The Gaytheist Agenda

As an atheist I’m often asked, “If you don’t believe in God what keeps you from being a thief, a rapist, or even a serial killer?”. It’s presumed that all morality comes from God/the Bible, and that religious people are inherently more moral than non-religious people.

So what of Reverend Tim Jones, who directly told his congregation it was OK to violate the eighth commandment?

British police and retailers have criticized an Anglican priest who advised his congregation to weather
economic turmoil by shoplifting.

The Rev. Tim Jones, 41, told his congregation at St. Lawrence Church in York, England, during a sermon Sunday it is better for the poor to turn to shoplifting than “prostitution, mugging or burglary,” the telegraph.co.uk reported Monday.

“My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift. I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither,” he said. “I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.”
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I can only imagine the millions of religious folk who are working overtime to justify in their minds what Reverend Jones did. It never ceases to amaze me how anything and everything religious people do, no matter how severely it conflicts with their dogma, can be rationalized. And yet they can beat others–including those who aren’t believers and those who are of other faiths–over the head mercilessly because we don’t follow every jot and note of their precious holy book.

The hypocrisy is astounding, and it reeks.

 

Why is it so many people think “religious beliefs” should exempt them from any rule/law they don’t want to follow? Then they turn around and cry persecution when they find out they don’t have special rights just because of their lifestyle choices.

Shirley Chaplin, 54, of Exeter, said she was removed from front-line duties for refusing to take off her cross.

Richard Younger-Ross, Lib Dem MP for Teignbridge, said it appeared to be a case of “religious bias”.
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Actually, it isn’t:

The Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust has said its uniform and dress code prohibits front-line staff wearing any type of necklace because of health and safety concerns.

So it’s not a case of “religious bias” but an across the board policy that happens to include crucifixes on chains, particularly those on long chains such as the one Chaplin wears. People working in health care settings are in close contact with patients, and often have to bend/stoop over them. Necklaces, particularly longer chains and pendants, can dangle and become contaminated. When the caregiver moves to the next patient s/he could easily pass on an infection via the necklace (it’s highly improbable that a necklace is going to be washed routinely as hands are). Yes, it’s a remote risk, but a risk all the same. Furthermore it’s possible that confused or agitated patients could grab a dangling necklace, or that the chain could get caught in patient apparatus, which puts both caregiver and patient at risk.

I worked for 20 years with adults who had disabilities. While our dress codes didn’t forbid any particular jewelry we were warned strongly against certain types of jewelry that could pose hazardous with agitated or confused individuals. Among those things were long chains and hoop or dangling earrings, all of which could be grabbed by agitated or confused clients. At one agency we also had a dress code that forbade tops with political or religious statements/slogans, and we weren’t allowed to discuss religion/politics with the clients. This was not, as some might like to claim, a matter of “religious persecution”, but to avoid hot-button topics that could cause agitation among the clients (who had mental illnesses). We were there to provide care to our clients, not to worry about our personal agendas.

The trust said it would only be acceptable to wear a crucifix pinned inside a uniform lapel or pocket.

So it’s not that Chaplin is forbidden to wear the crucifix while on duty, it’s that she can’t flaunt it to everyone in the manner she wishes to.

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“I can’t explain how important the cross is to me. It’s how I express my faith.
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“My Christian faith is what motivates me to care for others.
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She added: “You cannot separate a person’s faith and motivation from other areas of their life, including their work.
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Translation: I went into nursing to earn religious brownie points. If my patients and co-workers can’t tell from at least 10 feet away that I’m super-Christiany then how is the Big Guy going to know to give me a check mark in His book? If people can’t see my cross what good are all my efforts? It’s not like I’m doing this just to help people!

Chaplin isn’t being perseucted. She’s just being told to follow the rules that apply to all. The only thing being harmed here is her astounding religious ego and her delusion that unless every person she works with knows she’s a Christian the world will implode.

 

This is the type of PSA they should show over here. It’s long and it’s graphic, but it delivers its message well.

They’ve done it in Hawaii, California and elsewhere in the US. Now they’re doing it in the UK. Yet of course when it’s all said and done LDSinc will claim, as they did after Proposition 8, that they did nothing and their individual members just decided on their own to contribute millions of dollars and spend countless hours working to eradicate the rights of people who’ve done absolutely nothing to them. Then they and their members will all whine about how they’re being unfairly targeted and “persecuted” for their beliefs, blah blah blah. From Pink News UK:

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According to an email seen by PinkNews.co.uk, it appears the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is throwing its support behind efforts to exempt religious groups from anti-gay discrimination laws.

