Mike Huckabee Plays the Victim Card

Over on The Atheist Experience blog there's a post with a link to a very ... interesting letter from Mike Huckabee, soliciting donations for a new organization he's involved with. In the letter - which I strongly urge you to read - he mentions the threat we face from Islamic radicals, but then warns his constituents of "an even greater menace [that] threatens to destroy us from the inside out" - "a re-energized Left here in our midst that is working harder than ever to drive out God and ALL MENTION of religious faith from America's public life."

That's right - Mike Huckabee, a Christian living in a majority Christian nation, wants to warn his fellow Christians that, somehow, evil godless liberal atheist scum are going to subvert their will and override the entire democratic system.

Huckabee blames "Big Government", Obama, and Pelosi for "liberal attacks on faith [that] are accelerating to a crisis point."

A few choice bits:

I'm sure you've followed the stories of how liberal judges have targeted our cherished "Pledge of Allegiance" because it contains the words "one nation, under God. [1]

You and I have watched for years as liberals [2] and atheists have systematically driven all [3] Christmas-season nativity scenes from public squares all across America. [4]

Prayer in schools is all but extinct... [5] public school children are barred from singing Christmas carols... [6] an invocation at a graduation ceremony is likely to generate a barrage of lawsuits from "offended" liberals and atheists. [7]
[...]
How long do you think it will be before the liberals and atheists are able to have the words "In God We Trust" stricken from our bills and coins? [8]

How long before the atheists and the ACLU [9] declare final victory in getting the entire "Pledge of Allegiance" banned from our schools? [10]
[...]
I am concerned that our children and grandchildren could inherit an America where ANY religious utterance is prohibited outside the walls of a private home or church, just because some liberal might be "offended!" [11]
[...]
Our liberal-leaning [12] courts have been outlawing God in all aspects [13] of our public lives.

And our left-dominated media [14] has mercilessly portrayed believers as either frightening fanatics or idiotic simpletons. [14]

Here's what I have to say about that.

[1] This has never happened. Judges can't "target" anything. People bring lawsuits, and judges make judgments.

[2] Notice how he paints all liberals as enemies of people of faith? Never mind the fact that the majority of liberals are people of faith themselves, and might actually agree with him about some of his complaints... let's paint them all with a broad brush! Discriminating between different people is hard!

[3] This is an interesting use of "all" to mean "practically none of the."

[4] Removing the promotion of religion is not the same as promoting atheism. A blank piece of paper is not an atheist pamphlet. A public square without a nativity scene is *a public square.*

[5] If you ignore, of course, the fact that children and teachers are fully allowed to pray in school - the teachers just aren't allowed to lead kids in prayer or make them pray.

[6] [citation needed]

[7] See, Mike, this is where you don't get it (again). We're not offended by your beliefs. We're offended that you're so eager to trample the Constitution by injecting your beliefs into our taxpayer-funded schools. You want your kids to learn about God and Jesus in school? Send them to private school. I don't want to pay for it.

[8] Oh noes! Not our money! How can we practice our faith freely if we can't put our deity on the coinage?

[9] The same ACLU which has fought for the rights of Christians several times.

[10] Who has ever suggested this?

[11] Again... it has nothing to be with being offended. But that's beside the point. Neither I nor any atheist I've ever known have wanted to legally prevent people from expressing their religious beliefs (though we would prefer they kept them to themselves). What we want is for the *government* to stop endorsing religion. There's a significant difference between "we won't let you say 'God'" and "we won't let the government promote a specific religion." Mike Huckabee is intentionally ignoring this.

[12] What's the composition of the Supreme Court, again? Oh, that's right... half and half, with a swing voter who leans conservative:

• Ginsberg: very liberal, consistently votes against conservatives
• Breyer: consistently liberal
• Sotomayor: consistently votes progressive
• Kagan: centrist-progressive
• Kennedy: the swing vote; considered conservative; sometimes votes liberal
• Alito: consistently conservative
• Roberts: consistently conservative
• Scalia: extremely conservative
• Thomas: extremely conservative (more than Scalia)

In George W. Bush's eight years in office, he appointed 325 federal judges. In Barack Obama's three years so far, he's appointed 62. Extrapolate that out to eight years and you get 165 judges - barely half of those appointed by Bush. And yet we're supposed to believe that liberals have been taking over the court system. Hilarious!

