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.

Defining marriage for everyone else

My mom was a devoutly Christian woman, a staunch Roman Catholic whose go-to strategy for difficult times was "Ask the Holy Spirit for help."  She rarely missed church, read the bible avidly, and taught Wednesday afternoon sixth grade catechism classes for years.

Despite her deeply-held religious beliefs, she had one other strong belief that stands out in my memory.  She used to phrase it as, "My rights end where your nose begins."  When someone she knew did something that was against the moral code by which she lived, she would shrug and say, "That's between them and the lord."  And for her, that ended it, unless it was to add, "None of my business."

Which is an attitude I would love to see in more religious folks these days.  Live according to your own morals; don't expect anyone else to conform to them.  What others do is none of your business.

And that especially extends to what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

The desperation of highly religious people to control who has sex, how, and with whom reached some kind of apogee a couple of days ago when David Fowler of the Family Action Council of Tennessee filed a lawsuit that would stop the state from issuing all marriage licenses until the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which legalized same-sex marriage in the United States, is overturned.

Yes, you read that right.  Fowler would prefer to have every couple who would like to get married in the state of Tennessee denied a marriage license than to see a single LGBT couple granted one.

Astonishingly, state lawmakers are already lining up behind Fowler's suit.  Representative Susan Lynn has sponsored a resolution in support of what Fowler and FACT are trying to do.  "I have dozens of sponsors, and the message of my resolution is clear,” she claimed.  "We as a state have been violated, and we expect the doctrine of separation of powers and the principles of federalism reflected in our Constitution to be upheld."

Can we be clear on something, here?  This is not about federalism and the Constitution.  This is about sledgehammering religious views on what is an acceptable marriage into law, effectively abrogating the separation of church and state in the process.

And at its base, it's all about the fact that these people think that gay sex is icky.  What other possible justification can there be?  How does the fact of two gay men getting a marriage license have any effect at all on my (heterosexual) marriage?  It doesn't change the definition of my marriage.  It merely allows them to decide on the definition of theirs.

And it's not like the biblical definition of marriage is all that clear in any case.

The stance of "I believe this, so you have to act in accordance to those beliefs whether you accept them or not" is the hallmark of extremism.  Interesting, isn't it, that the same Religious Right who would love nothing more than to halt same-sex marriage and mandate that creationism is taught in public schools are the same ones who rail against the extremist Muslims for basically doing the same sort of thing.  In Saudi Arabia, you can be flogged and imprisoned for drinking alcohol -- whether you're Muslim or not.

Explain to me how this is different from what David Fowler and his cronies in Tennessee are doing.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

Fowler et al. are perfectly within their rights to disapprove of homosexuality.  They can believe that the bible is 100% literally true, internal contradictions and all.  They can cherry-pick the prohibitions from Leviticus they like, and ignore the ones they don't (such as all of the dietary restrictions).  No one, honestly, cares what they believe.  It's a free country, and you're allowed to practice whatever religion you choose, or (fortunately for me) none at all.

But when you start demanding that the terms of that religion become the law of the land, you are automatically in the wrong.

Sorry, Mr. Fowler.  Your rights end where my nose begins.

Wrath dodging

As a further indication of how completely unhinged our country is becoming, there is a resolution before the county commission in Blount County, Tennessee -- authored by Commissioner Karen Miller herself -- asking god's wrath to pass them by.

Here's the text of the resolution:

With a firm reliance upon the providence of Almighty God WE the BLOUNT COUNTY LEGISLATURE call upon all of the Officers of the State of Tennessee, the Governor, the Attorney General, and the members of the Tennessee Legislature, to join US, and utilize all authority within their power to protect Natural Marriage, from lawless court opinions, AND THE financial schemes of the enemies of righteousness wherever the source AND defend the Moral Standards of Tennessee. 

WE adopt this Resolution before God that He pass us by in His Coming Wrath and not destroy our County as He did Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities.  As the Passover Lamb was a means of salvation to the ancient Children of Israel, so we stand upon the safety of the Lamb of God to save us.  WE adopt this Resolution begging His favor in light of the fact that we have been forced to comply and recognize that the State of Tennessee, like so many other God-fearing States, MAY have fallen prey to a lawless judiciary in legalizing what God and the Bible expressly forbids.

