Vote for your life

I made a comment a couple of days ago on social media that American citizens should vote on Tuesday as if their lives depended on it -- "because they do."

One person who responded to this said, "Come on.  Stop with the alarmist talk, it doesn't help anything or anyone.  My life depends neither on whether I vote nor who I vote for."

My response is that privilege will do that to you.  But you'd have to be blind not to see that not all Americans are so fortunate, and making this claim implies that you don't give a rat's ass what happens to them.  What I said was neither hyperbole nor a ham-handed attempt to stir people up; it was simply a fact, if not for everyone, for a great number of people who are finding their rights curtailed and in some cases their identities legislated out of existence.

Let me give you just one example -- Representative Matt Shea, of Washington State, who is on the ballot for re-election on Tuesday.  Shea is a religious nut job who just published a four-page "manifesto" outlining what should be our approach to fighting wars on God's behalf.  The part that stands out is this:

Rules of War

• Avoid bloodshed if possible.
• Make an offer of peace before declaring war.
• Not a negotiation or compromise of righteousness.
• Must surrender on terms of justice and righteousness:
• Stop all abortions;
• No same-sex marriage;
• No idolatry or occultism;
• No communism;
• Must obey Biblical Law.
• If they yield, must pay share of work or taxes.
• If they do not yield -- kill all males.

Yes -- there is a man running for Congress, as an incumbent, who believes that I (as a male supporter of same-sex marriage, and someone who doesn't obey biblical law) should be killed.

Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, of Spokane County, has turned over the "manifesto" to the FBI.  As well he should.  It is a direct, specific threat against a (large) group of American citizens based on one thing and one thing only -- religion.  If someone can explain to me the difference between this and ISIS's continual cry of "kill all the infidels," I'd appreciate it.

Gustave Doré, Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (1877) [Image is in the Public Domain]

As for Shea, he said the comments were "taken out of context," making me wonder in what context they could possibly be put that would make them acceptable to any reasonable human being.  "First of all, it was a summary of a series of sermons on biblical war in the Old Testament as part of a larger discussion on the history of warfare," Shea said in a video.  "This document, in and of itself, was not a secret. I’ve actually talked about portions of this document publicly."

Which I'm calling bullshit on.  If you read the document, he is clearly not outlining, in some kind of academic way, the rules of holy warfare in Bronze-Age Israel.  He goes into some detail about the command structure of God's Army, using terms like "corporal," "sergeant," "captain," and so on.

Now, I'm no biblical scholar, so correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense is that these are not terms that were used by Joshua's soldiers at the Siege of Jericho.

Oh, and he says that to be part of God's Army, guys need to be circumcised.

Is it just me, or are these ultra-religious nutcakes really fascinated by guys' naughty bits?  I swear, people like Shea care more about what I do with my dick than I do.

The scariest part of this is that this is not some lone loony crying out in the wilderness; this guy is in a credible position of being re-elected.  Not surprising considering our leadership; Vice President Mike Pence is himself an evangelical hard-liner, to the point that after the shootings at the Pittsburgh synagogue last week, he couldn't even bring himself to get an actual Jewish rabbi to offer words of comfort.  The guy who did the speaking -- Loren Jacobs -- is a member of the "messianic Jews," sometimes called "Jews for Jesus," who believe that Jews in general are destined for hell, and will only be saved if they accept Jesus.  (The other upside, I guess, is that they get to keep their cultural Judaism, which is why people like Jacobs don't speak of this as an actual conversion.)

So yes, voting for one of these people is saying that you don't care if people in demonized groups live in peace or get murdered.  At least own up to it and stop trying to soft-pedal the truth.

In my fifty-odd years of being aware of politics, next week's election is far and away the one that is the most crucial.  It feels like we're at a crossroads between turning our nation around, reclaiming the tolerance and acceptance that have always been part of our national heart, or accelerating the slide into fascism.  So let me amend my statement in the previous paragraph; not only is voting for people like Shea accepting Trump's brutal, ultra-Christian, white nationalist view of what the U.S.A. should be, not voting is the same thing.  Because it's fucking well certain that the people who are on Shea's side -- and Trump's -- are not going to sit this one out.

So next Tuesday, vote.  Shed your complacency.  Find others who aren't sure if they want to make the effort, and give them a gentle nudge.  Offer to drive people to the polls.  If we can't do this, I fear that we are in for a very, very dark time ahead.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a wonderful read -- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  Henrietta Lacks was the wife of a poor farmer who was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951, and underwent an operation to remove the tumor.  The operation was unsuccessful, and Lacks died later that year.

Her tumor cells are still alive.

The doctor who removed the tumor realized their potential for cancer research, and patented them, calling them HeLa cells.  It is no exaggeration to say they've been used in every medical research lab in the world.  The book not only puts a face on the woman whose cells were taken and used without her permission, but considers difficult questions about patient privacy and rights -- and it makes for a fascinating, sometimes disturbing, read.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Discrimination and brain scans

Today we have two stories that are interesting in juxtaposition.

The first is out of North Bend, Oregon, where two high school students reported ongoing harassment not only from students, but teachers and administrators, over the fact that the students are LGBT.

One of the students, Hailey Smith, describes an incident that is horrifying. "The discrimination wasn't an isolated incident and it didn't just come from students," she says.  "When I told the principal that my civics teacher called me out in front of the whole class and said same-sex marriage was 'pretty much the same thing' as marrying a dog,' the principal told me 'everybody has the right to their own opinion.'  The next day, the teacher apologized, but as I walked away, he said 'don't go marrying your dog.'"

Violence toward the two students went unaddressed.  The second student, Liv Funk, says she was harassed by several other students, and once was ambushed outside school, where she had "I fucking hate homos" yelled at her -- and then was hit twice with a skateboard.  Funk brought this to the attention of Jason Griggs, the school resource officer.  Instead of making sure she felt safe in her own school, and seeing that the students who attacked her received consequences for their actions, he turned the blame against Funk.

"Mr. Griggs said being gay was a choice, and it was against his religion," Funk reported.  "He said he had homosexual friends, but because I was an open homosexual, I was going to hell."

