Two faces of religion

Two more examples of the good and bad sides of belief, both from Minnesota.

CHRIS LIND
On the bad side, there's the case of Chris Lind. He was fired as a hallway supervisor in the Prior-Lake/Savage school district for talking to students about abstinence, despite repeated warnings to stop. He would also question them about their sexual orientation, and reportedly told one student that it was "National Pick On Lesbians Day."

The story doesn't end there. After being fired, he went out and got elected to the school board, prompting the popular school superintendent, Tom Westerhaus, to resign in protest.

Now Lind is threatening to sue the school board he is now a member of, if it doesn't pay him a settlement for wrongful termination.

The school board may have overstepped its bounds a bit, because the cause for firing included activities Lind pursued in his off time, off campus. But unless the conversation is consensual, teachers have little to no business discussing an individual student's sex life, faith or sexual orientation, either on campus or off.

Outside the legal realm, overstepping boundaries is wrong and rude, even if it's motivated by sincere belief.

TOM AND POLLY WILEY
On the good side, there's the case of Tom and Polly Wiley, an Iowa couple who went on a missionary trip to Tanzania in early 2007, helping to put a concrete floor into a preschool near Arusha. There they met 5-year-old Zawadi Rajabu, a girl born with two club feet.
They found a surgeon who helped them find Dr. Mark Dahl, a St. Paul specialist who is one of only a handful of surgeons in the country familiar with an arcane technique for straightening club feet. He agreed to do the surgery for free, and the Wiley's then raised the money to fly Zawadi and her mother to the Twin Cities -- and found a Tanzanian physician that they could stay with while they're here.

Here's the difference between the two cases: Lind spent his time pointing out the flaws he perceived in others, while the Wileys simply lived their belief, showcasing their faith by humble example, compassion and sacrifice on behalf of others. Lind demonstrates why many people associate believers with sanctimony and the bedroom police; the Wiley's demonstrate the power and hope that true belief can engender.

minnesota, religion, politics, midtopia

Great moments in religion, 2007

As another holiday season winds to a close, we're reminded again why so many people look a bit askance at religion, and why conflating "religion" with "morality" is illogical. There are plenty of positives to religion -- as I've noted before. But as with any human institution, it's prone to abuse and misuse.

From the 2007 holiday season alone, we have the following cautionary tales:

HINDUS VS. CHRISTIANS
In India, home to many religious militants, Hindu attacks on Christians led to several days of riots and clashes. Though a small minority and initially the victims, some Christians went beyond defending themselves, engaging in retaliatory arson attacks against Hindu homes. The dispute began when a Christmas Eve show was perceived by hard-line Hindus as an attempt to encourage conversions -- a touchy subject in India: The state where the violence occurred, Orissa, even has a law requiring police permission before someone can change their religion.


CHRISTIANS VS. CHRISTIANS
What better way to honor the birthplace of Jesus than to fight over it? Sounds silly, but that's a not-uncommon occurrence at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built over a grotto where many believe Jesus was born. The church is jointly managed by three different Christian sects: Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic. It would seem to be a triumph of interfaith cooperation -- were it not for the pitched battles between priests over such weighty matters as who gets to clean what part of the building. And the peacemakers? Palestinian policemen, who broke up the fight.

JEWS VS. MUSLIMS
Down the road, in Nablus, masked Jewish settlers from an illegal West Bank settlement attacked four Palestinian farmers, spraying them with pepper gas and beating them with sticks. Hardline Jewish settlers believe they are divinely ordained to settle Palestinian land, which is often simply appropriated without compensation to the landowner.

MUSLIMS VS. EVERYBODY
It's been a busy week for Islamist extremists. Though putatively fighting a holy war against Christian and Jewish oppressors, their targets of late have been mostly Muslim: Sunni tribesmen opposed to Al-Qaeda, Benazir Bhutto and, of course, those heretical Shiites -- some of whom have violence issues of their own.

SIMPLE STUPIDITY
Here we have not one, but two examples of believers -- in this case, Christians -- putting faith ahead of brains.

The first is the urban legend that the song "12 Days of Christmas" is really a coded recitation of Catholic beliefs, apparently based on little more than the fact that the song is really old, and that both it and Catholicism manage to contain some elements numbered up to twelve. Never mind that the symbolism ascribed to the song involves elements embraced both by Catholics and their Anglican persecutors, which kind of renders the whole exercise pointless.

The second is a small movement that sees Biblical significance in Interstate Highway 35, which runs through Minnesota.

Some believe I-35 might be shorthand that links the interstate to Isaiah 35:8 of the Bible: "And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not pass over it, and fools shall not err therein."

I-35 = Isaiah 35... get it? Never mind that there doesn't seem to be any explanation for the eight. There's also the weird logic outlined by one supporter, who points to tragic events -- the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the 1963 assassination of JFK and killings and kidnappings in Laredo -- in arguing that I-35 is a "highway of holiness." Huh? If that's holiness, I don't want any part of it.

