Take god out of politics. Seriously.

A City Councilman in North Carolina has turned out to be either atheist or agnostic. His opponents are crapping their tightiewhities:

Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government — but he doesn’t believe in God. His opponents say that’s a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they have the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

Bothwell’s detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state’s requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Constitution. Arkansas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas have similar provisions.

“The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me and it’s certainly not relevant to public office,” said Bothwell, 59.

Well done, Councilman. I wish more people who thought like you would run and get elected. Why is god such a big part of these state constitutions anyway? Someone who is American can come on by and explain this to one very bemused Canadian, please.

Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist lists all the portions of constitutions with these bizarre holy edicts written in and, according to The Freethinker, the NC one was modified in 1868 to include this particular passage. Is it safe to guess all the rest were altered at some point as well?

When Bothwell took office last week, he used an oath that doesn’t require swearing on a Bible or reference God. That has riled conservative activists, who cite a quirk in the state constitution that disqualifies officeholders “who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

Although Bothwell said a legal challenge would be “fun,” he believes his foes’ efforts are politically based.

Rather than let him do his job and see how capable he is to be working for the city at a political level, they’d rather try and get him canned now because they don’t approve of his lack of belief? How dare a non-believer have a presence? How dare he run! How dare he win! Whaaaaaaa!! Stomp stomp stomp those big boy Christian feet until you get your way. Very mature.

I wonder if people who voted for him knew he wasn’t religious ahead of time, or if that’s just popped into public awareness now.

It’s sad if he had to hide it in order to run.
It’s even more sad that it’s considered a scandal.

What’s more important, Communion or human rights?

Since this is a Catholic conundrum, the answer is obviously Communion.

Shea, who has left the Catholic church, says he doesn’t understand why Tobin is targeting Kennedy.

“Everybody, including these priests, deserve Communion. Because that’s the whole point of it. That’s part of the point of the church. I don’t think anybody should be disqualified from it,” he said. “It’s politics. I think the bishop’s playing politics.”

The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts called Tobin’s action an “act of courage, fidelity and charity, intended to prevent scandal and sacrilege.”

“Bishop Tobin is being a good pastor by urging Congressman Kennedy not to commit the mortal sin of receiving Communion while in a state of grave sin,” said the league’s executive director, C.J. Doyle.

Sinners like Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy who supports the abortion rights. It’s a mortal sin to swallow the Savior.

Know what the article is really about? 125 priests in Rhode Island are accused of molesting children and Tobin is choosing to pick on a politician rather than clean house.

“He claims that it’s important that we protect the unborn. But it’s equally as important to protect those who have been born and those young children who have been raped and sodomized by clerics and priests. But yet he seems to protect those clerics,” said Ruth Moore, of Hull, Mass.

The group called on Tobin to publish the names of priests from the diocese who have been convicted of or admitted molesting children, or if a thorough investigation has turned up credible evidence of child molestation, even if no conviction resulted.

The diocese has said in court papers that 125 of its priests have been accused of molesting children. While many of their names are known from lawsuits and news accounts, others have never been released.

But all the priests deserve Communion because “that’s the whole point of it.”

Quotable JFK

Via Jesse Galef @ Friendly Atheist:

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish–where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source–where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials–and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

Nice one.

World Net Daily confuses fact and fiction

I like the headline on this one, all set to raise instant ire in all who see it:

Billboard companies allow slam against God.

Gracious. Call the troops. Someone has slapped a billboard on the side of a building giving God a funny mustache and a stupid grin to make him look stupid in front of everyone. The shame! The travesty! It’s the end of the world!

In actuality, it’s just a statement on a billboard by a road. If you don’t believe in God, you’re not alone. Finally, some truth in advertising. It’s aimed at the people who may have turned from faith, or are at least starting to doubt it, and wonder what to do. Find people who’ve gone through it, boys and girls. We’re out here. Don’t be shy.

How does World Nut Daily spin it? It turns out the bigger issue is about billboard companies who’ll run those so-called “slams” but are unwilling to run WND advertisements based on worse lies and slurs:

Two major billboard companies are allowing signs that slam Christian faith, even though they rejected out-of-hand a billboard campaign that asked for documentation of Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president.

