The cabinet of Doctor MAGAligari

So Dictator-for-Life-elect Donald Trump has started to select his appointees for cabinet and other major government positions, and his choices are as appalling as they are unsurprising.  Apparently the only qualification for being selected is how fervently a prospective candidate has kissed Trump's ass.  Many of these are so awful they'd be funny if the consequences weren't so dire; the worst make replacing a distinguished jurist like Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the vapid Amy Coney Barrett seem like, "Eh, okay, that's not so bad."

Let's start with one that's so weird that when I first saw it posted, I thought it was a parody.  Alas, it isn't.  Trump has proposed a new department of the federal government, to be run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, called "The Department of Governmental Efficiency."  Or... DOGE.

I swear, sometimes the jokes write themselves.

It's unlikely that Trump can just declare the creation of a new department without Congress's approval, so it might be that this will be some sort of advisory board -- or considering the current Congress, maybe they'll just rubber-stamp it.  Whatever form it takes, Musk has already promised to cut two trillion dollars from the federal budget, which is going to be tricky because the discretionary budget is only around 1.7 trillion dollars.

But Musk's grasp on reality is such that he considers the loss of three-quarters of the users of Twitter since he took over a sign of his excellent business acumen, so why not?

What's most amusing about this one is that apparently Musk is already rubbing Trump the wrong way, and there are signs that his stay in the administration might be under half a Scaramucci long.  It's unsurprising when you think about it; there's no way in hell Musk and Trump could share the limelight.  There can only be one egotistical, sociopathic man-baby getting the praise, or else sparks start to fly.  What I wonder is what will happen when they have a serious falling out; Musk's way smarter than Trump (not that this is a high bar), and if he starts using his obscene amounts of wealth to sabotage Trump's agenda, things could get ugly fast.

Then there's the nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.  At first, tapping Hegseth struck many people as a puzzling WTF moment; his sole qualification seemed to be that he'd been a host on Fox & Friends.  But further inquiry into Hegseth's background found that there's something darker behind this choice.  Hegseth has frightening ties to the Christofascist movement, especially the "Reformed Reconstructionists" (nicknamed the "TheoBros"), who advocate laws based on Christian supremacy, male dominance, and "building the Kingdom of God on Earth."  A sign of his beliefs is his tattoo someone found an image of:

"Deus Vult" ("God Wills It") was the rallying cry of the Crusaders, and has been taken over by the Christian Dominionists -- who want laws passed requiring Christianity as a prerequisite for holding elected office.

The Environmental Protection Agency is going to be run by New York State congressman Lee Zeldin, whose definition of "protection" is "deregulate the absolute fuck out of everything."  Zeldin has strong ties to the fossil fuel and auto industries, and basically wants to repeal any legislation holding back oil and natural gas drilling.  "While protecting access to clean air and water," Zeldin said, almost as an afterthought, although how he plans on doing both simultaneously is a mystery to everyone, probably including himself.

Then there's Mike Huckabee -- who stated "there's no such thing as a Palestinian" -- as ambassador to Israel.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services; in a speech Trump said he was going to let RFK "go wild on health care."  The man is an antivaxxer, a conspiracy theorist who said that COVID-19 was genetically engineered to spare Jews and Chinese people, and promotes a whole shelf full of fringe-y "alt-med therapies."  He, in fact, seems simply to be an all-around general-purpose wacko, whose extreme anti-science views and determination to spread them was directly responsible for a measles epidemic in Samoa that killed dozens of children.  

And how about Tulsi Gabbard, who called media coverage of the January 6 coup attempt "sensationalized," and labeled Trump's 34 felony convictions as "persecution," who has been nominated for Director of National Intelligence despite having zero experience in intelligence (in both senses of the word).  Representative Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer, said about Gabbard, "Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin.  As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am deeply concerned about what this nomination portends for our national security.  My Republican colleagues with a backbone should speak out."

But of course they won't, because no one questions Dear Leader.

Perhaps worst of all (at least so far -- heaven only knows what other hideous revelations await in this warped and surreal horror movie), there's the nomination of Florida Representative Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, which may have moved Trump onto shaky ground even with some of his supporters.  Gaetz has been the subject of investigation for having sex with a minor and for child sex trafficking, so putting him in the position of Attorney General -- the top legal advisor to the president, who oversees all issues of law enforcement nationally -- is a horrifying choice.  (I heard an interview with one Republican on the radio this morning who was one hundred percent supportive of Gaetz, and who said that one positive result of the nomination would be shutting down the investigation into Gaetz's actions -- further evidence that the majority of the GOP have more of a problem with a child being queer than they do with a child being raped.)  At least there were two Republicans, who (for obvious reasons) declined to be named, who said they were "stunned and disgusted" by the pick, and that "we wanted him out of the House, but this isn't what we had in mind."

Oh, and Republican Senator Susan Collins went so far as to say she was "shocked" by Gaetz's nomination, thus exceeding her previous most-overwrought emotional state, which was "concerned."  I'm sure she'll even make a frowny-face as she votes "yes" on confirming him.

