Andy McCarthy has a problem with a lesson from high school civics:

Very clear constitutional commands that, for example, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”, or that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” or that “No state shall … deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”, have not stopped courts from upholding campaign finance reform, prohibitions against gun possession, or racial preferences.

Most of us, sometime around 11th grade or so, learn that there are no absolute rights in the Constitution. This makes sense, because about the time we're seventeen is when we realize that, while saying "penis" at competitively escalating volumes is hilarious, it's not really an appropriate thing to say during class and we deserve to be punished for it. While giggling, obviously.

Under a theory of constitutional absolutism, Andy McCarthy should support the free practice of sharia law. After all, it would almost certainly offend the conscience of Muslims who seek to practice it to have that practice banned. Yet...he doesn't. The First Amendment clearly states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[,]" which would seem to indicate that private citizens choosing to govern their affairs by private religious laws should have that choice reaffirmed by the courts, rather than trampled on by intolerant secularist bigotry.

Or something, whatever. I'm not entirely sure what sharia law is, except that the Muslims in my apartment complex have nice curtains, so I assume that's part of it.

Of course, it doesn't, because the Constitution isn't a legal code. It's an outline applied to the world as it exists, within the context of society as it evolves. There are things it protects and things it doesn't, however imperfectly those realms are determined. Constitutional absolutism of the sort that results in a "right of conscience" to be free of laws you find offensive only works so long as you assume the Constitution was meant to protect you and only you, and that there was a mysterious Eleventh Amendment lost from the original Bill of Rights that tells everyone else to kiss your hairy ass.

Of course, if I had a constitutional right to play the penis game in school, I'm totally going to pretend to be the world's oldest high school senior next year.

At XX Factor yesterday, I joked that Gingrich and other anti-choice nuts are going to rethink their opposition to stem cell research in record time if, as hoped, a cure for a certain form of erectile dysfunction is created. Really, it was only half a joke. The ugly truth of the matter is right wingers' utterly different approach to women's reproductive health care and men's access to ED drugs demonstrates that contrary to their claims of simply acting on devotion to Jesus, these folks are using religion as a cover for a deep-set misogyny. From the Catholic Church to most info you can find on religious websites to the anti-choice members of Congress, when asked about Viagra, they are supportive. Republicans like John McCain have routinely voted against bills that would require insurance companies that cover Viagra to cover contraception. The reason for this is simple: plain misogyny. Anti-choicers tend to see contraception as a "party drug" that allows dirty sluts to go slut it up. But they see Viagra as allowing men their god-given erections. That this is a hypocrisy is glossed over with an argument I've seen all over religious websites, but is best voiced by Bill O'Reilly:

The argument is that erectile dysfunction is a condition that needs to be cured, but since pregnancy is "natural" (actually, so is erectile dysfunction, as it's often just part of aging), preventing it is dirty slutdom. It's the thinnest of excuses for naked misogyny, especially if you consider that the worst that will happen physically to a man who doesn't get an erection is that he doesn't get an erection, but a pregnant woman is going to suffer weight gain and severe pain no matter what, and some of the more serious side effects of pregnancy are diabetes, stroke, and even death. 

Since anti-choicers by and large present themselves as devout Christians who are only doing god's will, however, that makes this misogynist bullshit even worse. Right now, the Catholic bishops are screeching because the HHS is going to require them to cover birth control prescriptions for organizations they control that hire from and serve the general public. What's nakedly sexist about this is the Biblical justifications for banning abortion and contraception are extremely thin, but the Biblical justification for denying access to Viagra is really sound. Anti-choicers have cast around wildly in the Bible looking for verses that mention abortion or contraception---which have been around in one form or another since roughly forever---and haven't found much. A little poetic language about the womb doesn't mean banning abortion, nor does a strange story about a man defying god's direct orders to impregnate his dead brother's wife say much about contraception so much as the importance of taking direct god-orders seriously. 

But Paul's writings in the New Testament are pretty clear on this: he thinks while married sex is better than fornication, no sex at all is the best of all possible worlds. He reluctantly allows that married people, having already gone ahead and been dirty sex-havers, should continue to do that, but it's definitely less than ideal. With this worldview in mind, the Christian seems obligated not to see erectile dysfunction as a tragedy, but as god sending a hint to you that your days of being distracted from your worship by sexual concerns are being called to an end. Paul seems very clear on the point that people have sex for fun and not really for procreation, so the use of birth control strikes me as no more sinful by this measure than simply marrying in the first place. But trying to reverse god-given celibacy with modern medicine seems like directly defying god's obvious will when he struck you with ED. That is, if you read the Bible with an intention to actually doing what it says. Most Christians---even the good ones---come to the Bible with a predetermined belief in what's right and look for rationalizations in the verses. It's clear with anti-choicers that they just don't like women and seek verses that reinforce that, ignoring the fact that Paul is probably just as concerned with how filthy male sexuality is as female.

The good news is I'm not Christian, so I'm free to see all this hostility to sexuality as perverse, and believe instead that sex is up there with chocolate and warm days in reasons to be thankful to be alive, and that medical science should make it their business to make the enjoyment of life safer and less stressful. Thus, Viagra and birth control for all!

On that note, enjoy this story of a legislator in Virginia who has introduced a bill requiring that men who want Viagra undergo a rectal exam in order to do so. For their own health, you know. Just like those mandatory vaginal probes fro women seeking abortion. 

Yesterday was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and while it's good news that you can still get an abortion in all 50 states in this country (sort of), the fact of the matter is that we've lost a lot of ground. Legally, for one thing, but psychologically as well. I examine the problem at RH Reality Check, talking about how people are growing more accustomed to the idea that female sexuality is male property. Depressing stuff, but it's important to realize that this battle is not and has never been just about abortion. It's about women's rights and women's roles, and whether we should be full citizens or be managed and controlled by fathers, husbands, ministers, etc. Which is why I loved the picture that the New York Times chose to illustrate this story about the growing acceptance of anti-contraception views amongst Protestants.

In a single image, we get what anti-choicers believe men have lost, and what they believe stripping reproductive rights will return to them: Woman as pet dog. 

We don't even get the dignity that cats get, in their worldview. No wonder they don't care if Gingrich told his second wife she should just put up with the third one. Your dog doesn't get a vote when you get a new dog.

Some feminists tend to dismiss everything anti-choicers say out of hand, but what I think is interesting is that they're often quite right on the facts of what reproductive rights mean for women, but they're just wrong when it comes to their beliefs. For instance, this passage in the Times piece: 

As Dr. Paris suggests, much of the new birth-control skepticism comes from the suspicion that contraception is allied with more nefarious practices. In the 1970s, abortion became a central issue for evangelicals; now some worry that the kind of woman who controls her fertility is the kind who would abort an unwanted fetus. Antifeminist Christians worry that secular culture both encourages women to take the pill and leads them into the work force.

There's something a little strange about the distancing language the writer, Mark Oppenheimer, uses here. I would say that it's encroaching on the status of "indisputable fact" that contraception makes it easier for women to enter the work force. I would also argue that they're not wrong to believe that that exceedingly rare women who "doesn't believe" in contraception is probably not going to have an abortion when she gets pregnant. The problem is that they extrapolate incorrectly from there, assuming that taking away women's contraception will somehow magically make them feel more passive and accepting of the idea of constant, forced childbirth. The data shows the opposite, that the more hostility there is to reproductive rights, the more abortions there are, because more women are facing unwanted pregnancies. Simply enshrining one set of values into law doesn't magically make the population agree. Anti-feminists know this very well, since they adamantly resist laws that reflect women's equality. The problem here is their woman-as-dog model doesn't allow for understanding that women have minds of their own, and so they tend to think that simply demanding it will get instant, dog-like compliance. You see this a lot with antis who wave off your questions about the inevitable black market that arises when abortion is illegal; they have convinced themselves women only seek abortion because women are dumbly following orders, and they'll change when they're given a different set of instructions.