First off, they aren’t slamming anyone’s faith, nor aimed at any specific religion. No religion is being insulted. No believers are overtly getting insulted in the language itself. It’s not saying “God sucks!” or “Christianity sucks!” or “Everyone who believes in god is an idiot!” It’s just making a statement that there are people who don’t believe. What happens in the heart and head of the reader is a separate issue that has nothing to do with the advertising.

If the billboard company refused to run WND’s ridiculous birth certificate ads, they were right to do so. That was propaganda designed to sow seeds of distrust in a popular candidate. Slurs and allegations without any basis in fact, I might add, no matter how much “research” they’ve put in. Not finding any evidence for their claims has just made them cry “conspiracy” all the louder, instead of admitting to the possibility that they might actually be wrong about it.

“I found it ironic that the billboard … is maintained by Clear Channel,” wrote a WND reader who noticed the apparent double standard. “I seem to recall Clear Channel did not want to run any of the ‘Where’s the Birth Certificate’ ads on their billboards, because of the ’sensitivity of the issue.’”

They were being polite. They were also holding to their promise not cater to groups engaging in character defamation. The certificate signage was suggesting Obama was a liar and not fit to lead the country.

Company spokesman Tony Alwin did respond to WND’s request today for comment on the latest development, sending a link to the “code of industry principles as a guide for content” from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.

Specifically, it calls on companies to “Observe Highest Free Speech Standards.”

“We support the First Amendment right of advertisers to promote legal products and services, however, we also support the right of outdoor advertising companies to reject advertising that is misleading, offensive, or otherwise incompatible with individual community standards, and in particular, we reject the posting of obscene words or pictorial content,” the code states.

Alwin did not respond to subsequent questions from WND on whether his company has determined “Are you good without God?” doesn’t mislead anyone, doesn’t offend anyone and meets all community standards.

I’d hazard a guess that it’s because he thinks you guys are crackpots and has already given you more time than you deserved. The question is innocuous. It’s also reminding other non-believers to continue being good role models because the world is, quite literally, watching.

It’s not misleading. There is no offensive content in the language. There is nothing obscene in it beyond what readers imagine. If it offends you, you need to look at why. It’s not our fault if you can’t begin to fathom it.

“WND’s reporters have investigated this issue more extensively than the rest of the media combined – sending senior staff writer Jerome Corsi to Hawaii and Kenya in search of evidence,” he has said. “We have commissioned private investigators in Honolulu. There is simply no persuasive evidence to affirm Obama’s claim to a Hawaiian birth. There is no hospital on the island that will confirm the first black president of the United States was born there. It’s all conjecture. And no controlling legal authority in this country has ever asked Obama to provide the proof.”

Have they ever insisted someone prove it before? Has any president had to drag his birth certificate out to show it was real? Has every one of their certificates been given to guys who check for counterfeiting to make sure everyone was truly who and where they said they were? Or are you guys just picking on Barack because he’s different?

Did they not see the article demonstrating how Barack might be related to everyone who has ever been president? Only one guy out of all of them was not a descendant of John “Lackland” Plantagenet, once king of England and a signer of the Magna Carta. That’s quite the pedigree. Maybe Martin Van Buren’s legitimacy should be worked over with a fine tooth comb, instead. He was a Dutchman! The first Dutchman ever elected! Man, did nobody check if he was really American first?

Turns out they did, in a way. He was the first ever president born with the status of American Citizen. All the previous ones had been British subjects when they were born. Does that negate their legitimacy? Maybe Americans ought to discount the earlier boys and name Van Buren as first proper Prez. That poor sod got stuck with an economic downturn while in office, too, and he failed to achieve a second term despite popularity. Too many people blamed him for their problems, I guess. And the wheel just keeps on turning…

WND looks unwilling to give up on their billboard bullshit, but we can hope other companies like Lamar and Clear Channel have the public in mind as they turn away every attempt to discredit Obama.

What do Christian Scientists believe?