What's coming?  I'd have said his next likely move was to put Marjorie Taylor Greene in charge of the Department of Education, but he's planning on closing that.  So MTG will have to cool her heels in the House of Representatives for a while longer.  Maybe the My Pillow guy can become the head of the Department of Homeland Security or Surgeon General or something.  I dunno.

The only glimmer of hope I can find in all this -- and it's a slim one -- is that his choices for cabinet members are, one and all, so dramatically unqualified that they're likely to resemble the Keystone Kops more than they do the Wehrmacht.  The problem is, as the entire mess implodes, it can do a lot of damage, depriving American citizens of services they depend on, and in the case of Kennedy and HHS, actually killing people.  As usual, the GOP is the Party of Small Government Until They Want Large Government.  Cutting services to ordinary Americans, defunding public education, destroying health services and medical care, deregulating industry, and killing environmental standards, that's all fine and dandy; but let's get the government into libraries, schools, and people's bedrooms, and along the way get the church into everything.

So those of you who voted for Trump -- I hope you're happy with the chaos that's about to descend.  It's grimly satisfying to know that with Republican control of the Executive Branch, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and (likely) the House of Representatives, you people at least won't have the option of blaming the Democrats when things go to hell.

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Voting for the voice of god

Below I present to you a series of quotes.  You'll see a pattern pretty quickly.

• It’s the natural law of God. We have a theocracy right now.  You know, the only thing worse than not being elected president would be to be elected president without God’s blessing. I can’t think of a worse place in the world to be than in the Oval Office without God’s hand upon you.  -- Mike Huckabee
• It was as if there was a presence of the Holy Spirit in the room and we all were at awe and Ted, all that came out of his mouth, he said, ‘Here am I Lord, use me.  Here am I Lord, I surrender to whatever Your will for my life is.’  And it was at that time that he felt a peace about running for president of the United States. -- Rafael Cruz, speaking of his son, Senator Ted Cruz
• I feel fingers [of god]...  I finally said, ‘Lord if you truly want me to do this, you’ll have to open the doors, because I’m certainly not going to kick them down.  And if you open the doors I will walk through them.  And as long as you hold them open, I will walk through them...  I believe God will make it clear to me if that’s something I’m supposed to do.  I will run if God grabs me by the collar and asks me to run. -- Ben Carson
• Our goal is eternity.  The purpose of our life is to cooperate with God’s plan, and I believe that's what this [the presidential race] is about...  To those who much has been given, much is expected, and we will be asked to account for that, whether your treasures are stored up on earth or in heaven.  And to me, I try to allow that to influence me in everything that I do. -- Marco Rubio
• We have prayed a lot about this decision, and we believe with all our hearts that this [Santorum running for president] is what God wants. -- Rick Santorum
• My relationship with God drives every major decision in my life.  Our country is at a crossroads and we need a proven conservative leader who is not afraid to fight for what is right — even when it’s not politically expedient.  My decisions are guided by my relationship with God. -- Scott Walker
• He and his wife believe they are touched by God, and that this is his time.  It's like – they can't lose – that's the sense of it.  I don't know if he'll win the nomination, but I'm absolutely sure he'll be one of the last two Republicans standing. -- an anonymous supporter and financier, speaking of Governor Rick Perry

So what we have here is a host of presidential candidates who are all basically claiming that god told them personally that he wanted them to run.  Fortunately, one of them at least is aware that god can't simultaneously support everybody:

I think sometimes, while people say, “we’re praying about this, we’re asking God,” that’s fine, but it seems like the criteria that I’ve been told for selecting candidates seems very secular.  It’s about well, this person is polling well, this person has the cash.  And I’m thinking, you know if these guys were going up against Goliath they would’ve insisted that it was the big guy, with the king’s armor—they never would’ve allowed that shepherd boy with the five smooth stones, and with Gideon’s army, they would’ve run for cover when God got Gideon’s army down to 300. -- Mike Huckabee, speaking about his rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz

But of course, since he's implying that because of all of this, god's supporting him, I'm not sure we've gained any ground, here.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And of course, the other problem is that the unifying theme between all of these guys is that none of them are going to get the Republican nomination.  (We could argue over whether Ted Cruz still has a shot, but I think that realistically, he's done for.)  So what's going on here?  Was god trolling all of them?  Or saying, basically, "Yes.  It's my will that you run" without adding, "... but you're all gonna lose."  Or just telling them what they wanted to hear, because the almighty didn't want to hurt their feelings?

The problem is exactly what Susan B. Anthony observed -- "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because it so often coincides with their own desires."

So anyway, it's all rather amusing to we non-religious types that one of the only Republican candidates who didn't claim to be anointed by god -- Donald Trump -- is looking like a shoo-in for the nomination.  Of course, the downside is that Donald Trump winning the nomination doesn't only mean that the God Squad didn't get it, but that, um, Donald Trump will have won the nomination.  So my laughter is ringing a little hollow at the moment.