[13] He's playing with "all" again... and I'd really like to know just what on earth he's talking about.

[14] The media so left-dominated that a milder, leftist, more reality-based version of Glenn Beck gets fired from the top-rated show on his network.

[15] Well, Mike, if the shoe fits...

But this mindless, factually-ignorant screed isn't even the best part. The best part is that he blames increases in crime, abortion, and drug use on godless liberals and atheists. Mike... atheists don't even make up 10% of the population of this country. You're in the majority; sounds to me like you're the one who needs to get his house in order here.

Huckabee's letter goes on to announce the formation (partnered with Newt Gingrich) of Renewing America's Leadership (ReAL), an organization "a new national non-profit organization that is working with ministers and lawyers" to fight the perceived threats to religious liberty from liberals and atheists.

Huckabee insists that "the Founding Fathers fully intended for expressions of religious belief to be incorporated into American life" - something I don't really have a problem with. I'm sure they did. What they didn't intend was for the government to be the one making those expressions. They intentionally set up a secular democracy, not a theocracy, no matter what Mike and his pals would like us to think.

The letter is a golden example of hyperbole, from the beginning down to the statement (next to the box you tick to indicate you want to donate) saying that the "Obama-Pelosi liberals [want] us all to worship at the altar of Big Government". It's also a golden example of historical ignorance, blind bigotry and hatred, and foamy-mouthed fear-mongering.

This smarmy little diatribe could be presented in schools as an example of the conservative mindset: fearful, hateful, pious, always looking for an enemy, bombastic, exuding a sense of helplessness even when part of the majority, perceiving nonexistent threats, and ignorant of reality.

But it's worse than that, really. Read the letter again, but substitute 'atheist' for any other minority group. Imagine a past and future presidential candidate attacking any other minority this way. Imagine, for example, a candidate blasting African Americans for wanting to remove segregation and anti-miscegenation laws from our government. That candidate would be laughed out of the race. And yet, with atheists (and, to be fair, with Muslims, since Huckabee attacked them too), it's still okay - in fact, you're practically expected to attack atheists if you want to be taken seriously by conservative voters.

Mike Huckabee should be ashamed, but you can bet he won't. He won't because we still live in a country where most people agree with his distorted view of reality. And that's why we can no longer afford to remain silent. We actually are victims to this wannabe theocrat and his ilk, and yet we're the ones painted as oppressors. If atheists remain silent - if we remain hidden away in the closet, out of view - we'll never change minds in our favor.

For-Profit Prophets

There's a trend I've noticed, and I'm surely not the first: So often when a preacher makes some great declaration about the future, he seems to be in it for the money. Oh, he'll put on a good show of being earnest, declaring that God has spoken to him and given him a message that the big guy needs to get across to his True Believers.

Two recent examples come to mind.

First is a local pastor whose name I don't know. Occasionally at work, if I'm bored, I'll listen to a kooky little local Christian talk radio station. They boast a wide variety of content, from nationally syndicated 'bible study' programs to call-in marriage advice shows to whatever the local ministry has on its mind. Every Monday afternoon, the Australian-born (or New Zealand-born? Sorry, my Aussie and Kiwi friends - I'm not familiar with the accents) pastor will rant on about Obama, the New World Order, and whatever swims else through the water lining his brain.

About two months ago, he made some rather bold - and specific - predictions. Citing a supposed Obama official who said that the world population had to be reduced to about two billion, he said that while driving to the radio station he'd been given a vision. Blood would literally flow in the streets of America. The government would shut off the nation's electricity, and sick and elderly people would start to die horrible deaths as their sorely-needed medications went bad. The Obama administration would start rounding people up and sending them to death camps. (But true Christians would be saved!) All within the next four weeks. Clearly, if it's been almost two months, his deadline has come and gone, and (surprise, surprise) nothing happened. And yet there he is still, every Monday afternoon, ranting about the latest indignity committed by the "Obama regime", as transmitted to him by Glenn Beck.