What Oppenheimer doesn't talk about. but that picture illustrates so well, is what anti-feminists really feel is lost with what they call "contraceptive culture": men's god-given right to have a woman---perhaps several (though in a row, mostly)---who follow them around, worshipping their every move, submitting completely and joyfully. I suspect this fantasy never was a reality, but I suspect a lot of Christian fundamentalists have convinced themselves that giving women the power to say "no" to men is what made us so maddeningly unwilling to play the supplicant. No to sexual overtures, no to marriage, no to demands that we wait on you, and most importantly, no to letting your magical seed plant itself in our bodies whenever it wants. That's why I believe that modern conservative Christians don't worship Jesus so much as Sperm Magic. The last few paragraphs of this piece makes that clear:

It then occurred to me that a few decades ago, when evangelicals and Catholics were further apart on birth control, they were also pretty far apart on questions of salvation — evangelicals were quite clear that Catholics were going to hell.

So I asked Mr. Surratt if Mr. Santorum would have any trouble getting into heaven. His answer confirmed that for today’s conservative Christians, the differences between Protestant and Catholic have gotten narrow indeed.

“That’s a God deal,” the pastor told me. “That’s his deal to judge. I’m glad I don’t have his job.”

When the differences between fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics were about things like the worship of saints and transubstantiation, well, there were real differences there. Now they're coming together to worship their true god---Sperm Magic---in basically the same way---fighting against women's rights---and so there aren't any theological differences to fight over. The chumminess that follows is predictable enough. 

When I put the word out yesterday that I was wanting to hear from atheists what god they choose when believers inevitability claim they secretly pray, I got a bunch of different answers, and all were entertaining. There were few repeats, but one name kept coming up over and over again: Bast, also known as Bastet. I'll leave it to experts in ancient history to explain the signficance of this goddess, who was usually portrayed as simply being a cat (instead of being a person with a cat head). Ancient Egyptians are remembered fondly for many reasons, including the pyramids and Cleopatra, but their affection for cats is near the top of the list of reasons modern people think back on that culture and smile.

But the whole thing made me think: why not just cut out the middleman? Why not just pray directly to cats? Well, once that idea was in my head, I realized that a top ten list was in order.

Ten Reasons to Pray to Cats Instead of Gods

1) Cats are real. 

2) Because of this, cats have a marginally better chance of answering your prayers than gods do. For instance, if you pray specifically for purring or for someone to scratch your furniture, your cats can probably get that done for you. Not much else, of course, but something is better than nothing.

3) As my buddy Ross said, "Plus, the cuddling and the purring. They actually deliver on the promise of temporal comfort." Science proves him right!

4) Cats may pee on your bed, but they're not going to send you to hell for all eternity.

5) You'll be able to see with your own eyes that the cats appreciate your prayers, whereas gods tend to be notoriously silent with the gratitude. 

6) Cat offspring. God offspring. 'nuff said.

7) By praying to cats, you run no chance of praying to the same thing at the same time as that putrid douchebag Ross Douthat, who used Hitchens' death to write this horrible sentence: "My hope — for Hitchens, and for all of us, the living and the dead — is that now he finally knows why." The "why" in this case is why Christians believe---Douthat studiously ignores other religions making competing claims with his. But since Christians like Douthat believe that non-believers are going to hell, he basically just wished Hitchens was in hell. Maybe he's too stupid to grasp that, or maybe he thinks that you can sin against his god, but he'll let you in anyway so long as you showed proper contempt for women and Muslims. Who fucking knows? Either way, by praying to cats, you have nothing to do with that kind of mindlesss cruelty remade into "morality" by public displays of piety. 

8) Sure, cats enjoy murdering smaller creatures, but they eventually eat them, making good use of the proteins within. If you pray to gods, you have to believe that they make people suffer for no good reason whatsoever.

9) People who may not like cats or who prefer dogs may argue with you about aiming your prayers at cats, but they're unlikely to start a holy war.

10) Cats have never, as far as I know, been used to rationalize denying women reproductive control of their bodies, trapping women in the domestic sphere, or denying gay people their rights. Unlike many gods conjured by humans, cats have no opinion on what you wear, and certainly won't smite you for going about with your hair or your knees uncovered. 

I'm sure you all can think of more in comments!

Sigh. The one thing that makes a gleeful, Hitchens-esque pissing on Hitchens' grave less fun is all the god-botherers who are doing it wrong. I mean, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, as the authoritarian conformists who exploit every opportunity to preen about their imaginary sky friend display very little in the way of imagination or humor, but man, it's still a major bummer seeing "let's pretend the atheist wasn't an atheist". As described by the blogger Cuttlefish:

Inflamed hemorrhoid and commenter “Art Aficionado”, on NPR, on his third comment in the first eight on Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s piece on Hitchens (seriously, NPR, BBH? Were all the interns gone on college break?) writes “I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Hitchens prayed to God in his final moments. It’s very plausible.” He repeats this claim several times across the comments, in response to those who show him how unlikely this would be, and how irrelevant.

You commonly see this assumption with some believers that atheists secretly believe, and we're just "mad" and rebellious, and trying to get under their skin. But that in our quiet moments, we pray. 

To which I say: okay. If you believe that, I have one question for you. 

What god?

I mean, humans have invented thousands and for all we know, millions of deities. Since you have so many to pick from, and you, being a naughty atheists, aren't beholden to the one you inherited at birth, the field is wide open. Personally, for my secret moments of desperate prayer that I supposedly have, I'm definitely not going to go with the Christian god, who is mainly characterized in the Bible as a patriarchal dick. Seriously, fuck that guy. 

Personally, I feel that if I am secretly praying (I'm not), the god I'm going with is Tefnut, the Egyptian goddess of moisture. Some of you might find it strange to have a goddess of moisture, but if you grew up in a desert, like I did, it starts to make a little more sense. If it's really windy out, having Tefnut come through with a little extra saliva generation is quite welcome. Tefnut was created by a solar god masturbating, though it's unclear if he snowballed himself first, or if he just shot her and her twin brother Shu directly out of his penis. Since it's all made-up anyway, I say, whatever you want. Just remember, she's a goddess of body fluids, the moister and stickier, the better. The important thing is that Tefnut is a very moist lady with a head of a lion. By far, she's more interesting that dour old Bible-god, with his commandments and remarkably dry exterior. So should I ever, as some believers claim atheists must, be overwhelmed with a desire to pray, I'm skipping over that Christian stuff and hocking one up for Tefnut. 

Since you atheists out there are secretly praying, to what gods are you praying?

PZ has a blog post up about new research showing---no big surprise---that religious people actually believe in all that magic stuff they say they believe in. I wasn't aware that this was controversial, but then again, I've met people who sit around reading religious texts where others can't see them, which I figure is the most relevant measure.

Julian Baggini discovers that believers believe. Baggini is an atheist who has in the past sniped at the New Atheists a fair bit; he’s argued that we’re an uninformed bunch who rail against straw man theism, because, he has argued, most practitioners of religion are followers of practice, not belief — they go to church for ritual and community, and all the dogma is dispensable. Now he has surveyed a few hundred believers, and learned that they actually do think the superstitious stories they have been told are very important.......

I think I’d call this the Atheist Delusion. Many of us find it really hard to believe that Christians actually believe that nonsense about Jesus rising from the dead and insisting that faith is required to pass through the gates of a magical place in the sky after we’re dead; we struggle to find a rational reason why friends and family are clinging to these bizarre ideas, and we say to ourselves, “oh, all of her friends are at church” or “he uses church to make business contacts” or “it’s a comforting tradition from their childhood”, but no, it’s deeper than that: we have to take them at their word, and recognize that most people who go to church actually do so because they genuinely believe in all that stuff laid out in the Nicene Creed.