Maybe god could tell Donald that he was destined to become president.  Given god's batting average so far, it'd pretty much assure that he'd lose.

Hearing voices

I'm a little concerned that the next president of the United States might be either delusional or else an outright liar.

I know this statement probably has a lot of people shrugging.  We here in the United States have a long history of electing a colorful combination of the insane and the dishonest to public office.  But this is the first time in my memory that we have so many people seeking the highest office in the land who are proud to announce that they hear voices.

Let's start with Ben Carson, who last November told Christian Broadcast Network's David Brody that he felt the "fingers of god" pushing him to run for president.  He's been up front ever since that he's running because god has told him that's what he wants.  "I serve God, and my purpose is to please Him, and if God be for you, who can be against you?...  I am running for president because God grabbed me by the collar and asked me to run."

Pat Robertson concurred, and said that god sent him a personal message that Carson's the real deal:

God came to me in a dream. He had a white robe and a white beard, and told me our next president would be another colored man.  I’m interpreting that to be Dr. Ben Carson. Unless Barack Obama seeks a third term.

I wouldn't expect the Lord of Hosts to use verbiage that makes him sound like a bigoted white dude, but what do I know?

Then there's Mike Huckabee, who attributes his political support to... Jesus Christ:

There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people.  That’s the only way that our campaign can be doing what it’s doing.  And I’m not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite.  There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much, and it has.  And it defies all explanation, it has confounded the pundits.  And I’m enjoying every minute of them trying to figure it out, and until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they’ll never figure it out. And it’s probably just as well.  That’s honestly why it’s happening.

Rick Perry also received a message from god that he should run for president:

And it has been an incredible outpouring and I can tell you that has given me the calmness in my soul that, you know, God sends messages through a lot of ways and through a lot of messengers... You may not see that burning bush, but there are people seeing that burning bush for you. I’m getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do.

Burning bushes notwithstanding, Perry decided on September 11 to throw in the towel.  Maybe it's just as well, given the mixed messages god's sending to everyone.

But no one sounded as sure that he has a direct phone line to to the almighty as Scott Walker, who went on record as saying:

My relationship with God drives every major decision in my life.  Each day I pray and then take time to read from the Bible and from a devotional named Jesus Calling.  As you can imagine, the months leading up to my announcement that I would run for President of the United States were filled with a lot of prayer and soul searching.  Here’s why: I needed to be certain that running was God’s calling — not just man’s calling. I am certain: This is God’s plan for me and I am humbled to be a candidate for President of the United States.

But in another startling change in the divine plan, Walker also called it quits, just four days ago.  I guess maybe god's calling of Scott Walker was a misdial.

I don't know about you, but why are so many people accepting of the fact that we have multiple candidates who will state outright that they hear voices?  It doesn't take a Ph.D. to recognize that if more than one person is claiming that god said they'd be the next president, they can't all be right.  In fact, the great likelihood is that all of them are either (1) lying, or else (2) insane.

It is a sorry state of affairs that we have come to a place where to succeed in politics, you have to pander to the ultra religious -- or else be one of them yourself.  I'm willing to believe that Walker and Perry might have just been saying what they thought their constituency wanted to hear; but there's no doubt about Huckabee and Carson, both of whom are avowed young-earth creationists.  In fact, just a couple of days ago, Carson proved that to be a brain surgeon, you don't necessarily have to be rational on any other topic:

I do believe in the six-day creation.  It says in the beginning God created the heaven and Earth.  It doesn’t say when he created them, except for in the beginning.  So the Earth could have been here for a long time before he started creating things on it.  But when he did start doing that, he made it very specifically clear to us the evening and the morning were the next day because he knew that people would come along and try to say that, ‘Oh, it was millions and millions of years.’  And then what else did he say in the very first chapter?  That each thing brought forth after its own kind.  Because he knew that people would come along and say, you know, this changed into that and this changed into that and this changed into that.  So at the very beginning of the Bible, he puts that to rest.

The power of the Religious Right is even affecting Donald Trump, who recently said that the bible is his favorite book.  Pressed for details, though, he began to waffle a little.  "The bible means a lot to me," he said.  "but I don't want to get into specifics."

He later did say that his favorite bible verse was the part in Proverbs where god commands us "never to bend to envy," a passage that is laudable but unfortunately doesn't exist.  Maybe he was confusing the bible with his other favorite book, The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump.

I find myself watching this race with an increasing sense of horror.  How did we get to a place where a group of people who are, honestly, a minority of practicing Christians can wield such political clout?  I am a little aghast that to maintain credibility amongst the Republican powers-that-be, you have to state outright that you are experiencing what amounts to a psychotic break.

Oh, but these are the same people who claim that Christians in America are an embattled and persecuted minority.  So we're not talking about having a serious grasp on reality right from the get-go.

I live in hope that rationality will prevail, and whoever ends up left in the race by the time the serious campaigning starts will at least be sane.  Because what we're looking at right now is more akin to being forced to choose between the Mad Hatter and the March Hare.  And if that's what we end up with, I'm thinking of moving to Costa Rica.

