I wrote recently about the denial of emergency reproductive health care at Catholic hospitals, and I'm glad to see that this extremely important issue is getting media traction. There are two articles in the Washington Post this week calling attention to these clashes across the country (HT: The Wall of Separation).

As AU says:

The Maryland Health Care Commission voted unanimously to allow a Catholic hospital called Holy Cross to build a new facility in northern Montgomery County. The commission made this vote even though another hospital run by a group affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventists had proposed building a facility that would offer the full range of reproductive care.

It's not just the denial of abortion to women suffering life-threatening complications of pregnancy, though that's certainly the most critical issue. But Catholic-controlled hospitals restrict women's freedom in other ways as well: for instance, by forbidding doctors to perform tubal ligation. This is usually done along with C-section for women who don't want any more children, but since it's not allowed at these hospitals, women who give birth there end up having to travel elsewhere and go through more surgery. There's also the threat of these hospitals ignoring patients' living wills if they're deemed to conflict with Catholic dogma about end-of-life care.

AU has promised legal action in Montgomery County, which is as it should be. When hospitals are built on public land or with public money, religious gatekeepers have no right to come in and decree which kinds of care will be forbidden there. The old, celibate men who run the church can preach whatever they like to their own congregations. They may not enforce their beliefs on everyone who comes to a hospital, regardless of those people's own beliefs or affiliations.

But it's not just Catholics who value religious dogma over human well-being. There's also this shocking story out of Georgia, where a church-run homeless shelter with the audacity to call itself the "House of Mercy" flatly refuses to serve gay and lesbian people:

Earlier this month, two women checked into House of Mercy along with their children. Soon, the operators of the facility began to suspect that the two women were lesbians, and promptly kicked them out. Both women told the local news that they weren't even gay, and one of them said she came from an abusive home.

Is there even any point in citing the Bible? Probably not, but I'll do it anyway:

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left...

Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'"

—Matthew 25:31-45 (NIV)

I could point out that there's no footnote saying, "Except when those people are gay, in which case I couldn't care less about them," but why even bother? It's obvious that people like Elder Bobby Harris only care about the parts of the Bible that give them an excuse to hate.

And that's really what's behind all this, whether it's evangelical-run shelters that turn gay people out onto the street, or Catholic bishops who demand that women with preeclampsia be left to die. Their charitable work isn't done out of a genuine concern for human welfare - how could it be, given this evidence? - but out of a desire to enforce their brand of religious superiority on the population. They want to show, in a very public and visible way, which people they consider worthy or unworthy of their help, and by so doing, to prove that their beliefs and their edicts reign supreme. This cruel, theocratic desire for supremacy is something that an enlightened and secular society shouldn't tolerate.

Having written recently about what really caused the Confederacy to secede, I wanted to say some more about the topic. I've previously discussed the religious foundations of the CSA and how they repeatedly appealed to God and Christianity as a defense of the rightness of slavery, and I'd like to add some more evidence on that subject.

Benjamin Palmer was born in Charleston in 1818 and became one of the preeminent Christian preachers of the antebellum era. He served as Moderator of the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. - the highest elected position in that body - and wrote several works on theology which, according to the Southern Presbyterian Review, are still in print. When he died in 1902, a Christian magazine, The Interior, eulogized that "Dr. Palmer served God and his generation as a symbol of the immutability of the great essentials of our religion" and praised "his faithful witness to Jesus Christ in the word of his preaching", which "gave him such power... as few of the Lord's ambassadors have ever wielded in any age of the church".

But Palmer was known for one other thing as well. In November 1860, just days after Abraham Lincoln's election, he gave a famous sermon at his church in South Carolina. In that sermon, he said that "I have never intermeddled with political questions," but that he was compelled to speak on politics because "we are in the most fearful and perilous crisis which has occurred in our history as a nation". Since Palmer was the representative of "a class whose opinions in such a controversy are of cardinal importance", namely the clergy, he felt that it was now his obligation to speak out.

And what vital message did he have to impart?

A nation often has a character as well defined and intense as that of an individual.... this individuality of character alone makes any people truly historic, competent to work out its specific mission, and to become a factor in the world's progress. The particular trust assigned to such a people becomes the pledge of the divine protection; and their fidelity to it determines the fate by which it is finally overtaken... If then the South is such a people, what, at this juncture, is their providential trust? I answer, that it is to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery as now existing.