Since this is a both/and blog, I thought I'd split the baby here.  It is both true that believers believe, and that they participate in religion for social reasons. I don't see these things as mutually exclusive. It's one of the unfortunate tricks of human psychology that we believe things in no small part because that's what we're expected to believe, or because we want to believe. Which are kind of the same thing, actually. People want to believe what they're expected to believe, because that makes it easier to get along. You aren't in conflict with others because of your beliefs, and you get all sorts of social rewards. The fear of losing that causes people to banish doubts about their beliefs when they creep into their mind. Some people are outliers, and just habitually question common wisdom, but not most people. 

It's not just religion where we see this. It's not a coincidence that conservative ideals are concentrated in some communities and liberal ones in others. It's not just that people seek out like-minded people, though that is part of it. It's also that people tend to go along with the prevailing wisdom. 

Let's think of a relatively small example of how this works. Say, you're living in a conservative community and getting married. Your inclination is to keep your name, because it initially seems like the most logical option. It will cause less strife in your professional life, make it easier for people to find you on Facebook, and help you avoid excessive paperwork. But then the pressure starts. It might not be overt; your fiance may just look disappointed and say in a despondent voice, "Well, if it's what you really want." Your friends look startled, as if you're a freak. Your soon-to-be in-laws wonder aloud how you're going to name the children. Your mother calls and says that it would be nice if you weren't rubbing everyone's noses in what a feminist you are. Eventually, the strife gets to be a bit much. You start to think that it would just be easier to change your name. Once you've made the decision, being a human being, you start to rationalize it. You say, "My husband told me it was my decision, and it was! I wanted everyone to have the same last name. I don't like my last name anyway." 

The word "rationalize" has unpleasant connotations, but in fact, most people rationalize most decisions most of the time. For instance, I chose to grab the Nation magazine instead of the American Prospect on my way to the gym today. God only knows why. The real reason was probably beyond silly; maybe it was just closer to my hand and I was distracted. But as soon as I picked it up, I said to myself, "Huh, the articles look really interesting today. They are covering something I'm really in the mood to read." I suspect I would have found the Prospect just as interesting if I'd grabbed it instead; I do like both magazines a lot. 

The problem with rationalization is that it gets intense when the stakes for abandoning a decision are high. If I read the Prospect tomorrow and find I like it better, nothing is lost. I may even forget that I made a decision at all. But if I changed my name, and someone challenged that, my sense of self-esteem (I like to think of myself as an independent person, as do most), would be threatened. So would the estimation of my husband as a non-selfish spouse who puts my interests ahead of his male entitlement. So I double down with my rationalizations, to avoid cognitive dissonance. With religion, the stakes are really high for a number of people. Their family, marriage, sense of self, and community may be entirely built on it. 

So, perversely, New Atheists and the critics of them are both right. We need to understand that people believe because of social pressures. But that doesn't mean we should shut up when criticizing religion. Loud criticisms of religion aren't going to be effective on most people who have a lot invested in religion, but they are incredibly effective on people who have little investment. I use myself as an example. I never went to church as a kid, not really. I was never confirmed. My parents told me to believe whatever I wanted. The few times I went to church, I found the process and people alienating. So when I was presented with atheist arguments, I had no reason to reject them out of hand. Other people I've spoken to were very religious and came around, and it's usually because they had an alienating experience with religion that made them more open to atheist arguments. By making direct, logical arguments against religion and gods, atheists create opportunities for people who have low investment in religion or a crisis in faith to come around. But we'd be mistaken if we didn't think that social pressures played a major role in this, and also sought ways to relieve those pressures on people, so they don't feel they need to believe. 

I'm a little disappointed that none of the atheist blogs I read have addressed the controversy over Lowe's pulling their advertising from the show All-American Muslim, after being deluged with mail from a bunch of hateful Christian bigots. Now, there's nothing I hate more than people trying to score points by claiming that since you didn't blog about X, you must not care about X. I'm not doing that by any means; I'm sure a lot of atheist bloggers saw the story and took a pass because they didn't really think it falls in their wheelhouse. I get that. A lot of atheists probably think, "Well, we don't believe in Islam, so it seems a little strange to defend people who do," even if you do think that Lowe's did a really stupid, vile thing. But I would argue that this occasion is a perfect opportunity for atheists to speak out on behalf of the program and against the bigots who are trying to get it off the air. So I put a quick list of three ways that speaking out on this issue is not only the right thing to do, but to the benefit of atheist activists.

1) Hated religious minorities should stick together. Muslims are, after all, the group competing with atheists for the title of Most Hated and Misunderstood Religious Minority. So we have that in common with them. But, more importantly, secularism is something that benefits way more than people who don't believe in a god or gods. The rights to individual conscience and to not have the government favoring Christianity above other beliefs help Muslims out just as much as atheists, and by defending All-American Muslim, we can send the signal that we're open to working for a secular government for the good of all. Religious freedom should be our number one priority, because without it, we're shit out of luck actually getting people to listen to our arguments about why god claims are illogical and should be abandoned.

2) To show that there's a difference between ideas and people. Atheists are often being accused of oppressing Christians when we try to boot religion out of politics or criticize religious ideas.We deny this, repeatedly, by pointing out that there's a difference between ideas and people, and saying, "You are wrong about religion" is not the same thing as saying, "You're a bad person". By vigorously defending Muslims as people, and pointing out that most Muslims are ordinary people just like most Christians, Jews, and atheists, we send a signal that we really do get the difference between criticizing a belief and harboring bigotry against a person. 

3) Increased understanding of different religions is good for atheism. I suspect there's two reasons that Christian groups oppose All-American Muslim. One is that they hate Muslims, and fear that their followers might feel their bigotry lessen in face of evidence that Muslims are mostly ordinary and downright boring folks like the rest of us. But the other is that they fear their followers discovering that perfectly nice, normal people believe in Islam in the same way that Christians believe in Christianity. That realization---that different religions make claims that directly contradict each other, so they can't all be true---is the first step on the path to atheism. The next realization is that what someone believes, religion-wise, is rarely due to having weighed various beliefs against each other and choosing the correct one, but basically is a matter of what religion your parents believed in when you were born. Since your average Muslim and average Christian believe what they believe for exactly the same reasons---i.e., that's what they were always told---some Christians exposed to this idea will start to think about their own beliefs and why they hold them. Which, in turn, will cause some to de-convert. Granted, that path isn't the common one, because  most people have defenses and rationalizations that keep them from really thinking this through, but it will be true for some. I firmly believe that a major reason non-belief is on the rise in the U.S. is because of our increasing religious diversity. The more you're exposed to competing faith-based claims about the world, the more likely you are to decide that none of them actually has the answers. So, weird as it is to say this, I think that one of the best ways to grow the atheist movement is to educate  more Americans about what non-Christian religions actually believe. 

Plus, like I said at XX Factor, all of us benefit if non-exploitative reality TV aimed at actually educating people gets produced, instead of the crap that fills the airwaves now. 

Notable Christian (and unnotable quarterback) Tim Tebow is everyone's favorite topic of sports conversation, and, more importantly, the topic of this exact conversation over and over again:

GUY: "God, Tim Tebow is shitty."

OTHER GUY: "He keeps winning!"

GUY: "He throw ten passes a game, connects on four of them, and the Broncos' defense does all the work to keep them in the game so that he can 'drive them to victory.' He's such a sanctimonious toolbox."

OTHER GUY: "Oh, so you hate him for being Christian!"