The holy book deal

UPDATE:  I'm deleting this post.  Turns out, I (and millions of others, including the editorial staff of USA Today) were the victims of a hoax.  Kim Davis did not receive a book deal -- for which I am, honestly, very grateful.

The origin of the story was The National Report, a satire site.  To my credit, if the source had been The National Report, I would have realized it -- TNR is sort of a less clever version of The Onion, and I've seen their stuff before.  But such is the way of things that bullshit stories sometimes gain unmerited credence by working their way up the media ladder, and this one duped the people at USA Today and other more reputable media outlets -- and thus, yours truly here at Skeptophilia.

All of which reinforces that we all need to check sources carefully.  Thanks to the folks who let me know that I'd fallen prey to Poe's Law.

We'll be back to our regularly scheduled (and, with luck, more reliable) programming tomorrow.

Moral assault

There is a speech by a public figure that I wonder if you've heard.

I won't present it here in full; but I will give a link to the complete text later, for those of you interested in reading the entire thing.  But here is a bit of it:

There is an effort today to disturb the established order.  Wait a minute.  Listen, I am talking straight to you....  Let me repeat, the Bible says as clearly as language can put it...   

Individually, Christian people... through the years have been able to work together and to understand each other.  But now a world of outside agitation has been started, and people are coming in the name of piety, but it is a false piety, and are endeavoring to disturb God’s established order; and we are having turmoil all over America.  This disturbing movement is not of God.  It is not in line with the Bible.  It is Satanic.  Now, listen and understand this.  Do not let people lead you astray.

These religious liberals are the worst infidels in many ways in the country; and some of them are filling pulpits...  They do not believe the Bible any longer; so it does not do any good to quote it to them.  They have gone over to modernism, and they are leading... people astray at the same time... But every good, substantial, Bible-believing, intelligent, orthodox Christian can read the Word of God and know that what is happening now is not of God...

Whenever you get a situation that rubs out the line that God has drawn... whenever that happens, you are going to have trouble.  That is what is happening today in this country.  All this agitation is... to overthrow the established order of God in this world...  Certain people are disturbing this situation.  They talk about the fact that we are going to have one world.  We will never really have one world until this world heads up in God.  We are not going to have one world by man’s rubbing out the line that God has established.  He is marking the lines, and you cannot rub them out and get away with it.

The established order cannot be overthrown without having trouble.  That is what wrecked Paradise.  God set up the order of Paradise.  He told Adam and Eve how to live and what food to eat and what not to eat.  He drew the lines around that Garden; and when Adam and Eve crossed over the lines of God, thorns grew on roses.  The first baby that was born was a murderer and killed his own brother.  So it has gone down through the ages.  It is man’s rebellion (due to the fall) against a Holy God to overthrow the established order of God in this world.

Sound like familiar rhetoric?  Contains a few more words, but basically the same sentiment as Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis's statement on being released from jail the day before yesterday: "I just want to give God the glory.  We serve a living God who knows exactly where each and everyone stands.  Keep pressing, don’t let down because he is here.  He is worthy."

And no one was more voluble about the jailing of Davis being an assault on the established order of god in the world than Mike Huckabee.  In an op-ed piece he wrote for Fox News, Huckabee said:

When I warned that the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage would lead to the criminalization of Christianity in America I was dismissed by many as an alarmist and my comments were mocked by the chattering class.  Now, just two months after the court's lawless ruling, an elected county clerk has been put in jail by an unelected judge for refusing to issue a “marriage" license to a same-sex couple, removing all doubts about criminalization of Christianity in this country. 

Kim's stand for religious liberty is a pivotal moment in our nation's history.  Will we continue to pretend as though the Supreme Court is the "Supreme Branch" with the authority and ability to make laws?  It most certainly is not.  The Supreme Court is one of three co-equal branches of government under our Constitution.  It is no more the "Supreme Branch" than it is the "Supreme Being" with the authority to redefine the laws of nature or of nature's God!

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the parallels between Huckabee's words and the opinions voiced in the speech from which I quoted in the beginning of this post.  God has delineated proper guidelines for behavior; the courts are attempting to force the abandonment of those guidelines; and right-thinking Christian folk are commanded to stand up against the tyranny of a judicial system determined to erase the divine order in the United States of America.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The only problem is, the first speech is one given by evangelical preacher Bob Jones in 1960 after the Supreme Court forced the segregation of public schools in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.  He argued that the separation of races was a moral imperative, straight from the mouth of god via the bible.  The Supreme Court of the day was nicknamed "the nine dictators" and public employees were encouraged to flout the ruling -- resulting in the "Massive Resistance" movement that shut down schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia for nearly two years rather than see them integrated.

