You could tell that she knew she was on shaky moral ground from the beginning of the interview:

“This is a court that ruled… that orientation is going to be treated like race under California law. It really means that our government is now in the business in California of saying that people like me who think marriage is the union of husband and wife are exactly like bigots who opposed interracial marriage.”

The thing is, Maggie, that people like you are exactly like racist bigots earlier in the century who opposed interracial marriage.  Let’s go through a short list of the reasons:

1. For starters, I have yet to hear a pro-family group come up with a justification for banning gay marriage that didn’t involve their slightly fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.  We live in a secular society with a secular government and a secular constitution, so attempting to argue and legislate from a position is not only irrelevant, it’s also illegal.
2. Opponents of interracial marriage made sure that there were unjust laws on the books that made the practice illegal, and when someone protested they pointed to those laws and said it was the will of the people.
3. Proponents of slavery and later of Jim Crow laws certainly had a Biblical justification for their bigotry ready to trot out whenever someone protested, but that didn’t make them right.
4. Opponents of gay marriage in California point to civil unions as a way for homosexual couples to be “separate but equal” under the law.  Can you think of another example of a minority group that was oppressed under the flimsy legal justification of “separate but equal”?

So I’m sorry, Maggie, but groups who oppose gay marriage today are exactly like groups who opposed interracial marriage.  My fervent hope is that history remembers you and your colleagues as the bigots that you are after the dust has cleared and the legality of gay marriage has been established once and for all.

“That means people in these faith traditions are going to be treated like racists in the public square if we don’t overturn this decision.”

Sometimes, Maggie, you have to call a spade a spade.  Anyone who treats you or your friends in Christ like bigots in the public square would be perfectly justified in doing so, because that’s what you are.  You’re trying to keep basic human rights that don’t harm anyone from a minority group because your invisible friend in the sky wrote down a few lines six thousand years ago that vaguely condemn one man lying with another man if you interpret it through the proper fundamentalist theology.  Your argument has no basis in modern morality.  The best you can come up with is that it’s the will of the people, but one of the great things about this country is that the will of the people can be overturned when the will of the people is wrong and violates the law.  The constitution is the highest law in America, not God.

“The next step is to raise $10 million to wage a media war.”

This is where conscientious people from all walks of life need to step in and step up.  You can see from the interview above that even when they come close to the truth, these fundamentalist nutjobs are still so set in their ways that they’re going to fight for a constitutional amendment tooth and nail.  We need to fight against them and make sure that this amendment doesn’t pass.  Of course all is not lost if it does pass, that just means that the decision will likely go to the Supreme Court to see if a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is unconstitutional, but we have the opportunity to defeat this now and protect basic human rights for everyone, not just heterosexuals.

I’d like to leave everyone with one last thought from the duplicitous Maggie Gallagher:

“My concern is to protect marriage and religious liberty in the state of California and the rest of the United States.”

Sorry, Maggie, but heterosexuals have already destroyed the institution of marriage far more thoroughly than gays could ever hope to.  Heterosexuals have waged a vicious scorched earth campaign against marriage that has stretched across divorce courts, Jerry Springer, and reality shows like “Who Wants to Marry A Millionaire.”  You can’t fight for the integrity of marriage, because as it stands today heterosexuals have made sure that there is almost no integrity left in the institution.

And let’s remember that this is a society where we are guaranteed freedom from religious oppression.  The Establishment Clause was put in to prevent exactly the sort of thing that you are trying to do right now.  Your religious liberty does not extend so far that it should prevent the basic civil liberties of others.  This is a secular society, not a theocracy, and if your religious beliefs are so outdated as to become immoral then it’s probably time to examine them and make some changes.

Technorati Tags: Maggie Gallagher, National Organization for Marriage, NPR, Day to Day, marriage debate, fundamentalist, christianity, religious bigots, bigotry, gay marriage, California gay marriage

Of course it isn’t going to be easy. Project Marriage, a Christian organization touting itself as a “loose alliance of pro-family and church organizations” (which is press release code for “fundamentalist bigots”) has gotten over 1 million signatures on a proposal to amend the California constitution to ban gay marriage, thus invalidating today’s supreme court decision.