These folks don't represent the mainstream of their faith, of course. None of the examples here do. But they're a remarkably time-compressed compendium of all the ways that faith -- particularly partisan, unquestioning faith -- can lead to harmful results. Believe whatever works for you: but always be willing to tolerate the existence of, and interchange with, other beliefs. And always, always, always be willing to entertain the idea that more than one belief could be right -- or that you are the one who is wrong.

religion, politics, midtopia

Tuesday small change

Closing out the night with some interesting links that don't require extended commentary:

PRESERVATIONISM RUN AMOK
A Christian Scientist church in Washington, D.C., is a badly designed, ugly and deteriorating pile of concrete that is hideously expensive to maintain. It's the kind of unfriendly, uninspired building that helped create the modern preservationist movement. But now, ironically, it's old enough to draw preservationist protection of its own -- to the dismay of the church that has to cope with it. The writer's rhetoric is over the top -- the church isn't that ugly, and it doesn't even own the building anymore -- but he's not alone and he raises some good points about the clash between preserving history and protecting property rights.

GREENSPAN: IRAQ ALL ABOUT OIL
That's apparently what he says in his memoir, which hit the streets yesterday -- along with a scathing critique of Bush's economic policies. This should surprise no one. You don't have to believe that we invaded merely to seize control of the Iraqi oil fields to realize that the only reason we care about what happens in the Middle East is because a lot of our oil comes from there. If there were no oil in the Arabian peninsula, we'd treat it with the same casual indifference and neglect that we treat most of Asia and Africa. There are plenty of unpleasant tyrants around the world, but only Saddam was sitting on large proven oil reserves. It's not just a weird coincidence that he's the one we decided to knock over. I'm not being moralistic here; after all, securing our energy supplies is a legitimate national interest. But I think we ought to be honest about the root causes of the war, because our involvement of Iraq is a significant externalized cost of our dependence on oil. Until we admit the true cost of that dependence, we will not take the steps necessary to kick the habit.

HOMOSEXUALITY AKIN TO PEDOPHILIA, BUT NOT QUITE AS BAD AS NECROPHILIA
Or something like that. An aide to Mike Huckabee tried to explain away Huckabee's 1998 statement that "It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations—from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia." Let's put aside the wild-eyed nature of that comment for the moment (pedophilia and necrophilia are publicly endorsed and institutionally supported?) The aide said what Huckabee meant was that while same-sex sex and screwing a dead body are both aberrant behaviors, homosexuality is at one end of the spectrum while necrophilia is at the other. That might make sense, given the sentence structure -- except that then you have to draw the conclusion that in Huckabee's world, sadomasochism is worse than both homosexuality and pedophilia. You know what I want to see? I want to see Huckabee draw a diagram of his aberrance spectrum, so we can see clearly where he rates each act. BTW, the first commenter at TPM has a great line: "So torture is okay as long as it's not in a loving bed?"

Iraq, gay rights, religion, Greenspan, Huckabee, politics, midtopia

A principled stand on gay marriage

A handful of liberal churches are taking a principled step in support of gay marriage -- refusing to perform civil ceremonies for anyone, gay or straight.

These churches, and a handful of others around the country that took the same step, will still hold a religious ceremony to bless the unions of straight and gay couples -- but straight couples must go separately to a judge or justice of the peace for the marriage license.

In other words, they're taking the first practical step toward separating religious marriage and civil marriage, which have become intertwined to the detriment of both.

I've argued before that the way to settle the gay marriage debate is to get the government out of the marriage business: civil unions (and the benefits thereof) to everyone who qualifies, and religious marriages for people who want one and can find a church to perform the ceremony.

Now these churches have taken the first step toward making that a reality.

Right now, it's just a handful of liberal churches. But there should be a compelling interest among conservative churches, as well, who may want to start refusing civil ceremonies in order to avoid association with gay marriage, or pressure to perform same-sex ceremonies.

"I know there are clusters of conservative pastors in Massachusetts who have discussed refusing civil ceremonies so as not to be under pressure to perform same-gender ceremonies," said Runnion-Bareford, who himself believes that government and the church have a joint interest in promoting traditional marriage as a societal good.

One can only hope. I don't support (or anticipate) pressure on conservative denominations to perform same-sex marriages. But I do think that gay marriage will become more and more accepted, and in the end the only way opponents can "protect" the word "marriage" is to decouple it from the civil ceremony and make it a purely religious undertaking. So as time goes on, I think you'll see an odd coalition of churches supporting such a move.

civil unions, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Muslim saves Jew

For those who view Islam and Muslims as the problem, I bring you this: A Muslim man who saved a Jewish man from a religion-related beating on a Brooklyn subway.

A Brooklyn man whose "Happy Hanukkah" greeting landed him in the hospital said he was saved from a gang of Jew-bashing goons aboard a packed Q train by a total stranger - a modest Muslim from Bangladesh.

Walter Adler was touched that Hassan Askari jumped to his aid while a group of thugs allegedly pummeled and taunted him and his three friends. So Adler has invited his new friend over to celebrate the Festival of Lights.

The two new pals - Adler, 23, with a broken nose and a fat lip, and Askari, 20, with two black eyes - broke bread together and laughed off the bruises the night after the fisticuffs.

You gotta love the religious ignorance of the attackers:

One of the group immediately hiked up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of Christ.

"He said, 'Happy Hanukkah, that's when the Jews killed Jesus,' " said Adler.

No, that would be Good Friday, Braniac.

religion, politics, midtopia

What century is this?

What finally tipped me over the edge into resuming posting was the announcement that Mitt Romney will be making a major speech on faith in a couple of days, hoping to neutralize his Mormonism as a campaign issue.

Regular readers know that I'm no big Mitt Romney supporter, and as an agnostic I often take a jaundiced view of religion in general. But c'mon: Have we learned nothing from history, or even the last five years?