His church flock is still just as full as ever, and he commented last week about what a "miracle" it'd been that the November church donations were bigger than they'd been the whole year. I can't imagine the sort of things he must've been saying to his faithful, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least to find out that he was saying they needed to give of their "financial gifts" to help God prevent such horrible things from happening.

The second example is one Hemant Mehta blogged about:

The fans of Family Radio Inc., a Christian radio network, have sponsored dozens of different billboards in select cities around the country proclaiming the exact date when Jesus is coming back.

May 21st, 2011.

You know, just like the Bible “predicted.”

They have a website about it, of course. It's a delightfully insane blend of numerology, Biblical contortionism, and general rectal extraction. They're giving away a bunch of stuff for free, though they're limiting how many copies each household can get. Weird... the world is going to end in less than half a year, and they're worried about spending all their money on shipping The Truth to The Lost?

I like Hemant's ideas:

If they are serious, let’s see them put their faith to the test.

I want to know now what these Christians are going to say/do when the Rapture doesn’t happen.

I want Family Radio to promise to go off the air if the Rapture doesn’t occur on the predicted date.

I want them to commit to giving a certain amount of money to Foundation Beyond Belief on May 22nd if they’re wrong. (I promise we’ll only ask them to honor their pledge if Jesus didn’t appear…)

I want a promise that they’ll film a video while saying, “My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?” while wearing banana costumes. It’ll be put up on YouTube on May 22nd… but only if they’re still around.

He's right, of course; they won't do any of this, because deep down they're just expecting to be let down again. What they will do, though, is continue to accept donations. Because nothing says "I really believe the end times are coming" like asking for financial support.

Just goes to show you. "Prophets": Con artists, the whole lot of them.

We're Not Alone

One thing I hear a lot from my fellow nonbelievers is that it seems like Christian extremists are constantly pushing for an American theocracy. While I'm convinced that this is true - that is, that fundamentalists would love to take over the country and turn us "back to the Bible" (whatever that means to them) - I'm not sure just how successful they would be. After all, they would have to deal with all the non-Christians, not to mention the other Christians who disagree with them. That's no small number of people, either; regardless of how noisy and obnoxious the extremists are, they're still technically a fringe. And they're not without their detractors inside the faith community, either. Anomaly100, one of the few Christians I follow on Twitter, wrote (among a lot of other stuff that makes good sense):

The Family at 133 C Street, infamous for their stifling and oppression, behind closed doors, [and for] deeming who is and who isn’t moral, are the very ones showing support to Uganda for giving homosexuals the death sentence.

The protesters in Iran are determined to topple their government due to the oppressive dictatorship they’ve had to endure from a forced theocracy.

Are we becoming them? So much is done in the name of God but do you think God needs their help?

This is something I've wondered about quite often. Why do religious extremists feel that they need to enforce their God's rules? Do they honestly think that an omnipotent, omniscient being wouldn't be able to handle things on its own? That they're so ready to take action in defense of their deity seems to directly counter the idea that they are devout in their faith. After all, were they truly of the opinion that their God's will would always be done, they would see no reason to act on his behalf. And if their God were omnipotent, how could anything possibly go any way but his? The idea of something going against the will of God would be a logical impossibility.

Anomaly100 and I definitely don't agree on the basic theological argument - that is, she argues against religious extremists on the basis that they distort Christianity, while I argue against them on the basis that their actions belie doubts that their words deny (and think that their stance is more in keeping with a fundamentalist tradition). But her viewpoint is a good reminder that nonbelievers aren't the only ones who are loath to allow dangerous religious ideas to take a solid root.

If God be for us, what is forbidden?

Romans 8:31-33 says:

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.

I've often thought of these verses whenever I hear about the latest hypocrisy and theocratic nonsense to emerge from the fundamentalist Christian set. To believers and to atheists, they have two very different meanings. For most of the believers I know, it's a source of comfort. It means that no matter what the world throws at them, God will be on their side, offering defense and protection. It's reassurance that God is obviously willing to do anything to help them out, since he's willing to sacrifice his son (himself) for our sake.

As an atheist, I read it differently. It's essentially saying that anything a believer does is justified and above repute; that since God is the one who justifies actions, non-believers have no right to question anything a believer does. I'm pretty sure that some believers see it this way, too - specifically, the kind of hardcore fundamentalists who are just slightly closer to the sane end of the spectrum than Fred Phelps.

