Hate Speech

In the year 2005, a Dutch cartoonist by name of Kurt Westergaard drew this brilliant cartoon.  In case it needs explanation, it depicts the prophet Muhammad as a man of war.  The cartoon set off a worldwide controversy for its blaspheming the prophet Muhammad and, by implication, the religion of Islam.  Westergaard died in his sleep at age 86 in 2021.

In the year 2015, two Muslim brothers murdered a dozen people and injured 11 others in response to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's persistent satirization of Islam and its prophet Muhammad ("We have to carry on until Islam has been rendered as banal as Catholicism").

Our Secular Nation

The United States is a secular nation, not a Christian nation, and this blog post is an explanation why this is OK and even necessary, even if you are a Christian.

If we were a Christian nation, what would that look like?  According to latest (2020) estimates, 69.7% of us are Christian. 

“See, that proves we are a Christian nation!”

What is a Right, anyway?

I recently found this gem on my Facebook Timeline, posted there by a “friend” of mine.  It is called A Bill of Non Rights.  The author (Lewis Napper, a computer software engineer from Mississippi who ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 2000) was tired of hearing that every damn thing is a RIGHT (he was a Libertarian, of course), and he made the point (back in 1993) that all sorts of things (food, housing, health care, a job, happiness, etc.) are not “rights,” a point with which I substantially agree.  You may have already seen it on your Facebook Timeline.  But you should read it before continuing to read this post.

School Prayer

School prayer is a very hot issue among Americans, right up there with abortion and gay rights. But Americans who know the Constitution understand that the ban on school prayer is not an attack on Christianity or on religion or on God. In the first place, the ban concerns only public schools as they are agencies of the state, of the government (our taxes pay for public schools and they are open to everyone, not just members of one religion or one economic class). There is no ban on prayer in private schools as they do not represent government authority. And, finally, there is no ban on student prayer (individually or in a group), the ban is on prayers initiated (compelled) by the public school, as any such prayer would represent an “establishment” of a (particular) religion. Imagine, if you will, a prayer that would satisfy not only every Protestant Christian sect (Southern Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Mormon, Christian Science, etc., etc.), but also the Roman Catholic faith, the Jewish faith (orthodox to Reform), the Muslim faith (Sunni and Shia) and even the “faith” of non-believers. Is such a prayer possible? So, any prayer is necessarily the work of one or more religious sects but never the work of all. Thus, any such public-school prayer would be a case of “establishing” a religion, forbidden to government by the words of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Wedding Cakes

The Supreme Court case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was decided on June 4th in favor of the cakeshop, by a 7-2 vote, 2 of the 4 liberal judges dissenting.

Here are the essential details:

In July 2012, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, a gay couple who were planning to wed, entered Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado to order a wedding cake. At the time, Colorado law did not honor gay marriages; so, the couple had planned to travel to Massachusetts – where gay marriages were legal – get married there, fly home and celebrate their union with their family and friends; it was for this after-party that the couple wanted a special cake. Jack Phillips, the owner of the bakery, was a man of “sincerely held (Christian) religious beliefs,” and he refused to make the couple a cake, based on his religious belief that marriage was between a man and a woman. There was no discussion of a message or customization or even any decoration of the cake; the discussion never went beyond a gay couple wanting the cakeshop to make a wedding cake for them and the owner refusing.

An Open Letter to American Creationists

To my Creationist friends – Young Earth Creationists (who believe that the Earth and the universe are only thousands of years old, not because the Bible told them so but because James Ussher, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland declared in 1654 that creation took place at nightfall on 22 October 4004BC, some 6021 years ago), “plain old” Creationists (who believe that the physical universe must have been the creation of a supernatural deity) and Intelligent Designers (plain old Creationists who understand that they have to strip religion and God out of the equation in order to pass Constitutional muster).

How long have you wanted to have YOUR story respected?  Surely since only a few years after Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) and The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).  Surely since the awful Scopes Trial (1925), where the Christian prosecution prevailed, but not really.  We have been fighting Culture Wars (between fundamentalist Christians and seculars) for as long as we can remember.  And only one of the issues is the teaching of Darwinian Evolution in our public schools.  And wanting to challenge it on its own turf with the Biblical Creation story.  And being most recently slapped down by conservative Judge John E. Jones III, a George W Bush appointee, in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005).

Be Fruitful and Multiply

The Holy Bible, in the King James version, quotes the Lord God as saying “be fruitful and multiply” seven times (always in Genesis).  He speaks to the animals (Genesis 1:22), to the first male and female human beings even before they are named (Genesis 1:28), to Noah about animals (Genesis 8:17), to Noah and his sons (Genesis 9:1 & 9:7), to Abraham about Ishmael (Genesis 17:20), and finally to Jacob (Genesis 35:11).  God urges His line to “be fruitful and multiply;” but He is done urging it even before Moses rescues the children of Israel from Egypt.  Maybe He meant it as an eternal commandment (for everyone, for Jews), and maybe He didn’t.