We're deeply engaged in an overseas war, ostensibly to fight religious extremists who wish to impose their brand of faith on everyone. One way we're doing that is by attempting to persuade Iraqis, Afghanis and everyone else that a person's race and religion does not matter: Sunni and Shiite can live together peaceably, ruled by a government representing all of them. In particular, we're trying to persuade Sunnis that it's quite all right to be ruled by a Shiite majority.

But at the same time, here at home, a longtime governor and serious presidential candidate feels compelled to make a national speech in order to advance the argument that it's okay to elect a Mormon as president.

Like, duh.

Seriously. What century is this? And what sort of mixed message are we sending to the people abroad whom we presume to instruct in tolerance? Sure, "refusing to elect" is a far different thing than "executing as infidels". But the philosophical underpinning is too similar to dismiss.

If Romney were a religious nut, that would be one thing. I would never vote for Pat Robertson, for example, because he holds extreme, often apocalyptic views and seems all too willing to try to put those views into practice. But that doesn't mean I would refuse to vote for any evangelical Christian candidate. And I tend to oppose conservative Christians because I disagree with their politics, not because they're Christian. Just like I oppose conservative Jews, Hindus and Muslims.

Grow up, people. Vote or don't vote for Romney because you agree or disagree with him, not because of where he goes to church on Sunday (or Saturday, or whatever).

And Republicans? Consider this event as further proof of the excessive and damaging hold that the religious right has on your party.

Romney, religion, politics, midtopia

Anyone but the godless

My presidential ambitions took a hit this weekend. The New York Times ran a story about religion and morality in politics, with Mitt Romney as the hook. But the chart that ran with it -- reproduced above -- is worth a long, close look (click on it to get a larger version).

Not believing in God -- which, defined that way, applies to agnostics like me -- renders a candidate suspicious in the eyes of two-thirds of voters. It's worse than being old, uneducated, gay, Muslim, female, divorced, a drug user or a philanderer.

It's a positive for just 3 percent. Which makes a certain amount of sense: lack of belief is a negative trait, after all -- not negative in the sense of "bad", but negative in the sense that it's defined by the lack of something. It's hard to get excited about something a candidate isn't.

So I'm actually pleasantly surprised that it makes no difference for a third of voters.

It turns out that while the specific nature of one's belief has an effect -- more people are willing to vote for a Mormon than a Muslim, all things being equal -- the most important thing is simply to have a belief.

It's not that simple, of course. For one thing, a candidate usually has more than one trait listed on the chart, and any real candidate is an actual person, far more than the sum of his or her labels. So the chart is more useful as a description of general attitudes than as an attempt to apply it to specific races.

Further, the story goes on to note that the real concern with regard to candidates with minority beliefs is tolerance: John Kennedy got past anti-Catholic bias by promising he would resign rather than let his religion interfere with the national interest. It suggests Romney could pursue the same tact.

I don't know about the resigning bit, but "tolerance" (or more carefully chosen words like "admiration" or "respect") is how I'd frame it if I were running. Lack of belief on my part does not imply hostility to religion; far from it. It simply reflects my own inability to claim belief in something for which I see no compelling proof. In some ways I envy believers, for clearly they've found something that I have not. And who am I to say who's right?

On a political level, religion has a valid and vital role in society, and that role should be tapped wherever and whenever it makes sense to do so. Religion should suffer neither fear nor favor from government.

One concern about a "godless" candidate is that they have no personal ethics, no solid moral foundation. It's tempting to label such concerns ignorant, but there's little political gain in insulting voters. Luckily, such questions are easily addressed by discussing my personal ethics and the principles they spring from. Alternatively I could simply point to various politically useful biographical items, like my military service, faithfulness in marriage or the fact that I was an Eagle Scout. That might not assuage concerns about unbelievers in general, but it would help make one agnostic candidate more palatable.

Meanwhile, the chart reveals some interesting relationships:

1. Being a smoker is worse than being a woman, which is worse than being divorced;

2. Being a former minister is even worse than that.

3. Having an extramarital affair is (slightly) better than admitting past drug use. But both are better than never having gone to college.

4. Being a Muslim is almost exactly as bad as being gay.

5. "Drain the swamp" rhetoric notwithstanding, 35 percent of voters view being a "longtime Washington politician" as a positive.

6. Apparently the recipe for a successful politician is a Christian veteran who ran a business after attending a prestigious university.

Lots more in the chart. What would you do? Which of the characteristics listed are positives or negatives for you, and why?

religion, politics, midtopia

Christian intolerance

It's not quite the same thing as detonating car bombs in crowded marketplaces, but this week has been a reminder that religious intolerance isn't restricted to certain religions or countries.

From Dyre Portents:

Did somebody make this International Religious Intolerance Week and forget to notify the calender makers?

I opened on the fifth with Of Paganism and Pundits,followed that with a post about Christians trying to firebomb another Christian church, then two days ago the Pope declared that all other churches weren't true churches, and today we have this:

"This" being members of a Christian anti-abortion group heckling a Hindu priest delivering the invocation in the Senate chamber on Thursday, saying it was a "false prayer" and asking Jesus' forgiveness for "allowing a prayer of the wicked." Here's the video:


Their group, Operation Save America, then issued a press release:

The Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the One True God, Jesus Christ. This would never have been allowed by our Founding Fathers.