See the problem here?  When someone claims to know what god wants, almost always (what a coincidence!) god's will agrees perfectly with the person's own biases and beliefs.  Cherry-picking scripture to back up those biases and beliefs is easy enough; as we've seen over and over, you can find support for damn near anything you want in the bible if you pick and choose, up to and including stoning disobedient children to death.

And each time some bigoted cultural practice is presented as divine utterance, dire predictions are made of what will happen to our society if it's legislated into well-deserved oblivion.  Just yesterday, Glenn Beck said that the Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage was going to lead to our abandonment by god:

This is it.  I'm telling you this is the last call.  Within a year, America will be so divided that we literally will not even be able to understand one another.  I am telling you, please, Dear God, listen to me, please.  Please!  We are here.  This is the moment that historians will look back and say, 'They would have survived, but they chose death instead.'  He can no longer be our God.  He has to withdraw...  We're going to feel the full ramifications of what it feels like to choose death.

How is this any different from Bob Jones's claiming that ending segregation was "rebellion... against a Holy God to overthrow the established order of God in this world?"  Both are motivated by the narrow-minded, self-righteous bigotry of men and women who believe that the law of god demands the denial of basic human rights -- and both are justified using scripture and the language of hellfire and damnation.

And both, fortunately, are destined to the scrap-heap of history, along with countless other evils that have been put into the mouth of god by pious hypocrites -- slavery, the subjugation of women, anti-semitism, the torture of heretics, the burning of witches.

The target changes each time.

The basic inhumanity of moral assault, however, always remains the same, regardless of how it's justified.

Tantrums over Kim Davis

I told myself that I wouldn't comment on the whole Kim Davis thing, that other and better voices had already said what needed to be said.  The Rowan County, Kentucky county clerk who refused to follow the law of the land and issue marriage licenses to LGBT couples on the grounds that it was inconsistent with her Christian beliefs has been jailed for contempt of court, and there you are.

But of course the whole kerfuffle has resulted in the Christian Persecution Party roaring back with a vengeance.  This movement was started a few years ago by evangelicals who think that (1) not getting your way is the same as being oppressed, (2) it's persecution if you're not allowed to visit your own beliefs on every other citizen in the United States, and (3) the 74% of Americans who self-identify as Christians represent an embattled minority.

Think I'm exaggerating?  Let's start with online loudmouth Joshua Feuerstein, who had the following to say:

I told you a long time ago, ladies and gentlemen, that the LGBT community has one agenda and that is to come after Christians.  That has been the agenda all along. They want to put the clamp on Christianity in America, and you either back them and support them or you’re going to jail… 

… I challenge you to get there, to Rowan County, and let’s make sure that Kim is let out of jail.  It’s not fair that a Christian is persecuted and thrown in jail simply for not endorsing gay marriage.

Sorry, Josh, but that's a lie.  Kim Davis isn't in jail because she is a Christian.  She's in jail because she is an elected official who refused to follow a federal law even after being ordered to do so by the court.

Then we had the ever-baffling Mike Huckabee weighing in:

Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubts about the criminalization of Christianity in this country.  We must defend Religious Liberty!...  Look, you would have hated Lincoln, because he disregarded the Dred Scott 1857 decision that said black people aren’t fully human.  [Lincoln] disregarded [Dred Scott] because he knew it was not operative, that it was not logical.

Wait a moment.  You are... you are seriously saying that Kim Davis is like Lincoln because she's denying rights to a group of American citizens?  And then defending that comparison by showing how Lincoln did the exact opposite?

And finally, no BizarroFest would be complete without a contribution from Ted Cruz:

Those who are persecuting Kim Davis believe that Christians should not serve in public office. [...] Or, if Christians do serve in public office, they must disregard their religious faith–or be sent to jail. 

Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny.  Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith.  This is wrong.  This is not America. 

I stand with Kim Davis.  Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama Administration is trying to force to chose [sic] between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion.

No, Ted, we think Kim Davis belongs in jail because she refused to do her fucking job.

But you know, the whole thing smacks of hypocrisy anyway.  What do you think these same braying wingnuts would say in the following situations?

• A Muslim food store checkout clerk who refused to ring up a customer because he was purchasing pork.
• A Quaker who worked for the sheriff's office and refused to issue an adult a handgun license.
• A vegan who worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and refused to issue a hunter a deer hunting permit.
• A Christian Scientist clerk in a pharmacy who refused to sell customers any drugs at all.

Think they'd support any of those?

Yeah, right.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Martyrs' Last Prayer (1883) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

How about calling it like it is?  You are perfectly within your rights to refuse to do a job that interferes with your religious beliefs.  But in that case, you should not hold that job.  If Kim Davis had resigned because she wasn't comfortable issuing marriage licenses to LGBT individuals, that would have been intolerant of her, but at least the honorable way to follow her religious precepts.  That she expects to keep a job, while using her religion to get out of doing it, is ridiculous.