Take, for example, Mission:America, an organization with a focus of reforming America according to Biblical principles - part of what is known as the Dominionist movement. On their "To Christians" page, in the middle of a lengthy screed denouncing American Christians for their tolerance of homosexuality (and feminism, and paganism, and pornography, and violent media, and......), they say the following:

And the big question is: why do you let the world define what's right to do? What will be "accepted" or not? What is "hate" or not? This defense of inaction completely undermines who Christ is and what God is able to do. Such cowardice should make us tremble. For God would not only be with us if we tried to talk some sense into the world, He is just as able to judge each Christian and the society we live in for our disloyalty and cold-heartedness. I believe right now, He is doing just exactly that.

Emphasis added. By the way, when you see this kind of Christian talking about "the world", they're not just talking about the people of the world. They're speaking in the Biblical sense - that the world is materialistic, sinful, fallen, and disgraced; that it is in the grip of Satan, which is the justification for disregarding its opinion.

They believe that God must approve of what they're doing, and as a result, they simply don't care what anyone thinks of them. This is an incredibly dangerous mindset. Not only are they dismissive of anyone who disagrees, but they almost seem eager to redefine hate to be "whatever we don't like". Nowhere in this message is even the barest semblance of Christian humility. These people believe that they know the mind and the will of an omnipotent, omniscient being, and that it agrees with them and will justify any action they take.

Recently Linda Harvey, the founder of Mission:America, posted an article called "The Top 10 Ways to Make Kids Truly Safe in 2010". The list begins somewhat well:

Let’s teach our children to refrain from honoring oppressive, liberty-denying practices and beliefs. Children should be civil to all, but refuse to be manipulated...

Which I think is fantastic. But, of course, it continues.

...into “respecting” Islam, praying to Allah, etc., no matter how many points it counts on the social studies/diversity unit test. They should urge every girl they know wearing a hijab to remove it and no longer submit to a system of subtle bondage. They should share the Gospel of Jesus Christ deliberately with every Muslim they know— and make sure these lost kids know that Christians believe in a loving God who gives us free will.

Sigh. The rest of the list isn't much better. It's a full menu of shameless bigotry, hatred, and intolerance, all in the name of "what's right". And, of course, since they think God is on their side, nothing is off the table.

But how can we deal with this? Nothing we say will change their minds; they've already made that perfectly clear by saying that they won't let the world define things for them. Even other Christians likely won't be able to reach them, since they think that most Christians have lost their way and should conform to their example. We're talking about people who are infinitely immune to criticism. Essentially, their dogma is a religious conspiracy theory. They're the only Enlightened Ones who see the Truth Behind Everything and have to strive to bring the Blinded Dupes into their fold. Any argument against their position is seen as evidence that they're right.

The best approach that I can think of is to forget working directly with them and work on bringing around anyone who might be tempted to buy into what they're saying. Over on Hemant Mehta's fantastic blog, Friendly Atheist, a commenter said:

Don’t hold your breath. People who think of their god as a “shepherd” are going to act like sheep.

I wouldn't paint with such a broad brush, honestly. Unless we make them aware of people like this vile woman, they likely won’t even know this sort of thing is going on. Her viewpoint is not mainstream in Christianity, from what I can tell. Most people have never heard of her or the damnable things she’s said, so it’s not exactly fair to condemn them for their ignorance.

The problem for us isn’t that they’re not speaking out – the problem is that we have to figure out a way to make them aware without being dismissed as anti-Christian. I’d bet that the vast majority of Christians, being the silent moderate majority, would likely vilify her as well. I know that when I was a believer, people like this made me just as sick as they do now, only for different reasons (e.g., they were misrepresenting Christianity). I just didn’t think they were significant enough to bother with; either that, or I just had an abstract idea that people like this existed, rather than concrete examples.

But this kind of apathy isn't acceptable to me now. I can't silently sit by and let bigotry go on unchallenged. This is a war for the minds of the world, and the less we do, the more minds they'll win. The bottom line is this: Mission:America is a hypocritical, bigoted organization that distorts the book it claims to revere to make it work for their purposes (moreso than most believers). They simultaneously claim moral superiority and an immunity to judgment. As a result, they have no moral basis for anything they claim, and reasonable people everywhere should be insulted that such people think they know what's best for our children.