Not one Senator had the backbone to stand as our Founding Fathers stood.

Yeah, because the Founding Fathers, as we all know, were flaming religious zealots who expressed nothing but contempt for nonChristian beliefs....

I'm sure this display of stupidity and intolerance will do wonders for this group's cause, not to mention their eventual disposition in the afterlife.

religion, politics, midtopia

The roots of jihad

A former British Islamic extremist talks about what drives militants to attack civilians. The core of the article:

Though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

He goes on to say that mainstream, moderate Muslims respond to extremists by trying to ignore them, which is a mistake: they must be confronted, and have the religious rug underpinning their actions yanked out from beneath them.

He even suggests one way to do so:

A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.

In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam.

It's a start, but it will run into problems because someone will point out that such an interpretation essentially prohibits jihad entirely. But through unsatisfying sleight-of-legal-hand, not straightforward reasoning.

So rather than draw torturous limitations on jihad, how about simply renouncing the whole idea of "external" jihad? Or rather, renounce its violent expression. External jihad could be pacified into missionary work, where battles are fought in the marketplace of ideas, not with guns and bombs. And "internal" jihad -- the quest to better oneself as a Muslim -- could remain intact.

In any event, what you have here is a former militant calling for -- and suggesting a path for -- an Islamic Reformation. In passing, he also admits that violent extremists are a small minority of Muslims.

All in all, an interesting read that gives some good insight into the extremist mindset.

terrorism, religion, Islam, politics, midtopia

Falwells across the pond

And you thought only America had prominent ministers who were too dumb to live:

The floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops.

One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless.

It's like Jerry Falwell has been reincarnated as an Anglican. At least now we can make fun of English idiots instead of enduring criticism of American ones.

Graham Dow, the Bishop of Carlisle who is the one quoted above saying tolerance of gays was part of the problem, may be socially conservative, but he also sees populist economic reasons why God is punishing us:

The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. "It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God's judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible," he said.

Conservative or liberal, the reasoning is still loopy.

To be fair, some of the bishops made a certain amount of sense not reflected in the headline:

Global warming has been caused by people's lack of care for the planet and recent environmental catastrophes are a warning over how we behave, according to the Bishop of Liverpool.

"People no longer see natural disasters as an act of God," said the Rt Rev James Jones. "However, we are now reaping what we have sown. If we live in a profligate way then there are going to be consequences," said the bishop, who has previously been seen as a future Archbishop of Canterbury or York.

That seems straightforward enough: If we don't care for the planet we will suffer the consequences. But calling such a simple bit of cause-and-effect "God's wrath" is a bit like saying if you touch a hot stove, the resulting burn is God's wrath. It kind of devalues the whole concept of both God and wrath.

They also expressed their condolences for the "innocent victims" of the floods. I'd love to see them try to explain that logic: Why is God punishing and killing innocents in order to punish us for our excesses?

Gits.

England, religion, politics, midtopia

Former "gay conversion" officials apologize

Exodus International is the leading practitioner of something known as "conversion therapy" or "reparitive therapy," in which homosexuals are "healed" of their affliction through prayer, religion and counseling, becoming happy, healthy heterosexuals.

There are plenty of excellent reasons to be skeptical of this approach. For one particularly trenchant commentary, consider a Salon writer's account of his session with one such "therapist" -- who, among other things, made false claims about psychology's stance on homosexuality. He also said homosexuality was "highly correlated" with poor hand-eye coordination (you know, bad at sports), childhood loneliness (lonely kids are apparently more likely to masturbate, which somehow leads to being gay), wanting love from a distant father (thwarted filial affection turns into generalized sexual desire) and a whole lot more fluff.

Now, on the eve of Exodus' annual conference in Irvine, Calif., three former top executives at Exodus are apologizing for their actions on behalf of the group. They were sincere, they say, but they eventually came to realize the harm they were causing.

The three are Michael Bussee, a co-founder of Exodus; Jeremy Marks, former president of Exodus' European operations; and Darlene Bogle, founder and former director of an Exodus referral agency in California.

"Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families," the three, including former Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee, said in a joint written statement presented at the news conference. "Although we acted in good faith, we have since witnessed the isolation, shame, fear and loss of faith that this message creates."...

All three said they had known people who had tried to change their sexual orientation with the help of the group but had failed, often becoming depressed or even suicidal as a result.

To his credit, Exodus president Alan Chambers acknowledges problems while defending his organization.

"Exodus is here for people who want an alternative to homosexuality," Chambers said. "There are thousands of people like me who have overcome this. I think there's room for more than one opinion on this subject, and giving people options isn't dangerous."

He added that sexual orientiation "isn't a light switch that you can switch on and off."

Well no kidding.

Things like reparative therapy will always be able to claim some "success" because of two things: the power of the human mind and the fact that sexual orientation is more of a spectrum than a pair of opposites. Let's deal with each in turn.

The adaptability of the human mind is legendary. Given time, people are able to accustom themselves to situations that, looked at from a distance, would seem completely degrading, impossible or entirely undesirable. On the negative side, it's why we have things like genital mutilation, the "untouchable" castes in India and people living in garbage dumps. On the positive side, it's the determination behind incredible feats, like the marathon monks of Japan.

Sexual orientation is a strong force, but given the range of things humans can adapt themselves to, it's not an insurmountable one. If the societal norm were homosexuality and someone really, really, really wanted to fit in, they could probably find a way to accomodate the need to take a same-sex mate.