The number of features in this resolution that are eyebrow-raising is impressive, given that it's only two paragraphs long.  First, there's the whole separation of church and state thing, which Miller apparently thinks is an optional clause in the Constitution.

But consider also the "financial schemes of the enemies of righteousness."  I'm no biblical scholar, but my impression is that Capitalist Jesus is a fairly recent invention.  My memory is more that there were dozens of biblical prohibitions against usury (lending money at interest) -- it's called an "abomination" more than once, and in fact has a good many more mentions in the bible than homosexuality does.  Deuteronomy 23:19 is especially unequivocal: "You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent. "

Then there's Leviticus 19:34: "The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.  I am the Lord your God."  Oh, and the thing Jesus said about the money-changers in the temple, the poor inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven, and how it's easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for rich man to enter paradise.

Jesus sounds more like a socialist than a Republican, frankly.

Then there's the attitude that the all-loving and all-seeing god would smite the shit out of the people in Blount County because of something the Supreme Court did in Washington D.C.  Is it just me, or does Commissioner Miller not have much faith in the aim of the almighty?  It's something that has struck me before -- the way natural disasters are blamed on god's wrath, when in fact hurricanes and floods and wildfires and earthquakes don't discriminate much between the righteous and the unrighteous.  They more have to do with whether the geographical area in question was already prone to hurricanes, floods, wildfires, or earthquakes.

It's almost as if god wasn't choosing where to send natural disasters, that they're being directed by climate and plate tectonics.  Funny thing, that.

Besides, what kind of deity would hold Commissioner Miller, who is presumably a god-fearing Christian herself, guilty having anything to do with same-sex marriage?  She isn't a Supreme Court justice, and presumably has neither voted for legalization of same-sex marriage nor is in such a marriage herself.  So why would she need to "beg for favor?"  And why would Blount County, which according to a demographic survey is nearly 50% evangelical protestant, be singled out to be treated like "Sodom and Gomorrah?"

Seems to me that a god that smites whole counties, pretty much at random, is kind of an asshole, and not really all that worthy of worship.

But that is the sort of deity that Ms. Miller apparently believes in.  It'll be interesting to see if the commission approves her resolution tomorrow.  You have to wonder if there'll be any commission members who will be willing to vote against it, and go on record as saying, "No, I'd prefer to pass on the providence of the Almighty God.  I'm standing with the Lawless Judiciary and the Enemies of Righteousness."

I know that's what I'd do.  In fact, I'd not only vote against the resolution, but I'd devise a resolution of my own suggesting that Ms. Miller is unfit for public office in a secular democracy.  After all, I've already established that I'm deserving of God's Coming Wrath, so I'm pretty much screwed anyway.  At this point, it's Go Big or Go Home.

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.

Sharing the misery

I guess it was too much to hope for that the opponents of marriage equality would say, "Oh.  I guess it's the law of the land now, and we lost.   Bummer."  And disappear gracefully.

Things are never that easy, are they?  The dire threats of what's gonna happen to us, now that we've allowed LGBT people to have the same rights that the rest of us have always had and completely take for granted, are already ringing from the rafters.

First we had the ever-grim Franklin Graham, informing us that now that the Supreme Court has legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, there's gonna be hell to pay:

I’m disappointed because the government is recognizing sin.  This court is endorsing sin.  That’s what homosexuality is – a sin against god...  Arrogantly disregarding God’s authority always has serious consequences.  Our nation will not like what’s at the end of this rainbow...  The President had the White House lit up in rainbow colors to celebrate the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage.  This is outrageous—a real slap in the face to the millions of Americans who do not support same-sex marriage and whose voice is being ignored.

Graham wasn't the only one who keyed in on the whole rainbow thing.  Over at Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham took a moment away from building a new Ark to make the following cheery assessment:

The president did not invent the rainbow; God invented it, and He put the rainbow in the sky as a special reminder related to Noah’s Flood.  God had sent the global Flood in Noah’s time as a judgment because of man’s wickedness in rebelling against the Creator...  (T)he rainbow was set up by God as a sign to remind us that there will never again be a global Flood as a judgment.  But one day there will be another global judgment—the final judgment—and it will be by fire...  (W)e need to take back the rainbow and worship the One who invented the rainbow, and every time we see it be reminded of its true message.

