Suddenly

In an article in the 21 December 2010 San Francisco Chronicle a story on the Vatican's sudden interest in helping clerical child abuse victims included the statement: 


 "This month, the Vatican published a letter from 1988 that it said showed that Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican's doctrinal office in charge of handling abuse, had sought ways for swifter punishment for errant priests. At the time, he was unsuccessful."

Interestingly enough, in a Reuters news article on 21 November 2010 there were extensive quotations from His Holiness' new book, including the following: 

 "Suddenly so much filth. It was really almost like the crater of a volcano, out of which suddenly a tremendous cloud of filth came, darkening and soiling everything, so that above all the priesthood suddenly seemed to be a place of shame and every priest was under the suspicion of being one like that too."

Hmmmm. Suddenly, suddenly, suddenly.  Apparently by 2010 the Holy Father had entirely forgot that twenty years earlier he had been in charge of a Vatican office that was supposedly investigating clerical abuse.  So now suddenly suddenly suddenly there is "so much filth".

No, the real purpose of that Vatican office twenty years ago was to continue covering up clerical abuse, just as the church has been doing for centuries.  In this case, though, His Holiness did his job so well that he convinced himself that the abuse hadn't happened....and then twenty years later could describe it as being "suddenly suddenly suddenly" revealed.

Obama's Audacity Revealed

I am sitting here breathless, contemplating Obama's utter evil audacity as explained on a Christian website:

http://www.fivedoves.com/rapture/2008/obama_666_symbol.html

Yes, all you have to do is turn the symbol upside down, decolorize it, recolorize it, triple it, and move a couple of pieces and clearly, there it is: "666".

Faith moves mountains, they say.  Certainly it's needed to decode symbols.

And check out some of the other articles on this site.  They include several absolute, airtight proofs that Obama is the Antichrist.

Who'd have guessed?

For the Bible Tells Me So

I've just watched the 2007 movie For the Bible Tells Me So on DVD and am profoundly moved.  First, at the outrageous hatred of gays taught until fairly recently by all the Christian Churches and still taught by all but four or five of them.

And second, that even though there are some people who are so full of Christian hatred that they disavow their gay children, most parents (at least in this century) ultimately realize that they love their children too much to disavow them, and that a better choice is to simply ignore the hatred their denomination teaches or to affiliate with one of the handful of tolerant denominations. 

The movie focuses on how five sets of parents came to accept their gay  children, so it carries a positive message.

On the other hand, since it reviews the vicious persecution of gays by the Christian church during the last half century, it served to renew and refresh my animosity to that religion even though i continue to admire the individual Christians who can reject the hate their churches teach.

The good news, though, is that i realized that Christian hatred of gays will very soon be going into a rapid decline as the churches find a new and much improved scapegoat to rally their flocks against.

After all, who does God hate even more than fags?  Yes, the Muslims!!!  Sic 'em, Your Holiness!  Maybe it'll take the public's mind off your coverup of your child molesters.

Ahhhh, free free, free at last!

Separation of Church and State

I've made some feeble attempts to address the question of the separation of church and state in response to recent statements by the right wing that this country was founded by Christians and intended to be a Christian country all along.  However, i have never come close to creating an argument as complete and cohesive as "The Conservative Christian Case for Separation of Church and State" written by Jimi Jobin, a graduate of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and now a pastor in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I'll paste it in here just in case the link above goes bad:

• The Conservative Christian Case for Separation of Church and State
• An open letter to Pastor H. Wayne Williams.
• By Jimi Jobin
  
  Jimi Jobin is pastor of Terra Nova Faith Community in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is an alumni (sic) of Liberty University and is a contributor to the political blog The Briefing.
  
  
• What follows is a response to the actions of Rev. H. Wayne Williams who, in defiance of the IRS Law denying churches the ability to publicly support political candidates, has chosen to endorse Gordon Howie for Governor of South Dakota from the pulpit. Howie has asked for pastoral support and in return has promised to assist those pastors in taking their inevitable IRS trials to the Supreme Court in an effort to end separation of church and state in America.
  