This becomes even more true if you view sexuality as a spectrum. In that view, most humans have a mix of same- and opposite-sex attractions, with the only difference being the ratio between them. The spectrum probably looks like a lopsided, inverted bell curve, with most of the population clustered at either end of the scale. A practicing heterosexual, for example, might be 99% hetero and 1% homo.

Such people have little inclination and absolutely no need to address the 1% -- indeed, they may be entirely unaware of it. But a certain percentage of the population is more mixed, becoming increasingly bisexual: 80/20, 70/30, 60/40, 50/50 and all the way through to the other end of the scale, where the most strongly identifying homosexuals reside.

If you accept that view, then it's possible to understand how a 60/40 homosexual, for example, might be able to suppress the 60 and express the 40 in order to fit in and gain societal acceptance. Or, with far greater mental effort, a 90/10 homosexual could do the same thing.

But at that point you have to stop and ask: Why? What's the point? Is there any rational basis to the societal bias against homosexuality? And is it either fair, reasonable or humane to push gays to get "fixed"?

Then, too, consider the situation where a group points to a 60/40 who was cured, by way of increasing the pressure on a 90/10 to view himself as both "there's something wrong with me" and "I'm too weak-willed to fix it." When the situations aren't remotely parallel, and all in service of... what?

I'll grant Exodus' Chambers the philosophical point that "choice is good," and if gays think they can become nongay they have every right to make the attempt. But that facile justification ignores the source of the problem -- societal bias. Wanting to "go straight" isn't generally something that comes from within. It's most often a reaction to discrimination imposed from without.

Chambers' argument also ignores the complexity of sexual orientation, and in that area groups like Exodus are complicit. They acknowledge that change is hard, but they don't acknowledge that sexuality isn't binary, and so change is harder for some than for others.

I respect monks that can run marathons every day. I just don't see why that sort of effort is a reasonable thing to ask gays to attempt simply because society is uncomfortable with them. It's a "blame the victim" approach that fails any society-level cost-benefit analysis. On an individual level it may pass such an analysis, but only because of pervasive social bias against gays. And the analysis is warped when people are misled by bad science and false claims perpetrated by groups like Exodus.

sexual+orientation, gay rights, politics, midtopia

A visit to the Creation Museum

Ars Technica visits the Creation Museum. Here's their report.

evolution, science, religion, politics, midtopia

Lina Joy may leave Malaysia

Lina Joy, the Malaysian Muslim who is being prevented from officially becoming Christian, is talking about leaving the country -- something of the standard solution for high-profile cases of religious persecution.

"I am disappointed that the Federal Court is not able to vindicate a simple but important fundamental right that exists in all persons: Namely, the right to believe in the religion of one's choice," Joy said in a statement released through her lawyer, Benjamin Dawson.

"The Federal Court has not only denied me that right but (denied it) to all Malaysians who value fundamental freedoms," she said....

[She has] the option to leave the country. Asked if she will take that option, Joy, 43, said in her statement: "It would be extremely difficult to exercise freedom of conscience in the present environment." Dawson, her lawyer, said the media are free to draw their conclusion from the statement.

So it's more a suggestion than an actual plan. But it's hardly surprising. Countries that deny freedom of conscience deserve to lose people, who will vote with their feet rather than live under injustice.

Malaysia, religion, Lina Joy, politics, midtopia

Sex and religion

Slate's Hanna Rosin this week reviewed a provocative new book: "Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the lives of American teenagers."

What's so provocative about it? The author, Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas in Austin, did a detailed survey as well as in-depth interviews to correlate religious belief with sexual behavior. And the results are surprising -- or not, depending on your point of view.

Teenagers who identify as "evangelical" or "born again" are highly likely to sound like the girl at the bar; 80 percent think sex should be saved for marriage. But thinking is not the same as doing. Evangelical teens are actually more likely to have lost their virginity than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. They tend to lose their virginity at a slightly younger age—16.3, compared with 16.7 for the other two faiths. And they are much more likely to have had three or more sexual partners by age 17: Regnerus reports that 13.7 percent of evangelicals have, compared with 8.9 percent for mainline Protestants.

And of course, there's the "not enough information" problem.

When evangelical parents say they talk to their kids about sex, they mean the morals, not the mechanics. In a quiz on pregnancy and health risks associated with sex, evangelicals scored very low. Evangelical teens don't accept themselves as people who will have sex until they've already had it. As a result, abstinence pledgers are considerably less likely than nonpledgers to use birth control the first time they have sex. "It just sort of happened," one girl told the researchers, in what could be a motto for this generation of evangelical teens.

Again, not surprising to any advocate of comprehensive sex education. Keeping kids ignorant about sex simply increases the risk to them when they eventually do have sex.

Which they will. Because while "save it for marriage" pledges and abstinence programs may slightly delay a teen's first premarital sexual experience, they do not generally prevent them. So the risk remains, unabated:

he fate of the True Love Waits movement, which began with the Southern Baptist Convention in the '90s, is a perfect example. Teenagers who signed the abstinence pledge belong to a subgroup of highly motivated virgins. But even they succumb. Follow-up surveys show that at best, pledges delayed premarital sex by 18 months -- a success by statistical standards but a disaster for Southern Baptist pastors.

Yowch.