The email, sent by law firm Devonshires on behalf of the church, suggests religious groups should band together in a powerful coalition to fight the government proposals.
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The email cites the successful campaign of 2005 when the religious lobby obtained exemptions under the Gender Recognition Act. Law firm Devonshires hosted a number of meetings for religious and non-religious groups to win the exemptions.

The Church of Latter-day Saints now plans to take the government “by surprise” by organising a coalition of religious groups to contest gay protections in the Equality Bill.
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Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, expressed concern that the gay community was not organised enough to fight attempts to derail protections.

He told PinkNews.co.uk: “It does seem to suggest Mormons are behind this. What immediately struck me were the echoes of Proposition 8 - they pumped millions into the campaign but denied it.
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Poor persecuted Mormons. Merely standing up for their “deeply held belief” that gay people don’t deserve the same legal protections they do. To think that some mean spirited people actually call them bigots for that!

 

Three must-read posts from elsewhere in the Blogosphere:

Thoughts from an Abortion Doctor
This piece is long but well worth the full read.

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We all know that anti-abortionists aren’t really “pro-life,” they are “pro-forced birth.” They make huge assumptions about who the women are who actually have abortions. They think that all the women who have abortions are just young flaky women who have no concern for the life of the embryo/fetus they are aborting. They couldn’t be more wrong.
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The decision to have an abortion is an agonizing decision, that few women choose lightly. They will be criticized for whatever decision they make. What kind of terrible mother could kill her own child? What kind of terrible mother could give her child away to strangers? What kind of terrible mother would keep a child she can’t afford to care for?
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The “pro-coerced birthers” think that these are immoral women who should be punished for their (sex) sins with an innocent child. Then they complain about “welfare mothers” who need money to support their children. Those “precious babies” become children who they don’t want to feed. Aren’t Christians supposed to provide charity for those who need it? Worse then that, they don’t want to use federal funds to provide effective contraception or abortions for poor women. They just want to keep punishing women. Of course, if it’s one of their own, she just “made a mistake, she’s really a good girl.” Abortions happen in the fundie community too, don’tcha know.
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I would be the happiest person in the world to never do another abortion again. So why do I do them? Because pregnant women with unwanted pregnancies are willing to risk just about anything, including almost killing themselves, in order to try to end unwanted pregnancies.

I remember reading some statistics comparing abortions in the U.S. and Mexico, before they were legal there. About the same number of abortions were done in each country, just over 1 million abortions a year. In the U.S. about 10 women died as a result of legal abortion. In Mexico, about 10,000 women per year died as a result of illegal abortions. 10,000 women who were mothers, sisters, daughters, wives. Not pre-viable fetuses.

There’s excellent evidence that in countries where women control their reproduction, the families are more prosperous. Funny that, women knowing when it’s a good or a bad time to add a child to their family.
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Life Under Socialised Medicine
OMG it’s a cross between Logan’s Run and Soylent Green! Not.

I live in Britain, under the NHS. Now, I want to say this up front in case anyone gets the wrong impression: the NHS is not perfect and no-one should ever claim it is. Having got that established…
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As for the government deciding your healthcare? Well, there’s two things here. Under the NHS, doesn’t happen. My doctor and psychiatrist decide what care I need, they note it down on a computerised system and the NHS reimburses them, the actual exchange of money nevers involves you. The career civil servants who run the NHS don’t decide your care, they just direct the resources where they’re needed, quickly, quietly and with a minimum of fuss. Admin costs average 6.8% of the budget, including pensions and benefits. Secondly, how is that different from insurance suits deciding your healthcare? Given the choice, I’d rather go with the career civil servants. The insurance industry has a profit motive, they are actively looking to screw you out of your healthcare because the more people they can cut off from care, the more money they make. The civil servants don’t care either way, they get paid exactly the same regardless of whether the NHS runs a surplus or a defecit. I could ring my doctor this morning and get an appointment this afternoon. Ah, but perhaps I’m special because I have “SUICIDE RISK” on my file? ‘Fraid not. Most people will get an appointment on the same day or, at worst, the following day.

