Turning bigotry into law

I'm going to make a categorical statement: if you approve of discrimination toward, or actual violence against, a person based on something completely outside of their control, you have lost all claim to the moral high ground.

This comes up because of a quote from Mat Staver, evangelical spokesperson and president of the Liberty Counsel, that the landmark anti-lynching bill currently being considered in Congress should be amended to eliminate the mention of LGBTQ people as targets.

"The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can’t stop them from coming the rest of the way in," Staver wrote in a statement.  "And this would be the first time that you would have in federal law mentioning gender identity and sexual orientation, as part of this anti-lynching bill... They’ve been unsuccessful over the many years in the past… but this is a way to slip it in under a so-called anti-lynching bill, and to then to sort of circle the wagon and then go for the juggler [sic] at some time in the future."

The Liberty Counsel is notorious for pushing specifically anti-LGBTQ legislation, and in fact is labeled as an "extremist group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  If you think that Staver's comment was a one-off, consider some of the other vitriol that's come out of the same organization:

Homosexual conduct can result in significant damage to those involved who engage in such conduct. There is no evidence that a person is born homosexual. And there is evidence that people can change. Our culture is being pressured with demands that our homes welcome, our daycares embrace, our schools indoctrinate, our businesses promote, and our laws reward this harmful sexual behavior. – Liberty Counsel website, “Resources on the Family,” 2015. 

Every individual engaged in the homosexual lifestyle, who has adopted a homosexual identity, they know intuitively that what they are doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive. Yet they thirst for that affirmation because they've tied their whole identity up in this sexual perversion. —Matt Barber, “Faith and Freedom Radio,” September 2013. 

We are facing the survival of western values, western civilization. ... One of the most significant threats to our freedom is in the area of sexual anarchy with the agenda of the homosexual movement, the so-called LGBT movement. It does several things, first of all it undermines family and the very first building block of our society, but secondly, it’s a zero sum game as well and it’s a direct assault on our religious freedom and freedom of speech. —Mat Staver, October 2011, Values Voter Summit

And so on.

Beyond the simple cruel inhumanity of these people, what they are saying is at its basis entirely false.  A study published in The Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences all the way back in 2006 has unequivocally shown that sexual orientation -- and gender in general -- is in no way a "choice."  The researchers write:

[T]here are two lines of evidence that homosexuality is influenced by polymorphic genes: (i) twin studies indicate that there are both genetic and environmental factors that contribute to the expression of the homosexual phenotype (Pillard & Bailey 1998; Bailey et al. 1999; Dawood et al. 2000), and (ii) male homosexuality appears to be inherited more frequently from the matriline (Pillard et al. 1981, 1982; Pattatucci 1998; Camperio-Ciani et al. 2004), suggesting the existence of polymorphic, heritable maternal effects and/or polymorphic X-linked genes influencing male homosexuality.

In another study released in November of last year, analysis of a huge sample size of men and women found stronger evidence still:

In a large study of more than 490,000 men and women in the United States, United Kingdom and Sweden, researchers discovered four genetic variants that occur more often in people who indicated on questionnaires that they had had same-sex sexual partners.  Andrea Ganna, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard reported the results October 19 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.  Two of the variants were specific to men’s sexual partner choice. The other two influence sex partner choice for both men and women.

Besides this evidence, the idea that being LGBTQ is a choice is ridiculous on two other grounds.  First, if someone chooses to be (for example) gay, wouldn't that imply that straight people are choosing that, too?  I defy you to find a single straight person who hit puberty and then sat there thinking, "Let's see, men?  Women?  Hmm, how shall I choose?"

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

But second, who in their right mind would choose being LGBTQ when there are assholes like Mat Staver and Matt Barber explicitly calling for discrimination against non-hetero individuals, and tacitly approving of violence against them?  LGBTQ individual have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, and are likely to be shunned by their families once they've come out.  In some societies -- like many places in the Middle East -- being discovered as LGBTQ means you're likely to be targeted for murder (if you're not arrested by the state for "immoral behavior" and executed in the public square, something that happens routinely in Iran and Saudi Arabia).