Which brings up a point I've never understood.  How does the whole Flood thing lead anyone to think that Yahweh of the Old Testament is worthy of worship?  It's more the action of a genocidal maniac, in my opinion -- killing everyone and everything, infants and children included, because of some perceived wickedness that couldn't be fixed any other way.

Oh, but rainbows!  There are rainbows, so it's all okay!

Isn't this a little like saying, "Hey, dude!  I know I drowned your family and pets and livestock and all, but look, here's a pretty rainbow in the sky as my promise I won't do it again!"  *glowers*  "At least not that way.  I might still start a fire and burn them all alive.  But if you bow down and worship me exactly the right way, I might let you slide, this time."

Doesn't that make you want to shout hallelujah at god's infinite goodness?

But no one demonstrated quite so clearly the truth of the old definition of Puritanism as "the desperate fear that somewhere, people are enjoying themselves" as Wayne Allyn Root.  Root, you may recall, is the one who said that the only way that Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court is that the president blackmailed Justice Roberts.  And now, Root has made a rather bizarre pronouncement -- that same-sex marriage is wrong, because marriage isn't about happiness:

Marriage is the most difficult thing in the world.  I’m talking to you as someone who has been married 24 years, marriage is so difficult that if you do not go to church every Sunday and your whole life isn’t built on a bedrock faith in God and you don’t have kids and your whole life isn’t built around those kids and none of that’s in place and you’re married, the odds of you staying married are close to zero.  Divorces will now triple.  Gays will never stay married.  They just bought themselves the biggest bunch of unhappiness and legal bills that they could ever imagine.

"Go ahead, LGBT people," Root seems to be saying.  "I hope you're satisfied.  Now you get to be just as miserable as the rest of us."

You have to wonder what his wife thought when she read this, don't you?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Besides just being ridiculous, his statement is actually exactly the opposite of the fact.  The highest divorce rates aren't among atheists.  The highest divorce rate of any of the main religious affiliations is the Baptists, at 29%.  (Atheists are at 21%, tying the virulently anti-divorce Catholics.)  Regionally the highly religious Southeast and Midwest have the highest numbers of divorces, with Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma topping the list.  

Kind of funny, when the bible is even more unequivocal about divorce being sinful than it is about homosexuality.  Consider Luke 16:18: "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery."  And adultery, recall, was punishable by being stoned to death.

And yet, the ultra-religious aren't pressuring the courts to make divorce illegal.  Funny thing, that.

So anyway, I'm sure we haven't heard the last of this.  We'll be revisiting it frequently, not only when individual clerks of court refuse to issue marriage licenses to LGBT couples (something that has already started) but every time there is a natural disaster, at which point we'll hear all about how it's "god's wrath."

I wonder what god will pick as a symbol this time that he still loves us even though he's willing to smite the shit out of us at the drop of a hat?  After all, he's already used rainbows.  Maybe flowers, you think?  Flowers are nice.  "I'm sorry you deserved being beaten to a pulp," he'll say.  "Here, have a dozen roses.  All better now?"

Celebrating the small steps

Today I am off to the wedding of one of my oldest and dearest friends (and long-standing partner-in-crime), who is finally able to marry her sweetheart because same-sex marriage recently became legal in the state of Florida.  Their happy day is a tribute to the hard work of people who have worked tirelessly to make sure that love receives official recognition -- regardless of the genders of the people involved.

But of course, such a sea change in attitudes, not to mention laws, is not going to be met with universal support.  Just as alterations in our culture regarding women's rights and racial equality did not occur rapidly (and you might add, with complete accuracy, that they still haven't changed as much as they need to), our stance toward LGBT individuals still has a tremendously long way to go.

And such objections haven't just come from loudmouthed bigots such as Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and Mike Huckabee.  Ordinary folks have decided for some reason to make this issue their cause célèbre.  Take, for example, the couple in Australia who are threatening to divorce if same-sex marriage is legalized.