Now, I keep having the sam argument with conservatives who believe the NHS is a failure since it usually runs at a loss. IT’S SUPPOSED TO! Look, healthcare is not a product like a Big Mac, healthcare is a service. The Post Office doesn’t make a profit either and it doesn’t matter if they do. Their primary purpose is to move the mail about for the mutual benefit of all. The fire service puts out fires for the mutual benefit of all. And that’s how the NHS works. They’re not a profit driven business, they just treat illnesses for the mutual benefit of all. It is in an insurance industries best interests to deny you care. It is not in the governments best interests to do so because the quicker you get better, the quicker you get back to work and start paying taxes again.
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How about costs? I pay around 22% income tax and about another 8-9% National Insurance (our version of Social Security, there is no such thing as a payroll tax here). That’s about average. How much do you pay in taxes? Now, add the cost of your health insurance (assuming you have it) to that figure and work it out again. The NHS running costs work out at just over $2000 per citizen, per year. How much can you get a year’s health insurance for? The US spends, on average, $2.3 trillion a year on the combination of Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance. Assuming the same $2000 per citizen, per year cost, the entire US population could be covered for around $600 billion a year, not counting start-up costs. Yes, some people here choose to take out private insurance anyway, that’s their right and they do it for many different reasons. Some want the option of skipping the wait times, some want a more luxurious hospital or brandname drugs (the NHS tends toward functionally spartan and generic drugs to keep costs down), some may have more esoteric reasons but the option is there. Some employers offer it as a perk for their high-value employees. I smoke about a pack a day. Marlboros here cost about $12 a pack, 80% of which is tax. I don’t mind paying that because the vast majority of that goes into the NHS. The government takes in about £10 billion annually from tobacco taxes and spends about £6.8 billion treating smoking-related illnesses. Again, I have no problem with paying that. I have a habit which is damaging to my health so I pay extra to cover the extra care which may be required.
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Every other nation in the industrialised world manages some form of universal healthcare. It takes many different forms, with varying methods of delivery and paying for it. Since you’re coming to this relatively late, there’s nothing to stop the US setting up a committee to examine the existing systems and then mix-and-matching the best parts, absorbing Medicare and Medicaid along the way, until you come up with something special and uniquely American. The USA is the richest nation in the world. California alone is the fifth biggest economy on earth and yet, you are the only industrialised nation which doesn’t guarentee at least basic healthcare for all of it’s citizens. Guys, Italy manages this without it turning into a socialistic nightmare. Are you seriously telling me that US politicians are markedly worse than those of Italy? In most of the civilised world, only a very few unfortunates (mainly homeless people or drug abusers) die for lack of care. That’s a tragedy, no questions there but how many people in the US die because they can’t afford care? Triage by wallet.
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Religious Freedom Doesn’t Include Promoting Hate
The title says it all.

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As the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act moves closer to passage through Congress, right-wing spokespersons are screaming louder about how this legislation will severely impact religious freedom.

Is that true?

It all depends on how you define religious freedom.

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These same religious folks claim that similar laws passed in the United States would inhibit their ability to preach the “truth of the bible” that condemns homosexuality. Of course, that arrogantly presumes that anyone preaching a message accepting of GLBT people is not preaching “the truth,” and that’s where the issue gets sticky.
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There are things people can say that aren’t facts. These are called opinions, and as the saying goes, opinions are like…..tushes-everybody has one. I could tell my wife a dress makes her look fat and that is not a hate crime. While it revisits the stupidity concept, it is not a hate crime.

When a pastor stands at his pulpit preaching to his congregation about how depraved homosexual behavior is and that GLBT people are abominations (stop me if you’ve heard that one before), the one thing he is NOT doing is stating a fact. He is stating something based on his interpretation of a translation of the Bible which is at best an opinion but has the potential to be much more, including a hate crime.

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First, a hate crime by its nature results in harm to the affected minority, usually violence. Remember, Matthew Shepard wasn’t just teased because he was gay, he was pistol whipped, tortured, and left tied up to a fence to die. Any pastor who preaches a sermon that even indirectly leads someone to commit a violent act has no business behind a pulpit, but might very well belong in jail.

Second, there are only really eight verses in the Bible, the infamous “clobber passages,” that are used in the condemnation of homosexuality. That’s right, all of this anger, discrimination, and hatred stem from EIGHT verses of scripture, translated and retranslated over thousands of years, written in times where society had no concept of a long-term same-sex relationship. Society also condoned slavery and polygamy (now there’s traditional marriage for you) back in those times.

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So how do I define freedom of religion? I view it as the ability to openly worship and celebrate God as I have come to understand Him. There are plenty of places in the world where that is still not an option, especially for those who profess to be Christians, so I don’t take it for granted.

I DO take for granted, however, that my freedom should not harm anyone else or infringe on their ability to worship God as they understand Him. I also take for granted that this does not give me the right to preach hate and incite anger toward anyone.