The Religious Right positively relishes the opportunity to cast themselves as this century's Christians being eaten by lions in the Colosseum, when exactly the opposite is true; they are the ones attempting to use their position to force their belief system on everyone else.  So instead of deriding Kim Davis as a shirker who is getting paid for a job she refuses to do, or a scofflaw who sticks up her middle finger at the law of the land, she's given shouts of acclamation for being a staunch True Believer in the face of dreadful persecution.

So it's time to say it to their faces: throwing a tantrum because you'd like to force everyone to dance to your music, and no one's cooperating, is what toddlers do.

Grow up.

Love wins

I'm sure that most of you know by now that in a landmark 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal across the nation.

When I got up this morning, I noticed a few things that bear mention.

• The world still exists.
• God did not smite America.  No meteorites, no volcanic eruptions, no earthquakes.  Nothing.
• My marriage to Carol has continued, unaltered, since yesterday.
• Texas pastor Rick Scarborough has yet to set himself on fire.
• The bible-thumpers who threatened to move to Canada are still here.

I find the last-mentioned especially amusing, given that Canada legalized same-sex marriage in 2005.  If you people are looking for a place to move, a country where religion trumps the rule of law, homosexuality is a punishable offense, and everyone is expected to run their lives by the precepts of a holy book, I think Syria or Iraq might fit the bill better than Canada.

What gets me most about all of these people is that they're not just content to live their lives by their own religious precepts; they expect everyone else to follow those precepts, too.  Not satisfied with simply practicing their own religion to the best of their ability, they demand that the entire country has to do so as well.

It's not that hard.  If you want to marry someone of the same gender, do so.  If you don't, then don't.  

End of story.

Or would be, except for the likes of Glenn Beck, who thinks that giving people rights they've been denied amounts to persecuting everyone else.  Beck, who really needs to up the dosage on his anti-psychotic meds, had the following to say:

Persecution is coming. If this goes through, persecution is coming.  I mean serious prosecution.  Mark my words. …  If gay marriage goes through the Supreme Court and gay marriage becomes fine and they can put teeth in it, so now they can go after the churches, 50 percent of our churches will fall away, meaning the congregations.  Within five years, the congregations, 50 percent of the congregants will fall away from their church because they won’t be able to take the persecution.

Further, he says that there are tens of thousands of ministers who are going to face martyrdom because of the decision:

The number in the Black Robe Regiment [a group of conservative Christians Beck likes to talk about] is about 70,000 now.  The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000.  That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man.

Because that's likely.  I think the Black Robe Regiment is going to be pretty frustrated over the next few months, wandering around looking in vain for someone to kill them:

[member of the Black Robe Regiment shows up at a gay couple's wedding reception] 

Black Robe dude:  "Aha!  Here we go!"  (throws his arms open)  "Go ahead!  Oppress me, torture me, and kill me!  I'm ready to die!" 

Guy at wedding reception (puzzled):  "Why would I do that?  This is a celebration.  Here, have some cake." 

Black Robe dude (triumphantly):  "I thought so.  This cake is poisoned, isn't it?" 

Guy at wedding reception:  "No, sorry.  It's lemon cake with rainbow frosting."  (takes a bite)  "See? Delicious."

Black Robe dude:  "So you're not going to murder me for my beliefs?" 

Guy at wedding reception:  "Nope." 

Black Robe dude:  "Rats."  (slinks off, looking for persecution elsewhere)

Beck, of course, wasn't the only one.  Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's less compassionate son, was grim yesterday evening.  "I pray God will spare America from His judgment," Graham said.  "Though, by our actions as a nation, we give Him less and less reason to do so."

Mike Huckabee, of course, was considerably more verbose in his reaction, not to mention considerably less coherent:

The Supreme Court has spoken with a very divided voice on something only the Supreme Being can do-redefine marriage.  I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch. We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat. 

This ruling is not about marriage equality, it's about marriage redefinition.  This irrational, unconstitutional rejection of the expressed will of the people in over 30 states will prove to be one of the court's most disastrous decisions, and they have had many.  The only outcome worse than this flawed, failed decision would be for the President and Congress, two co-equal branches of government, to surrender in the face of this out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny. 

The Supreme Court can no more repeal the laws of nature and nature's God on marriage than it can the law of gravity.  Under our Constitution, the court cannot write a law, even though some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and accept it without realizing that they are failing their sworn duty to reject abuses from the court.  If accepted by Congress and this President, this decision will be a serious blow to religious liberty, which is the heart of the First Amendment.

Right.  Because that's what the Supreme Court is supposed to be doing; passing "god's law."

But no one was more butthurt than Justice Antonin Scalia, who said in his dissent, "Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms?" he wrote.  "And if intimacy is, one would think that Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage.  Ask the nearest hippie."

And the result was not what Scalia hoped, which was for people to sit up and amazement and say, "Good heavens, you're right!"  Instead, #AskTheNearestHippie has become a trending hashtag on Twitter, along with a brilliant new Twitter account to follow... @TheNearestHippie.

Because, Justice Scalia, mocking a ridiculous statement is a freedom.  It's called freedom of speech.