Before getting all smug about short-sighted moralizing, however, consider a few of the book's caveats and other findings. First, a big caveat:

Partly, the problem lies in the definition of evangelical. Because of the explosion of megachurches, vast numbers of people who don't identify with mainstream denominations now call themselves evangelical. The demographic includes more teenagers of a lower socioeconomic class, who are more likely to have had sex at a younger age. It also includes African-American Protestant teenagers, who are vastly more likely to be sexually active.

There also are demographic splits: Southern teens are more likely to have sex than teens in the North, as are those who are less well-off and less well-educated.

Next, there is a group of teens for which abstinence pledges actually work.

Among the mass of typically promiscuous teenagers in the book, one group stands out: the 16 percent of American teens who describe religion as "extremely important" in their lives. When these guys pledge, they mean it. One study found that the pledge works better if not everyone in school takes it. The ideal conditions are a group of pledgers who form a self-conscious minority that perceives itself as special, even embattled.

So truly committed religious teens wait until marriage. This is hardly surprising; they are living out values they strongly believe in, so outside coercion is unnecessary. I would think such teens would abstain until marriage even without abstinence pledges and even if they attend comprehensive sex-ed classes.

For the same reasons -- strong social networks that reinforce the value system -- Mormons and church-going Asians also have high levels of abstinence.

I have not read the book, so I cannot comment on its methodology. But it seems safe to draw some general (and somewhat obvious) conclusions.

1. Teens are remarkably impervious to coercion that goes against their own values or desires.

2. Pressure to remain abstinent at best delays the onset of sex; there is still a need for comprehensive sex education.

3. If you want kids to avoid sex, you must get buy-in from them -- either as a moral value (wait until marriage or adulthood) or a practical matter (the reward isn't worth the risk). This takes more than threats, lectures and good intentions. It takes responsible, loving and frank parenting over a period of years so that your values become their values, too.

4. Comprehensive sex education, contrary to the claims of its moralistic critics, apparently hasn't been interpreted by teens as license to bang like rabbits.

Discussing healthy sexual behavior with your kids can be a tough road to walk, because there's a certain contradiction involved. You're trying to persuade them to wait until they're older while also trying to avoid going overboard and demonizing sex as "dirty" or bad.

But if you've got a good relationship with your teens, it should work out most of the time. Even with my young children, I've found that kids can handle complex issues and moral ambiguity if it's presented forthrightly. Just avoid rules that are oversimplified, overly draconian or simply not mentioned at all. All three approaches may be more comfortable for the parent, but in each case you're either not giving them information they need or the world you describe is so unlike the one they encounter that they'll conclude you're either lying or clueless.

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the Weekly Standard praises it. Interestingly, the conservative magazine notes that blue-state teens, while sexually progressive in attitude, actually have sex later than their red-state counterparts and are also more likely to use contraception when they finally do have sex. Yet having accepted that, the reviewer goes on to claim that the abstinence movement has played an important role -- citing the same True Love Waits data I quoted above. But at best that shows that encouraging abstinence only works as part of a comprehensive sex-education curriculum -- most of which have always included abstinence anyway.

On a blog run by his publisher, the author, Mark Regnerus, sounds off about the state of sexual learning in the United States. And in a review-plus-interview by the Austin American-Statesman, Regnerus makes some of the same points I do, specifically that "the idea of 'the talk' has to go away. It must be an ongoing dialogue."

And here's a Q&A he did with the Dallas Morning News, where again he sounds a bit like me: "We have to talk about facts, to be open about the beauty and pleasure of sex, and its mixed emotions and consequences. Tell them the complicated truth about the beauty and frustration of marital sex. Admit there is a gray area.... We all know it. No more hiding."

A Presbyterian minister and professor gives the book high marks, saying there's an interesting insight on every page.

sexuality, religion, politics, midtopia

Religious intolerance, here and abroad

Two examples of religious bigotry today, which helps illustrate the difference between individual and government discrimination.

First, in New Hampshire, an idiot confronted Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney's visit to New Hampshire started on a sour note Tuesday when a restaurant patron declared he would not vote for the Republican presidential contender because of his faith.

"I'm one person who will not vote for a Mormon," Al Michaud of Dover shouted at Romney when the former Massachusetts governor approached him inside Harvey's Bakery.

The kicker? This wasn't someone from the religious right; it was a self-described "liberal" who said he plans to vote for Hillary Clinton.

There are plenty of questions about Mr. Michaud. If he disagreed with Romney's politics, why make a point of criticizing his faith? Why shout it out in a small, crowded room? It's enough to make one wonder if his goal was actually to embarass Romney. And then there's the classic question of whether he's really a liberal -- and if he actually understands what that word means.

Regardless, I hope we can agree that his moment of fame was classless, rude, illiberal and violative of American values, even if it is in accord with much of American political history. And be glad that in this country a member of a minority faith is only subjected to such individual actions and not (generally) government persecution.

Now let's go to the other side of the globe, where that sadly is not the case.

Malaysia's best known Christian convert, Lina Joy, lost a six-year battle on Wednesday to have the word "Islam" removed from her identity card, after the country's highest court rejected the change.

The ruling threatens to further polarize Malaysian society between non-Muslims who feel that their constitutional right to religious freedom is being eroded, and Muslims who believe that civil courts have no right to meddle in Islamic affairs.