Allah Revisited

In a piece that I called Katy Perry & Allah, I probably sounded like an enemy of Muslims.  I suggested that American Muslims needed to get used to being discriminated against, at least individually and personally (rather than officially by the government).  But my whole drift was that they could not expect to have their prophet Mohammad respected, not as they wanted him to be, not by the American people.  Because individual freedom of expression is America’s creed (not just YOUR freedom, but everyone’s); what makes us American more than anything else, is our RIGHT to offend, to blaspheme, to insult, to disparage.  And I was suggesting that this lack of “respect” was part of a period of indoctrination that might last a hundred years or more; ask a black man how long it will last that they won’t respect you, and he will say with some justice: “it never ends, white Americans are all alike, bigoted as hell.”  Seen the movie The Gangs of New York yet?  I recommend it, it will give a real face to American intolerance.  But it will allow you to breathe easier about it.  Really!

So what am I here for this time?  To associate myself with President Obama’s sentiments, and not with Donald Trump’s.  And to honor the New York tabloid Daily News (NOT a liberal rag) for its graphic eloquence!

Gay Marriage, Updated

U.S. District Judge David Bunning’s decision to jail Rowan County, Kentucky’s Court Clerk Kim Davis was an overreaction.  Thank God it is done with, and in only six days’ time.  Too long by six days; better he had put her on leave without pay until a resolution could be reached.  And a perfect resolution was indeed reached, in less than a week.  As long as one clerk or assistant clerk is able to fulfill the letter of the law, there is no need for Ms. Davis to be forced to betray her conscience.

Washington Post 2015/09/04, etc.

You should be clear that I am on the side of the LGBTQ community in the gay marriage argument.  For several reasons.  One, it is no skin off my back if a gay couple gets married, it costs me nothing.  Two, the argument against gay marriage is a religious one, and the first amendment prohibits the establishment of a religion (or group of religions) in the nation and in the states, and a legal ruling in favor of a religion is an “establishment” of that religion.  Third, no religious organization will be compelled to marry – or even recognize as married – any gay couples, as the Supreme Court decision only relates to civil law.  Fourth, before the Court decision, civil law sometimes distinguished between married people and single people, oftentimes advantaging married people; now gay people will be able to take advantage of those same advantages of being married.  And last, does your happiness really depend on the unhappiness of human beings who are not like you?

Obergefell v. Hodges

Obergefell v. Hodges is the name of the same-sex marriage case heard by SCOTUS today, April 28th, 2015.

On this, the day that the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments about the “right” of Same-Sex Marriage, I thought two new thoughts.  But before I speak them, I want you, my reader, to be crystal clear where I stand.  One, I am 100% with the proponents of the right to same-sex marriage who want to be treated the same as traditional marriage couples in civil law, as it does no harm to anyone to allow them to share this “right” with opposite-sex couples.  And, two, this issue does not seek gay access to religious marriages; churches or congregations may continue to do as they want – let them marry gay couples or let them not marry gay couples – let them have their own internal struggles with this issue, and I am sure that many churches and surely many more congregations will fracture over this “right.”  So be it.  There you have it, FOR same-sex marriage in its CIVIL sense only, and FOR the freedom of religious institutions and religious practitioners to continue to discriminate (is this really a Christian thing to do?) against gays at the same time.  I am not threading the needle, I am NOT having it both ways, but no one is asking for private non-discrimination, only governmental non-discrimination.  If you, dear reader, think I am wrong, prove it; show me with a citation of a legal action to compel a church to officiate and/or to recognize a same-sex marriage.

The Contraceptives Controversy

Reader: if you are a practicing Catholic who believes the Pope has a right to define women’s sexual behavior, please do not read this essay; it will only piss you off.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +

Have you caught the spat about contraceptives between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church?  Church doctrine forbids contraception and the Church objects to the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) providing information about and access to and coverage for contraceptives to its faithful.  Newt Gingrich – a third wife convert to Catholicism – called it the biggest assault on freedom of religion since … well I am not sure, maybe since Martin Luther hammered his 95 Theses to the door of his church.  Rick Santorum, a one wife Catholic, has said equally nasty things about it too.  The Obama administration, as its first response, offered to allow the church, as an employer providing health insurance to its employees, not to have to pay for that part of the insurance package; but the insurance company would still have to provide contraceptive services to the church’s employees and insurance policy holders.  I suspect that will not satisfy everyone as the church may want to deny its members information and access to contraceptives (despite the fact that many of them already use contraceptives, doctrine be damned).  So, for Gingrich, Santorum and others, freedom of religion in the USA seems to mean the right of the Catholic Church (the employer) to deny freedom of choice to individuals who work for them (employees).  Ironic.

Katy Perry and Allah

To my Muslim brothers and sisters:

For starters, you may not choose to call me brother when you finish reading what I have to say.

For hundreds of years, Jews have suffered indignities from their fellow-Americans.

For hundreds of years, Roman Catholics have suffered indignities from their fellow-Americans.

Gay Rights and Religious Freedom

The state of Arizona (with its Senate Bill 1062: Denial of Service to Gays on the grounds of religious beliefs) presents us with an interesting problem. Who has rights and who does not? The issue argues the rights of gays to be served anywhere in public vs. the rights of business owners to refuse to sell to gays (because of religious freedom).

Let me begin by suggesting that no Christian religion worthy of the name discriminates against gays. Jesus would not have approved. The Old Testament, maybe. But Jesus, never. But that is just my opinion (we both read the same Book; we are just pointing to different passages in the same Book).