On the positive side, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has publicly stated that he will “always be there to fight against” this group and their efforts. The bad news is that the proposed constitutional amendment will go on the November ballot for a vote no matter what the governator says as long as they have enough valid signatures.

So we have a Christian group that is trying to pass legislation that will make their religious beliefs part of the secular constitution of their state. I don’t know about everyone else, but this boldfaced attempt by religion to hijack what should be a secular decision seriously pisses me off.

I’d just like to say that this is ridiculous. As Dan Savage is fond of pointing out, heterosexuals have proven with the divorce rate that they don’t give a rat’s ass about the sanctity of marriage, so that argument in favor of keeping gays from marrying falls flat. Leviticus has a pretty strong condemnation of homosexuality if you’re reading the right translation with the right interpretation, but Christians conveniently and consistently ignore Bible passages condemning divorce, adultery, and sacrificing a goat every time a woman is menstruating. Obviously they’re willing to overlook Bible passages when it makes their life more convenient, so there’s no reason why they can’t just agree to consign the anti-gay passages to the dustbin of religious history. There is absolutely no justifiable reason for all of this anti-gay sentiment amongst Christians. Even Jesus seemed like a live and let live kinda guy, not counting his cameo in Revelation.

The truth is that homosexuals provide a convenient “other” for conservative groups and conservative politicians to demonize for their own gain. Conservatives have discovered that nothing gets their fundamentalist religious base out of the church and into the voting booth better than the idea that somewhere two women or two men might be having sex with each other with the blessing of the state. And if they happen to vote anti-gay posturing politicians into office while they’re in that voting booth rallying against the perceived evils of homosexuality then that’s all the better for these Machiavellian bigots. Perhaps if conservatives ever pulled themselves away from the withered teats of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity long enough to think an independent thought then they would be appalled at how easily they as a group are manipulated and herded, but that’s about as likely as Rush and Hannity taking advantage of the new pro-gay atmosphere in California to finally consummate their forbidden love.

Heterosexuals and homosexuals alike need to fight for the basic human rights of the homosexual community. Any society that is willing to marginalize one group could just as easily marginalize everyone else, and America is better than this. If you’d like to help out then you can start by checking out the ACLU’s Get Busy Get Equal campaign. I enjoy the legal protections of marriage, and I’m sure there are many others reading this who are married themselves. It’s time that we make sure our gay friends, relatives, and neighbors enjoy those same protections. And most importantly, it’s time that we send a message to the religious right that they can’t hijack the legal process to try and legislate their religious beliefs into law.

America is not a theocracy, and we need to make sure it stays that way.

Technorati Tags: gay marriage, California supreme court, California gay marriage, Project Marriage, religious right, theocracy, religious law

“The National Center for Science Education is antichrist.”

Just about anything that is said afterwards can be discredited by this first sentence alone.  This is a debate about whether or not religion should be taught in public schools under the guise of Intelligent Design.  Intelligent Design has been proven time and again to be a slapdash repackaging of creationism in secular sounding terms in a feeble attempt to get it into science curriculum.  The National Center for Science Education isn’t antichrist, they’re simply asking that science curriculum reflects the separation of church and state that was established with the founding of this country.  To call the NCSE antichrist is to call America and most of the founding fathers antichrist while at the same time revealing your true religious motives right from the get go.

“Text taken from The Quest for Right, a 7-book series on origins based on physical science, the old science of cause and effect:”

As far as I know science is still operating under the same old system of theorize, test, modify, and test again until you get it right or get as close to right as is possible with current technology and methodology.  It’s the same system that has been in use since the beginning of the Enlightenment, and it’s the same system that has consistently validated ideas like evolution that have gotten your panties in such a twist.  Could it be that you’re hearkening back to the pure science of the dark ages that served humanity so well for so long?