Nick and Sarah Jensen, whose statement got them their fifteen minutes of fame on the cover of the Canberra City News, made a fairly unequivocal statement regarding their beliefs:

My wife and I just celebrated our 10-year anniversary. But later this year, we may be getting a divorce. 

The decision to divorce is not one we’ve taken lightly.  And certainly, it’s not one that many will readily understand.  And that’s because it’s not a traditional divorce. 

Our view is that marriage is a fundamental order of creation.  Part of God’s human history.  Marriage is the union of a man and a woman before a community in the sight of God.  And marriage of any couple is important to God regardless of whether that couple recognises God’s involvement or authority in it.

If our federal parliament votes to change the timeless and organic definition of marriage later on this year, it will have moved against the fundamental and foundational building block of Australian society and, indeed, human culture everywhere. 

Indeed, it raises a red flag when a government decides it is not content only having sovereignty over land, taxes and the military — but ‘words’ themselves. 

This is why we are willing to divorce.  By changing the definition of marriage, ‘marriage’ will, in years to come, have an altogether different sense and purpose.

And if Australia does legalize same-sex marriage, and the Jensens do go through with their divorce, my guess is that the response by the public will be:

*YAWN*

Because you know what?  No one gets to step in and tell the Jensens what they are allowed to do regarding their own marriage.  That's not what LGBT people want to do to the Jensens; it's what the Jensens want to do LGBT people.  It is, in fact, kind of the whole point.  If two consenting adults want to marry -- regardless of who they are -- they should be allowed to.  If they want to divorce -- for whatever reason -- they should be allowed to.  No one should have the right to limit two adults' public expression, and recognition, of love, except the two adults themselves.

It's also a little funny that the Jensens are objecting to someone changing the "timeless and organic definition of marriage" as it comes from the bible, when the various biblical laws regarding marriage weren't exactly what most people come up with when they think of "traditional marriage."  To quote an op-ed piece by biblical scholars Robert Cargill, Hector Avalos, and Kenneth Atkinson that appeared in the Altoona Herald:

In fact, there were a variety of unions and family configurations that were permissible in the cultures that produced the Bible, and these ranged from monogamy (Titus 1:6) to those where rape victims were forced to marry their rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and to those Levirate marriage commands obligating a man to marry his brother’s widow regardless of the living brother’s marital status(Deuteronomy 25:5-10; Genesis 38; Ruth 2-4).  Others insisted that celibacy was the preferred option (1 Corinthians 7:8; 28)...  In fact, during a discussion of marriage in Matthew 19:12, Jesus even encourages those who can to castrate themselves “for the kingdom” and live a life of celibacy... [And] Ezra 10:2-11 forbids interracial marriage and orders those people of God who already had foreign wives to divorce them immediately.

So not only are the Jensens objecting on biblical grounds to something that isn't even clearly defined in the bible itself, inadvertently, what the Jensens are doing is highlighting exactly the reason why same-sex marriage needs to be legalized.  The Jensens' choice to divorce only exists because they already have a right that is being denied to others.  And giving LGBT individuals the right to marry no more alters the Jensens' marriage than giving African Americans the right to vote altered the voting rights of privileged whites.

But enough of the negative stuff.  Today is for celebrating the small steps.  And to my two dear friends Wendy and Renee, I wish love, prosperity, and a long and happy marriage.

Swing votes, squirt guns, and prayer

Most of you probably know that the United States Supreme Court is likely to announce a decision on the federal legalization of same-sex marriage some time this month, and that the decision is likely to come down to how one man votes -- Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is in the uncomfortable position of being the "swing voter."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The more liberal-leaning justices -- Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan -- seem likely to vote in favor.  The remaining four more conservative members are likely to vote against.  That means that Kennedy will almost certainly be the one who casts the deciding vote.

And this is why he is currently the target of prayer rallies.

The effort is being organized by "Coach" Dave Daubenmire, who came into the public eye after an ACLU suit to stop him from forcing the players on his high school football team to pray.  Daubenmire and the school district he worked for settled out of court (the school district lost $18,000 in the process), but Daubenmire now spends a lot of time on the lecture circuit telling everyone how he beat the ACLU because of god's power and the power of prayer.