On the one hand, this is a fairly minor matter: words on an ID card. She was not actually prevented from converting, and is not in danger of being killed for doing so. And the legal point is minor, too: whether the secular courts have jurisdiction over such matters. They decided not, that only the country's Sharia courts can allow the removal of the words from Joy's card.

Let's put aside, too, the problem of having parallel legal systems. Listen instead to the words of the judge:

"You can't at whim and fancy convert from one religion to another," Federal Court Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim said in delivering judgment in the case.

Or consider the reaction of the crowd outside:

About 200 mostly young Muslims welcomed the ruling outside the domed courthouse with shouts of "Allah-o-Akbar" (God is great).

And what fate awaits Joy in the sharia courts, if she goes that route?

In practice, sharia courts do not allow Muslims to formally renounce Islam, preferring to send apostates to counseling and, ultimately, fining or jailing them if they do not desist.

They often end up in legal limbo, unable to register their new religious affiliations or legally marry non-Muslims. Many keep silent about their choice or emigrate.

Fines and jailing, never mind the related legal prohibitions against marrying nonMuslims.

It always astonishes me that believers can justify coerced membership in religion, any religion, failing to understand that doing so not only grossly violates individual rights, but it undermines that religion's legitimacy. It's pure power politics, nothing more.

The world should continue to support Joy and express outrage not just at her treatment, but a legal system that allows such religious-based discrimination and disallows freedom of conscience. This is what true persecution looks like, and Malaysia should be pressured to change its laws to respect individual belief.

And for those of you inclined to ask "where are the moderate Muslims?", consider this very balanced article from Al-Jazeera. Or Sisters in Islam, a Malaysian Muslim women's group that is one of several that has sided with Joy in this case.

Malaysia, Lina Joy, Romney, religion, politics, midtopia

Koran wins in court

In a case that has some relevance to the resoundingly ignorant flap over whether Keith Ellison could swear on a Koran, a North Carolina judge has ruled that nonChristians can use their own holy book when called as witnesses in the courtroom.

The decision represents a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, which sued the state after two Guilford County judges rejected an offer from an Islamic center to provide county courthouses with free copies.

"The highest aim of every legal contest is the search for truth," Wake Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway wrote in an 18-page opinion. "To require pious and faithful practitioners of religions other than Christianity to swear oaths in a form other than the form most meaningful to them would thwart the search for the truth.

"It would elevate form over substance."

The legality should have been beyond question; the judge's opinion simply notes the futility of swearing on a book you don't believe in.

Maybe now Prager et al will cease their hyperventilating about this and concede their point was flawed. But I'm not holding my breath.

religion, politics, midtopia

Exploding the myth of Muslim silence

That's the purpose of an interesting piece by Stephen Schwartz, author of "The Two Faces of Islam."

In it he argues that the media ignores moderate Muslims while covering the radicals in lavish, horrific detail, painting a distorted picture of the faith. The centerpiece of the article is a deconstruction of coverage of the plot to attack Fort Dix. He notes that the plotters weren't, as first assumed, Kosovo Albanian Muslims. They were, instead, ethnic Albanians from Macedonia who came here as children and were radicalized in Arab-dominated Wahhabi mosques. His point is that the media misses distinctions between different kinds of Muslims, lumping peaceful, moderate Albanians in with violent Wahhabis.

He then cites several examples of Muslim commentary on the case -- all of it condemning the plot -- that he says got scant coverage.

I didn't follow the Fort Dix story closely enough to judge whether he's right on that score, but the piece once again points up the intellectual bankruptcy of those who demand that Muslims "speak out" against terror. Continuing to make that argument ignores several relevant facts:

1. They do. All the time. I've cited multiple examples in the past year.

2. Demands that Muslims take the lead assume that moderate Muslims have some sort of connection to (or influence over) the extremists. What are (for example) American Muslims supposed to do: Call up Al-Qaeda and yell at them? They don't have AQ's number any more than you or I do, nor will their words be heeded any more than yours or mine.

3. Few groups spend a lot of time flagellating themselves for the extremists in their midst.

Let's expand on that last point for a moment because it's an important one, tied in with assumptions about group identity that simply are not true.

The underlying logic of the "Muslims must denounce terrorism" goes as follows: The terrorists are Islamic, and therefore Muslims have a particular duty to denounce Islamic terror.

This is reasonable to an extent: disavowing the nutjobs operating under your banner is sometimes necessary.

But where it goes off the rails is when people demand that every Muslim denounce every act of Islamic terror every time one occurs.

This is ridiculous. Every time a Christian commits murder, are Christians obligated to go on television and state the obvious -- that murder is wrong and the offender doesn't represent Christian views?

Of course not. They can simply state once (or occasionally) that murder is wrong and unChristian. Actually, they don't even have to do that; it's considered obvious that murder is wrong, so they aren't required to say anything. Silence is not assent in such cases.

So why are Muslims treated differently? Because groups are always good at pointing out the mote in other groups' eyes, even while giving their own members the benefit of the doubt. Do conservatives regularly call out nutjob conservatives? No. Liberals do that, and conservatives disavow them if necessary. Do liberals regularly call out liberal nutjobs? No; conservatives do that, and then liberals disavow them if necessary.

In this country, who spends time identifying atheist/agnostic misbehavior? Believers. Who are most likely to point out believer wrongdoing? Atheists/agnostics.