Palmer argued that enslaving black men and women wasn't just the South's divine mission, but that it was doing them a kindness, since "their character fits them for dependence and servitude", and that if liberated, they would be helpless, would soon "relapse into their primitive barbarism" and die of starvation or anarchy. But most of all, he was convinced that God was on the South's side in this struggle, since after all, slavery was "recognized and sanctioned in the scriptures of God".

Without, therefore, determining the question of duty for future generations, I simply say that for us as now situated, the duty is plain of conserving and transmitting the system of slavery, with the freest scope for its natural development and extension... My own conviction is, that we should at once lift ourselves, intelligently, to the highest moral ground and proclaim to all the world that we hold this trust from God, and in its occupancy we are prepared to stand or fall as God may appoint. If the critical moment has arrived at which the great issue is joined, let us say that, in the sight of all perils, we will stand by our trust; and God be with the right!

And if God was on the side of the slaveholders, then what motivated the abolitionists? Well, Palmer had the answer to that one too:

...in this great struggle, we defend the cause of God and religion. The abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic. The demon which erected its throne upon the guillotine in the days of Robespierre and Marat, which abolished the Sabbath and worshipped reason in the person of a harlot, yet survives to work other horrors, of which those of the French Revolution are but the type. Among a people so generally religious as the American, a disguise must be worn; but it is the same old threadbare disguise of the advocacy of human rights. From a thousand Jacobin clubs here, as in France, the decree has gone forth which strikes at God by striking at all subordination and law.

...This spirit of atheism, which knows no God who tolerates evil, no Bible which sanctions law, and no conscience that can be bound by oaths and covenants, has selected us for its victims, and slavery for its issue. Its banner-cry rings out already upon the air — "liberty, equality, fraternity," which simply interpreted mean bondage, confiscation and massacre.

Speaking on behalf of the modern atheist movement, let me just say: Thanks, Dr. Palmer! I realize you meant that passage as a polemical insult against your adversaries, not as an actual description of their beliefs - but if you want to give us atheists the credit for abolishing slavery, I'm happy to accept it.

We see this pattern repeated throughout history: every social or political reform movement is demonized by the religious conservatives of its day as sinful, heretical, atheist - and then when the good guys win out and the cause is triumphant, the believers of the next generation claim that it was a religious movement all along. (This is exactly what happened with the U.S. Constitution, to name another example, and there are others.)

Whatever the evil of the day, religion almost always plays a major role in justifying it. That's because the unknown will of an unseen deity can be appealed to as a means of sanctifying any injustice, whereas a morality based on human rights and equality isn't nearly so flexible and accomodating. Small wonder, then, that the preachers have always seen atheists lurking in every corner of the opposition. In a sense, they're quite right - because we're the defenders of the morality of human beings, the morality of this world. Even back then, preachers like Benjamin Palmer must have known that ceasing our reliance on the alleged will of God, and unleashing reason as a source of morality, could only lead to the rise and growth of atheism. The only difference is that he refused to admit that was a good thing!

If blogging was my full-time job, I'd probably have written a post about each of these stories! As it is, I leave you with some food for thought - and there's a virtual banquet this week:

• In the U.K., more and more decaying churches are being converted into homes - a fitting use for these still-beautiful buildings, in my opinion.

• According to a study in the journal Pediatrics, gay teens are more likely to be punished by schools and courts than their straight peers. One wonders if something similar holds true for young atheists; there are plenty of places in the country where I wouldn't doubt it in the slightest.

• And on that note, a mind-boggling story about former Confederate states celebrating secession - in one city, there will be a parade featuring "a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy" - that's being cast as a celebration of "self-government" and "states' rights". In reality, what the Confederates were mainly fighting for was their right, often justified by religion, to buy and sell human beings as property. A hundred and fifty years later, it's astonishing that so many people still refuse to admit their ancestors were in the wrong.

• Divorce rates are skyrocketing in Iran as Iranian women, increasingly assertive and educated despite living in a brutally patriarchal society, fight back against unwanted marriages and cruel husbands.

• Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show how Ireland's government caved in to Vatican pressure to grant immunity to church officials suspected of complicity in child rape.

• A council of rabbis in a Lubavitcher Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn have issued a decree forbidding believers to speak to the police, even to report a crime, without the permission of the rabbis.

• In San Francisco, a DMV employee was suspended after he sent a letter threatening hellfire to a transgender woman who applied to have her sex changed on her driver's license. It appears that he shared her name and address with his church without asking permission. It also appears that this is not the first time this employee has done this. Stories like this need to be better publicized - when bigots cry for "freedom of conscience" clauses that would permit them to refuse to do their job on religious grounds, this is what they're really demanding the right to do.