The story ends as happily as this sort of thing ever could.  The students brought these incidents to the attention of the ACLU, who filed a lawsuit against the school.  Both Griggs and the principal, Bill Lucero, have been fired.

Which they should be.  As school administrators, it is your job to protect the rights of the students who are in your charge.  All of your students, regardless of race, ethnic origin, religion, or sexual orientation.  If you can't do that, find another job.

It is also most decidedly not your business to bring your own religion into the picture.  You are free not to pursue homosexual liaisons if your religion tells you not to.  Whether anyone else does is, frankly, none of your damn business, and it once again brings up the open question of why so many people on the religious right are so incredibly concerned with what other consenting adults are doing in the privacy of their own homes.  With regards to sex, most of us just do it in whatever form we enjoy; these people seem absolutely obsessed with how everyone else is doing it, and often focus on that question with a dogged determination that suggests they spend most of their time thinking about it.

Which is, honestly, a little skeevy.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Benson Kua, Rainbow flag breeze, CC BY-SA 2.0]

The second story comes from the University of Liège (Belgium), where a neuroscientist named Julie Bakker studied diffusion tensor imaging brain scans of 160 children and teenagers who were transgender -- to use the medical term, had gender dysphoria, where they felt that they were the opposite gender from their anatomical sex.  And she found that these young people had brain structures that are consistent with the gender they feel they are, not the gender their reproductive organs would suggest.

Bakker was clear on what this implies.  "Although more research is needed, we now have evidence that sexual differentiation of the brain differs in young people with GD, as they show functional brain characteristics that are typical of their desired gender," she said.  "We will then be better equipped to support these young people, instead of just sending them to a psychiatrist and hoping that their distress will disappear spontaneously."

So what LGBT people have always claimed is once again shown to be exactly correct; that sexual orientation and gender identification are not a choice, but a result of a fundamental difference in brain wiring.  It makes as much sense to discriminate against LGBT people as it would to discriminate against someone based on their eye color.

More to the point, since 99% of the anti-LGBT sentiment you hear comes from very religious people; if these individuals are wired that way, doesn't that mean that (in your worldview) God created them that way?  Funny how this implies that your all-loving God has created millions of people specifically for you to hate.

I'd like to think that this will open people's eyes a little, but I may be overly optimistic to think that.  People like Lucero and Griggs, the school administrators who gave tacit approval to harassment and violence against LGBT teenagers, clearly aren't going to let a little thing like a peer-reviewed scientific study change how they see the world.  I will say, though, that people like them will eventually be seen for who they are.  Just as we now look on the people who thought that other races were inferior, who sanctioned slavery and violence and discrimination, with well-deserved disdain, I can say with some confidence that the bigots of the world -- regardless of their target -- will one day be labeled as being on the wrong side of history.

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This week's book recommendation is a brilliant overview of cognitive biases and logical fallacies, Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly.  If you're interested in critical thinking, it's a must-read; and even folks well-versed in the ins and outs of skepticism will learn something from Dobelli's crystal-clear prose.

Labels, morality, and hookups

There have been some interesting, and all too predictable, responses to a study that appeared in the Archives of Sexual Behavior this week.

The paper, written by Arielle Kuperberg and Alicia M. Walker, is entitled "Heterosexual College Students Who Hookup With Same-Sex Partners," and investigates the skew that can exist between a person's behavior and their self-identification.  Specifically, Kuperberg and Walker sifted through data from 24,000 American college students, asking questions about hookups, long-term relationships, and which demographics they fell into.

The results were unsurprising, at least to me.  Only looking at the individuals' most recent hookup, they found that 12% of the male-male experiences, and 25% of the female-female experiences, were reported by self-labeled heterosexuals.

In an interview with PsyPost, study co-author Kuperberg explained that the (also self-reported) reasons for these hookups by students who consider themselves straight varied all over the map.  Some said they were curious, or experimenting; others, that found themselves in the situation in the heat of the moment (as it were) but had no inclination to repeat the experience.  Most fascinating -- and saddest -- were the 8% of the students who said they were heterosexual but had participated in a same-sex experience, and who described themselves as highly religious and such behavior immoral and sinful.

What is a little disheartening are the responses I saw on social media to this study, a link to which I've now seen on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter.  Some of the comments were positive, but a great many were like the following:

• Another skewed study by liberals trying to ram their immorality down everyone's throats.
• If you're male and like to have sex with women, you're straight.  If you like to have sex with guys, you're gay.  Why is that so hard to understand?
• More license to treat deviancy as normal.
• So trans and pansexual and bisexual and so on isn't enough?  Now we have to have a separate category for guys who want a girlfriend and a boyfriend at the same time?
• Astroturfing to destroy our culture.

(Astroturfing, by the way, is "the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by a grassroots participant(s)."  I'd never heard the term, and had to look it up, so I thought I'd save you the trouble if you also hadn't run across it.)

What baffles me about all of this, and in fact what has baffled me for years, is why anyone cares who's having sex with whom.  As long as there's consent, and no breaking of trust with a significant other, how is any of it immoral?  (And, in the case of opposite-sex hookups, measures are taken to prevent conception.)  Jonathan Haidt, who has extensively studied morality, includes "purity/sanctity" as one of his five moral pillars.  But it seems to me that this one is different from the other four (care, fairness/justice, in-group loyalty, and respect for authority) in that even when it's broken, no one gets hurt.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Ludovic Bertron from New York City, Usa, Rainbow flag and blue skies, CC BY 2.0]

Again, let me emphasize that I'm not talking about situations of cheating.  That's not just about the sex, it's also about disloyalty, dishonesty, and lack of respect for a commitment.  But setting that aside, how can two guys trying it out be "immoral," or "deviant," or a move toward "destroying our culture?"

After all, they're not insisting that you have a same-sex hookup.  They're just saying they wanted to.

And as far as the person who objected to all the categories, let me say something I've said before.  Gender and sexual orientation are not binary.  They never have been.  Gender is not just about the physical anatomy -- it also has to do with the chromosomal makeup (XX versus XY) and the fundamental wiring of the brain.  As far as orientation goes, it was known all the way back to the Kinsey studies that there are plenty of people who are not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual in their desires -- irrespective of whether they ever act on them, or how they choose to label themselves.