  
  Pastor, I recognize your frustration, and I see how things have come to this. For years America has only shrugged at religion, and recently Christianity has been caught in a violent tug of war between Republicans and Democrats. We feel, as leaders, entitled to make political endorsements. Why shouldn’t we—particularly in a democracy where endorsements translate directly to power—take up our biblically-informed opinion, get behind a pulpit, and urge our people to support a candidate? Why shouldn’t we support the rulers we stand to benefit the most from, and give them a divine leg up?
  
  For the historically minded among us, the reasons for not bringing our spiritual authority into political campaigns are blood red. For nearly 2,000 years our faith forefathers were persecuted and oppressed; not always by the irreligious, but more often by competing tribes within Christianity. Clerics would jockey for favor in the kingdoms of men, then use any clout gained to suppress the views of their theological enemies.
  
  Over and again we stamped out those who did not fit into our au courant idea of orthodoxy and we entrenched ourselves into division, using the steel of our ruler’s swords to proclaim our theological certainty. Christians have killed and tortured more of their own than any other group in history, and this was possible solely because of the unholy union of church and state. Pastors gave rulers their blessing, and rulers returned the favor by silencing the pastor’s critics, a fantastic deal for the pastor who courts the powers, but a dangerous and painful reality for those who do not.
  
  There isn’t a Christian denomination in existence that has not been slaughtered by its theological opponents. The Pope used his political power in Spain to launch the Inquisition. Bloody Mary earned her moniker by burning 300 dissenters of Roman Catholicism at the stake. The Calvinists and Lutherans used their influence over the German princes to commit near genocide of Catholics all over Europe during the 30 Years War. Catholics in the third Crusade almost exterminated the Orthodox church in Constantinople. Anabaptists have been drowned, burned, and exiled under each of the other major sects.
  
  For almost 1500 years, Christians wielded political power to slay one another; until the founding of America. America was the first country without a designated faith, here was the only place in the world where Catholics and Protestants, Radical Reformationists and Orthodox (not to mention Jews, Muslims, non-believers and others) could live as neighbors. An accomplishment not won by better theology nor a love of peace, but because each lacked the ability to oppress one another by controlling the government.
  
  We have created a land where church and state are separated to protect them from one another, not to diminish the role of either. The integrity of the church is jeopardized when politicians can appeal to spiritual leaders and gain their endorsement because the opportunities for abuse and ambition are too rampant. The same quid pro quo corruption that taints those tempted by lobbyists will await pastors when their support can yield inexhaustible American power. This is why America has passed laws to preserve the dignity and purity of the pastoral office, exchanging tax exemption (a unique phenomenon in the world) with the trust that the nation’s charitable goodwill can't be used as a political force.
  
  Christianity has flourished in America, due in large to the inability of any one religious sect to silence the others by electing one of their own. Consider how different things would be if all along pastors had the ability to endorse candidates, if the elected then changed the social landscape to keep the favor of the pastors—like Mr. Howie is promising to do today. What if JFK had been endorsed by the Pope, what might he have done to protestants? What if Billy Graham had used his crusades to call for the reelection of his close friend, Richard Nixon?
  
  Pastors needn’t remain neutral when it comes to social change. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. championed civil rights, Rev. Charles Finney fought to abolish slavery, and many more contributed to all the progressive reforms of the 19th century, from Women’s Suffrage to Child Labor Laws. But we stir change by stinging the national conscience, by being a prophetic witness for biblical values and obedience to Christ from the pulpit, not by taking the dangerous short cut of merely electing somebody to make a sweeping change in our favor.
  
  Pastors are here to bring the optimism of a better world, a Kingdom of God where it can be on Earth as it is in Heaven. We aren’t here to arbitrate the national discussion, or to be some sort of referee who awards polling points to one side while punishing the other using our immense spiritual clout. Are we willing to compromise our ability to provide hope for the chance to pronounce judgment? Will we use the cross as Caesar did, to dominate political foes, or as Jesus did, to liberate the unseen?
  