By Sarah Braasch

In loving memory of my baby brother, Jacob Michael Braasch (01/28/86 – 02/02/10)

Kat and I were working on an English translation of a section of the French website for the women's rights organization, Ni Putes Ni Soumises (NPNS – Neither Whores Nor Submissives). We were struggling with the word mixité. We toyed with "the mixing of the sexes". But, that sounded like one of those speed-dating events. We settled on "desegregation". But, then we included the antecedent "gender", to distinguish our meaning from the more common American connotation of racial desegregation. "Gender desegregation" does capture, in English, the intended meaning of the French word "mixité". But, we were left somewhat dissatisfied. NPNS uses mixité as the last in a three-word chant representing the three ideological pillars of their movement. Laicité, Egalité, Mixité. Gender desegregation doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

As I plowed away, I came to an expression that made me roar aloud with laughter. Kat demanded to know the cause of my apparent mirth. As often occurs in such situations, a painfully literal translation had tickled my funny bone. It just sounded so weird and precious in English. I had translated "Mercredis de la Mixité" as "Gender Desegregation Wednesdays". When I told Kat, she laughed too. Then, we both laughed. Then, we laughed so hard we cried. It was one of those irreplaceable and singular moments of cosmic comic connection, otherwise known as, "you had to be there". It's ok if you don't get it.

But, then, after we had finally stopped laughing, we had a serious conversation about our reaction to my lacking translating skills. Obviously, it was the combination of the ostensibly esoteric with the ostensibly quotidian, like Theosophy Thursdays. But, why did "gender desegregation" sound so academic, so arcane, so removed from the populist vernacular that it incited uproarious laughter when "racial desegregation" or just "desegregation" does not?

Racial equality has been cemented as an indispensable ideological pillar of liberal, constitutional democracy while women continue to struggle for full recognition as human beings and as citizens. While religious justifications for racism are considered barbaric and archaic notions of yesteryear and beyond the pale for a modern, civilized society, religion remains the foremost obstacle thwarting women's aspirations to humanity and citizenship.

The evolution of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (popularly known as the LDS or Mormon Church) during recent decades illustrates this point perfectly. The Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) Church broke away from the main sect of "Saints", because they refused to give up polygamy (so-called celestial plural marriage) as a central tenet of the Mormon doctrine, among other complaints.

Imagine, for a moment, an even more strident version of the FLDS Church. Let's call them the Super Fundie Latter Day Saints (SFLDS) Church. Imagine this SFLDS Church breaking away from their Mormon brethren, because they refuse to give up racism as a central tenet of the Mormon doctrine.

If you question whether either or both polygamy and racism were, have been or are foundational tenets of the Mormon doctrine, I invite you to peruse the LDS Church's own literature on their own website. It's quite eye-opening. Copious documentation indicates that generations of Mormons were taught that dark skin is a curse from God, as well as evidence of a less than entirely virtuous pre-human existence, serving to justify everything from racial slavery and segregation and discrimination to Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws. Only public outcry and condemnation and boycott, rising dissent among the rank and file, and the risk of losing federal funding for BYU's students provoked Jehovah into revealing a doctrinal change to the church leadership in 1978.

But, back to our imaginary Super Fundie LDS Church that is incensed with the original LDS Church for abandoning the foundational doctrinal tenet of racism. Imagine that this Super Fundie Mormon sect decides that the best way for it to propagate its originalist vision of Jehovah's intentions for mankind is to adopt as many black babies as possible. The goal of the program is two-fold. It will give these decrepit black souls an opportunity to redeem themselves while in their human incarnations, hopefully with the added bonus of turning their putrid black skins white. And, the black babies will be brainwashed into submitting to their divinely ordained, sub-human status, thereby furthering God's plan for differentiating amongst his creations, according to moral uprightness, by segregating them by race and geography.

Turns your stomach, doesn't it? Strikes you as pretty much the most disgusting, despicable agenda ever, doesn't it?

It was real. This actually happened, or something very similar. Except that black kids weren't the targets. Native American kids were. And, it took place during the latter half of the immediately preceding century.

It was called the Indian Student Placement Program. Mormon families took in thousands of Native American kids and brainwashed them into believing that they were the cursed Lamanites, the black sheep descendants of ancient Middle Eastern Jews. The program's creator and leader, Spencer W. Kimball, former President of the LDS Church, once bragged about the program participants' complexions turning noticeably whiter, as evidence of their having left savagery behind for a Mormon life and salvation.