The Friendly Atheist Under Attack

Hemant Mehta, one of the most tolerant, genial, and patient atheists I've ever seen, is currently under attack from a thinly-veiled far-right Christian hate group calling itself the Illinois Family Institute, which has a history of saying some pretty nutty stuff. And I'm not just calling them a hate group, either; for a while, the Southern Poverty Law Center had them listed as one, specifically for their strident anti-gay stance, comments, and leadership. Here's a sample:

The conference boiled down to a veritable jihad against gay rights. No fewer than 18 presenters railed against homosexuals and the "gay agenda." It seemed that the speakers, many of whom were ostensibly there to talk about the virtues of a Christian nation, just couldn't help but take repeated swipes at gays and lesbians.

...

Peter LaBarbera, head of the Illinois Family Institute and a discredited "researcher" whose work has been denounced by the American Psychological Association for producing bogus data "proving" homosexual behavior is deleterious to health and welfare, called homosexuality "disgusting." LaBarbera, who "investigates" this lifestyle by hanging out in gay chat rooms, insisted that good Christians must "stand up to homosexual aggression" and stop using "that hoary euphemism" -- "sexual orientation." He called for the repeal of all "sexual orientation laws" -- laws that ban discrimination against gays -- because they violate religious freedom. He demanded the closing down of all "homosexual establishments." And he spoke of the "need to find ways to bring back shame to those practicing homosexual behavior."

(Researching homosexual behavior by hanging out in gay chat rooms? Wow. Yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with that...)

Back to the main story. Primarily at issue is a sarcastic remark from Hemant regarding comments made by Laurie Higgins, director of the Division of School Advocacy (read: anti-church/state separation) for IFI.

The story really begins with the arrest of two gay men (for trespassing, apparently) who - GASP! - kissed each other in front of a Mormon temple in Salt Lake City, and the subsequent nationwide kiss-in protests. One of the protests took place in Chicago, and the IFI certainly wasn't happy about that. Higgins said:

An adult kissing a pre-pubescent child or a high school-age adolescent in a sexual or romantic manner is both obscene and inappropriate despite the protestations of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) to the contrary.

Romantic or sexual kissing between two consenting adults who are in love and who are closely related by blood is both obscene and inappropriate despite the protestations of defenders of incest to the contrary.

Romantic or sexual kissing among “multi-partner” unions, like those profiled in a recent Newsweek article, are both obscene and inappropriate despite the protests of polyamorists to the contrary.

Romantic or sexual kissing between two people of the same biological sex is both obscene and inappropriate despite the voluble, vigorous, and often vitriolic protests of homosexuals to the contrary.

To which Hemant said:

The only thing that could make this kiss-in even better is if it took place just outside Higgins’ house.

So terrible, I know! Of course, to everyone but Higgins, this is obvious sarcasm. He was not seriously endorsing the idea of holding a kiss-in protest in front of her house. Regardless, it's time to cue the Christian persecution complex:

... Mr. Mehta doesn't merely expatiate philosophically, he gets personal too.

Last week, Mr. Mehta made an unfriendly comment on his Friendly Atheist blog that I found troubling enough that I shared it with some of the District 204's administrators and the members of the school board--something I have not done on the other occasions he has written about me.

He wrote the following in response to my IFI article about the homosexual kiss-in: "The only thing that could make this kiss-in even better is if it took place just outside Higgins' house."

In my email, I expressed my disappointment that a role model for students would make such a vindictive, irresponsible, and unprofessional public statement. My hope was that someone in the administration would have a conversation with Mr. Mehta regarding his influential role in students' lives and his inappropriate comment.

That's right; she e-mailed the people who sign his paycheck. She's applying a little pressure. Heaven forbid that anyone should think she's trying to get him fired! Just because she sent the e-mail to everyone but him and specifically to the folks who could decide whether or not his employment should be terminated, that doesn't mean she wants him gone. His higher-ups have his back, anyways:

Not surprisingly, everything is fine at work. My superiors respect my right to free speech and their concern is with my professional work, not my private life. For what it’s worth, my teaching evaluations over the past couple years have been excellent, thank you very much.