So the idea of same-sex hookups between people who consider themselves mostly hetero might make you feel squinky, but the fact that you don't like reality deserves only a shrug and a comment of "tough shit."  As I've also said before, the universe is under no particular compulsion to behave in a way that makes you comfortable or conforms to your biases.

I'll end with a quote from study co-author Arielle Kuperberg:

Our research shows that sexual identity and sexual behavior do not always match up.  Same-sex behavior may not necessarily have implications for sexual orientation; not everybody who has hooked up with a same-sex partner but identifies as heterosexual is "secretly gay" or "on the down low." 

Some may be engaging in experimentation because that’s now an expected part of college, and they are curious about same-sex sexuality.  Others may be experiencing conflicts between their sexual orientation and their religious beliefs, which can cause psychological distress.  Although the behavior is the same, motivations for it are diverse, which is important to take into account in future research and in clinical settings.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

Candy bars for Satan

Happy Halloween to all of my loyal readers.  I'm saying this because "Happy Scary Day Of Your Choice" sounds ridiculous, so if you don't celebrate Halloween, you can feel free to get your knickers in a twist.

Because it's a day long associated with legends about ghosts and hauntings and demons and so on, Halloween is not a big favorite with the ultrareligious types.  It's interesting, however, that the day itself has a (sort of) Christian origin; in the Celtic calendar, there were twelve months of thirty days each, which left five days at the end that belonged to no month.  Because of this, they were thought to be days when all of the natural laws were suspended, the dead came back to life, and other special offers.  The culmination was the last of the five days, Samhain, on which your local priest was supposed to get together with the pious members of the village and fight back the forces of evil, after which there was a big celebration complete with high-fives about how they beat the hell out of the demons yet again.  This practice was later co-opted by kids, who would disguise themselves as demons and go from door to door, demanding a gift (a treat) in exchange for their not vandalizing your house (a trick).

The next day, November 1 (All Saints Day) was a holy day, celebrating the start of the new year and the triumph of good over evil, and a time to remember the dead, at least the ones who were buried on sanctified ground.  All Saints Day is sometimes called "All Hallows Day," so the day before is "Hallow's Eve."

And thus Halloween was born.

[image courtesy of photographer Jarek Tuszynski and the Wikimedia Commons]

So the whole thing has a connection to some at-least-sort-of-Christian mythology, although its roots go back much further, to the pagan rites of the ancient Celts.  I suppose I can see how the ultrareligious would object to the whole thing.  But this still doesn't explain Linda Harvey, televangelist and founder of Mission:America, who said last week that you should definitely not let your kids participate in trick-or-treating, because it could...

... turn them gay.

I kid you not.  Harvey said:

Yes, America’s recent exaltation of Halloween as a festival second only to Christmas owes a lot to promotion by homosexuals and their new favorite comrades — gender-confused males and females. 

And as usual, the “LGBTQ” folks have no problem using any tool, Halloween included, to corrupt children.

How did she figure all this out?  It's hard to say, although she says she escaped from the magnetic lure of evil only by the skin of her teeth:

When I was 14, I had my own bizarre encounter with the enemy spirit world by experimenting with a Ouija board.  Since my parents were Episcopalians, I received no warnings of spiritual danger because at that time, they lacked a mature, informed level of faith. 

But when my friend and I asked the “board” questions, some unseen force pushed the pointer around.  At times, our fingers were hanging on for dear life as it flew around the board, often spelling out messages. 

I had little biblical background to understand what this presence surely was.  Now, I can only thank God for mercifully protecting me from being drawn more deeply into this spooky and alluring world where the unseen has real, tangible power.

What "this presence" was is the well-studied ideomotor effect, where people's conscious or subconscious thoughts drive their bodies to respond, often in such a way that it feels "reflexive" or out of their control.  So there's nothing much to a Ouija board, and it's only able to tell us what we already knew (or what we might imagine).  No evil "presence" required.

Oh, and Linda: that's a hell of a dig at the Episcopalians, not to mention your own parents.  I guess "ecumenism" forms no part of your religious practice, then?  Nor familial respect?

Fortunately for Linda and her followers, there's an alternate celebration available.  It's called -- and I am so not making this up -- "JesusWeen."  The idea is instead of dressing up in costume and getting candy on the evening of October 31, you dress in conservative clothing and pass out religious study materials.

I just bet the neighborhood kids are going to be busting down the front door to participate in that.

Anyhow, if you're planning on going out trick-or-treating tonight, be ready for attacks from Satan and coming back gay.  I guess we all have to decide what kind of risks we're willing to take.  And this is just me, but if I heard that a neighbor was passing out full-sized Mounds bars, I would throw caution to the wind with respect to either of these.

Sounding the dog whistle

Given the other news this week, I think a lot of people have missed the story about a vote on a resolution in the United Nations, to wit, that countries "that have not yet abolished the death penalty... ensure that it is not imposed as a sanction for specific forms of conduct such as apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations... ensure that it is not applied on the basis of discriminatory laws or as a result of discriminatory or arbitrary application of the law... [and] ensure that the death penalty is not applied against persons with mental or intellectual disabilities and persons below 18 years of age at the time of the commission of the crime, as well as pregnant women."

The good news is that the measure passed, 27-13.

The bad news is that the United States was one of the 13.

This puts us in the company of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, and China.  The Trump administration has not addressed why the United States voted "no," and at the time of this writing, there is no explanation on the State Department website.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Call me cynical, but this sounds like a dog whistle to the Religious Right to me.  The current administration has made it clear that they are determined to undo every specific protection LGBTQ individuals have, and to place the Bible ahead of the Constitution in determining the law of the land.  No surprise, given Mike Pence as vice president; he went on record as saying that prohibiting same-sex marriage was an "enforcement of god's law," and that if made legal, it would trigger "societal collapse."

My general feeling is that if all it takes to make your society collapse is giving official recognition to the expression of love between two people who happen to be of the same gender, then your society was kind of a house of cards to start with.