Simply put, groups are horrible at policing their own, because doing so requires admitting some kinship between your own beliefs and those of the nutjobs -- admitting that your beliefs can be twisted to bad ends. No one likes doing that.

Beyond that, when you're in the group you know that the extremists are just that -- extremists, a tiny minority that do not represent the group as a whole. They are shunned, dismissed; psychologically, the majority separates themselves from the whackjobs to the point they no longer feel kinship with them -- and thus no particular responsibility to account for their actions. Hence Christians feel no particular need to respond every time a Christian misbehaves, and Muslims feel no particular need to respond every time a member of some fundamentalist sect detonates a car bomb.

This is especially true when the actions cross national and sectarian boundaries. Demanding that a mainstream American Muslim denounce fundamentalist terrorism is like demanding that Lutherans denounce the actions of Baptists -- or, more aptly, Christian Identity adherents. It's actually even sillier than that, because at least in the example above everyone involved is American. In the case of Islamic terror, we're demanding that American Muslims feel responsibility not just for another sect, but for another country and culture. So it's more like demanding that Lutherans apologize for the atrocities committed by the Lord's Resistance Army.

Now, political reality is a different matter, and not always fair; in this day and age, there is more political need for Muslims to speak out than there is for Christians. But that doesn't make demands that they do so any less illogical. Nor does it justify the assumptions made about them when they fail to speak up in any given instance.

terrorism, religion, politics, midtopia

Bomb threat at Falwell funeral

This is weird, and not just in the obvious ways.

A small group of protesters gathered near the funeral services to criticize the man who mobilized Christian evangelicals and made them a major force in American politics -- often by playing on social prejudices.

A group of students from Falwell's Liberty University staged a counterprotest.

And Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

Oh, great. Some left-wing whacko tries to bomb Falwell's funeral.

Huh? What's that?

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service.

Not a left-wing nutjob; a conservative Christian nutjob!

You gotta love the logic required to arrive at the conclusion that setting off bombs is the perfect way to avoid disrupting the service....

The good news is that he was an incompetent dimbulb:

The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News' Pierre Thomas. They were "slow burn," according to the official, and would not have been very destructive.

But then there's this:

Three other suspects are being sought, one of whom is a soldier from Fort Benning, Ga., and another is a high school student. No information was available on the third suspect.

Great. Additional nutcases still on the loose.

Falwell, politics, midtopia

Jerry Falwell dies

Mr. Moral Majority meets his Maker.

I'm not going to pretend to miss him. Oh, there was the entertainment value of his blustering, but that hardly made up for the actual damage he did. Although in the long run it's a wash, as the declining influence of he and his kind make clear. He gave people a good look at what the religious right stood for -- and it wasn't pretty.

Still, I'm not big on bashing the dead, so I'll just keep silence. I hope there's an afterlife for you, Mr. Falwell. If there is, I'm curious to know if it's the one you expected.

Falwell, religion, politics, midtopia

The Book of Mitt

Will the candidacy of Mitt Romney produce -- dare I say it -- a teachable moment?

I've written before about my perspective on the state of Islam, the existence of moderate Muslims and the illogic of people who say "Islam, not Muslims, is the problem."

First, to make such a claim one must ignore all the real-life examples of moderate Muslims -- such as the moderate Muslim who helped the British foil a plot to bomb transatlantic jetliners. If they exist, it stands to reason that there can be moderate interpretations of Koran.

Second, the holy books of most major religions contain violent passages, passages depicting horrific punishments for nonbelievers or outsiders, passages rife with misogynism, racism and fourth-grade ethics. That's what you get from books written between 1,400 and 4,000 years ago.

It makes no sense to point to such passages in the Koran and say all Muslims are violent or evil without applying the same logic to Christians and Jews and Hindus. The latter have (mostly) managed to overcome the violence and tribalism built into their books; it stands to reason that Muslims can, too -- and have.

Which brings us to Romney. Because in his case I'm starting to see the roles reversed: Some liberals/Democrats bashing Mormonism (using sites such as this one) and conservatives/Republicans defending him.

All of which, with luck, gives us an opportunity to pause and think. Liberals should realize that by adopting the tactics of Islamaphobes, they become no better than those they oppose. Conservatives should realize that if the tactic is illegitimate when directed at Romney, it's also illegitimate when directed at Muslims.

Some bloggers point to time as an important distinction: Christianity's violence is in its past, while Islam's is in the present. They are right, but that still does not make Islam the problem; the problem is certain medieval interpretations of Islam that still hold sway in some areas. Instead of attacking Islam as a whole, we should be attacking those vile interpretations. That way we get to be intellectually consistent, logically correct, and as a practical matter it minimizes the number of enemies we have to deal with (some Muslims instead of all Muslims).

As for Romney, he's not in my top five list of candidates I would vote for. I find his new-found conservative views both wrong and a fine example of gross pandering. But who the heck cares if he's a Mormon? Even if he was deadset on creating a Mormon version of Sharia law, does anyone seriously think he could do so? You think the distinctly non-Mormon Congress and courts would go along with him, not to mention the American populace and those trial lawyers that Republicans love to hate? I have yet to see any plausible scenario wherein Romney's faith could have any meaningful impact on his presidency, and thus be a legitimate factor in his presidential campaign.

If we can absorb that lesson in tolerance (and the limits of power) and then transfer it to other religions, Romney's campaign will have performed a public service, win or lose.

religion, Romney, politics, midtopia