the disinformation floating around about the Little Sisters of the Poor case, religious corporations have a very firm exemption to the contraceptive mandate. Would the Court want to rewrite the statute—and possibly make corporate law into a teeming mess of exemptions and inquisitions?

There’s a way out, of course; and that is to rely on precedents like Lee and say that the “for profit issue” doesn’t need to be decided, because in any case the government’s interest in uniform application of the mandate trumps whatever burden it may place on any secular employer, corporation or not. If Congress disagrees, it knows how to write a limited exemption to the mandate, the way it did for Edwin Lee. That would be the best all around; the Tenth Circuit opinion upholding Hobby Lobby’s claims is such a wretched piece of work that a sane justice might not want to touch it, much less affirm it.

Let’s put all this enforced public piousness in light of a changing USA and a changed Europe.  What seems to drive these pious folks is fear and insecurity.

 Just last year, the Princeton economist Angus Deaton, in his book “The Great Escape,” demonstrated that the enlargement of well-being in at least the northern half of the planet during the past couple of centuries is discontinuous with all previous times. The daily miseries of the Age of Faith scarcely exist in our Western Age of Fatuity. The horrors of normal life in times past, enumerated, are now almost inconceivable: women died in agony in childbirth, and their babies died, too; operations were performed without anesthesia. (The novelist Fanny Burney, recounting her surgery for a breast tumor: “I began a scream that lasted unremittingly during the whole time of the incision. . . . I felt the knife rackling against the breast bone, scraping it while I remained in torture.”) If God became the opiate of the many, it was because so many were in need of a drug.

As incomes go up, steeples come down. Matisse’s “Red Studio” may represent the room the artist retreats to after the churches close—but it is also a pleasant place to pass the time, with an Oriental carpet and central heating and space to work. Happiness arrives and God gets gone. “Happiness!” the Super-Naturalist cries. “Surely not just the animal happiness of more stuff!” But by happiness we need mean only less of pain. You don’t really have to pursue happiness; it is a subtractive quality. Anyone who has had a bad headache or a kidney stone or a toothache, and then hasn’t had it, knows what happiness is. The world had a toothache and a headache and a kidney stone for millennia. Not having them any longer is a very nice feeling. On much of the planet, we need no longer hold an invisible hand or bite an invisible bullet to get by.

Yet the wondering never quite comes to an end. Relatively peaceful and prosperous societies, we can establish, tend to have a declining belief in a deity. But did we first give up on God and so become calm and rich? Or did we become calm and rich, and so give up on God?

Here’s yet another attempt at trying to free up religious practice while making certain only the right religion gets it’s due. This is a law offered up in Georgia.

A prime example is the proposed Senate Bill 283, sponsored by state Sen. Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton.

The bill, if passed, would allow local school systems that chose to do so to “educate students about the history of traditional winter celebrations and allow students and school system staff to offer traditional greetings regarding the celebrations, including … ‘Merry Christmas’; … ‘Happy Hanukkah’; and … ‘Happy holidays.’”

Senate Bill 283 also would allow “scenes or symbols associated with traditional winter celebrations, including a menorah or a Christmas image, such as a nativity scene or Christmas tree” to be displayed on school property, as long as the display “includes a scene or symbol of … more than one religion; or … one religion and at least one secular scene or symbol.”

Such displays could be put in place under the condition that they “shall not include a message that encourages adherence to a particular religious belief.”

Of course, Dugan’s bill owes as much to political considerations as to any particular concern that he or other lawmakers might have with regard to any inadequacy in public-school instruction on “winter celebrations.” It’s clear that the sole purpose of the bill is to allow Republican lawmakers, who comprise a majority of General Assembly members, to go back home claiming to have struck a blow against the alleged “war on Christmas” as part of their re-election bids.

If you’ll pardon the expression, though, the devil is in the details here. Let’s suppose the bill does become law. A couple of issues, which might be attractive to any litigiously minded heathen like the ACLU, or any number of godless liberals who might imprudently insist on an exact interpretation of a state law, immediately present themselves.

First, of course, is the broad phrase ‘traditional winter celebrations.’ In ancient times, it was traditional to celebrate the winter solstice, sometimes in debauched fashion. If, as the argument might go, students are to be educated about Christmas, should they not also be taught about other, arguably more problematic, winter observances?

There’s also the language in the bill prohibiting holiday displays from including “a message that encourages adherence to a particular religious belief.” Clearly, the intent here is to ensure that overtly religious phrases — “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” immediately springs to mind — don’t intrude into the public arena.

It would, however, certainly be possible to argue that even the presence of a holiday symbol — say, a Nativity scene — in a school display is “a message that encourages adherence to a particular religion.”

This kind’ve crap is even filtering down to the city level where Baton Rouge City Council refuses to symbolically support removing a blatantly unConstitutional sodomy law off  its books.  What is worse, is that police are still using the damn thing.

On Wednesday, the Metro Council voted on what was intended to be a symbolic gesture of support for a legislative proposal by state Rep. Patricia Smith, D-Baton Rouge, to remove the anti-sodomy laws from the books.

Such laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, but the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office cited the state’s law in recent years when it arrested more than a dozen gay men in sting operations for consenting to sex. The District Attorney’s Office refused to prosecute the cases.

Ahead of the vote, groups such as the Louisiana Family Forum and the Baptist Association of Southern Baton Rouge expressed their strong opposition to the measure.

The Family Forum emailed residents urging them to voice their disapproval to the council, which prompted a flood of emails against the resolution.

However, some prominent local groups expressed disappointment Thursday with the Metro Council’s action, saying the council was continuing to project an image that Baton Rouge is intolerant toward gays and lesbians.

The Metro Council is “out of sync with the rest of the community,” according to John Davies, president of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, adding recent surveys show local and statewide residents are generally supportive of gay and lesbian rights.

There’s always been backlashes to progress and modernity.  History is full of such examples and many of them are wrapped up in religious mantels.  What is so amazing to me is how extremist pols seem to have crept into the halls of power in such unimaginable ways with such horrible legislation.  The Republican Party seems to have sold its soul to extremists.  Little wonder that so few people these days actually self-identify as Republican. 

Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008.

Let’s just hope that more and more people know what this minority party has in store for us all.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?