A significant number of the members of Trump's cabinet are evangelical; in fact, it was revealed two months ago that five members of Trump's advisory staff -- Pence, Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, and Rick Perry -- attend a weekly Bible study session in a room in one of the government office buildings on Capitol Hill.  Reverend Ralph Drollinger, who runs the study group, is well known for this sort of thing; he runs Capitol Ministries, whose stated purpose is to "evangelize elected officials and lead them toward maturity in Christ."  About Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Drollinger said, "He will go out the same day I teach him something and I’ll see him do it on camera and I just think, 'Wow, these guys are faithful, available and teachable and they’re at Bible study every week they’re in town.'"

Predictably, no one in the administration sees any potential breakdown of the separation of church and state in all this.

But back to the United Nations.  I'm well aware that UN resolutions have no teeth, so even if the United States had voted to support the measure, it wouldn't have made a substantive difference in the way LGBTQ individuals, atheists, and the ex-religious are treated.  But as a symbolic gesture, it sends a hell of a message.  The fact is, we are siding with countries where I, as a blogger who has been openly critical of Islam, would be jailed and flogged at best, and at worst hauled out into the public square and beheaded.

If some member of the faithful didn't murder me first, as has happened over and over to atheist bloggers in Bangladesh.

Oh, but wait: you know what else Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, China, and the United States have in common?  They're all on the United Nations Human Rights Council.  Huh.  Funny thing, that.

In any case, I sincerely hope I'm wrong, that there was some other subtlety I'm missing that triggered the "no" vote.  It's hard for me to stomach the idea that I live in a country whose administration honestly wants to see gay people and atheists killed.  I shouldn't be surprised, however; the current favorite for Jeff Sessions's old Senate seat in Alabama is Roy Moore, who said that "Homosexual behavior is crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it."

Moore currently is leading his opponent, Doug Jones, by an eight-point margin.  So maybe it's not that outlandish after all.

So until proven otherwise, I'm sticking with my initial conclusion that all of this is about Donald Trump reinforcing his image among the Religious Right as a godly man. I suppose this is understandable enough; heaven knows his actual behavior would never lead you to that conclusion.

Fake news reflex

I have never been one to post political stuff on social media.

For one thing, I don't think it changes anyone's mind.  Besides the fact that most people simply rah-rah the stuff they already believed and ignore everything else, there's also the tendency of folks to read the headline only -- one study that compared clicks to shares found that 59% of the links shared to social media had not been opened by the person sharing them.

Then there's the fact that most of the time, I just don't want to get into it with people.  That may be surprising coming from someone who writes a blog that is sometimes controversial, occasionally downright incendiary.  But when I get on social media, I'm really not looking for a fight.  I'd much rather see funny memes and pictures of cute puppies than to get into a snarling match over, for example, how, where, and how much we should respect the American flag.

Which is why it was ill-advised of me to post a story from Vice that appeared three days ago, describing a move by Trump administration officials from the Department of Justice to argue in the 2nd Court of Appeals that employers should be able to fire employees for being gay.  The case in question, Zarda v. Altitude Express, originated from an incident in 2010 when skydiving instructor Donald Zarda sued his former employer, alleging that his firing had been based solely on his sexual orientation.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Predictably, I found this appalling, and in a moment of pique, I posted it to Twitter, which auto-posted it to my Facebook.  Most of the responses I got shared my anger at the situation, but one of them said, simply, "Fake news."

And no, she wasn't making a joke.  I know that she's fairly conservative, and this kind of heavy-handed federal government interference in the court system runs pretty counter to the Republican narrative of small government and a hands-off approach to local and state jurisprudence, so I'm guessing that she saw that if it were true, it'd be pretty hypocritical.  (More and more, it's become clear that the current administration wants small government until they want big government, and see no contradiction at all in demanding both, practically at the same time.)

So she just called it "fake news" and forthwith dismissed it. 

It's not, in fact, fake news at all.  I know Vice is pretty strongly left-leaning, so it's reasonable to view what they post through that lens; but a five-minute Google search brought me to the amicus curiae brief filed by attorneys for the Department of Justice, and it's exactly what the Vice article described.  Failing that, there were dozens of media sources -- left, center, and right -- that carried the story, and all said substantially the same thing.

(One hopeful note; given how badly DOJ attorney Hashim Mooppan's arguments crashed and burned in front of Appellate Court Judge Rosemary Pooler, it looks likely that the strategy may have backfired rather spectacularly, as an overview of the case in Slate describes.)

So it obviously wasn't "fake news," regardless of your political persuasion or your attitude toward LGBT individuals, discrimination cases, or Vice.  What on earth could prompt someone to say that?  I know the person who made the comment is quite intelligent, articulate, and well-spoken.  We don't agree on much politically, but we've always been pretty cordial to each other despite our differences.

It's a troubling impulse.  Confirmation bias, where you accept claims for which there is little to no evidence because it fits with what you already believed, is as illogical as rejecting claims because they run counter to the talking points from your political party.

In fact, the latter may well be worse, because that immediate, reflexive, knee-jerk rejection of what you want very much not to be true makes you ignore facts that could flag when you've made a mistake -- when you have a belief that, in fact, is not correct.  It insulates you from catching your own errors in judgment, logic, or simple fact.

Which might well be comforting, but it doesn't lead to better understanding.  Me, I prefer to admit I'm wrong and correct the mistake.  As Carl Sagan put it, "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

And this extends to political arguments which, although they often involve emotions and competing interests, should still be based on actual factual information.  I'll end with another quote, this one from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts."

Egg wars and chosen candidates

Some days I really feel sorry for my Christian friends, who are (one and all), logical, thoughtful, and intelligent.

The reason I say this is that so many of the most visible spokespeople for Christianity appear to be, to put not too fine a point on it, complete loons, and that gives the impression that all Christians think that way.  It's as if you were trying to get a good handle on the stability, temperament, and brainpower of actors, and you were only allowed to look at Tom Cruise, Charlie Sheen, and Kim Kardashian.

This comes up because of a trio of stories, of increasing wackiness, that I ran into just in the last two days.

Let's start with the outcry by the Church of England and British Prime Minister Theresa May over the fact that a nationwide chocolate egg hunt, sponsored by Cadbury's, has been named the "Great British Egg Hunt" instead of last year's title, the "Easter Egg Trail."