The one happy note in all this is that evangelical Christianity of the kind espoused by Staver and Barber is declining both in numbers and in influence.  Some have attributed this to their tying themselves irrevocably to Donald Trump -- witness Jerry Falwell Jr.'s recent statement that he "can't imagine President Trump doing anything that is not good for the country" -- a move that I think of as hitching their rowboat to the Titanic.  But it goes beyond that.  As Dr. Ken Fong, Baptist pastor and professor emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary, put it in an interview in Forbes,  "White evangelical leaders were in bed with conservative politics long before Trump became President—notably the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and The Moral Majority.  However, the fact that so many of them and their followers not only helped elect Trump in 2016 but continue to be his most unflinching fans has exposed their moral hypocrisy for all to see."

Not only their hypocrisy, but their innate cruelty.  I can only hope that more and more people are seeing people like Staver for who they are -- vicious, narrow-minded bigots who want their own prejudices enshrined in law.  And that their followers one by one fall away, once they realize that their leaders' message is founded on nothing but hate.

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Carl Zimmer has been a science writer for a long time, and his contributions -- mostly on the topic of evolution -- have been featured in National Geographic, Discover, and The New York Times, not to mention appearances on Fresh Air, This American Life, and Radiolab.  He's the author of this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation, which is about the connections between genetics, behavior, and human evolution -- She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potentials of Heredity.

Zimmer's lucid, eloquent style makes this book accessible to the layperson, and he not only looks at the science of genetics but its impact on society -- such as our current infatuation with personal DNA tests such as the ones offered by 23 & Me and Ancestry.  It's a brilliant read, and one in which you'll learn not only about our deep connection to our ancestry, but where humanity might be headed.

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

Welcome to the persecution party!

It's a minor mystery to me why some groups seem to enjoy appearing persecuted.

Maybe they think it's some kind of bizarre pseudo-syllogism:

• Highly moral people often find that others reject their views.
• Having your views rejected is the same as being oppressed.
• Lots of people reject my views.
• I feel oppressed by this.
• Therefore I must be highly moral.  q.e.d.

Just in the last couple of days, we've had three examples from the fanatical evangelical wing of American Christianity wherein we learn that Christians in general are a persecuted minority, because, apparently, comprising 78% of the American citizenry and nearly 100% of the people who hold public office puts Christians in danger of imminent eradication.

Let's start with Franklin Graham, who's shown himself more than once to be an angry little man unworthy of the stature conferred upon him by his name.  His father, evangelist Billy Graham, was and is a thoughtful and moral man who participated actively in the Civil Rights Movement and worked against human rights abuses in the Eastern Bloc and apartheid-era South Africa.   So even though I disagree with his theology, I've always had a grudging admiration for him as a human being. 

Franklin, though, seems like a schmuck.  Not to put too fine a point on it.

In an interview with Gordon Robertson, son of noted wingnut Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham went on and on about the upcoming "storm of persecution" that Christians are facing in the United States.  He said:

We’re going to see persecution, I believe, in this country because our president is very sympathetic to Islam and the reason I say that, Gordon, is because his father was a Muslim, gave him a Muslim name, Barack Hussein Obama.  His mother married another Muslim man, they moved to Indonesia, he went to Indonesian schools.  So, growing up his frame of reference and his influence as a young man was Islam.  It wasn’t Christianity, it was Islam. 

There are Muslims that have access to him in the White House.  Our foreign policy has a lot of influence now, from Muslims. We see the Prime Minister of Israel being snubbed by the President and by the White House and by the Democrats and it’s because of the influence of Islam.  They hate Israel and they hate Christians, and so the storm is coming, I believe, Gordon.

What makes this even more ridiculous is that when Graham was asked last month by (of all people) Bill O'Reilly if he could name some of the Muslims who are influencing the president, he couldn't come up with a single name.  Not one.

Oh, but "he knows they're there."  That's enough, apparently, to make it a fact.