When my alarm went off this morning I caught the tail end of an interview on Saskatchewan’s Morning Edition where Sheila Coles was wrapping up a chat with Linda Feldmann, the Washington Christian Science Monitor correspondent about the governor races from yesterday.

Why would CBC use a Monitor correspondent? Wouldn’t a Christian Scientist rag be a teeny bit biased when reporting on results? Or would they be no worse than any other media? She sure seemed to be on Sarah Palin’s side, at least, and approved her endorsement of candidates.

I see that support for gay marriage collapsed in Maine and Washington State’s referendum to keep gay couple rights on par with hetero couples had similar problems, but narrowly won out in the end.

Beats me why people make such an issue out of that. Daft. Stupid bible, making a sin out of it. Stupid. Stupid.

Ah well anyway, that’s all I’ve got right now. I should probably care more about the political jungle that is the U. S. of A. We’re neighbours after all. I should be caring what Canada does, too. I’m one of the 70ish percent that never got around to voting against our mayor last week. I totally meant to…

Evil ads promote volunteering? Quick! Call the Army!

I’m going to ignore the fact that there’s a part one to this thing and just take this opinion piece as it stands.

My ten-year-old daughter loves “So You Think You Can Dance.” I suspect most eight to eighteen-year-old girls do. So, my question to the producers of this hit show is: “Why are you pointing my daughter to a web page asking her to work at Planned Parenthood?”

Because Planned Parenthood paid for the ad? They’re allowed to advertise on shows that women who may need them will be watching. Planned Parenthood does more than abortions, by the way. They offer a wide range of services and have good goals in mind that would benefit a lot of people.

Besides, TVs haven’t gotten that smart, have they? They don’t know how old a viewer is. “Look out. 4156 Bork Ave has a 10 year old staring. Put something fluffy on…”

Are they going to send people over to your house now and force your daughter to give up her life for a few hours and stuff envelopes in a stuffy office? No. It’s something we in the normal world call a “suggestion” and it wasn’t specifically aimed at your daughter. She just happened to see it.

Next week the networks will coordinate their shows’ story-lines to promote volunteerism.

Volunteering is a great way to do a great thing and a great way meet people who also want to do great things. (It’s also something I know I should be doing. I just keep putting it off.) I suspect a lot of kids took up smoking after seeing their favourite actors lighting up in movies and TV and so on. If only volunteerism could be a lifelong habit, too. I don’t see anything wrong with what they’re planning.

Leave a church to start another one? Nononono..

That’s not the way to get help, people! Nonononono…

Ah well, they can if they want to. Seems folks at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church have been having a holy feud over who’s going to lead them, and neither one of the choices is the warrior Jesus.

The action by the unhappy members at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church was the culmination of a feud between loyalists to an evangelical luminary, the Rev. D. James Kennedy, and his replacement as pastor, the Rev. Tullian Tchividjian, a grandson of the Rev. Billy Graham.

The new congregation met for its first service last Sunday, and organizers said more than 450 people attended. The people who formed the new congregation had lost a Sept. 20 vote to fire Tchividjian. Organizers of the still unnamed church said nearly all of their attendees had been among Coral Ridge’s roughly 2,000 members.

Coral Ridge said it’s not worried about maintaining its membership after the departures. About 200 people enrolled in a class for new members after Tchividjian took over in March.

Still, the move is a dramatic split. Kennedy’s daughter, Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy, joined many longtime Coral Ridge members, including church elders, the organist, choir director and hundreds of choir members, in deserting the congregation they helped build.

So what’s the deal with Tchividjian, besides a nearly unpronounceable last name?

Under the leadership of Kennedy, who died in 2007, the church was a forerunner to modern evangelical megachurches, a fiercely conservative voice on social issues including homosexuality and abortion, and a powerful political voice.

Tchividjian, 37, took over earlier this year. While he has shown no sign of theological differences with Kennedy, he has rejected politics as the most important force for change, and his sermons have not focused on divisive issues. Meantime, he cuts a far different image, forgoing the type of choir robe Kennedy wore during services, and sporting spiky hair, tan skin, and sometimes a scruffy beard.