But despite all of this, the lion's share of the responses I saw yesterday were positive.  Facebook positively erupted in rainbows.  Even a conservative buddy of mine posted, "Let gays get married.  Let the rednecks have their guns.  Let atheists be atheists, and let Christians be Christians.  Because America is about freedom.  Freedom to live how you please, and be happy with your life.  So smoke a bowl, shoot your guns, cuss a lot, praise Jesus, and wish those two fellas next door a happy honeymoon."

To which I responded, "Amen, brother."

So there you are.  The law of the land.  And to my LGBT friends and their allies who have fought this battle for decades, I can only say:

Congratulations.  Love won.

Mike Huckabee, Josh Duggar, and hypocrisy

Rape and pedophilia are two of the most unforgivable crimes.  From the horrific emotional scars they leave in the victims, to the complete disconnect from anything remotely close to human empathy in the perpetrator's mind, attacks of this sort turn my stomach so quickly that I can barely stand to read news stories that cover cases of rape or child molestation.

It is why I have, up to now, avoided dealing with the whole debacle surrounding Josh Duggar, and the allegations that when he was a teenager, he molested five little girls, including his younger sisters.  It seemed to me that the police were dealing with it, and the backlash against the hyper-Christian, ostensibly ultra-pure family would take care of itself.

The Duggars have been the darlings of the Christian Right for some time; their TLC show 19 Kids and Counting was held up as an example of how good Christian families should behave.  Everything was about traditional family values and going to church and dedicating your life to Jesus.  When the allegations surfaced, it was a devastating blow; the "reality show" was cancelled, and Josh Duggar resigned his position as a lobbyist with the Family Research Council, an organization that raises money and support for conservative causes.

Which is as it should be.  You get accused of something like this, you retreat in disarray.  So far, nothing much to comment, unless you count exclamations of disgust.

But then the support for Josh Duggar began to surface.  His family came out on his side, which was unsurprising until you think about the fact that some of the alleged victims are his sisters.  Josh's parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, said, "Back twelve years ago our family went through one of the most difficult times of our lives.  When Josh was a young teenager, he made some very bad mistakes, and we were shocked.  We had tried to teach him right from wrong.  That dark and difficult time caused us to seek God like never before."

Which, you'd think, would include getting his victims some counseling from professionals trained to help molestation victims, something that there's no indication ever happened.  Josh, on the other hand, was told what could happen to him if he did it again, and was sent to "stay with an acquaintance and do manual labor."  Apparently, in their eyes, this did the trick; Josh Duggar said he's patched it all up with Jesus. "I asked Christ to forgive me and come into my life," he said.  "In my life today, I am so very thankful for God's grace, mercy and redemption."

So far, still not something that's all that surprising.  In this worldview, if you apologize to god, you're just hunky-dory no matter what you did.  When this happened, I still thought, "Nope.  Not going there."

But then Mike Huckabee got involved.

Huckabee, a contender for the Republican nomination for president, has been vitriolic in his stance against LGBT rights.  In a speech just last month sponsored by the Family Research Council, Huckabee said that legalizing gay marriage would lead to Christians being arrested for their beliefs:

If the courts rule that people have a civil right not only to be a homosexual but a civil right to have a homosexual marriage, then a homosexual couple coming to a pastor who believes in biblical marriage who says ‘I can’t perform that wedding’ will now be breaking the law.  It’s not just saying, ‘I’m sorry you have a preference.’  No, you will be breaking the law subject to civil for sure and possible criminal penalties for violating the law….  If you do practice biblical convictions and you carry them out and you do what you’ve been led by the spirit of God to do, your behavior will be criminal... Christian convictions are under attack as never before.  Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great nation.  We are moving rapidly towards the criminalization of Christianity.

And this same man, who has over and over again claimed that marriage between two same-sex people in a committed relationship is an abomination, has come out unequivocally in support of Josh Duggar:

The reason that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of a minor is that the society has traditionally understood something that today’s blood-thirsty media does not understand — that being a minor means that one’s judgement is not mature.  No one needs to defend Josh’s actions as a teenager, but the fact that he confessed his sins to those he harmed, sought help, and has gone forward to live a responsible and circumspect life as an adult is testament to his family’s authenticity and humility... (F)ollowing Christ is not a declaration of our perfection, but of HIS perfection.   It is precisely because we are all sinners that we need His grace and His forgiveness.  We have been blessed to receive God's love and we would do no less than to extend our love and support for our friends.  In fact, it is in times like this that real friends show up and stand up.  Today, Janet and I want to show up and stand up for our friends.  Let others run from them. We will run to them with our support.

Then, there's the fact that when the story about Josh Duggar hit the media, Judge Stacy Zimmerman ordered that the file on the allegations be destroyed.  No reason was given, and Springdale Police Department spokesperson Scott Lewis said that this was unusual -- that records of this kind are typically kept indefinitely.  But the situation becomes a little clearer when you add to that the fact that when Huckabee was the governor of Arkansas, he twice appointed Zimmerman to serve on influential committees, and that she gives prominent mention of her ties to Huckabee on her re-election website.