Do you know what is even more disgusting and despicable? This is still happening. Every day. All over the US. Right now. To women and girls.

All over the US, in religious communities and families, women and girls are being brainwashed into believing that they are sub-human, meant only to obey and serve the men in their lives, meant only to birth and raise more adherents. They are brainwashed into believing that they are the sexual and reproductive chattel of their families and communities. They are brainwashed into believing that they will either submit to God's divinely ordained plan and subject themselves to sub-human treatment, or face dire consequences in the here now, the hereafter, or both.

How do I know? Because, it happened to me. I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. I was raised to believe that men dictate the lives of women, because women are inferior by design, by God's design.

If it isn't ok to adopt an African American or Native American baby and raise it to believe that it is sub-human on account of its race, why is it ok to take a girl baby and raise her to believe that she is sub-human on account of her gender? I don't care if you birthed her yourself. Your children are not your property to abuse as you please. They are human beings with rights.

How do they get away with this? By claiming this blatant abuse as a religious liberty. We don't let them get away with that anymore with respect to race, but we still let them get away with it with respect to gender. At least, according to Spencer Kimball, the dark-skinned kids can grow lighter as they grow more virtuous. But, what about the poor girls? No matter how much a little Mormon girl prays for her clitoris to grow into a penis, I'm guessing that wasn't part of God's plan. Instead of being so concerned with gay couples adopting and raising children, maybe we should be scrutinizing Christian Fundies who want to adopt girl children and raise them as sex slaves.

Where is the public outcry and condemnation and dissent and government response for gender segregation and slavery as exists for racial segregation and slavery?

Nothing exemplifies this cognitive dissonance as well as the global uproar over public burqa / niqab bans. In the U.S., it is far easier to craft a legal argument against the burqa / niqab as a simple safety measure and general prohibition against identity obscuring masks in the public space than it is to even begin to speak about addressing the ban as a women's rights provision, as an affirmative action provision, as a gender equality provision, as a prohibition on gender segregation in the public space, or as a prohibition on gender slavery in the public space.

Why? Because everyone is ready to bend over backwards to defend the burqa / niqab as the free expression of religious liberty. Because religious liberty still trumps women's human and civil rights in American jurisprudence. Because we still view women as the sexual and reproductive chattel of their families and communities.

History repeats itself. Again and again and again. How quickly one forgets the Civil Rights Era. It boggles the mind how no one seems to realize that we already had this argument. But, it was about race. First, it was about slavery and then it was about segregation. And the opponents of progress and democracy made all of the same arguments. They denounced the Civil Rights Act as the federal government overstepping its constitutional bounds by regulating the behavior of private citizens in the public space. They said that the federal government was trampling on the First Amendment rights of US citizens. And, the proponents of progress and democracy made the same arguments. They said that separate never equals equal. They said that a liberal, constitutional democracy cannot sustain itself with a substantial portion of its citizenry disenfranchised and debased.

Recently, Rand Paul appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show. Rachel Maddow was shocked and aghast at Rand Paul's seeming suggestion that the portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that touched upon the behavior of private citizens in the public space should never have been.

Rachel was eloquent when she replied, "The Civil Rights Act was the federal government stepping in to protect civil rights, because they weren't otherwise being protected. It wasn't a hypothetical. There were businesses that were saying black people can not be served here. And, the federal government stepped in and said no, you actually don't have that choice to make. The federal government is coming in and saying you can't make that choice as a business owner."

You don't get to make that choice, even if you are a member of the persecuted minority, and you want to segregate yourself from the persecuting majority. We are not going to allow racial segregation. We would no more allow a black owned restaurant to refuse to serve white patrons than we would a white owned restaurant to refuse to serve black patrons.

Why shouldn't you be able to segregate yourself? Segregation is not a choice you get to make in the public space of a secular, democratic republic. Segregation is the antithesis of democracy. Segregation is the antithesis of human rights. Segregation is the antithesis of equality. Segregation is the antithesis of equal protection. Separate but equal does not exist. I thought we already arrived at that conclusion in the US with Brown v. Board of Education.

What about the freedom of association? This is not about forcing people to be friends or lovers or cohorts of whatever variety. The woman in the burqa in public is not the black woman with her black friends entering a white owned store. She is the white storeowner putting up a "no blacks allowed" sign in her store window. She is saying, "I demand the right to participate in society fully, but I also demand the right to discriminate regarding with whom I will interact, with whom I will engage in the public space. I demand the right to treat other human beings and other citizens in a discriminatory fashion. I demand the right not to acknowledge the humanity of the other citizens in the public space while I also demand that they acknowledge my humanity."