Next on the persecution hit parade we have radio talk show personalities Mat Staver and Matt Barber, who were offering their opinions on the Washington state florist who was sued because she refused to sell flowers to a gay couple who were getting married.  The florist, Barronelle Stutzman, has become something of a hero amongst the ultra-religious for her actions.  She said, "You are asking me to walk in the way of a well-known betrayer, one who sold something of infinite worth for thirty pieces of silver.  That is something I will not do."

Apparently in these people's eyes selling someone out to be tortured and executed is exactly the same as selling someone flowers.

But Staver and Barber, of the radio show Faith and Freedom, seem to have no problem accepting Stutzman's rather inflated opinion of the importance of her actions in the grand scheme of things.  Barber went even further than Stutzman, and issued the following dire warning:

If, God forbid ... the Supreme Court somehow defines and manufactures a constitutional so-called right to sodomy-based marriage this summer, in June, if they do that then the floodgates will be open.  There will be Christian persecution widespread across the United States and the so-called gay marriage agenda will be the sledgehammer used to crush the church and to crush religious liberty and the crush individual Christians, their finances, to ruin them.  That's what this agenda was always about and that's what we will see if the Supreme Court goes the wrong way in June.

Righty-o.  Apparently a few people finally being able to have public and official recognition of their committed relationships will lead to wild hordes of out-of-control gays running around smashing Christians with sledgehammers.

But even that is sensible as compared to what Gordon Klingenschmitt came up with.  Klingenschmitt is a member of the Colorado House of Representatives, winning in 2014 by a 70-30 margin of the popular vote even though he appears to have been doing sit-ups underneath parked cars.  Klingenschmitt decided to weigh in on last month's murder in North Carolina of three young Muslims:

An American atheist has killed three Muslims in North Carolina because they were like Christians.  This man obviously had something against people of faith, whether they're Muslim or Christian, and the three young Muslims were sadly found shot in their homes on Tuesday.  Well, the murderer allegedly of these three young Muslim students is an atheist man named Craig Stephen Hicks, who is not just a person who doesn't believe in Islam, but he is so radically atheist that he was arrested on suspicion of three counts of first-degree murder.  Hicks is reportedly a vocal supporter of United Atheists of America, and according to his Facebook page, was a fan of television shows like The Atheist Experience, and also the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Here's a radical left-wing atheist who is going around killing people of faith.  He's posted a number of anti-religious images and messages on his Facebook page.  One of the images he posted said, and I quote, "Why radical Christians and radical Muslims are opposed to each other's influence when they agree about so many ideological issues."  So he killed the Muslims because they think like Christians.  

Wow.  Where do I start?

First, Hicks was not arrested because "he is so radically atheist," he was arrested because he almost certainly murdered three people.  It seems unlikely that he did so solely because the three were Muslim; his ex-wife, Cynthia Hurley, described Hicks as an angry and confrontational man who once watched a movie that involved a man going on a shooting rampage and found it "hilarious."

"He had no compassion at all," Hurley said about Hicks.

So Hicks was an atheist who didn't like Muslims, but he was also a violent man who is very likely to be mentally unbalanced.  He'd had repeated angry exchanges with his three victims over parking spaces, and it's thought that this might have actually been what set him off.

But Klingenschmitt doesn't like things complicated.  In a bizarre screed that should win the 2015 Pretzel Logic Award, Klingenschmitt has Hicks thinking, "Wow, these Muslims, they think just like Christians!  And Christians deserve to be killed, because that's what I found out from the Southern Poverty Law Center!  I think I'll go kill them right now."

Which may have edged out James Inhofe's Senator-with-a-Snowball act as the single stupidest thing an elected official has said so far this year.

So there you have it.  Between Obama and his invisible Muslim advisors, and crazed gays forcing florists to sell gay men flowers at sledgehammer-point, to people killing Muslims because they're so much like Christians, I give you: the evangelical pity-party talking points of the day.

Which brings me back to my original question of why this worldview is so appealing.  Is it because people are more likely to rally around the cause if they feel threatened?  It seems the only logical explanation to me.  Because by any other standard of rational discourse, these people are sounding increasingly like they've lost their minds.