Oh, he’s “different.” You know, Jesus was different…

Bill Aschraft is an elder at Coral Ridge and he’s just glad it’s another church they’re starting. Yes, they haven’t become baby-eating atheists. You can heave a sigh of righteous relief over that, certainly.

Ah well, whatever. Churches seem to pop up all over the place like mushrooms, don’t they…

I don’t think quotes from the bible should be considered “government speech”

But that winds up being the justification used in Utah for why a monument to the ten commandments can be displayed in a park when the courts denied the extra-terrestrial Church of Summum a monument to their “faith” in the same park (I wrote about this before).

Permanent monuments in public parks are not subject to the free speech analysis that applies to speeches and leaflets in public forums, the court ruled. Instead, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for eight justices, such monuments are “best viewed as a form of government speech.”

Since the government is free to say what it likes, Justice Alito said, the Summum church’s right to free speech under the First Amendment was not violated by the city’s rejection of its monument.

It was a unanimous vote but a few of the judges expressed concerns over the implications of such a ruling for future cases, which at least proves a few of them are capable of checking the wind direction, even if they still insist on sailing anyway. For the rest, though, it was just full speed ahead.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said the decision on Wednesday should foreclose all challenges to the Ten Commandments monument. “The city ought not fear that today’s victory propelled it from the Free Speech Clause frying pan in to the Establishment Clause fire,” Justice Scalia wrote.

The monument in question, Justice Scalia continued, is virtually identical to one the court allowed to be displayed on the grounds of the Texas Capitol. “The city can safely exhale,” he wrote.

Texas is doing it so it must be okay? I suppose they’re also wishing more governments would put up Ten Commandment monuments so Utah and Texas would no longer be singled out as the most fundamentalist dorks in the nation…

Justice David H. Souter, who joined the court’s decision but did not adopt Justice Alito’s reasoning, was not so sure. If the Ten Commandments monument is now understood to be government speech, he said, “the specter of violating the Establishment Clause will behoove” the city “to take care to avoid the appearance of a flat-out establishment of religion.”

Not being American, I had no idea what the Establishment Clause was so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, it’s the part of the First Amendment relating to the prohibition of a national religion and/or “the preference of one religion over another or the support of a religious idea with no identifiable secular purpose.”

What Alito is doing is treating the Ten Commandments like a given, something accepted as truth without needing to prove it. He and his supporters are starting at the assumption that everyone accepts the Ten Commandments as government speech, which is, of course, a fallacy. Souter’s also quoted as suggesting that there’s “safety in numbers” and it’d be a wise move if a “careful government” made allowances for other monuments.

Just have to wait and see if anything else comes of this, I guess.

Palin says, “don’t do what I did…”

Bristol recently gave birth to her kid and saddled him with one of the dumbest names ever given a child. Now she’s preaching against teen pregnancy.

Bristol Palin said she “obviously discourages” teen pregnancy and knows that plans she previously made for herself will now forever be changed. “Teenagers need to prevent pregnancy to begin with – this isn’t ideal. But I’m fortunate to have a supportive family which is dealing with this together. Tripp is so perfectly precious; we love him with all our hearts. I can’t imagine life without him now.”

Why didn’t she “discourage” it ten months ago and make sure Levi had a condom on? Oh right, because Mom promotes abstinence-only education rather than encourage the use of birth control or other safe-sex alternatives. How does she feel about the Alaskan education system failing to save her daughter from a less than “ideal” situation? Blessed by God. So is sex before marriage a sin or isn’t it?

Yes, Bristol is pretty damned fortunate. She has two parents, one of which is in a very high government position and in no position to cause herself more bad press. This kid and her kid aren’t going to suffer through economic hardship like many other teen mothers would. This kid is going to get the best of everything, or near enough.

Results of a study of abstinence pledges have recently shown they have little to no effect on how much sex a teen ultimately has.

Rosenbaum matched students who had taken a virginity pledge with those who hadn’t. After five years of follow-up, those who had taken a pledge did not differ from teens who hadn’t taken a pledge in rates of premarital sex, oral or anal sex, or sexually transmitted diseases.

Teens who had taken a pledge had 0.1 fewer sex partners during the past year, but the same number of partners overall as those who had not pledged. And pledgers started having sex at the same age as non-pledgers, Rosenbaum found.