GUY: "No, I hate him for being bad at his job and still having thousands upon thousands of people who cheer for him because he bows down in reflective prayer every time a camera's around. I hate him because he's played awful team after awful team, barely beat them with help from a defense that has to work its ass off every week, and he's still supposed to be a star despite being Mark Sanchez with a Jesus piece."

OTHER GUY: "I think that says more about you than about him."

It's that last line that's utterly infuriating. The NFL is rife with quarterbacks who've won despite not adding much to their teams - they're competent guys who aren't asked to do much and deliver exactly that. Trent Dilfer won Super Bowl XXXV as the 31st-ranked quarterback in the league, because he had a great defense.  Terry Bradshaw is a hall of famer whose career QB rating is 70.9 - he was basically just good enough to not screw up his team's amazing defense. Brad Johnson won a championship with the Buccaneers, mainly because of (you guessed it) his team's stellar defense.

The phenomenon of mediocre game managers steering teams to victory is nothing new. But in the case of Tebow, it is. You placing him in that category says more about you than about him...as Jen Floyd Engel is happy to remind us.

What if Tim Tebow were a Muslim?

Imagine for a second, the Denver Broncos quarterback is a devout follower of Islam, sincere and principled in his beliefs and thus bowed toward Mecca to celebrate touchdowns. Now imagine if Detroit Lions players Stephen Tulloch and Tony Scheffler mockingly bowed toward Mecca, too, after tackling him for a loss or scoring a touchdown, just like what happened Sunday.

I know what would happen. All hell would break loose.

Stinging indictments issued by sports columnists. At least a few outraged religious leaders chiming in on his behalf. Depending on what else had happened that day, they might have a chance at becoming Keith Olbermann's Worst Person In The World.

And there would be apologies. Oh, Lord, would there be apologies — by players, by coaches, possibly by ownership with a tiny chance of a statement from NFL commish Roger Goodell.

You cannot mock Muslim faith, not in this country, not anywhere really.

Awww...she has a sad because Muslims don't get mocked for being kind of crappy athletes whose popularity is due entirely to their preening displays of faith. Here's a list of famous Muslim athletes. In case you were wondering, not a one of them followed up scoring a basket or having a good round by pulling out a mat and praying to Mecca, because to do such a thing would have been kind of dickish. 

His religious fervor is an easy target for the vitriol spewed from those who dislike him, but the reasons are much deeper than that. From his advocacy of abstinence to his infamous “You will never see another team play this hard” speech at Florida, it is like he is too good to be true. He is too nice, and thereby we want him to trip up so we can feel better. We want him to be revealed as a hypocrite, and when that fails to happen, we settle for gleefully celebrating his failures on the football field. And why? Because he dares to say thanks?

No. It's because he's not that good. And, more importantly, it's because he's built up this cult of personality that tells us we must root for his success because he's such a good person and, by extension, such a better person than us. It's not the negative reaction to Tebow that's an indication of moral weakness or a character flaw; it's the breathless worship and reflexive moral superiority that we're supposed to imbue to the 47.5% of passes he completes. 

What this whole repeating cycle of Tebow — rip his game, mock his faith, rise to his defense, repeat — has revealed about religious discourse in America is ugly. We have become so enamored of politically correct dogma that we protect every minority from even the slightest blush of insensitivity while letting the very institutions that the majority holds dear to be ridiculed. And this defense that Tebow invites such scrutiny with his willingness to publicly live as he privately believes calls into question what exactly it is we value.

And herein lies the problem. Tim Tebow's value to people like Engel isn't the charity work he does. It isn't to the teammates he supports, or the fans he sends his love to. Tebow's value is that he lets people like Engel feel like enlightened victims of a society that doesn't see how good and pure she is. Tebow is the newest scapegoat in an old saga: the besiegement of true believers (or those who want to be true believers) by society at large. 

If there is a problem with mocking Tim Tebow, it's that he makes it too easy. He wants the slings and arrows of the world trained on him when he does Super Bowl commercials for Focus on the Family; he is the victim whenever someone makes fun of his signature kneel. That victimization feeds into the legend of Tebow and his flock, and makes him all the stronger even as he continues to be a poor man's Donovan McNabb (who is, at this point, his own poor man's Donovan McNabb). It doesn't matter what he does on the field, it just matters that he's morally superior while he does it.

Tim Tebow, as far as I can tell, isn't a bad guy. He's just a sanctimonious pseudo-dick whom a great number of people think can do no wrong because Ephesians is rattling around his head instead of his receiver's route. His sin isn't bowing to God on the field; it's empowering religious and cultural forces who've spent decades mercilessly mocking others to, once again, claim they're the victims in all of this.

Back from Skepticon and still trying to catch up! Fun was had by all, mostly because of the onstage talks and offstage conversations, but there was a very exciting incident that also happened during the conference. 

For those who can't read it, it says "Skepticon is NOT welcomed to my Christian Business." This was very exciting for we atheists at Skepticon, since clear-cut proof of overt discrimination is so hard to come by in our era of everyone pretending to be tolerant even while promoting intolerance, and almost every blogger who saw this wrote a post about it, except perhaps myself and Lindsay Beyerstein. The owner has since apologized for his hasty actions, and now there's a raging debate over whether or not he should be forgiven or not. I participated a little, since I generally think that we can't move forward on progressive issues if we don't accept sincere apologies from people who've been overtly prejudiced or bigoted, and allowed that human beings can and do grow. But now I realize that I kind of don't give a shit, on a fundamental level. I just don't see this sort of thing as bigotry in the same way that I would see, say, a sign that says "No Muslims allowed" as bigotry. Before you crap your pants and write angry letters, let me explain.

Thing is, I don't see atheism and especially atheist activism as being primarily about protecting the rights of atheists as a group. I think a lot of people prefer that model, because it's a nice, comfortable one that makes it easy to align it with civil rights, gay rights, and feminism. The problem with it is that unlike with those other situations, is that the argument for mutual tolerance, nay, acceptance, is a lot easier to make when it comes to religious groups, racial groups, sexual orientation, and gender. Gay rights is no real threat to straight people. Women having rights isn't anti-male. Black power doesn't mean white people can't hold jobs or go to school anymore. Accepting Muslims into your community doesn't mean you can't be Christian anymore. That conservatives have to lie and claim these things are true just shows how empty their actual arguments are. 

I suppose if atheists were willing as a group to relegate atheism to being just another religious belief, then we could probably limit ourselves to using the oppression/rights model of activism, though it would really seem kind of silly since atheists---unlike women, people of color, or gays---tend to be better-educated and wealthier than the dominant group. But we're not content to allow ourselves to be defined as a religious group. On the contrary, the whole point of atheism is that it's not religious. We tend to argue that there isn't a god or gods. We argue that religion is a hypothesis on how the world works, and we criticize it. While many atheists do in fact get oppressed when they speak out, it's not usually because they're atheists per se, but because of what they're doing, which is criticizing religion. This may seem like a distinction without difference to you, but I really don't think that it is, to myself or to most Americans. I make a similiar distinction between oppression against women and hostility to feminism. They're related in a lot of ways, but that someone on a blog makes rape threats at me because he disagrees with my ideas is different than when some guy sexually harasses me on the street because he can see that I'm a lady. In one case, they're arguing---crudely, unfairly, and pointlessly---with an idea and in the latter they're just hating on me for what I am. These distinctions, by the way, are an excellent way to maintain my sanity.