“Special note on obstructionism: In 1916, one thousand scientists were polled as to their belief in a deity (i.e., God). Of the ones responding, 60 percent had no religious belief. A follow-up study 80 years later revealed that the percentage of atheists, someone who does not believe in or denies the existence of God, among scientists remains shockingly high: 78 percent of physicists, 58 percent of biologists, and 55 percent of mathematicians are atheists.”

This is one of the biggest gripes that I have with modern religions.  Why is it shocking that scientists don’t believe in God?  Why is this such a scandal?  Why do the religious have this impulse to convert everyone around them to their particular belief system?  In short, who cares if they don’t believe in God?  It doesn’t surprise me that a good deal of scientists don’t hold a religious belief one way or the other.  Their whole life revolves around coming up with a suitable cosmology that is based on observable evidence and rigorous testing, which is something that no religion in the world can stand up to.  There is no case for God other than taking it on faith, and you’ll forgive me if I prefer scientists who question the world around me rather than taking it at face value based on ancient and outdated tribal morality.

 ”Sixty percent of those polled by the University of Georgia historian Edward Larson snubbed Judaism, Islam, and Christianity by equating “belief in a deity and an afterlife with superstition based on fear and wishful thinking.” Nature, 4-09-1997″

At the risk of sounding pedantic, here is the dictionary.com definition of superstition:

1.	a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like.

2.	a system or collection of such beliefs.

3.	a custom or act based on such a belief.

4.	irrational fear of what is unknown or mysterious, esp. in connection with religion.

5.	any blindly accepted belief or notion.

Sounds like religion fits the definition of superstition perfectly!  Moving on.

“Even more disturbing, only 10 percent of those polled “expressed an intense desire for immortality” (that is, going to heaven), thus, signifying that on the average only 10 percent of physicists, biologists, and mathematicians are under covenant.”

Again you’re showing your ass by revealing your true motives.  Basing an argument against science on the fact that scientists aren’t “under covenent” is ridiculous.  Freedom of religion means they have the freedom to no religion, but that shouldn’t affect how they do their job either way.  Ethical scientists have their own system, the scientific method, that has done pretty well so far.

“The great majority (90 percent) have little or no regard for God but, rather, oppose Him, promoting the error that the earth and all that is in existence happened by chance. The mystical tenet governs every aspect of academic science”

There is a subtle but very distinct difference between actively opposing God and teaching a cosmology that has no room for God, though that’s a distinction lost on the religious.  If an experiment was carried out tomorrow that proved once and for all that God did exist then that would be put into the science textbooks, but so far the almighty creator of the universe has been strangely silent for the past five thousand years.  Science teachers aren’t actively trying to convert their classrooms to radical atheism, they are simply teaching the sum total of centuries of scientific inquiry.  It’s not the scientists’ fault that God hasn’t shown any evidence of his existence once in all that time, and it isn’t the teacher’s job to teach religion to students.  Religion and schools are separate, and that’s how it should be.  If you’re interested in theocracy then you can move to Iran where they’re more welcoming to that brand of close-minded thinking.

“To the point, obstructionists: scientists, biologists, mathematicians, and the NEA, teach the innocents within the classroom that there is no God.”

Again, God and religion shouldn’t be taught in the classroom.  We are a secular society that has the basis for that secularism written into the Constitution.  I for one am glad that I live in a society where freedom of inquiry and freedom of thought is considered a basic human right that is part of the highest law in the land.  Otherwise we might live in a world where creationist theocrats such as C. David Parsons got their way and stifled true understanding of the universe with a tragically limited cosmology written by primitive nomads six-thousand years ago.