Anyway, school officially begins tomorrow. And I still have my job.

But that's not enough for Ms. Higgins. She has since posted at least two other articles on the IFI's home page attacking Hemant:

District 204 parents really should spend some time perusing Neuqua Valley math teacher, Hemant Mehta's website to determine whether he is the kind of man with whom they want their children to spend a school year. He absolutely has a First Amendment right to promote any feckless, destructive, and offensive ideas he wants via his blog, but, as I mentioned in my earlier article, parents have the right not to have him as a teacher and a role model for their children.

Okay, it's time to cut the sarcasm. Combine this with another of her spewings:

... Parents have every right not to have their children in the classroom under the tutelage of someone whose publicly articulated views they find fallacious and deeply troubling.

What Higgins is really saying is that anyone with a lifestyle or viewpoint that any parent considers factually or morally wrong shouldn’t have the right to teach. Her e-mail to Hemant’s administrators proved that much. Were she simply worried about parents’ choices, she would have e-mailed the parents and left it at that. Instead, she attempted to pressure Hemant's bosses into reprimanding or firing him. She doesn’t think he should be allowed to teach.

Since there has been such a response to her comments (with several hundred comments on Hemant's blog, calls coming in from the local media, and numerous e-mails to the IFI), she attempted to clarify her "true" intentions:

I want to be very clear about what I’m suggesting: I am suggesting that parents who have serious concerns about Mr. Mehta’s potential influence on their children’s beliefs politely insist that their children be placed in another teacher’s class.

It bears repeating that this is a transparent lie. If this were all she was concerned about, she would have left the school administration out of this entirely. Her goal is to get Hemant fired, because she thinks anyone with views she disagrees with is dangerous and shouldn’t have the right to teach children. She did not contact the parents to "warn" them about Hemant. She contacted his superiors and her mailing list. The choices of the parents did not enter into it.

You fail to acknowledge a central point that I addressed in my articles, which is many teens are unduly influenced by emotion or the cult of personality and are therefore predisposed to look favorably on the ideas of teachers whom they find cool or charismatic or funny or kind or iconoclastic.

...
If students have you as their teacher, like you, and develop a relationship with you—as happens often in high school—they will be more likely to look favorably on and be influenced by your ideas than those students who have no connection with you. This is the reason that many parents care deeply about role models.

Yes, Ms. Higgins, let’s warn those parents about the terribly dangerous and potentially harmful different ideas that people have. Different ideas are inherently bad and should be quashed as subversive. Parents should be terrified that such things are allowed in schools. Through all this bluster all I can see is her continued assertion that since Hemant is an atheist, he must be actively promoting atheism in his classroom. Care to give us some proof? Something we can sink our teeth into? Something more than just scare tactics?

Of course not. Ms. Higgins isn't about reality here. She's about dogma and rhetoric. We're talking about a woman who endorsed the bullying of gay students on the basis that homosexuality is wrong and immoral and shouldn't be coddled, so no insult is too strong.

Ms. Higgins is so terrified of the idea that children might learn about different lifestyles and beliefs that normal standards of morality and decency have no bearing on what she's willing to do to stop Hemant's oh-so-dangerous actions and speech. She's not pro-censorship, oh no! She just wants parents to know what teachers do in their private lives:

Those parents are entitled to sufficient information to make informed choices about the very public activities of their children’s teachers–something that for some odd reason seems to offend you.

No, Miss Higgins, they are not entitled to know what goes on in teachers' personal time, no matter how public it is. Parents are entitled to know what teachers do in school. Outside of school is none of their damn business.

This sort of behavior is the double-edged sword to the phrase "If God be with us, who can be against us?". On the one hand, it is saying that nobody can oppress you if God is on your side. On the other hand, it is also saying that if God is on your side, nobody can possibly have any real or valid objections to anything you do, since you've got divine endorsement. Higgins thinks that anything she does, no matter how venomous or slimy, is justified in the promotion of her beliefs.