"This marketing campaign … highlights the folly in airbrushing faith from Easter," said an official statement from the Church of England.  May concurred.  "I think what the National Trust is doing is frankly just ridiculous," May said in an interview with ITV News.  "Easter’s very important.  It’s important to me, it’s a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world."

Because Theresa May has nothing more pressing to worry about at the moment, apparently.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Okay, can we get one thing straight right from the get-go, here?  Neither the Easter egg nor the Easter Bunny is mentioned anywhere in the bible.  While the use of the egg as a symbol of rebirth (and thus resurrection) has been part of Christian practice for centuries, it almost certainly is originally of pagan origin.  German folklorist Jacob Grimm writes:

But if we admit, goddesses, then, in addition to Nerthus, Ostara has the strongest claim to consideration...  The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in matter of bonfires.  Then, through long ages there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-called, which the church itself had to tolerate: I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs, and to the Easter tale which preachers told from the pulpit for the people's amusement, connecting it with Christian reminiscences.

So what we have here is some hypersensitive types overreacting to an attempt to make a national event more inclusive, sort of like the coffee drinkers who got their knickers in a twist last December when Starbucks elected not to write "Jesus Jesus Jesus" all over their holiday-season paper cups.

And they call the liberals sensitive snowflakes.

Then we had conservative activists Don and Mary Colbert on the Jim Bakker Show, and they were asked about their support of Donald Trump.  Mary Colbert responded with a dire warning for all of us who dislike the Donald:

It’s not that Donald Trump is all that perfect of a guy.  We all know he’s not.  And we know that he’s not necessarily perfect in every way that we would like.  That’s not how God works.  He works through the ones he chooses.  We don’t choose them. 

All we have to do is recognize them and when you recognize a chosen one and you have the discernment to know that they’ve been chosen and know that that’s the will of God, then your life will be blessed.  And if you come against the chosen one of God, you are bringing upon you and your children and your children’s children curses like you have never seen.  It puts a holy fear in me.

Okay, just hang on a moment.

"We don't choose them?"  Um, yeah, actually we do.  It's called "having an election."

"Donald Trump is not all that perfect?"  We have a narcissistic, egomaniacal sociopath in the Oval Office, who appears to be very nearly amoral, who lies every damn time he opens his mouth, and who is a serial adulterer and likely sexual predator to boot, and you call that "not all that perfect?"  That's like saying that Joseph Stalin was "a bit of a control freak on occasion."

And last, if we don't support Trump, we are bringing curses on our "children and children's children?"  Look, lady, the closest I have to grandchildren at the moment is that one of my sons owns a pair of ferrets.  You're telling me that my prospective grandchildren, and probably my grandferrets as well, are cursed because I dislike Donald Trump?

Oh, and if that wasn't enough, Bakker himself said that by "blaspheming against Donald Trump," we're hastening the End Times.  Which, honestly, I can't say is a particular deterrent for me at the moment.  Considering the news lately, the Dragon With Seven Heads and Ten Crowns, the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, and the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons sound like a distinct improvement.

Last, no post about religious nutjobs would be complete without a contribution from Pat Robertson, who went on record this week as saying that he's tired of being "dominated by homosexuals."  After laughing for about ten minutes at the mental image this evoked, I went on to read Robertson's explanation of what he meant:

We have given the ground to a small minority.  You figure, lesbians, one percent of the population; homosexuals, two percent of the population.  That’s all.  That’s statistically all.  But they have dominated — dominated the media, they’ve dominated the cultural shift and they have infiltrated the major universities.  It’s just unbelievable what’s being done.  A tiny, tiny minority makes a huge difference.  The majority — it’s time it wakes up.

Oh, you poor, poor majority.  What is it that you're being deprived of?  The right to run Christian candidates for damn near every public office in the land?  The right to have your houses of worship in every village, town, and city?  The right to found your own universities?  The right to have "In God We Trust" on our currency and "One Nation, Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance?

In other words, the right to dominate every fucking sphere of influence in the entire country?

No, what Robertson and his ilk object to is that LGBT individuals are now demanding to be recognized as having rights, including the right to be free from discrimination.  That, apparently, is "domination" in Robertson's mind.

So anyway.  After that last one, I need to go have a cup of coffee and calm down for a while.

I must say, however, that I'm heartened by the fact that there are Christians who speak up about all of this nonsense.  I just wish they were louder, sometimes.  Or at least louder than people like Mary Colbert, Jim Bakker, and Pat Robertson.  But unfortunately, at the moment the loons are the ones who are getting all the press -- and they're the ones who will continue to be in the limelight until their followers say, "Okay, enough.  You're talking bullshit, and you need to shut up."

Strange attractors

You would think that after this many years of writing Skeptophilia, I'd be completely inured to weird ideas, that nothing would shock me.  But I still occasionally run into a claim that leaves me saying, "Um... uh.  Um.  Nope, I got nothin'."

That happened yesterday, when a loyal reader sent me a link to the website of the Spiritual Science Research Foundation.  The website subheader is "Bridging the Known and Unknown Worlds," so I was at least on guard that I was entering the realm of the woo-woo.  But I wasn't ready for the actual details of the claim therein, which turned out to be that gay people are gay...

... because they're being coerced by ghosts.

I bet my LGBT readers had no idea this was what was going on.  I bet they simply thought their brains were wired that way, which is supported by recent studies that showed genetic and epigenetic effects in LGBT individuals that are at least correlated with homosexuality, and may actually be causative.

Nope.  That's not it at all.  The real reason is that you've got a ghost following you around who is making lewd same-sex suggestions, and you're falling for it.

The worst part is that this isn't all they claim, and in fact, isn't even their weirdest claim.  Upon perusing the website, we find out that there are other ways you can tell if you've got a spirit-world hanger-on besides being gay.  Apparently, symptoms are a "foul taste in the mouth," "experience of eyes being pulled inside," "a sticky layer... formed on the face and body of the affected person," and "experience of strangulation."  Then we read the following, which I quote verbatim:

[T]he ghosts (demons, devils, negative energies, etc.) leave the body through any of the nine openings, i.e. two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, mouth, penis/vagina and anus.  The person may experience as if gas is going out of any of these openings or one may experience cough, yawning, burping, sneezing, etc. as per the opening involved.

