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.

Should the Boy Scouts be allowed to recruit in public schools?

It's always interesting to me when I run into a situation that I have to reconsider for the first time since becoming an atheist.

A mother in King, North Carolina recently wrote a letter to the editor in the Winston-Salem Journal:

On the second day of school, a representative from the Boy Scouts of America came to my son's school to recruit new members. My son came home so excited, and cried when I had to tell him no. I feel he is too young to understand BSA's homophobic and discriminatory policies, so I told him we already had too much on our plate. The BSA is prejudicial (it doesn't accept atheists or agnostics) and homophobic (no gays allowed). My son will never be a Boy Scout and I wish that I had been notified that valuable learning time was going to be spent promoting a homophobic hate group.

Recently President Obama made a 15-minute speech to children about working hard and staying in school. I got a verbal message from the teacher, a note and two calls letting me know about the speech.

Is the president's message that scary? Why does a positive message from the president require so much parental warning, while a discriminatory organization gets free rein to recruit during the school day with zero parental notification?

From now on, I expect notifications of future speakers at my son's school and the topic of discussion. I expect a verbal message from his teacher, a letter from the principal and two auto calls. I would also like the opportunity to send in a signed note to excuse him from said speaker.

The BSA, in case you didn't know, has official anti-LGBT and anti-nontheist policies, which have led to Eagle scouts being stripped of their awards and scout leaders being removed from their positions.

I'm an Eagle scout. I received my award from a scout troop where religion and sexuality were never discussed. Maybe there was an undercurrent of religion in some of the things we said (like the Scout Oath, which mentions doing duty to god and my country), but apart from the routine recitations it was never really raised as an issue. (Come to think of it, that's kind of surprising, considering that I grew up in a pretty conservative area of Michigan...)

But I know that troops do exist where just believing in the wrong god (e.g. being a Hindu) is enough to keep you out. And I've seen dozens of cases of scouts and scoutmasters having their awards and positions stripped away after publicly coming out of the closet.

So it's clearly not enough for me to apply my own personal experiences to this issue. If I say that it's okay to allow some scout troops into schools since not every scout troop discriminates on the basis of sexuality or religion, it would be equivalent to saying that since not all Christians are like Fred Phelps we should allow the more accepting groups to recruit in schools.

I can see the mother coming at this question with two different approaches:

1. She doesn't want her kids to be potentially indoctrinated into anti-LGBT, anti-nontheist beliefs.
2. She doesn't want to support an organization that discriminates the way the BSA does.

From the first viewpoint, it would seem a bit hasty to prejudge the practices of a local troop based on the policies of the national troop. The second viewpoint recognizes that things like membership dues and subscriptions to the Boy's Life magazine would be giving financial backing to a group with an official policy of hate, and I absolutely agree that such discriminatory groups shouldn't be given the platform of the classroom to seek new sources of income and new members.

Now I'm torn between turning in my Eagle badge to officially renounce the BSA and keeping it to pad my résumé...

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