It's important to understand that atheists scare religious people not because we're different, in other words, but because our beliefs do literally threaten their own. We don't simply present ourselves as another religious group whose beliefs can be kept to ourselves. We openly and unabashedly argue that religion is toxic and we'd like to see it end, just as we believe sexism and racism are toxic and should end. This is an argument over what people believe, not who they are. Religious people frustrate us to no end because they deliberately conflate "what I believe" with "who I am"---this guy with the sign did so---and I think it's a bad idea to do exactly the same thing out of expedience. In order to maintain that narrative, we would pretty much have to shut up about how religion is illogical and stupid, so that we can make this about identity and not arguments. In a narrow sense, this guy was bigoted because he refused to serve the gelato, but as soon as he stopped doing that and apologized, I think "bigotry" is the wrong framework to employ. Now I think it's more valuable to talk about why it is that atheism is such a threat, and the reason is that atheism as an idea is threatening, no matter how much atheists as people can get along with our neighbors in day-to-day interactions. 

Here's some more thoughts from earlier this year on why these distinctions are very important and shouldn't be blurred. Again, Christians are the first to scream "bigotry!" if you criticize their ideas, and so we atheists should be mindful not to imitate the worst aspects of our opposition. 

Since I know you readers are deeply interested in fighting the good fight for social justice in the bedrooms and parlors of this nation, I'm sure you've seen this horrible video:

This was posted by Hillary Adams, whose father is Judge William Adams, who is a judge for Aransas County, which is in the Gulf region of Texas. Adams admits that it's him in the video, and in the style of abusers everywhere, is leaning on the "just a scratch" excuse, as well as skepticism-inducing claims that his behavior here is somehow out of character. (Compare to Cain's statements this past week for another example of how this works.) No one is buying it, of course, since we all see with our eyes how hard he whipped his daughter with the belt. Additionally, since Hillary set the camera up in her room specifically to capture this, we have to assume a) that this had happened enough before to compel that choice and b) that she was getting really good at predicting when he would go off like this. Research into domestic violence shows that it's not uncommon for victims to become well-attuned to when their abusers have a desire to whip the shit out of someone, and they do in fact get good at predicting it. This also belies the abusers' claim that it's a matter of "losing your temper", but that they are in control of their emotions. 

When something like this happens, it's important to put it into context so people realize that behavior like this is not isolated or unusual, sadly. Jill has addressed how common it is for people with disabilities, who are often especially dependent on caregivers, to suffer abuse like this. Hillary has stated that Adams abused all his family members, but it seems he had a special hankering for whipping his only daughter, who happens to suffer from cerebal palsy, so we can see how it fits into this pattern. I want to add to this, and discuss abuse in the context of fundamentalist Christianity. 

Now, I couldn't find any religious information about Judge Adams, but he is a Republican, raising the chances to "high" that he's an evangelical Christian. More importantly, if you watch the video---which I only recommend you do if you have the stomach for this sort of thing---one thing will really jump out at you if you follow the workings of the Christian right. Adams keeps using somewhat strange terms like "disobedient" and "submission". For secular people, even those who have witnessed abuse, it's really rare to see someone spell out their goals of inducing submission and obedience. (Or maybe not. I'm sure commenters have some thoughts.) Other language is employed, in no small part because abusers also have to enact a mindfuck on their victims, and convince them that the abuse isn't somehow apart from the values of their time, which for secular people and moderate religious people include equality and individuality. But the words "obedience" and "submission" are flung around Christian right circles without any hesitation. When speaking to outsiders, they often try to play that awful-sounding language off as something not as bad as it sounds. Their schtick is to pretend that they're just using archaic words for the funsies, but when they say something like "submission", they don't really mean submission. (Michele Bachmann tried this tactic when asked about her pride in being submissive to her husband.) But they do mean it. It's impossible to believe otherwise, when you're reading, say, James Dobson extolling the virtues of whipping your kids into submission, or Christian housewives on blogs discussing how much of a struggle it is to frame their legitimate concerns into a submissive framework where even asking questions can sometimes be seen as an affront to a man's godly right to have the final say over household manners. They do in fact believe in a strict hierarchy of power in the household, and in fact, I would argue that fighting against feminist progress on the home front is their main organizing principle. 

Spanking your children is therefore a big fucking deal to the Christian right. I would honestly say, reading their materials, that being able to whip your children at will is number two in their list of political concerns, right after abortion. Gay marriage was rising on that list for awhile, but it doesn't seem to have the endurance that fears that the government is going to take their spanking rights away do. In fact, the Christian right has been successful at blocking the United States from ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children. (We are the only nation besides Somalia not to ratify it.) Within Christian right circles, enthusiasm for spanking is really, really high. At Stuff Christian Culture Likes, the blogger describes the general pro-spanking attitudes:

They don't feel that spanking is the same thing as hitting. They will defend it to their dying breath. Christian culture is very concerned that the government may take away their right to spank.

Pretty much all right wing Christian child-rearing manuals are paens to beating your children. And I mean beating. If confronted about this, fundies tend to backpedal and play off their obsession with spanking as if it's the same thing as a mild pat on the ass delivered to a toddler who has tried to run out in traffic or something. But they lean on the "rod" talk in the Bible, which means they are big on using weapons to beat your children. James Dobson believes you should beat children with a paddle or a tree branch, which he has somehow managed to rationalize into "loving" behavior. And he's probably the most mainstream! Other, less popular family "advice" books get even more elaborate when it comes to describing how to select the weapons to use against someone so much smaller than you. Now, that doesn't mean that all or even most fundamentalist Christians whip the shit out of their kids like this guy did. However, once you've created a cultural expectation that abusing your children is not only acceptable but expected, you can expect people to take it to the next level. Outside of the cursing and the threats to hit her in the face, in fact, there's not much in this video that falls outside of the Christian right prescriptions for "disciplining" a child.

Regardless of Judge Adams' personal beliefs, Christian right ideas about family hierarchy and paranoia that the government is coming to take away their "spanking" rights (I hate calling it "spanking", which allows people to equate it with painless bottom pats, which I still think aren't such a great idea but can't be meaningfully compared to whippings in any way) are the water that conservatives are swimming in when it comes to the Bible Belt. That context needs to be understood when looking at this video. It's not enough to be angry with Judge Adams and call for him to leave his job. We need to look at an entire culture that teaches that beating your children is a good thing to do.

By the way, I want to quickly address the people who are all over internet defending Adams by saying, "I was whipped and I turned out okay." Using the surival skills of victims to condone abuse is not okay. That's like saying it's okay to throw yourself downstairs because two years from now, that broken leg will be completely healed. The here and now counts as much as the later. A child is more than the adult they will become. They are a human being now, and their pain and suffering now matters. 

Yesterday I posted a card from Post Secret and addressed my anger at how religious bullshit about suicides had caused unnecessary grief and questioning of the motives of people who jumped from the WTC instead of stay in the building to burn to death.  I pointed out that the claim that making up gods is a good thing because the lies "comfort" people is objectively false, since religion is just as likely---often more likely---to use the tremendous power to make shit up and have people just believe it in order to control people through theological hand-wringing about sin that eclipses basic compassion and common sense.  This is an objective fact, of course.  Religion is a well-known instiller of sexual phobias, unquestioned prejudices, and of course, traumatizing people with claims like "suicides go to hell". 

I suppose it was inevitable that people whose defensiveness about their attachment to fairy tales would take over the comments, even though making a criticism about genuine religion-induced trauma about your own ego might be something to pause before engaging in.  The two predictable responses were "Not my Nigel!" and "you can't prove that anyone actually said the 9/11 jumpers were going to hell!", which neatly elided the fact that many powerful religions do in fact teach that suicide sends you to hell, which I'd say is one of the most callous, vicious things I've ever heard, except that religions pour out so many cruel lies to believers that it's actually hard to say which one is the worst.  (I know Christianity the best, but I'm sure atheists who've abandoned other traditions can come up with their own.) As for the first criticism, it's both a strawman and a red herring.  I never said that all religions were equally immoral; some objectively do temper their teachings with common sense morality, though they do so while often reserving the right to usurp common sense morality and basic human decency with theological wankery. The point was never "all religions are the same", but that when you're just making shit up, you can say stuff that's traumatic as well as comforting, and so this notion that religion is okay even if it's not true because it comforts doesn't comport with the realities. Objectively speaking, religious lies are used just as often---probably far more often---to control and shame than they are to uplift and comfort.  The argument that religion is okay because it comforts is based on the false belief that because you're lying you must be comforting, and that's simply not true.  Religious myths are just as often---probably more often---used to control and shame as they are to comfort.