This is unacceptable in a liberal, constitutional democracy. We must not tolerate gender segregation in our public space, even in the pursuit of religious liberty. It matters not if the "choice" to segregate oneself was coerced or no. It matters not if the woman wearing the burqa is a victim or no. We simply cannot tolerate gender segregation any more than we can tolerate racial segregation. Public segregation is not a choice you get to make.

This is not treating women like hapless and helpless victims, unable to choose their own style of dress. The anti-burqa ban argument is not only condescending to women, it is also contradictory. It is saying that women can and do and should be able to choose gender segregation and slavery of their own accord and volition, but that they may not be held accountable for the choices they make. Talk about having your cake and eating it too. If you can "choose" slavery, then you can be held accountable for choosing slavery.

Undoubtedly, the Civil Rights Act relied upon the Commerce Clause. While the Commerce Clause has been interpreted in an incredibly expansive manner, the Supreme Court has been narrowing the scope of this interpretation as of late. The questionable nature of applying the Commerce Clause to implement federal civil rights legislation could be avoided if we brought back the Privileges and Immunities Clause. But, regardless of the constitutional basis, our federal government acted to end racial segregation in the public sphere by regulating the conduct of private citizens in the public space. Is it really such a stretch to jump from racial segregation in public accommodations to gender segregation in the public space? I think you could make an even stronger argument that gender segregation in the public space impedes interstate commerce in the aggregate than you are able to make regarding racial segregation in public accommodations.

The fully integrated veil (the burqa or niqab) is more than segregation; it is effacement; it is dehumanization. It is slavery. This is not about morality. Morality has no place in the law. Desegregation, either racial or gender, is not the moral choice. It has nothing to do with morality. It has everything to do with democracy.

It is an issue of democratic representation and power distribution. It is the same issue that inspired the framers of the Constitution to separate powers within a tripartite federal government to create a system of checks and balances and to leave the balance of power in the hands of the states and the People. If any one class or group or entity has too much power, discrimination and oppression are quick to follow. This is why diversity is a compelling government interest. This is what makes affirmative action policies possible. Gender equality and desegregation should be every bit as compelling a government interest as diversity.

Per the current state of American jurisprudence, religious liberty trumps women's rights. This is a violation of the Establishment Clause. This is a violation of international human rights law. This is a violation of the principle of secularism. This places our liberal constitutional democracy in jeopardy. This is why we need the Equal Rights Amendment. Racial equality has had its constitutional moment, and now we need to enshrine gender equality in our Constitution in the same way.

I am a human being, not a whore, even if Jehovah or Allah or Yahweh or Jesus or Krishna or Mohammed or Buddha or Confucius or Rael says otherwise.

Maybe one day Gender Desegregation Wednesdays won't sound so absurd anymore.

We can dream.

As you've surely heard by now, Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling last week striking down California's Proposition 8 on equal-protection grounds. You might also have heard that Argentina has legalized same-sex marriage and that a Mexican court upheld a marriage-equality law in Mexico City, rejecting a challenge by the conservative Calderon government.

Of course, all three of these victories are cause for jubilation. The wins in Mexico and Argentina are particularly welcome, insofar as they show that marriage equality isn't just a cause of the wealthiest nations but is taking root throughout the developing world. They also show the weakening power and fading influence of Christianity in general and the Catholic church in particular - which, to no one's surprise, continues its resolute march in the wrong direction by tenaciously opposing these decisions. Meanwhile, in California, conservatives who scream and gnash their teeth over "judicial activism", by which they mean any court ruling they disagree with, now have a new villain: the notorious hippie liberal who first nominated Judge Walker, Ronald Reagan.

There's little question that the relatively liberal Ninth Circuit will uphold Judge Walker's decision, but the real question is how this ruling will fare at the Supreme Court. It's safe to assume that there are four votes in favor of overturning the ruling no matter what happens - the anti-marriage-equality side could come into the court dressed in clown costumes, conduct their cross-examinations in mime, and deliver a closing argument consisting solely of honking a bicycle horn, and Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito would vote in their favor.

But Justice Kennedy, the swing vote, is almost impossible to predict. Although he's a conservative Catholic and refused to enforce the separation of church and state in some truly horrendous decisions, he also joined the majority in Lawrence v. Texas, the decision striking down sodomy laws as an infringement of the right to privacy. It's just barely conceivable that he might actually rule the right way on this.