Allow me to interject here for the good of the order that if any of my readers experience coughing through their eyes, they probably should see a doctor.

And that goes double if your penis burps.

But in the words of the infomercial, "Wait... there's more!"  We also find out that if you have a ghostly groupie, you will "make moaning and weird sounds and not remember anything after," will be "fidgeting and restless," and will be prone to "domestic accidents such as heated oil flying from the frying pan."  Me, I thought the latter was just one of the hazards of cooking, one I first learned about while simultaneously discovering the general rule "Never cook bacon while shirtless."  I don't think I made moaning or weird sounds when it happened, although I do recall using some seriously bad language.

Of course, given that supposedly the affected individual doesn't remember anything afterwards, maybe I've just forgotten about the moaning noises.

But the pièce de résistance is the part about "sexual symptoms," wherein we get to the heart of the matter, which is that if you have a ghostly invisible friend, you'll become gay:

The main reason behind the gay orientation of some men is that they are possessed by female ghosts. It is the female ghost in them that is attracted to other men.  Conversely the attraction to females experienced by some lesbians is due to the presence of male ghosts in them.  The ghost’s consciousness overpowers the person’s normal behaviour to produce the homosexual attraction.  Spiritual research has shown that the cause for homosexual preferences lie predominantly in the spiritual realm.

We're then given some statistics, which is that homosexual orientation is 5% physical causes/hormonal changes, 10% psychological causes, and 85% ghosts.  I have no idea how they derived those numbers, but because it's statistics, it's bound to be correct, right?

Of course right.

So there you have it.  I'm not sure what else to say that the dog didn't cover.  I think the thing that bothers me about this most is that I'm sure there are people who read this website and nodded, saying, "Yup, makes total sense."  Which is kind of terrifying when you think about it.

Although who knows.  Maybe they have their reasons for believing all this.  Maybe someone was startled one day when her vagina sneezed, and was wondering why, and stumbled on this website.  Makes as much sense as any other explanation I can think of.

Hiding from reality

I have never understood the inclination on the part of some folks to pretend that if you just don't talk about something it will go away.

This has been the approach of a lot of politicians vis-à-vis climate change (at least among those who actually acknowledge that it exists).  Let's not even talk about our role in wrecking the planet, nor (especially) what changes we'd have to make in our own cultures and lifestyles to have a prayer of a chance of altering what is now increasingly looking like the outcome.

Which is the adult equivalent of a little kid pulling his blanket over his head because that makes the monster go away.

The latest in the "la-la-la-la-la-la, not listening" department are the states wherein teachers are not allowed to discuss homosexuality in public school classes.  There are currently eight states that have such laws: Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.  The general attitude seems to be that if kids don't hear about homosexuality, it'll stop happening, as if there are 100% straight kids sitting around in high school health class one day, and the teacher mentions homosexuality, and all of a sudden the kids go, "Holy shit!  I never thought of that!  I think I'll go have sex with a member of my own gender right now!"

Some states go even farther than that. Take, for example, Alabama State Code § 16-40A-2(c)(8):

Classes must emphasize, in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state.

And South Carolina State Code Statute § 59-32-30(5):

[T]he program of instruction provided for in this section may not include a discussion of alternate sexual lifestyles from heterosexual relationships including, but not limited to, homosexual relationships except in the context of instruction concerning sexually transmitted diseases.

And Arizona AZ Revised Statute § 15-716(c):

[N]o district shall include in its course of study instruction which…(1) promotes a homosexual life-style…(2) portrays homosexuality as a positive alternative life-style…(3) suggests that some methods of sex are safe methods of homosexual sex.

So yet another way that LGBT kids are systematically marginalized and stigmatized. Is it any wonder the suicide rate among LGBT teens is so high?

In Utah, however, we may be seeing the first sign of a sea change.  Last week, Equality Utah sued the state over its so-called "No Promo Homo" law.  Troy Williams, president of Equality Utah, said that the law "sends a message that our lives are something shameful, something that must be censored and erased... the time has come to end the stigma."  The lawsuit itself states that such laws "create a culture of silence and nonacceptance of LGBT students and teachers... They  leave LGBT students at risk for isolation, harassment and long-term negative impacts on their health and well-being."

Which is it exactly.  It also, of course, is a fine example of ideologues pretending that if they only close their eyes tight enough, everything they don't like in the world will vanish.  The evidence is incontrovertible at this point that homosexuality is not a choice -- it is either inborn or else wired in so early that it may as well be.  (You straight readers, when did you decide to be attracted to members of the opposite sex?  And if you say, "Well, I didn't decide to, it just happened that way," why in the hell do you think it would be different for homosexuals or bisexuals?)

So what this amounts to is institutional discrimination against people for something over which they have absolutely no control.  Explain to me again how this is fair?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Most appalling of all is the fact that the majority of the people of this stripe justify their beliefs using religion.  Isn't there also something in the bible about "judge not lest ye be judged" and "love thy neighbor as thyself" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you?"  I seem to remember those were pretty important parts.

In any case, it's heartening that people in Utah may be taking the first steps toward repealing these idiotic laws.  It can only be hoped that this will spread to other states that have similar statutes.  And that the supporters of such legislation are forced to take their hands from over their eyes and look squarely at reality -- not only that LGBT individuals exist, but what the years of bigotry, intolerance, bullying, and systemic marginalization has done to them.

Gay demon infestation

In support of my recent contention that the world has gone completely batshit crazy, today we have: exorcising gay demons that are infesting the White House.

This is the demand of one Julio Severo, a fundamentalist Christian blogger who writes over at Last Days Watchman, which has as its raison d'être proving that liberals and atheists (and worst still, liberal atheists) are bringing us ever closer to the End Times, as hath been foretold in the scripture.  Severo feels it is his duty to warn us all about how the aforementioned bad guys are going to usher in the appearance of the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons, not to mention the breaking of the Seven Seals and the blowing of the Seven Trumpets and the pouring out of the Seven Bowls and the flushing of the Seven Toilets.

Okay, I made the last one up.  But it's not so much weirder than the rest of the Book of Revelation, which in my opinion reads like a bad acid trip.  But to Severo, it's all literally true, and therefore is a serious cause for concern.