And now Daubenmire, who in his post-coaching days runs a ministry called "Pass the Salt" (further increasing the WTF factor in the whole thing), is organizing a nationwide series of prayer rallies that have as their goal persuading god to persuade Anthony Kennedy to vote no:

We're going to have a solemn assembly of prayer and repentance, asking God, please God, help us rescue marriage.  And we're going to totally focus on Justice Kennedy, we believe he is the swing vote, and we're just going to ask the Lord to forgive us of our sins and turn the heart of Justice Kennedy that he might see the error of his ways and protect marriage. The neat part about it... is that we're asking people from all across America.  Clear out there in California, you can't come to Washington D. C., but could you organize a prayer vigil at the same time we're doing it, noon to three o'clock Eastern Time on June 14?  Could you get the people in your church to come to a prayer rally?  It's not where we're asking the politicians to do something, it's not where we're marching and carrying signs and rebelling, it's where we're saying "Lord, forgive us, how did we ever get in this mess, please, Lord, forgive us."  

Can I paint a picture here, real quickly?  I like to use the illustration of Super Soakers, the little squirt guns that look like big cannons that kids like to play with.  That's they way I see prayer.  Everybody has a Super Soaker.  There a lot of people who are praying, and they're squirting their guns, they're doing all they can, but there's a difference between putting a lot of people out in a field and telling them to shoot away, and bringing them into your living room and putting a dot on the ceiling and saying, "Hey, everybody, point your Super Soaker at the dot on the ceiling."  The end result of that, if we got a hundred people to point their squirt guns at the dot on the ceiling, eventually there'd be a hole in the ceiling.  Concentrated, focused prayer.  That's why we think the Salt and Light Brigade is so important.  They don't have to come, we'd love for people to come, but we realize they can't.  But what if they all gathered in their local churches, or with their prayer groups, or with their families, and we told them who to pray for... We're going to focus all of our power in the same direction rather than just sporadically squirting our guns up in the air.  We're going to focus our guns on the same target, and punch a hole in the heavenlies. 

So far, this all Super Soakers For Jesus business seems to fall into the "No Harm If It Amuses You" department, but I do have to wonder how this could possibly work even if you accept Daubenmire's premise that there is a god who somehow likes to micromanage affairs here on Earth.  Daubenmire and his ilk always go on and on about how god knows everything and is all-good and all-powerful and will ultimately make everything work out; so it seems a little odd that anyone who believes that would think that prayer would accomplish anything.  Either your opinion is in line with what god already intended to do (in which case god was going to do it anyway, and your prayers are unnecessary) or it isn't (in which case god has no intent of doing what you say, so your prayers are futile).  Either way, it doesn't accomplish much.

Even C. S. Lewis, whose writing is usually pretty clear-headed and rational -- not that I agree with most of his conclusions -- seemed troubled by all this.  In his essay "Does Prayer Work?", he is up front that you can't change god's mind, but he thinks that petitionary prayer still somehow makes sense:

Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men?  For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it.  But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries.  Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will.

Which, frankly, strikes me as a little petty.  It's like a parent saying to his child, "I know you're hungry, but I'm not giving you food unless you ask, and you have to ask in exactly the right way."

And it also brings up the problematic situation for Daubenmire if Kennedy votes "yes."  Was god not listening?  Did the devil persuade Kennedy to vote in a more infernal way?  Did the prayers not work for some other reason?  Did they not have enough people praying?  ("You know, if there'd been 1,284,733 people praying, I'd'a had a chat with Justice Kennedy.  But 1,284,732 people just didn't quite do it for me.")

Because if god is so dead-set against same-sex marriage, you'd think he'd find a way to make sure it didn't happen regardless, right?

So the whole thing seems to turn on a philosophical point that doesn't, honestly, make a lot of sense.  It's far from the only thing in this worldview that I can't make sense of, of course.

As I said before, however, there's no real harm in it.  If they want to spend their time trying to change a presumably all-knowing deity's mind, they can knock themselves out.  At least that's less time they'll have to try to convince politicians, who not only can be swayed, but who actually exist.