What's absolutely insane about this is that she was removed from her job at a high school because of anti-gay comments she made on her personal time on talk radio:

If students have you as their teacher, like you, and develop a relationship with you--as happens often in high school--they will be more likely to look favorably on and be influenced by your ideas than those students who have little or no personal connection to you. This is the reason that many parents care deeply about role models.
...
It's probably the same reason that three years ago a well-known homosexual blogger informed my former superintendent that I had been interviewed on Moody Radio on the topic of homosexuality. During my last three years at Deerfield High School, there were more than a few supporters of the normalization of homosexuality who wrote publicly and contacted my administration about what they believed was my unfitness as a role model for students--and I worked in the writing center where I had no classes.

So, clearly, she's an utter hypocrite. She's out for revenge. Two wrongs make a right, in her mind. She's turning the tables, rather than turning the other cheek. What a Christlike thing to do.

I'm sure the story isn't over yet. To get the full perspective straight from the source, keep up with Hemant's blog: Friendly Atheist by Hemant Mehta

His previous posts on this subject:

• Comparing Them to Nazis
• Why the Illinois Family Institute Is Angry With Me
• Illinois Family Institute Goes After Me Again
• Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute Issues an Open Letter to Me

His excellent book: I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist's Eyes

Good Ol' Family Values

I can't say that I take pleasure in seeing a prominent religious public figure crash and burn under the weight of their own hypocrisy.

Wait a minute... yes I can!

Poor Sarah Palin. Everything seemed to be going so well for her. She was living a truly Christian life - getting pregnant out of wedlock and (likely) rushing into marriage to try to cover it up, promoting abstinence while living with proof that it doesn't work (and teaching her kids to do the same), inspiring fear and hatred in the 'Other' who was running for president, attacking liberal comedians as pedophiles who shouldn't be trusted around children because she couldn't figure out a joke, firing public safety commissioners out of personal vendettas, and sparking rumors of federal indictments for embezzlement.

You know... the sort of pious moral superiority that can only come with a proper religious background. Oh, well; at least she'll soon be mostly out of the limelight and won't have to face that darn liberal media for a while.

This isn't anything new. Religious leaders and religious politicians who tout their values as a sign of just how gosh-darn genuinely religious they are have a bad habit of violating their values in a very, very public way. Larry Craig, anti-homosexuality polemicist; Ted Haggard, megachurch preacher and moral role model; John Ensign, who said Bill Clinton had "no integrity left" after the whole Lewinsky deal; Mark Sanford, who loves to hike the Appalachian trail; Mark Foley, outspoken opponent of child pornography and the exploitation of children and part-time pen pal of underage Congressional pages; Jimmy Swaggart, who made a habit of exposing the indiscretions of his fellow evangelical leaders; and many other religious and political leaders.

Must be very convenient that you can go out and sin all throughout the week, then come back to church on Sunday and get saved all over again!

Glad I'm not in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma state representative Sally Kern has proposed what she calls the "Oklahoma Citizen's Proclamation for Morality." The proposition, which can be read in its entirety here, is truly comedy gold. She claims that "our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis," which (of course) can be blamed entirely on abortion, same-sex marriage, pornography, divorce, illegitimate births, and other favorite canards of the fanatically-religious right.

She whines and moans about how President Obama didn't officially recognize the National Day of Prayer, but he did recognize a month of tolerance for the LGBT community.

But the real juicy idiocy is at the very end:

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we the undersigned elected officials of the people of Oklahoma, religious leaders and citizens of the State of Oklahoma, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, solemnly declare that the HOPE of the great State of Oklahoma and of these United States, rests upon the Principles of Religion and Morality as put forth in the HOLY BIBLE; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, believers in the One True God and His only Son, call upon all to join with us in recognizing that “Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord,” and humbly implore all who love Truth and Virtue to live above reproach in the sight of God and man with a firm reliance on the leadership and protection of Almighty God; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Holy God, our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment, and grant a national awakening of righteousness and Christian renewal as we repent of our great sin.

Signed on the second day of July in the year of our Lord Christ Two Thousand and Nine.

Yowza. This from a woman who says she understands separation of church and state... and who has, in the past, said that homosexuals were a worse threat to America than terrorists. Does anything really need to be said here? She needs to be gone. Fast.

This kind of stuff needs to be shoved forcibly into the light of day. Thanks to the folks at Right Wing Watch for this one.