Which is why Severo had a conniption when he found out that there was a briefing at the White House wherein Victor Raymond, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe who is an out bisexual, spoke on matters of addressing the treatment of bisexual individuals in our culture.  To make it worse, Raymond began with a prayer addressing his tribe's supreme deity, calling on "the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka, to guide our words and thoughts so that we can speak true and strong."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Well, that was enough to send Severo into near apoplexy.  Raymond had "invoked homosexual demons," and stern measures needed to be taken:

An interaction between spirits of homosexuality and Indian religions is not uncommon. 

In Brazil, the most prominent homosexualists are adherents of African and Indian religions, very similar to voodoo. These religions embrace all forms of homosexuality as a gift from their “gods.” Such deities are considered demons in the Christian worldview. 

In Christianity and Judaism, homosexuality is accepted only when there is apostasy in those religions. But in Indian religions, heavily affected by witchcraft, no apostasy is necessary for a homosexual presence in their practices, because homosexuality is active among their witchdoctors and other adherents. 

A homosexual culture is a culture of demon possession. 

Has the White House turned into a haunt of demons? 

The first step for a “visitation” of such spirits is invocation — which was made at the White House. Homosexual spirits heard. Their presence is in the place where they were invoked, until their expelling, which can be done only by people who know and use the authority of Jesus’ name. 

The Bisexual Community Briefing focused on “policy and cultural issues of significance for the American bisexual community.” Spirits focused on the invisible, lethal and destructive.

All of which would be the rantings of a single wacko, and an opportunity for the rest of us to say, "Aww, isn't it cute when you try to make sense?" if it hadn't been for the fact that the story was picked up by Matt Barber in his site Barb Wire.  Barber is a virulently anti-LGBT commentator who got his degree in law from Pat Robertson's Regent University, and is Associate Dean for Career and Professional Development at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University (so he's a twofer, higher-education-wise), and whose site is a go-to place for anyone who is trying to find the latest in hatred, homophobia, and institutional discrimination.

But he also has a huge readership.  So his (perhaps unsurprising) pickup of Servero's Gay Demon Infestation story is giving it much more visibility than it otherwise would have had.  And worse still, the comments section indicates that there are people...

... who believe the whole shebang.

Okay, the readers of Barb Wire are a biased sample.  I get that.  But take a look at what some of the commenters said:

• A demented and confused native American calling upon demons?  That is consistent.
• Isn't it simply amazing how many weird, abnormal, sick groups of people the White House can manage to find to honor & expose the world to in a sordid attempt to make us think they are normal & even to be cherished?  What a Satanically inspired regime our current administration is &, with Hillary, the Evil, in charge, it will only get worse.  Batten down the hatches, my friends. May God help us!
• The word "bisexual" is another word used by the homosexual movement to take away the stigma of homosexual perversion and make it seem more normal.  There is no such thing as a "bisexual", only a homosexual who is capable of having sex with a woman, or an animal, or anything that walks. 
• And rest assured that it is no coincidence that it is "the first black president" who tarnished and demeaned the office of the president forever by introducing and glorifying homosexuality inside the white house, making it spirtually[sic] unclean.  I hope people have learned their lesson from making the mistake of electing someone like him because he was actually worse than our worst fears come true.  He used the White House to openly worship the devil. It's stunning.

All of which leaves me torn between screaming, crying, and spending the rest of the day hiding under a blanket and pretending that the rest of the world doesn't exist.

So just what you needed to cheer you up: further evidence that a significant fraction of humanity is insane.  I live in hope that some of this sturm und drang is because of the fact that the election is in three weeks, and it's brought out high emotions in everyone.  Maybe after the dust settles, the lunatic fringe will go back to quietly chewing on the straps of their straitjackets and stop feeling like they need to spew their vitriol all over the place.

If not, it's going to be an ugly, ugly winter.

Thou shalt not watch training videos

In the ongoing effort by a particular cadre of über-Christians to emphasize one or two tenets of their faith and pretty much ignore the rest of it, we have the case of a worker for the Social Security Administration who has said he would rather be fired than watch a seventeen-minute video on respecting diversity (particularly with respect to LGBT individuals) in the workplace.

David Hall, of Tolono, Illinois, has worked for the SSA for fourteen years.  This year, supervisors have required all employees to watch a training video on LGBT inclusion as part of a drive to decrease workplace harassment and increase tolerance and respect.  Hall, however, has refused, and claims he's being discriminated against because he's a Christian.  "I think this is an issue they are prepared to go to the mat with," Hall said, "but I’m not going to give up my faith or compromise my beliefs just to go along and get along.  I don’t believe God wants me to do that."

A few things about this particular case stand out.  First, Hall is claiming discrimination, even though the SSA is requiring everyone to watch the video.  If Hall, as a devout Christian, had been singled out to watch the video, he might have a case to claim he was being targeted.  In this case, however, it's hard to see how he's being discriminated against, given that the definition of discrimination is "the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

A more important point arises when you consider why the video is being mandated.  Remember that the video is not saying (1) being gay is moral; (2) Christian ethical codes are wrong; or (3) you should all run out and have gay sex right now.  What it's saying is that we should treat people with kindness, tolerance, and respect whether or not we are like them or agree with them.  Sorta like what you read in the following quotes:

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. -- Ephesians 4:32 

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.  And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. -- 1 John 4:20-21 

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. -- Matthew 6:14-15 

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. -- Luke 6:35-36

And, most strikingly:

Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.  We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. -- 1 Thessalonians 5:11-13

Oh, and the whole "judge not, lest ye be judged" thing.  That, too.

In fact, have you noticed that the bible has a lot more passages about being kind to others than it does about condemning homosexuals?  Funny thing, that.

Because that's the most annoying part of this whole emphasis on LGBT individuals being sinners; it requires you to pretend that a substantial fraction of the bible doesn't exist.  Besides the fact that there is a great deal more emphasis  in the bible on treating people compassionately than there is on the sinfulness of homosexuality, there are a whole slew of other things besides being gay that are considered sins (in fact, some are worse than sins, they're "abominations") and that Christians today pretty much ignore.  Eating shellfish, working (even collecting firewood) on the Sabbath, wearing clothing made of two different kinds of thread sewn together, men trimming their beards, having tattoos, and women speaking in church are a few that come to mind without even trying hard.  Oh, and the fact that no one born of a "forbidden marriage" -- and their descendants, to the tenth generation -- is to be allowed in church (Deuteronomy 23:2).