  It desecrates our pulpit to yield it to politics. We are called to something higher than to meddle in the affairs of ambitious men. We are not so Holy that we can merely baptize a candidate, and never drink the poison of his words. We do not stump for senators, we do not campaign for congressman, we do not preach for presidents, because the name of Christ is too precious to risk on a common election, no matter how important the issues at stake may seem. We cannot allow Jesus to become a political puppet, a sock on the arm of the statesman. Our role is to translate the values of scripture into the hearts and minds of every American, not to rule those Americans or force our values on them by manipulating the vote. The humble witness of Jesus is weakened when it is communicated through the edicts of rulers rather than the powerful persuasion of changed lives, hearts, and minds. The Kingdom of God cannot be voted into existence.
  
  Pastor H. Wayne Williams, I beg you to take your opinion to the poll and not the pulpit. Encourage your church to lobby their convictions, but don’t let a lobbyist lead your church. Your vote belongs to a candidate, but your pulpit belongs to Christ, so “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give unto God what is God’s.”
  

[The following is a comment anonymously added to Rev. Jobin's essay.  I'm including it because i have long had an interest in Pope Innocent III's genocide of the Cathars.  And yes, he called himself that without blushing.]

• • • • Religion and politics can be joined only in a society brutal enough to muzzle, maim or murder those whose beliefs don't fit the cookie-cutter theology of the ruling church. The Holy Roman Empire is perhaps history's most frightening example. To take just one of their "Crusades" -- Europe's first example of wholesale genocide was the plan executed by Catholics in the first quarter of the 13th century, when they sought to destroy all the Cathars/Albigensians.
        
        The Cathars had roots in a first-century Christianity -- there were MANY sorts of Christianity in the first few centuries, before the Roman Catholic Church acquired the power to eliminate its rivals. The Cathars' beliefs were completely incompatible with the Roman style. Jesus and Mary Magdalen, they said, had a sexual relationship. Sex should mostly be done for joy, they said -- not procreation. They were pacifists, and were greatly admired by their French Catholic neighbors.
        Many Catholics -- including priests -- converted to the religion of those they called the "Good Christians."
        
        The Church sought to destroy them all, but their Catholic neighbors wouldn't tell the Church's armies who they were. This led to one of the most infamous quotes in the history of religious warfare. When Arnaud Amaury, the Cistercian abbot Pope Innocent III appointed to head his army, was told by the military commander in the city of Beziers that they couldn't identify the Cathars because the local Catholics wouldn't name them, Amaury replied, "Kill them all. God will recognize his own." This same abbot later reported back to the Pope that, "Today, Your Holiness, twenty thousand citizens were put to the sword, regardless of age or sex."
        
        An estimated one million Cathars and Catholics were murdered in the crusade that lasted over twenty years.
        In modern times, we've seen other reasons that really religious people should not want their church married to state power. The overwhelming cowardice of the churches in Nazi Germany was one of the important reasons that, after the war, people lost respect for the churches and drifted away. (The Catholic Church signed the first treaty with Hitler, promising to keep Catholics from political activism. And the German Christian Church (Protestant) was pro-Nazi to the core.) When religions get a slice of state power, they show themselves as capable of brutality and murder as anyone else. For many citizens, this destroys churches' presumption of moral superiority.
      
      [Matte again.  Since i'm commenting, i'll add that the Roman Catholic church set up similar concords with Franco in Spain and Mussolini in Italy, but the reason Franco and Mussolini didn't arrange agreements with the protestants is not because the protestants were morally superior but rather because they were neither unified nor sufficiently numerous to make it worth the trouble to set up agreements.]
      

His Holiness Strikes Again

Last week His Holiness Benedict XVI visited Scotland and chose the occasion to praise Great Britain for standing "against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God".  His Holiness neglected to mention that he had been a Hitler Youth at that time.