Then there was the "nuh-uh!" argument, which is, "Nuh-uh! No one actually even worried for a moment that WTC jumpers were going to hell." This, of course, doesn't even really make sense because many churches already show callous disregard for their followers and teach the families of suicides that their beloveds are rotting in hell.  I don't doubt many religious leaders decided to make up an exception for 9/11 victims because not doing so is bad P.R., but let's not pretend it's because big, important religions are totally unwilling to traumatize their followers with images of hell as punishments for very normal human behaviors and sympathetic failings. 

Anyway, this is a long, roundabout way of saying that even the narrow "nuh-uh!" argument is false.  The guy who wrote the Post Secret card emailed me last night and sent a link to his Daily Kos post explaining his motives. In it, he mentions an Esquire article about the falling man, who was identified most tentatively as Norberto Hernandez, a pastry chef at Windows on the World.  Here are some of the reactions from Hernandez's traumatized family when they believed he could be the jumper:

He brought his print of Drew's photograph with him and showed it to Jacqueline Hernandez, the oldest of Norberto's three daughters. She looked briefly at the picture, then at Cheney, and ordered him to leave.

What Cheney remembers her saying, in her anger, in her offended grief: "That piece of shit is not my father."

Why would she say something so horrible about the man who leaped to his death?  The family's reaction when the Esquire reporter looked at the pictures more closely and determined it wasn't Norberto was illuminating:

She asks for copies of the pictures so that she can show them to the people who believed that Norberto jumped out a window, while Catherine sits on the step with her palm spread over her heart. "They said my father was going to hell because he jumped," she says. "On the Internet. They said my father was taken to hell with the devil. I don't know what I would have done if it was him. I would have had a nervous breakdown, I guess. They would have found me in a mental ward somewhere...."

There were a couple of reasons the Hernandez family couldn't stand the idea that Norberto had jumped, one of which is that they convinced themselves he was trying to escape a building from which there was no escaping.  But let's not play around and pretend that religious stigmatizing of suicide never came into play, and that religion is off the hook for this one. Theological wankery is all fun and games when it's abstract bullshitting, but when it comes to people's real life experiences, it can create unnecessary trauma. 

Greta Christina has a post on what I literally find the least interesting topic kicked around in atheist circles, the question of whether or not atheists should be "angry" or "friendly".  There's many variations of this argument, with some of the hardline friendly types suggesting that there's never any value to mocking religious beliefs, no matter how humorous they are, and hardline angry types minimizing some of the differences between some of the more liberal religious sorts and the fundies.  (I actually have a lot of respect for this, because it's a nice corrective to liberal Christians exaggerating the differences.) I'm linking Greta because she's got the only response to this that makes sense, which is basically "aw, fuck it, do what makes sense to you".  I've said this before, but it's worth repeating: when it comes to the promotion of any worldview or set of values, you need all sorts, barnstormers and pleasers, jokesters and earnest sorts.  Different styles make sense to different people, and the more diversity in your movement, the more ears you get. Riot Grrrls captured the imagination of would-be feminists who weren't so much into the power suits-style feminism or the hippie-feminism of the 70s, and that's a good thing.  

But I also reject the discussion because it's based on a false proposition, that there's a "right" way to persuade, some formula that will get people who aren't into your message to start listening.  This is a widespread delusion that spreads far beyond the atheist movement---it's part of the illusion of control---and I think it owes a lot to cultural paranoia about how advertisers and marketers manipulate us.  Well, they certainly intend to and they're often quite powerful at it, but it's important to realize that what any given message means is about 70% what the audience brings to it, and about 30% what the messager does, and that's if you're being unbelievably generous to the messenger.  Truly effective manipulation works with this limitation.  When manipulation works, it's about affecting an immediate behavioral choice, and it addresses already existing desires and beliefs to do so.  And even then, the most effective manipulations get say, 10-30% of people.  (Here's a good example.  Notice that it really only worked in influencing behaviors within a few hours, and it required tapping pre-existing beliefs to do so.)  There's no reason to believe that what advertisers do, which is to push pre-existing buttons to get impulsive decision-making, can be compared in a meaningful sense to what movements are doing, which is trying to change minds. 

Which isn't to say I think we should give up.  Historically, movements do have a good track record of changing minds.  But if you look at them honestly, you'll realize they did so in part by throwing all sorts of shit on the wall and seeing what sticks. It also depends on cultural context.  Movements take off in no small part because the culture around them shifts, making a larger percentage of the population open to their arguments.  Atheism shouldn't be any different in this regard.  

I think it would do the atheist movement well to remember that 95% of people who see a book titled "The God Delusion" and who pick it up are willng to be persuaded.  I definitely see that many atheists get this, since the discussions about growing the movement center around the assumption that people out there are asking questions.  But I don't see a lot of people making the important leap from there, which is realizing that because people who come to you are looking not to believe, how you present your message is just not that important.  At this point, people asking questions are just going to have a variety of tastes, and so the main thing is having a lot of variety in messaging so that different people can find the opening that makes the most sense to them.  But one thing I think is probably not worth our time too much is asking, "What does religion offer that we can replicate so that people who are deep into religion can be persuaded?"  I myself have asked this question, and now I really realize that it's bunk.  What religion offers is that it's what you've always had.  People tend to de-convert for two reasons: 1) their religions are so alienating they ran off or 2) they found themselves in a community where belief in the supernatural wasn't a prerequisite to get along with others, and so their need to believe faded away, making them open to atheist arguments.  Neither of these are within our control, though perhaps atheists would be wise to take a long view into investing more resources to grow communities where people stop feeling so much pressure to be religious.  

And completely off-topic, but I think worth considering is the distressing anti-satire critique that has formed on the left.  Anti-satire critique goes something like this: "Since some people who see a satirical send-up of their worldview will actually read it like an affirmation, satire is dangerous."  They usually cite the fact that many conservatives watch Stephen Colbert and believe him to be one of theirs for real.  This is again the illusion of control, and the false assumption that there's a message that can be crafted where the messenger has much more control over what the audience perceives.  What they fail to understand is that the counter-strategy to satire and irony, which is more earnest messaging, also misfires with a huge percentage of the audience.  A lot of people, like myself, have such an instinctual hatred of earnest pleading that the message behind it automatically becomes more suspicious because the messenger is hammering at it.  More importantly, what the audience brings to a message is exponentially more important than what the messenger brings.  The same conservatives who've convinced themselves that Colbert is one of theirs, if presented with a more earnest version of the same liberal messages, would roll their eyes and shut off the TV, making fun of how stupid and earnest liberals are.  There's really no way to construct  a message that will reach a hostile audience in the way that you hope it will.  The best you can do is keep talking and hope that people who are coming around find your particular style to be what they need to make the leap.  

There are two basic reactions from Vatican apologists you get when you write a pointed criticism of the dippy shit that the Catholic Church does: incoherent, bed-shitting rage and unbelievably sexist condescension.  Both reactions are hilarious but disturbing, because they tend to be effective at the ultimate goal, which is silencing critics of the church.  Most people really don't enjoy getting dog-piled and will think harder next time they dare suggest that the god-botherers are assholes.    But it's hard to decide which is a more fucked-up reaction.  On one hand, there's a fear factor in the incoherent rage response.  But the condescension is really over the top in the "silly girls can't be expected to understand stuff, which is why the church expects them to submit and stop asking questions" kind of way. 