And then there's "biblical marriage."  Such as the provision requiring young women who were raped to marry their rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), a verse that allows men who conquer other nations to keep any virgins as concubines (Numbers 31:17-18), a rule that when a man dies, his wife must marry his brother (Genesis 38:8-10), prohibitions against marrying outside of your tribe (Deuteronomy 7:3) , and so many instances of deity-blessed polygamy that I won't even try to name them.

So don't even start with any bullshit about the biblical definition of marriage being "one man and one woman."

The bottom line is that here we have this guy who has been given divine revelation that he's not supposed to watch a diversity in the workplace video because to do so would make him naughty in god's sight, while he apparently doesn't give a damn about most of the things in the bible that god supposedly does prohibit.  It's more and more looking like he's using the bible as justification for a lawsuit and his own bigoted inclinations rather than because there's been any real infringement on his right to practice his religion.

The most frustrating thing for me about all of this is that this is the same subset of Christians who accuse us atheists of having wishy-washy morality.  Just yesterday, I saw a comment on Facebook (apropos of the ongoing foolishness about having "In God We Trust" on police vehicles) that said, "Don't give in!  Atheists only whine about their rights being trampled because they don't have the moral backbone to know what is right."  Myself, I'm much more comfortable with someone whose moral code comes from careful consideration than one whose sense of right and wrong was determined by cherry-picking verses they like from their favorite religious text -- and ignoring the rest of it into non-existence.

The necessity of compassion

Yesterday I ran into the story of Sigourney Coyle, the high school student in Emmaus, Pennsylvania who is claiming she is being discriminated against because of the school's policy to allow transgender students to use the locker room and bathroom of the gender they identify with:

I am a woman, and I identify as a woman, and you can't make me change in front of someone who I don't identify with who is physically male...  Gym requires us to participate to pass high school and if I don't change I'm not allowed to participate.  So my options are to let myself be discriminated against or fail gym for not participating and not pass through high school, which would jeopardize my future...  I feel nothing against transgenders, I would just not like their rights to overrule mine.

Sigourney's mother, Aryn Coyle, tried at first to have her daughter excused from PE on religious grounds, but was told that religious exemptions only applied to the curriculum on sexuality in health class (which is a topic for a whole other post some time).

So Sigourney is painting this as her rights being trampled.  Not, of course, as a step toward treating with humanity and compassion a group of people who have been systematically demonized, ridiculed, bullied, and discriminated against.  And this stance is not because of any actual identifiable risk; according to studies conducted by the Human Rights Campaign and the National Center for Transgender Equality, the number of times a non-transgender person has been harassed or otherwise accosted in a bathroom or locker room is...

... zero.  The Advocate reports that "there has never been a verifiable reported instance of a trans person harassing a cisgender person, nor have there been any confirmed reports of male predators 'pretending' to be transgender to gain access to women's spaces and commit crimes against them."

As Elisabeth Parker put it in a pointed piece in American News X, "Despite all those transgender bathroom laws GOP state legislatures keep passing, a child is far more likely to be molested at church."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

That's not the way the Coyles see it.  Their dogmatic stance that anything except straight cisgender identification is wrong is pushing Sigourney into a position where she is risking her high school diploma to make their bigoted point hit the front page of the newspaper.

Oh, and did I mention that there are no self-identified transgender students currently at Emmaus High School?  That's right: the Coyles are blowing this issue up to maintain their right to discriminate against people who may not even exist.

But just so we can end on a good note, let's take a look at what happens when you do religion right.  Yesterday NPR did a piece on Reverend Danny Cortez, pastor of the New Heart Community Church of La Mirada, California (which belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention), who back in 2014 found himself in a philosophical bind when his son, Drew, came out as gay.  He agonized over it for some time, but finally realized what he had to do.  He went into his church, and preached a sermon that should be required reading for any folks who are on the fence about LGBT issues for religious reasons.  I want you to read the entire thing, which is available at the link I posted, but here's a particularly poignant excerpt:

The last night [at a conference on LGBT Christians and their struggles], I met a man by the name of Coyote.  He approached me, thanking me for my story—I told some people about my journey.  He said, “This conference is meaningful for me and my friends because this is the only church we get to go to once a year.” 

I was like, “What do you mean?” 

He said, “In the places we live, in the small communities, there are no churches that will accept us.” 

And my heart broke.  I thought, “That really sucks.” 

So, when I was asked the question recently, “How does it feel to know that you might be terminated in a few weeks?”  I said, “I am at peace.”  I’m at peace because I know my heart has been enlarged for people like Coyote who need a church.  I know that whatever happens, compassion is giving me clarity. It’s giving me clarity in my calling; it’s giving me clarity in my purpose.  People like Coyote, they need a church.  They need to be pastored.  They need a community of people that will not judge them because of their sexual identity. 

So, I pray that as a church we would open ourselves to how God directs us, and I caution you to realize that it’s so easy to look at the word of God and merely look at the letter of the law.  But there is something underneath it, a deeper current that is only understood by the Spirit, moved by love, and drawn into compassion.  Our thoughts cannot just be about arguing the biblical text.  It must be understood in the context of love, and that means in the context of real, human relationships.  Because compassion is what gives clarity to this matter.

In fact, that's what's missing from the entire battle surrounding the Coyles and Emmaus High School; any mention of compassion, any acknowledgement that what they're talking about aren't voiceless abstractions but real living, breathing human beings who have to live every day with the pain of discrimination.  But Reverend Cortez and his family are illustrations that the same force that drove the Coyles to their narrow-minded bigotry can also open the heart and bring people to a place of acceptance they never thought they'd see.

It brings me back to a quote I heard long ago.  I've never been able to find a source for it, but it still strikes me as one of the most powerful guides to behavior there is, and it can apply to anyone -- religious, atheist, or agnostic.  It goes like this:  "Always be more compassionate than you think you need to be, for everyone around you is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."