However, it's hardly desirable to stake the fundamental freedoms of millions of Americans on the whim of a single justice; we might as well trust a coin flip to deliver equality. I think there's a better way of defending this decision.

Whatever happens at each stage, it will take years for this case to work its way up to the Supreme Court. If Judge Walker refuses to stay his ruling, and if the Ninth Circuit upholds that, there could be tens of thousands of same-sex marriages in the meantime throughout the Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, it would be a fait accompli. It would be so firmly established that I can picture even a conservative Supreme Court being loath to overturn it. In that case, I could imagine the court simply refusing to hear the issue, letting Judge Walker's decision stand but not applying it to the rest of the nation.

The other possibility is that we could fight for a new ballot initiative. After all, Prop 8 passed by only a small margin, and the percentage of the electorate supporting same-sex marriage is growing every year. If California passes a new constitutional amendment repealing Prop 8 and affirming Judge Walker's ruling, the issue would be moot. Again, this would most likely result in a split where same-sex marriage was legal in California but not elsewhere. This isn't ideal, obviously, but it might be important strategically. Every victory we win, every legal beachhead we establish, builds momentum for the cause of equality and proves to wider society that the doomsday shrieking of the religious right is a heap of contemptible lies.

And the same holds true in Mexico City and Argentina: the more places that same-sex marriage moves into the mainstream, the more it will become familiar and accepted. More and more, people are getting the chance to see for themselves that gay and lesbian couples are normal human beings, deserving of the same rights as everyone else, and religious prejudice is weakening. Every fight we win sets the stage for further victories, and brings us ever closer to the time when true equality is the rule everywhere, not the exception.

I've written before about the ongoing schism within the Episcopal church, but those posts only concerned the goings-on in America. Now that battle has spread across the Atlantic and into the heart of Anglicanism, and it's looking more and more likely that the church will be cloven in two at its roots. As reported by the Telegraph, the Anglican General Synod has rejected a last-ditch compromise brokered by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and nominal head of the Anglican church, to prevent conservative members from breaking away.

Conservative and evangelical Anglican sects have been growing increasingly angered by the appointment of women and gay men to be bishops. They exerted their muscle last week to block the promotion of Jeffrey John, a gay man, to the post of Bishop of Southwark. But the conservatives weren't satisfied with that victory - in fact, as is usual with the religious right, it only led them to make further demands.

The conservative faction of Anglicans don't like women serving as bishops, and they especially don't like being subordinate to women bishops. What they wanted was, in effect, religious apartheid - a certain number of bishop positions reserved for men, with the assurance that conservative congregations wouldn't have to report to or deal with a female bishop if they didn't want to. Rowan Williams backed the proposal - though a liberal himself, he's apparently willing to compromise with bigots, as is also shown by his revolting remarks on sharia law. But the larger Anglican Communion wouldn't go along with the deal, and in a shock vote, Williams' proposal was defeated by a narrow margin.

What's next? The likely result of the vote is that hundreds of conservative clergy and parishes will split off from the Anglican Communion, defecting to the Roman Catholic church, which has offered to accept them and their prejudices with open arms (no surprise there). Personally, I don't see why the liberal Anglicans are going to such effort to keep them. Why would you want to share a church with a bunch of bigots?

If I were a liberal Anglican, I'd not only be welcoming the conservatives' exit, I'd be encouraging them. Yes, they'll diminish the church's numbers and prestige; yes, the money they contributed will be lost. But are those the most important things? This ridiculous effort to preserve unity at any cost, even if it means coddling the feelings of homophobes and misogynists, suggests that the Anglicans aren't ready to move into the 21st century after all. I say to them, kick the bigots out and move on with your lives! Show the world that you really value justice and equality. And while you're at it, you might want to consider reevaluating that book that gave them those ideas in the first place. Get rid of that, and you'd really have a religion worth believing in!

By Sarah Braasch

In loving memory of my baby brother, Jacob Michael Braasch (1/28/86 – 02/02/10)

Masters of the shell game have been swindling and duping the overconfident and the ignorant for millennia. The game operator places a "pea" beneath one of three "shells". The operator then shuffles the shells in front of the player before asking the player to guess at the pea's location. Unbeknownst to the player, the operator has removed the pea via a sleight-of-hand technique. It is impossible for the player to best the operator. The operator is in complete control of the outcome.