And actually, His Holiness got it slightly wrong.  It was not God that the Nazis wished to eradicate but rather the Jews, and the Nazis were assisted in this matter by Pope Pius XI, under whom in July 1933 the infamous Reichskonkordat between the Roman Catholic Church and the Nazis was drawn up and the two parties agreed to cooperate with each other.   The church actively supported the election of Hitler in November 1933, and its cooperation with Hitler continued after 1939 under the next Pope, Pius XII, who had negotiated the Reichskonkordat while he was still Cardinal Pacelli.

The existence of the Reichskonkordat explains why virtually no Roman Catholic clergy were willing to criticize Hitler - their own Pope forbade them to do so.  Consequently, the only Christian opposition to Hitler came from protestant clerics like Martin Niemöller, and since they were not protected by the Reichskonkordat, they paid the price.

Belgian Atrocities

The actions of the Roman Catholic church in Belgium have been much in the news recently as more and more victims of sexual abuse by priests over the past half century have been speaking out against their abusers and describing instances of abuse that were even worse that those uncovered in this country. 

After all, the priests over here left the littlest kids alone while in Belgium they molested 'em down to the age of two.

Read About It

I find a bitter, bitter irony in that the church heirarchy, who spent decades covering up the molestations of little children, is now putting its energy and untold wealth into political campaigns against the marriage of same-sex adults - no matter whether the adults in question be Roman Catholics, protestant Christians, Jews, Moslems, or even atheists.

They just adored us when we were small children, but they hate us now.

Demonstration

OK, i did it.  My first demonstration.

Last Sunday i quickly lettered a sign reading "You Must Be So Proud", segwayed down to the Noe Valley Ministry, which is that Presbyterian church there on Sanchez between Elizabeth and 23rd, and stood holding the sign with a pleasant smile as the last of the congregation arrived before their 10:30 service.

For those who asked "For what?", I replied, "For convicting Reverend Jane Spahr."

Most did seem to be aware that a few days earlier the reverend had been convicted of heresy (or whatever their church court called it) for marrying several same-sex couples during the few months in 2008 when this was legal in California.  Here's the New York Times article.

Few seemed at all ashamed although one woman did feel the need to point out that this particular congregation was quite accepting of gays.

To my credit, i refrained from asking why in the world any gay person would have the slightest inclination to enter a church whose official policy toward gays was hatred, or for that matter, to worship the god supposedly represented by that church.

If there were a god, it would like me the way it made me.

Consistency

One of the arguments used over and over by the Christian opponents of same-sex marriage is that all the benefits of marriage are available to same sex couples in domestic partnerships, and there is a shred of truth in this.  Yes, many of the benefits of marriage are now available to domestic partners.  Actually, it is probably true that most benefits of marriage are available to domestic partners.  However it is patently false that all the benefits accrue in domestic partnerships.

Just for starters, take a look at all the federal benefits like social security survivorship that are not available to domestic partners.

But what i'm getting at here is not to point out yet another blatant lie uttered by our enemies but rather to identify another case of shameless hypocrisy.

In an Open Forum column in the San Francisco Chronicle on 11 August, a man named John Eastman who identified himself as a professor at Chapman University  (which is in Orange County and we know what that means) argued that Judge Walker should have recused himself from the Prop 8 trial because as a homosexual in a long term relationship he stood to reap financial benefits if same-sex marriage were legalized.  Here's his column.

So out of one side of their mouths, the vicious scum tell the lie that we don't need marriage because we can get all the benefits from domestic partnerships, and out of the other side they say that a gay judge could not be unbiased because he had a financial stake in getting married.

Scientific American

I still subscribe to Scientific American, the oldest magazine in America.  Fairly often it has articles covering the war on science that has been conducted by religions, especially Christianity, since their inception since religious explanations of natural phenomena are invariably refuted by empirical data as the data are revealed by scientific study.

Hardly anyone is now so stupid as to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but Galileo was taken into the holy dungeons of the Roman Catholic Church and shown the blessed instruments of torture that would used on him if he failed to recant his heretical belief that that the earth revolved around the sun, in direct conflict with the Holy Bible.