The study also found that teens who took a virginity pledge were 10 percent less likely to use a condom and less likely to use any other form of birth control than their non-pledging counterparts.

“Sex education programs for teens who take pledges tend to be very negative and inaccurate about condom and birth control information,” Rosenbaum said.

Obama, for the record, is on record as promoting contraception.

President-elect Barack Obama said while campaigning in April he has “consistently” talked about the need to take a comprehensive approach “where we focus on abstinence, where we are teaching the sacredness of sexuality to our children,” and “contraception has to be part of that education process.”

Obama does plan to reverse a policy that linked assistance for combating AIDS in poor parts of the world to requirements that health workers emphasize monogamy and abstinence from sex over condom use, said Susan F. Wood, co-chairman of Obama’s advisory committee for women’s health, in November.

Hopefully it can make some kind of difference.

I think every high school should have condom machines. I don’t know about junior highs, but since kids want to experiment at earlier and earlier ages, it’s probably worth considering. But don’t just provide the condoms, teach them how to protect themselves before they get into a situation where they’ll wish they did. Do more to encourage the use. Carol Carozza, the marketing V.P. of Lifestyle condoms (in Canada, I presume) came up with something unique:

“Gen X and Y were brought up with the condom vernacular. They know they need to use it, but they’re not experiencing the full message,” says Carrozza, who is in the midst of promoting Lifestyles’ condom-dispensing Make-out Booth, which is making its way through bars and nightclubs across the U.S.

“The idea is to reach people where they’re partying and hooking up. The booth takes your picture like the old-style photo booths, and dispenses free condoms,” says Carrozza.

“Twenty years ago, the idea never would have flown. In the late ’80s or early ’90s we had to take down posters just because they contained the word ‘condom.’ Today’s message has to be abrupt, in-your-face and relevant to young people’s lives.”

I know people would love to go back to a time when sex wasn’t relevant to young lives but it ain’t gonna happen. Pandora’s box is open and protection is the only hope.

Archives of history and ministry

The Library of Congress, like all good library set-ups, wants to preserve as much history as it can and they have a place called the American Folklife Center where they store it all, from film to photos to letters, to personal history set down on paper by regular folk. The AP reports that the Center is currently looking to collect any and all speeches churches, temples and synagogues might have that relate to the upcoming inauguration and it sounds like a really good idea.

Inauguration-week sermons would be videotaped to highlight Barack Obama’s rise to power in an unprecedented quest by the Library of Congress to capture this transfer of power for future generations.

The folks at the library’s American Folklife Center are soliciting churches, synagogues, mosques and others for copies of sermons or passionate speeches that focus on the significance of the Jan. 20 inauguration of Obama as the country’s first black president.

The Folklife Center is looking for both video and audio clips, all to be preserved in a public collection that includes interviews after Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“If a historian asks ‘How did Americans react to Obama’s inauguration?’ we’ll have immediate responses to this powerful event,” said Dr. David A. Taylor, head of research and programs at the American Folklife Center.

The “Inauguration 2009 Sermons and Orations Project” marks the first time the library has gathered this sort of material from a U.S. presidential inauguration. Taylor says the project is especially timely — with the inauguration coming a day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday — and as it ties into King’s reputation as a great orator.

Nearly 70 percent of the 4,000 collections at the center involve the spoken word, whether it’s on paper, audio or video.

And a chunk of it is also devoted to folk songs, as it happens. The place was originally designed to be the Archive of American Folk Song back in 1928 and has digital recordings of some of the earliest recordings ever made on wax cylinders.

Which reminds me – if you can find it, it’s worth watching Songcatcher. It’s the story of a professor who takes her love of music into the Appalachians after getting turned down for a promotion and discovers the locals still sing their songs in a style long thought lost. She has a hell of a time getting them recorded for posterity, as the movie takes place during phonograph days and it’s not like there are decent roads and trucks to cart equipment around on. There’s also a lame romance going on between this “Songcatcher” and a local, played by Aidan Quinn, who thinks she’s wasting her time. Watch it for the music, not the plot, is what I’m saying.