Cultural relativists and obscurantists employ a similar sleight-of-mind technique to maintain control over human rights discourse and to deflect attacks from activists and the international community. They like to play a rousing game, which I like to call the Religio-Cultural-Racial Shell Game. The goal of the game is to hide the human rights violation by removing the violation from the discourse and entrancing any malcontents with the hypnotic effect of shell shuffling. The three "shells" in this game are comprised of the unholy trinity of Religion, Culture and Race.

If someone wishes to defend a practice, it is best to describe such a practice as a religious tenet, thereby bestowing upon it the greatest degree of protection from condemnation. It is almost enough to boggle the mind – the resulting effluvia of apologetics, if one only claims religion's bigotries as religious liberties.

However, some practices are beyond the pale, even by gods' standards, which are exceedingly capacious. The most horrific practices are becoming intolerable and unjustifiable, even in a world that pays the utmost obeisance to religious idiocy. This is the case with respect to such misogynistic practices as honor killings and female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced girl child marriages.

In such cases, it behooves the religious to disown their former bread and butter. They admit the existence of the practices in their societies, but impute it to the unorthodox work of culture's unwieldy and nefarious ways. They thereby immunize themselves against attack. This is the now all-too-familiar "it's not religion; it's culture" switcheroo. Of course, some religious diehards will remain unswayed by reformation, no matter how politic. And, unflappable cultural relativist purists will be undeterred by the pejorative connotation of the attribution.

But, the cultural relativists have an ace up their sleeve, a magic trick long employed by the obscurantists. And, even the religious are beginning to take note. Besides the potent defense mechanism of screaming cultural imperialism, one may artfully dodge any accusations of having perpetrated human rights violations by obscuring the issue with indictments of racist intent. The stultifying effect of such a charge has been duly noted by the religious. They have wasted no time in doing their utmost to attempt to equate religion with race.

The greatest operators of the Religio-Cultural-Racial Shell Game move the pea as it suits them, beneath whichever shell of obfuscation that happens to serve best in the moment. Thus, they leave the human rights activist bereft of options. It's not religion; it's culture, unless we wish to claim it as religion, but, regardless, if you attack it, you will be accused of racism.

Case in point: the burqa. It's not a religious tradition. It's a cultural tradition. How dare you impugn Islam or Allah as commanding such an odious practice? Except when it is claimed as a religious tradition under cover of religious liberty. How dare you deny a woman's free choice to express her religious faith? And, if you attack the practice, you will be charged with racism against Arabs, and, surprisingly, or not, Muslims, as if Islam were a race and not a religion.

Of course, all of these shenanigans are nothing but a ruse comprised of fetid, putrid smoke and shards of broken mirrors. Religion and culture are NOT non-overlapping magisteria. Religion is culture. To say that religion has some objective or absolute meaning or objective or absolute doctrine when wholly removed from its cultural context is asinine. This is simply an attempt to bolster the idea that religion bears some objective or absolute truth. This is false.

Religion has no meaning when removed from its cultural context. Religion was born from culture. Culture exists without religion, because humanity exists. But, without culture, religion ceases to exist. To pretend otherwise is to buy into the delusion of the objective or absolute truth of religious doctrine.

Religion is not the realm of divine values while culture may lay claim to the realm of human values. And, even if such were the case, no mere human is able to divine the distinction between the divine and the worldly. This fact has been borne out by the ages of human history, so I would be quite wary of the charlatan operators claiming to be able to do so now. Our understanding of what lies inside the realm of the divine evolves and fluctuates according to the whims of human culture. Strange that.

As we evolve away from religious idiocy, more and more barbaric religious customs and traditions will be relegated to the cultural realm and disowned by their respective religious forebears. Like a child who refuses to relinquish its disintegrating security blanket, the faithful are loathe to give up their cults. Instead, they are shedding tenets and customs and traditions and doctrinal commandments like a molting diseased emu, most of whose brethren are long extinct. The religious hang onto an illusory distinction between religion and culture as if their beliefs depend upon it. And, they do.

In the game of Hide-the-Human-Rights-Violation, cultural relativism is religion's bitch. The religious are not cultural relativists. They are not moral relativists. They believe that they possess an objective and absolute moral truth. Their gods are supposedly infallible. So, when their religious traditions and tenets and doctrines and beliefs fail to live up to the most rudimentary human formulations of moral behavior, how to respond?

Well, those faults must be the result of imperfect human culture intruding upon the sacred and divine and pure religious space. So, of course, if one discovers that culture, including human, all-too-human frailty and cruelty, has set up camp in the campground of divinity, it has to be expunged.