Not even right-wingers who do just that toward GLBT people I know and love.

Here are some of the current news stories from around the world.

 

*Zapata family delivers emotional statement and calls for federal hate-crime statutes
*Andrade gets life for murder of transgendered woman.

 
*2,000 LGBT New Yorkers Plan Trek to Albany to support LGBT civil rights.

 
*In MD, a new hate crime law would protect homeless people. This would be the first of its kind in the US. Having worked with people who were homeless, and knowing how vulnerable these individuals can be, I really hope this one passes.

 
*Gay hate crime convictions have doubled in Wales over the past three years.

 
*NH committee recommends killing gay marriage bill.

 

*Man sentenced to six years for attempted murder of “bisexual transvestite”. (Quotation marks from original headline. While the headline and the court say “transvestite”, the fact that the victim was in the process of obtaining gender reassignment indicates she’s transgender. )

 
*Youth pastor allegedly molested several girls and impregnated one.

 

Here is another wonderful guest article by Ebon.

“What a piece of work is a man” ~ Shakespeare, Hamlet

My mother had lesbian cats.

Seriously.

I was raised by my grandmother but when I was twenty, my mother and step-father’s marriage finally imploded and they split up. My mother took their female cat, Cass, with her. When she moved in with her current partner, he already had a female cat of his own, Sam. And they became, well, lovers. Sam was old even then, half-blind and deaf as a post so Cass would go out, hunt a mouse, stun it and bring it back for Sam to play with (which somehow manages to be both horrible and sweet at the same time). They shared bowls, shared a basket and yes, for all the gutter-minds out there, they engaged in the sex act.

One of the more common criticisms thrown at gay people is the accusation that homosexuality is somehow “unnatural”. Now firstly, have you ever actually looked at nature? If humanity had stuck purely with what was natural, we would be living in a tree, eating our meat raw and dying of dental abscesses. The life of man in the state of nature is, as Hobbes said, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Most of us are not aboriginals, most of us do not know how to live in harmony with nature. Even if we allow tool-making as “natural”, how many of us know how to make a decent bow or fletch arrows, how to make gunpowder or construct a snare? I know how to do those things, maybe a few of you do as well but how many? One percent would probably be being generous. The entire history of civilised humanity is a flight away from nature, a history of adapting nature to our own ends. Many ancient cultures (including the Roma) had a tradition that a communal fire was open to anyone that turned up and that was because, in the time when communal fires were common, the darkness was full of things with big teeth that wanted to eat you. The life of man in a state of nature is not The Flintstones, it’s having few natural weapons and being eaten by things with plenty of them. What saved humanity, what has made us the dominant species on the planet (unless Douglas Adams was right about the mice) is that we adapt nature to our own ends, change and refine it until it does what we want. So let’s not have any veneration of “nature” from people living a life which is entirely unnatural.

Secondly is that they’re just plain wrong. Now, we need to be careful with our definitions here because describing animals as “gay” or “lesbian” risks imputing human thought processes upon animals which do not share them but biologists have observed homosexual behaviour (that is, choosing to engage in sexual acts with a partner of the same sex even when mating partners of the opposite sex are available) in roughly fifteen hundred species. In about a third of those, homosexual behaviour is common and well documented . In Germany and Japan, penguins often form gay couples. When the German zoo authorities attempted to break the couples up by separating them and importing penguins of the opposite sex (largely to boost breeding numbers), it simply didn’t work. The zoo director remarked that the relationships were too strong and, amusingly, German gay rights groups protested the seperation. In American Bison, homosexuality is so common that the Mandan festival of Okipa (intended to ensure the bison’s return) concludes with a ceremonial re-enactment. The Lakota have a specific word for homosexual bison: pte winkte (meaning “bison two-spirit”). Giraffes virtually follow the old Greek saying of “a girl for duty, a boy for pleasure”, being more common than heterosexual coupling. Bonobos are almost uniformly bisexual. This listing could go on for some time but the point is made. Homosexuality is widely known in the animal kingdom and thus, in nature. Therefore, homosexuality is, by definition, entirely natural.

What is a uniquely human behaviour though, is homophobia. Again, we have to be careful not to apply human values because there is no such thing as “marriage” in most of the animal kingdom but nowhere in nature, excluding humanity, is there any kind of prejudice against homosexuality. Animals fight for all kinds of reasons; for territory, for food, for a mate or for dominance but in not one species outside humanity has violence ever occurred because one party took exception to another party shagging their own gender. Gay, straight, it doesn’t matter to them. If you can keep up with the pack, you’re fine.