Most Christian denominations have given up on this front, but many are still very active in fighting against evolution.  Scientific American has devoted numerous articles and most of an entire issue to demolishing the Intelligent Design attack on evolution, and the churches have given up in their attempts to force the teaching of Intelligent Design instead of evolution in our public schools, but they have fallen back on an approach of trying to get ID taught in the schools as an equal alternative to evolution.

They'll never give up.  Think not?  Well, until the Spring of 2010 the Texas School Board was led by a Young Earth Creationist, which would be laughable if it weren't so tragic.  And there are plenty of Christians who still argue that their infallible Bible makes it clear that the Earth is the center of the universe.

In the September 2010 issue of Scientific American Lawrence Krauss discusses the misuse of quantum mechanics by the religious, which i will not try to summarize, but i do have to quote one line.  He writes:  "I expect organized religion to continue to be a part of the cultural landscape, too, largely unaffected by the ongoing march of human knowledge, as it has been for centuries."

Upstairs Lounge

I just read an interesting article in the Summer 2010 issue of Equality magazine, a publication of the Human Rights Campaign.

The article tells the story of the 1973 fire that swept a New Orleans' gay bar called the Upstairs Lounge, killing 32 patrons and injuring dozens, the worst fire in New Orleans history.

But since it killed only occupants of a gay bar, the Roman Catholic archdiocese banned memorial services for the Catholic victims, and only one church of any denomination in the entire city allowed services.

This is called Christian love.

More Vatican Reforms

Some recent developments on that document i discussed in my previous post.  Closer examination reveals that it put the attempt to ordain women on a list of the “more grave delicts,” or offenses, which included pedophilia, as well as heresy, apostasy and schism.

Some folks outside the Vatican found it a bit much to equate pedophilia with suggesting that women should be ordained, but His Excellency Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington praised the document as "a welcome statement" and went on to explain, "The Catholic Church through its long and constant teaching holds that ordination has been, from the beginning, reserved to men, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.”

Jon Carroll, in a splendid recent column in The San Francisco Chronicle, described this statement as "the worst kind of arrant nonsense" and supported his assessment by simply substituting slavery for ordination of women.  "The Catholic Church through its long and constant teaching holds that slavery has been, from the beginning, reserved to dark people, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.”

Oh, but the gyrations of the Vatican in their attempts to support this ridiculous document became even more hideous.  Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s sex crimes prosecutor, explained why the document contained no requirement that clerical sexual abuse be reported to secular authorities:  “It’s not for canonical legislation to get itself involved with civil law.”  Well, of course not, not when we could keep the crimes covered up within the church.

They are cornered rats, and, as Carroll observed, "The cluelessness of the Roman Catholic Church is jaw-dropping."

Vatican Report

Just to catch up on the more recent outrages from the Vatican, there was an AP article printed in the SF Chronicle on the 9th of July with the headline

Vatican to punish abusers of mentally disabled

What a radical breakthrough!  After centuries of letting the abusers get away with it, now they'll be punished.  Oh, but if you look at the article you'll notice that this new crackdown is merely a plan and presumably has not yet been implemented.  Furthermore, you can comb the article from one end to the other looking in vain for any mention of turning the abusers over to secular authorities.  No, it's best to keep this sort of thing within the Holy Chuch.  Wouldn't want to upset outsiders.

You can read the full text of the article here.

A Manifesto

I usually provide links to sites that i like, but found the following manifesto on the site of a renegade faction of kind, loving members of the Presbyterian Church, with which i refuse any connection since its leadership is still enmired in hatred of gays. In fact, i was ready to stop going to my beloved Noe Valley Farmers' Market after learning that they were paying rent to the Noe Valley Ministry (a nearby Presbyterian Church) even though i had speculated that that congregation might be more loving (it being in San Francisco) than the typical Presbyterian Church. Luckily, i learned that the congregation loses money on the lot that it rents to the market, so i feel that i can continue to shop at the market even though the congregation's minister, based on an email exchange i had with her, apparently fully endorses the hatred for gays that her church espouses.