Take this amusing head pat I got from Jennifer Fulwiler, who, despite being female, is MRA-level sexist. I think she literally touches on every single condescending stereotype about women: that we're emotional children, that we're easily deceived, that we're incredibly stupid, and above all, that we cannot make decisions on our own, but instead are natural followers who are just doing what we're told.  And that therefore it's a matter of giving women the correct masters, because women, being basically like dogs, don't really have free will or moral agency. 

And no, I'm not exaggerating. Let us examine:

Amanda Marcotte’s article in Slate about World Youth Day is making the rounds this week. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by suggesting that she was very upset when she wrote it. What was it about the event that got her so flustered?

Sure, lady, tell yourself I was flopped out on my bed, weeping like a child who has been told she has to clean her room before she goes outside. Actually, wait, no.  Actually, what was going on was I read the article about World Youth Day and thought, "Man, the pope is a real choad, isn't he? I can totally make fun of this."  I'm not saying if I was actually laughing at my own jokes while I wrote it, but let's just say it's happened before.  I'm also pretty sure that if I was "flustered", I wouldn't have written a piece that hit so close to home.  All these things seem really obvious from the piece, which has more of a "eat my poo" tone than a "waaaaaah the pope is a meanie" tone, but I'll bet Fulwiler's audience eats this crap up, because it fits their image of women as emotionally unstable children. 

There’s not a clear thesis to the piece, but it seems that the Church’s anti-abortion stance, emphasized when Pope Benedict offered forgiveness to women who have had abortions, is what triggered most of her angst.

Fulwiler can cram as many synonyms as possible in for "bitches be crazy", but it's not actually changing the fact that my tone was not upset, flustered, angsty, or in any way comparable to a teenage girl furiously writing about being rejected by a boy in her diary.  The correct adjectives are "amused" and "mocking".  And I think we all know what the thesis of the piece was---again, relying more on stereotypes of women as childish and not doing our homework properly!---but I'm happy to spell it out:  The pope is a dickbag, and increasing numbers of Catholics are clueing into that.  See, that wasn't so hard!

She then goes on to accurately enough describe the pro-choice view that women should have control over our bodies. But, you know, we've already established that she thinks women are just too damn stupid for choices. So now the fun really begins.  If you read anti-choice stuff, you can probably guess where she goes next.  That's right!  To "contraception is an evil conspiracy to hoodwink ladies, who are really really stupid".

And, like a lot of crazy ideas in our culture, we have contraception to thank for it. Now that there’s widespread access to contraception, our young women are told not that sex creates babies, but that unprotected sex creates babies. They’re assured that sex can be safely separated from its life-giving potential, as long as they use artificial birth control. From a secular point of view, it might sound like a nice, pro-woman message.

Only if you think women are full human beings who can make their own decisions, which she most certainly does not. She goes on to point out that contraception some times fails, citiing the Guttmacher (who she erroneously claims is owned by Planned Parenthood---they're actually an independent organization with no connection to Planned Parenthood) statistic that half of women who have abortions were using contraception at the time.  Actually, she misinterprets the data, saying, "were using contraception when they conceived their child."  Actually, the statistic is "Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant."  Of this group, only 13% of pill users and 14% of condom users report correct use. She's fudging the numbers to imply that contraception is less effective than it is.

But let's get back to the "women are incredibly stupid" portion of the program!

So, let’s summarize the situation: Women are handed contraception and assured that they need not have a second thought as to whether they’re ready for pregnancy. Then, when their birth control method fails, they’re encouraged to undergo a painful medical procedure performed on the most sensitive part of their bodies.

Because you know what isn't even a remotely painful event in the most sensitive part of your body?  Childbirth.  Man, she not only thinks women are stupid, but that her audience is stupid.  I'm beginning to think she's just projecting a personal problem on everyone in sight.

I love the way she characterizes how contraception and abortions happen.  It's not that women seek these things out!  No, the contraception man comes to your door and hands you your bag of contraception.  Prior to then, it would have never occured you to do something like put a penis in your vagina.  But suddenly, without even thinking about it, you're rolling a condom on a penis and boom! Next thing you know, pregnant.  And then the abortion posse shows up to your house and takes you to the clinic.  You probably didn't even realize that you'd get a baby if you didn't go with them. Because you have no will or mind of your own. 

And so, to Amanda Marcotte and others like her, I would say, as I’ve said before: You’re right to be angry. You are correct in sensing that women’s freedom is being taken away. You’re just wrong to blame the Church. Not only does it not “punish female sexuality,” but it’s one of the few voices in our culture that respects it.

Yeah, they respect it so much that they'll respectfully force a 9-year-old to bear a rapist's child. 

Seriously, she has a strange view of respecting women: treat them like overgrown children, portray them as having no real will of their own, condescendingly tell us we have no understanding of our own lives and relationships, and push for laws that "respect" 78,000 women into their graves a year.  I think I'll stick with the old-fashioned definition of "respect" that involves treating women like grown adults who should have the right to make important decisions about their own lives. 

Also, because I know it's important to Jennifer Fulwiler, here's the thesis of this post: Jennifer Fulwiler is a sex-phobic, misogynist crank who does a poor job concealing her contempt for all women besides herself with condescending head pat tone. And she can eat my poo. 

Earlier today, I made fun of the Vatican for offering a 6-day window of opportunity to get yourself to Madrid for World Youth Day, and get absolution for your abortion so that you don't have to go to hell.  This sort of thing is catnip for me---misogyny plus bone-headedness plus religious nonsense!---and so I blogged about it for XX Factor, making a special note of how the Vatican's backwards teachings about abortion and contraception are both driving off believers and causing those remaining to basically ignore Church teachings and do what they want anyway.  I argued that the options already being taken by American Catholics---leave, or stay but do what you want---struck me as much better reactions to the Vatican's vicious misogyny than busting your ass trying to get forgiveness for doing something that wasn't wrong to begin with.  The church is wrong about reproductive health; the majority of American Catholics (I'm limiting my remarks to this country because that's what I'm familiar with, though it's worth noting that Spain, where the event is being held, has a high abortion rate, too) who are pro-choice and pro-contraception, are right.

This point of view brought down the inevitable calvacade of people claiming that I "hate" Catholics.  The most amusing of these accusations came from Michael Doughtery, who called me a "Know Nothing", and then when I challenged him on it, was unable to really explain how my view---that the Catholic Church is a corrupt institution that Catholics are wisely rejecting---has anything to do with the virulent opposition to immigration from Catholic countries that gave birth to the actual Know Nothing Party.  I remain firm in my belief that there's a difference between criticizing a church (an institution), an ideology, and a group of people grouped by ethnicity or religious heritage.  I think these distinctions are important, though I suppose that I, as a white person who, like Doughtery, has an "ethnic Catholic" last name that would have attracted negative opinions from Know Nothings, can sympathize some with his concerns that an antebellum political party could mean trouble for us. None of my readings on Know Nothings inclines me to think that they'd be open to my arguments that I'm not Catholic, but atheist.  

But even though the Know Nothing Party fell apart during the Civil War, I do think it's important for people to know about the Know Nothings, who did have a long-term negative impact on our nation and who had attitudes that are still very strong in our current political culture.  Here's a helpful About page that details out who the Know-Nothings were:

The Know-Nothings and their anti-immigrant and anti-Irish fervor became a popular movement for a time. Lithographs sold in the 1850s depict a young man with the caption, "Uncle Sam's Youngest Son, Citizen Know Nothing." The Library of Congress, which holds a copy of such a print, describes it by noting the portrait is "representing the nativist ideal of the Know Nothing Party."...