When Cass died several years ago of cancer (which cats are prone to, get yours checked), Sam began to pine for her and when she died herself three months later, family tradition is that she died of a broken heart. When I think of the two of them or of my own two adored cats, Mac and Jelli (who died seven months ago and three weeks ago respectively), I sometimes wonder if they didn’t have the better deal. The life of a house cat is sleeping, playing, eating and being petted. We call ourselves an intelligent species but our feline friends don’t give a hoot about which god you worship or who you love so really, which of us are the intelligent ones?

“I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable or unhappy, all over the earth” ~ Lord Summerisle, The Wicker Man

This is a guest article by Ebon, longtime reader and frequent commenter. Ebon is a British, bisexual Luciferian Satanist. He is also trained in law, has been an semi-professional wrestler and teaches self-defense to young women. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.
Buffy

 
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” ~ Charles Dickens

I was intending to talk today about the reaction to the Iowa decision, how the right is throwing around accusations of forcing gay marriage on Iowans (proving that they don’t understand the principle of judicial independence) but their reactions have been all too predictable. My favourite was the Representative (Steve King, R-naturally) who described same-sex marriage as “our worst nightmare”. Really? Gay people getting hitched is your worst nightmare, really? Dude, you have no imagination.

The Iowa decision is a triumph for the Constitutional principle of equal protection and, obviously, for the gay rights movement (or, my preferred name, the Common Humanity movement). According to Yahoo News , the first marriage licenses would be issued in roughly three weeks. Congratulations to everyone who will be getting hitched in the near future.

But, to change the mood completely; Baghdad, we have a problem. When Iraq formulated a new constitution in 2005, the new Constitution made Islam the official state religion and, while claiming to preserve the rights of other believers (although, interestingly, not of atheists), proclaimed that Islam was the primary source of law ( Section One, Article Two). Subsection A provides that no law may be established which “contradicts the established provisions of Islam”. Why is that relevant to a blog called The Gaytheist Agenda? Well, because that leads to this; Iraq has plans to start executing 128 men, at least five of those are guilty of no other crime than being activists for gay rights in Iraq. Iraqi LGBT, the nation’s main (and seemingly only) gay rights organisation alleges that many more of those prisoners are there primarily because they are gay.

There is a reason why both of our nations guarantee freedom of religion. There is a reason why your nation (but not yet my own) has no state religion and there is a reason why I am, although a man of faith, passionately interested about keeping church and state apart and this case is a good example: Mixing church and state brings out the worst in both. It allows the state to claim divine guidance for its political actions and it allows the church the power which has largely been denied to it for centuries. Your Founders, when they wrote the Constitution, had just come through a long and very nasty war where the opposing state (my own and the irony is not lost on me) could and often did claim to be acting with the approval of the divine. They knew how easily church and state could corrupt one another. Baron Acton warned us that power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. When the power of the state and the power of the church are combined, how close are we to absolute power and, by Acton’s prediction, to absolute corruption?

That’s a question I leave to your imagination. What I can say for certain is that the governments of both our nations allowed Iraq to enact a constitution based in religious law and the government that swore to uphold that Constitution is about to kill 128 men, at least some of whom are guilty of nothing more than loving other men.

“Is your god such a worldly god that he must play at politics?” ~ Sir Francis Walsingham

 

Deborah is 13, one of 11 children, and has been raised essentially in a vacuum. She has been heavily indoctrinated into Christianity and taught that she is an evil, sinful person in need of redemption. She’s even been turned into a miniature evangelist. Her parents have home-schooled her and her 10 brothers and sisters. They have “protected” her from the outside world and influences that might make her stray from what she’s been taught. But how prepared will she be to live in that outside world when she’s forced to enter it?

 
While I hesitate to use terms like “child abuse” it fits in this situation. This child’s mind has been warped, and is being warped more every day. She is not being given what she needs to effectively cope in the world, nor is she being afforded the opportunity to make choices for herself. She is being presented one choice and being made to think it is the only legitimate choice. That is what makes it abuse and a travesty. Sadly she is far from the only victim in her family, or the world.

 

There are places where religion rules. And even where it doesn’t, some want to change things.

Of course our own home-grown Theocrats think that their brand of religious fascism would be so much better than Sharia Law (simply because it’s Christianity and not Islam). But it wouldn’t.

There is a reason America was founded as a secular nation. There is a reason for the Separation of Church and State, which protects everyone religious and non-religious alike. It is because the mingling of religion and politics is dangerous, if not deadly. It’s just too bad the RRRW can’t understand that.