To contrast with the hatred of the Presbyterians and all but four Christian churches, i quote below the entirety of an article written by a retired bishop in the Episcopal Church and dated October 15, 2009.

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.
 
I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.

I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote.
The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

This is is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

- John Shelby Spong
 
OK, Bishop Spong, I'm joining you in your public declaration. And starting right now, i'm going to devote a part of every day to fighting back against Christian oppression.

Time, Not Space

In his "Judging Distances" Henry Reed observed that "maps are of time, not space." I was returning from produce shopping at the Alemany Farmers' Market this morning and realized that yes, farmers' markets are very much about time, too, since a couple of vendors had brought in their first heirloom tomatoes of the season and were mobbed.

And restaurants, too. Todd, who was probably the best chef the Anchor ever had, has returned to San Francisco for a visit and is cooking four meals a week, this week and next. Last night i had the cioppino, which is always excellent (when they have it), but with Todd behind it, it's heavenly.

And then i realized that there's a problem with my atheism: if i were a believer and behaved myself, i could eat Todd's cioppino every day in heaven for all eternity.

Oh, but wait. As my friend CK pointed out, if i were a believer the greater likelihood would be that i'd spend all eternity chained in the exhaust vent of Todd's kitchen.

Himself

OK, to lighten up after the first post here's a tale told by a Texas Panhandle friend forty years ago.

When she was a child on the farm, the new minister of their church came to call on them. She and her father were standing in front of the farmhouse beside her father's cotton fields, and the minister remarked, "You and God sure do have a fine cotton field there, Mr. Jones.

Her father paused and observed, "Yes, but you shoulda seen it when He had it by Himself."

In the Beginning

On Sunday 27 June 2010 for the first time in my life i fought back against my persecutors of the past seventy years.

I marched (or actually rolled on my Segway since i'm too lame to walk very far) in San Francisco's Gay Parade carrying a sign reading

STRIKE BACK AGAINST YOUR
PERSECUTORS: TAX THE CHURCH

Aside from the stink eye from the cops, who we suspected all along were also religious fascists, i basked in the greatest affirmation i've ever experienced in my life. Thousands of people lining Market Street gave me thumbs ups, laughed, applauded, shouted encouragement, and filmed me...and that's just the ones i could see at the front of the crowd lining the street.

The high point was when a couple of young men shouted rhythmically FUCK THE CHURCH, FUCK THE CHURCH and were immediately joined by dozens (hundreds?) of bystanders around them.

And OK, right here at the beginning i need to point out that there are millions of decent Christians in this country who ignore the hatred of gays that their churches preach. And for that matter i learned on Sunday of a fourth Christian denomination that has (at least for the time being) stopped teaching hatred of gays as official church doctrine: the Disciples of Christ. It joins the Episcopal Church, the United Churches of Christ, and the Lutheran Church in tolerance. And while i'm pointing, i'll point out that the Unitarian Church, not being Christian, never taught hatred of gays.

But please, don't let the rest of them give you that hideous bullshit about 'loving the sinner and hating the sin' while they gather millions of dollars pushing legislation that would force all Americans, gay and straight alike, to follow the rules of their vicious churches. They hate you right along with your sin, and they have always done everything they could get away with to force everyone else to toe their line.

Think about it. Do you really believe that the leaders of the Christian churches stopped burning heretics at the stake out of the secret sweet kindness of their hearts or simply because they no longer had the power to do so?

In one of John Adams' letters to Thomas Jefferson, he observed that a primary reason he wanted separation of church and state was that the churches would still be inflicting hideous punishments on the people "if they but could."

Nothing has changed. It is the nature of religions to force everyone they can to follow their rules - at swordpoint, if necessary. The only thing that ever stops them is meeting resistance they cannot overcome. What i shall do in this blog is further my attempt to start an active movement against the church here in San Francisco instead of merely mounting a feeble defense against their continual assaults - most especially attacks from the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches led and organized by His Evil Excellency, George Niederauer, Archbishop of San Francisco and Persecutor of Rule Breakers. His rules, not yours.