Gotta stick together, you know.  Can't have any nasty allegations stinking up the party of the pure of heart.

The whole thing has such a nauseating smell of hypocrisy that I barely know where to begin.  The man who in his stump speeches has been all about "traditional family values" rushes in to support an accused pedophile, while simultaneously expressing revulsion toward consenting adults who happen to be attracted to members of the same sex.  The fact that the Duggar family is "saved" somehow puts them outside of the realm of criticism; the media that has brought to light these charges is "blood-thirsty," and Josh himself is "responsible and circumspect" because he "confessed his sins."

So let's make sure that a judge orders the documents destroyed, and pretend the whole incident never happened.

I think that it's the self-righteousness that bothers me the most.  Even the mealy-mouthed "we're not perfect" declarations by the Duggars, and by Huckabee about them, smacks of "but because we're saved, we're going to heaven no matter what, so we're still better than you godless scum."  They've set themselves as paragons; just the fact that they felt the need to have a "reality show" about their family speaks volumes.

Yes, I know, I'm not perfect myself.  I've done bad things, things that I very much wish I could go back and undo.  I've tried to make amends when I could, and (most importantly) tried not to repeat my mistakes.

The difference is, I know that the times I've fallen short morally can't be fixed by apologizing to some invisible Sky God.  Forgiveness comes from the people you've hurt, not from Jesus.

Nor, incidentally, from Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee, Fischer, and the politicization of tragedy

I, like many others, have spent the last twelve hours trying to figure out how to wrap my mind around what happened yesterday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  A 20 year old man, almost certainly mentally ill, took the lives of 26 people, including his mother (one of the teachers at the school), the principal, the school psychologist, and twenty children between the ages of 5 and 10.  A tragedy of this magnitude is hard to comprehend; when I watched some of the video clips coming in from Newtown, when I listened to an emotional President Obama's voice cracking as he delivered his response to the nation, I could do nothing but sit there and cry helplessly myself.

Each of us deals with tragedy in our own way.  My (many) Christian friends on Facebook have posted comments that they are comforted by the thought that Jesus has gathered these children in.  My (also many) secular/non-religious friends have offered their thoughts and condolences to the bereaved family members of those innocent victims.  Members of both groups have voiced their renewed commitment to creating a loving, compassionate world, a world in which things like this don't happen ever again.  And at times like this, we are forced to revisit and question our laws regarding access to mental health care and gun control, which is right and proper.  We respond by comforting the grieving, giving solace to our own shock, and considering how to prevent such horrors in the future.

Well, at least most of us do.  Some of us respond by using the deaths of 26 innocent people to score political points. Consider former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's response: "We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said in an interview on Fox News yesterday.  "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

I watched the clip of Huckabee's interview with my mouth hanging open a little.  And at first, I thought, "Why bother writing about this?  Huckabee is a sanctimonious twit.  You already knew that."  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn't just keep silent.

Do you really believe that, Mr. Huckabee?  Your god is that petty, that heartless, that bloodthirsty?  Your concept of the Lord of Lords is that he is sitting there on his throne in heaven, and he's thinking, "I'm just fed up with America's commitment to the separation of church and state.  Ever since they eliminated prayer in schools, I've been getting more and more pissed off.  Hey, I know!  I'll send a crazed gunman to shoot a bunch of kids!  Yeah, that's the ticket!"?

And I realized: no, of course he doesn't think that.  He's a shill.  He is shamelessly using the grief and outrage of others to gain political capital.  He's not alone; every time something like this happens, you hear others of his cloth -- people like Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh -- do precisely the same thing.  They don't even stop for a second to say, "Let's take a break from the politically-motivated finger-pointing.  Let's use this horror to incite us to do good.  Hug your kids, help the people around you, do what you can to make your own community a safe place.  There will be other times to push politics; now is a time to come together, put aside our differences, and remember our common commitment to a better world."  No.  Before the gunshots have even stopped, they've already started manipulating the situation to further their own ends.

If you think this sort of thing is unique to Huckabee, who had already established his reputation as a heartless asshole by responding the same way to the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado earlier this year, think again.  Take a look at this video if you can stand to,  in which American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer states that god could have stopped the shooter, but didn't because "god is not going to go where he's not wanted."  If kids were allowed to pray every day in schools, Fischer claims, the whole thing never would have happened.  I'm sickened by someone who would stoop this low, who would callously think, "Wow, now people will really see that I was right about religion in public schools!" and give a speech like this on the same damned day that the murders occurred.

The word "reprehensible" doesn't even begin to cover this sort of behavior.  I can only hope that the people who hear these men talking, religious and non-religious alike, will be repulsed by the cold, calculated politicization of what should be a cause for national mourning.  And I hope that enough of them -- and especially of the Christians to whom Huckabee and Fischer are attempting to pander -- will tell them to sit down and shut the hell up, and that they will get the message that anyone with an ounce of compassion would react to their shilling with nausea.