Technorati Tags: C. David Parsons, secularism, religion, creationism, intelligent design, The Quest For Right, theocracy

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are circumstances under which it would be acceptable to fire a teacher for wizardry.  Maybe if he was trying to entice one of his students to enlist as a thief with a group of dwarves on a quest to reclaim their lost treasure from an ancient and fearsome dragon.  That’s the sort of dangerous thing that middle school students probably aren’t ready to handle.  Firing would be justified if if he was trying to kill one of the students to create a seventh horcrux that would make him an all-powerful immortal evil overlord.  I’d even say firing was justified if he was using his magical powers to banish students to the magical land of Oz.

But for making a toothpick disappear?  That’s just plain stupid.  I’d be willing to bet that there is a fundamentalist Christian child at the bottom of this who complained about the magic trick in the first place because everyone knows sleight of hand is an abomination before the Lord their God, but for a school system to actually fire someone over a magic trick is just further proof of the downfall of reasonable civilization.

Normally I would have some sort of snarky commentary, but the people at Westboro Baptist really do my job for me in this video. It crosses over from offensive to so-over-the-top-it’s-hilarious rather quickly.

This is most important — insist, as heatedly as any extreme fundamentalist, that the Bible must be read in the most naively literal sense in all passages, and therefore the tiniest mistake or scribal error invalidates the whole thing and any religion based on it.

My problems with religion are leveled squarely at the fundamentalist flavors of every major world religion out there today. You can feel free to believe the Dawkins argument that tolerance of moderate religion lends credibility to the more extreme elements of that religion, but I like to embrace a more live and let believe philosophy as long as that belief doesn’t involve suicide bombing, shooting up abortion clinics, kneecapping Catholics or Protestants for wandering into the wrong neighborhood in Dublin, or any other number of religious practices that wouldn’t be considered acceptable in polite company. Religious fundamentalists, unfortunately, are usually the source of most of those nasty glorifications of God that I just mentioned.

And where does this absolute certainty in the goodness of suicide bombings and religiously motivated murder come from? A literal interpretation of the Bible or whatever holy book you prefer, of course! So here is my proposition to religious groups out there who are tired of hearing from atheists who insist on a literal interpretation of everything in the Bible: We’ll stop taking everything in the Bible literally the instant that you afford us the same courtesy, and not a moment sooner.

(Of course even admitting that the Bible isn’t meant to be taken literally and attempting to “interpret” the good book can lead to some pretty wacky and wildly divergent belief systems, but it’s still a step above believing that the murder of homosexuals is justified because God said so in Leviticus.)

Biblical literalism is the root cause of a lot of the religious cancers that are currently poisoning an otherwise rational and secular Western society, so don’t think for an instant that I’m not going to give up the easy pot-shots that come from a literal interpretation of the Bible for as long as people insist on living their lives by that same literal interpretation.

Biblical literalism has led to dubious religious interpretations that glorify intolerance and murder. Biblical literalism has led entire segments of the population to reject scientific teaching because their pastor told them that God snapped the universe into existence 6000 years ago in a happy-go-lucky time when man and dinosaur coexisted in harmony. There’s a compelling argument to be made that our adventures in the middle east for the past half a century have as much to do with the belief that Jesus will be coming back there at any moment to throw everyone who doesn’t believe in him into a lake of fire as they do with oil supplies, as well as a whole host of other ideas that have no business in modern society.

So you can bet your crucifix that lampooning the practice of Biblical literalism wherever it rears its ugly head is going to continue to be a vital and justifiable part of the debate against religions that condone the practice. As long as religious sects that promote Biblical literalism continue to try and shove their beliefs down the collective throats of everyone around them, as long as religious groups try to legislate based on their own narrow interpretation of the divine, that narrow literal interpretation will continue to be justifiably dissected and refuted by individuals with a more rational mindset.

Technorati Tags: Bible, Christianity, Islam, Biblical literalism, atheism

The source of all of this uproar?  SB-777 - Student Civil Rights Act, a bill that aims to extend basic civil rights protection to lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transexual students in the California school system.  That’s all.  They’re just explicitly spelling out that people in the GLBT community have the same basic human rights and protections as everyone else in the public school system.

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