Lincoln noted that if the Know-Nothings ever took power, the Declaration of Independence would have to be amended to say that all men are created equal "except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." Lincoln went on to say he would rather emigrate to Russia, where despotism is out in the open, then live in such an America.

The basic premise of the party was a strong, if not virulent, stand against immigration and immigrants. Know-Nothing candidates had to be born in the United States. And there was also a concerted effort to agitate to change the laws so that only immigrants who had lived in the US for 25 years could become citizens.

Hmmmm..... I do think there is a modern equivalent of this heated opposition to immigration from a heavily Catholic country.  It's not the Irish that are hated now so much as Mexicans, however.  I'm not really seeing it come from myself.  In fact, I have a solid public record of avid support for the immigrants who I believe are being unfairly maligned.  

I do see some people, however, who have inherited this tradition of hostility to immigrants and claims that said immigrants are too different to assimilate and therefore must be kept out of our borders. Contrast the Republican Party platform with regards to the new Irish, i.e. Mexican immigrants, with the Democratic platform regarding the same group of people.  The GOP insists on treating immigrants like a threat to our way of life to be dealt with by fences, severe penalties, and using quotas to get "desireable" immigrants in while leaving "undesirable" ones out---which was exactly what the Know-Nothings wanted!  Democrats are still to the right of my views of immigration, but they have a much better platform, emphasizing making it easier for people to immigrate here and making living conditions for immigrants much better.  I'm all for that!  Unlike the Know-Nothings, I believe the immigrants from the heavily Catholic country south of us are a net gain for our society, and I'm grateful for a childhood spent on the border between these two great nations.

The Know Nothings engaged in some ugly stereotyping of their new Catholic, immigrant neighbors.  They treated Catholic immigrants like they were strange weirdos they had nothing in common with, portraying them as dirty, rowdy, drunken and unable to assimilate. They especially denied that Catholics had the ability to make up their own minds on political issues, but instead were in the thrall of Catholic teachings.  This view existed in some form until John Kennedy was elected President.  

So it's a fair question: Do I believe that American Catholics are an intelligent, independent-minded, diverse people who one shouldn't indulge in stereotypes about?  Let's look at the post in question:

If that currently seems like too high a mountain to climb, since you really don't know what you'd do with all your new free time on Sunday mornings, you can also just stay with the Church and pointedly ignore the misogyny while keeping your mouth shut about your conflicting views and behaviors. This option is also wildly popular. Twenty-eight percent of women getting abortions identify as Catholic, which is actually higher than the percentage of Americans overall who are Catholic. I'm not seeing the Vatican excommunicating them all, so that's a lot of women telling their doctors they're Catholic but not telling their priests that they've had abortions. And even though the Vatican claims that contraception is a no-no, 98 percent of Catholic women just ignore that ignorant edict and use it anyway. If being an American Catholic meant doing what the church tells you to do, there wouldn't be any American Catholics.

Hmmmm.... Reading that paragraph three or four times over, I keep getting the feeling that what I'm actually saying is that American Catholics aren't beholden to the church and tend to prefer their own personal authority over church teachings.  Now, I will go a step further and say that even if American Catholics tended to be more obedient to church teachings, I still wouldn't criticize them as a group.  That's their business, not mine.  Now if a group fights legal abortion or contraception, I retain the right to fight for my religious freedom not to have their dogma pushed on me by law.  But honestly, American Catholics aren't, as a people, doing that.  They basically see these things the same as non-Catholics, in roughly the same numbers.  The only people I see actually getting essentialist about Catholics are religious extremists trying to claim you can't be a "real" Catholic and pro-choice. 

Doughtery, in a fit of high emotion, compared criticizing the church's teachings and politics to burning down a Catholic church.  The question is, do I have a public record of beliefs about the right of religious people to have places to gather and worship, even if I disagree with their religion's teachings? Why yes, I do!  I have spoken out repeatedly about people who use terror and political pressure to intimidate people out of freely worshipping.  I don't think anyone is out of line for trying to persuade others to their point of view, but I believe that should occur strictly in the world of intellectual discourse.  Anyway, I'm skeptical that most religious bigotry is rooted in actual religious differences, but is more like that of the Know-Nothings, intertwined in ethnic and class hatreds, and religions is only used as a weapon in these deeper battles.  

As someone who gets hate mails and threats for my religious beliefs (that there aren't gods and aren't souls---a man who threatened to kill me and many others roughly a dozen times a day because we don't believe in god has finally been arrested), I'm actually acutely aware of how this all works.  But as someone who isn't a drama queen or interested in playing the victim, I'm extremely outspoken on drawing a big, thick line between the criticism of beliefs---even in colorful language---and discriminating against actual people.  In my experience, people who conflate the two are being intellectually dishonest in purpose of some larger agenda. 

I love most of this review of the double episode of "Louie" by Alyssa Rosenberg, but I have to object to this:

I should note that I tend to hold jokes made by liberals about evangelical Christians to a higher standard. If you’re going to venture into an arena of humor where it’s easy to take low roads and cheap shots and still be rewarded fairly handsomely for it by your audience.

Now maybe Alyssa objects generally to low roads, and expects all humor to be on a higher plane, but I see this attitude a lot coming from liberals, and I think it's coming from the wrong place.  It's generally coming from a mistaken belief that mocking evangelicals (really, fundamentalists) is punching down.  Liberals who don't get a lot of direct exposure to fundamentalists, in other words, buy fundamentalist myths about themselves: that they're outcast, that they lack social power and wealth, that they're somehow underpriivileged as a group.  Which goes back to what I was saying yesterday, about the illusion that the Tea Party is predominantly economically stressed people.  In reality, Tea Partiers tend to be wealthier than average.  

And for all their posturing, fundamentalists are not oppressed.  On the contrary!  Their political power outstrips their numbers, to begin with.  But more importantly, they hold often unchecked power in red state communities.  Actually walking through a parking lot of a megachurch on a Sunday morning will do a lot to quell any misconceptions that they're just earnest, beleaguered, underprivileged people who happen to have kooky beliefs.  Far from being the oppressed class, they are they are the oppressors.  In their communities, they terrorize queer people, atheists, anyone perceived as outside their norms, and sexually active women, even those sexually active women sitting in their pews.  In the South, Bible-thumping is also intertwined with racism and the continued devotion to segregation in many communities.  I think a lot of liberals who haven't done much time in these areas think of fundamentalists as ruling the trailer parks, but in reality, they rule the suburbs that are stuffed with McMansions. Believe me; for a lot of us when I was living  in Austin who are definitely on the outs with that community, if we found ourselves stepping outside of the city limits into the suburbs that are ruled by Bible-thumpers, we made damn sure to minimize our time there.  For much of the audience of any TV show or comedian that mocks fundies, a shot across the chin to fundamentalists is big time punching up.  What outsiders might perceive as a low road could save the life of young people stuck in these communities who question evangelical beliefs. 

They have social, political, and economic weight.  The only thing fundamentalists don't have is cool.  Of course, the social capital of cool is often complicated, since so much of cool comes from subcultures that have no social capital outside of cool.  Cool is a very real threat to fundamentalist communities and their ability to pass on their beliefs to their young, which is why they spend so much time trying to keep their young separated from pop music and youth fashion.  But so what?  Cool is really the only weapon we have against a group of people that actively and gleefully oppresses other classes.  Fuck 'em.  A sneering, mocking low road can actually be the road out for those ensnared in the culture who are having their doubts.  We shouldn't tear up that road on the grounds that it's a low road. Some times just pointing and laughing at someone can deprive them of a lot of power to do harm to others.  

Which isn't to say that I objected to that episode of "Louie".  But I don't think he was taking the high road so much as he had to have the fundamentalist Christian be a certain way for the events of the episode to unfold the way they did, since the episode was more about him and not really about her.