But, this is all just lip service. All of those so-called cultural practices are staples of the diet upon which the world's major religions feed. Misogyny, bigotry, slavery, genocide, rape, torture, racism and the list goes on and on. If those "cultural" practices go away, the world's major religions will shrivel up and die, turning into emaciated carcasses to rot upon the garbage heap of dead religions.

This is cultural relativism's raison-d'être: to do religion's dirty work. And, isn't that always how religion operates? Privately dependent upon that which is publicly disowned. Isn't it ironic that those who proclaim moral absolutism rely upon those who aver moral relativism to protect those practices without which religion has no purpose and cannot survive?

And, religion protects culture, as the ostensible linchpin of any given culture, by bestowing an aura of respectability and sanctity. It's part of their culture, but, at the same time, it's their religion, so show some respect.

The same may be said for the race shell. Religion breeds racism, as does cultural relativism, yet both rely upon most persons' abhorrence for racism as protection.

So, if you buy into the game, if you agree to play, as so many human rights activists do, out of western imperialist and colonialist guilt, what result?

If you refuse to acknowledge, for example, the role that religion plays in the subjugation of women, what are you saying as a human rights activist? You are saying that those societies that perpetrate the most egregious atrocities upon their female populations are sadists or idiots or both. You are saying that they are incapable of grasping the concept of human dignity or don't care. And, you are perpetuating the religious patriarchy that created the problem in the first place. In other words – you have been duped. Thanks for playing.

Can we call a farce a farce already? Can we expose the little wizened man pulling the levers behind the green curtain? Or, must we continue, blind, deaf and dumb, politely and purposely oblivious to the sufferings of our fellow travelers?

I, for one, am no one's mark, and I'm not religion's bitch anymore.

The Supreme Court heard arguments recently in a case out of California, in which a Christian student group at a public law school sued because they were denied recognition and funding by the school. The reason for this denial is that the school requires student groups to be open to all members, and the Christian Legal Society wants to ban - you'll never see it coming - people who are guilty of "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle". That means gays and gays alone, of course, since being gay is the only sin that Christians care about now. The Bible also prohibits divorce quite clearly [Matthew 19:6], but I've heard no allegation that this group seeks to exclude people who are "unrepentantly guilty" of having gotten divorced.

Some of the arguments before the Supreme Court verged on the comic, such as this exchange:

"Are you suggesting that if a group wanted to exclude all black people, all women, all handicapped persons, whatever other form of discrimination a group wants to practice, that a school has to accept that group and recognize it, give it funds and otherwise lend it space?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

No, McConnell said. "The stipulation is that they may not exclude based on status or beliefs. We have only challenged the beliefs, not status. Race, any other status basis, Hastings is able to enforce."

"What if the belief is that African Americans are inferior?" Justice John Paul Stevens said.

"Again, I think they can discriminate on the basis of belief, but not on the basis of status," McConnell said.

So apparently, a student group would not be able to outright bar black people, but would be able to bar black people who refuse to sign a sworn statement declaring their belief in the racial inferiority of black people. Totally different! Thanks for clearing that up.

The Christian group's lawsuit claimed that their constitutional rights of free association and free speech are being denied, which is an obvious falsehood. No one's freedom of association is being denied; the Christian group, or any other group, can select its membership based on any criteria they like. The issue is whether the school, which as a public institution is an arm of the government, must subsidize that discrimination by giving official recognition and funding to such a group. This question should have been settled long ago, but while the CLS isn't seeking to overturn civil-rights laws, it obviously wants to carve out an exception permitting them to practice anti-gay bigotry with state support as long as it's founded on religious belief (as if racism of past eras was not also justified with religion).

Sadly, this revolting argument isn't an American aberration. On the other side of the pond, Christian fundamentalists in the U.K. (yes, they do exist!) are making exactly the same argument:

A top judge was warned that court rulings against Christian workers risk causing "civil unrest" as he heard the case of a relationship counsellor who was sacked after refusing to give sex advice to homosexual couples. Gary McFarlane's barrister said that laws banning discrimination had taken precedence over religious freedoms.

...Christian leaders are particularly concerned by a ruling by Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls on behalf of the Court of Appeal. Lillian Ladele, a registrar who refused to conduct civil partnerships because they were against her beliefs, was deemed to have broken the law and could no longer work as a registrar.

They claim that the ruling meant that the right to express the Christian faith must take second place to the rights of homosexuals.

That last sentence could be more accurately written as follows: "They claim that the ruling meant that the right of Christians to be bigots must take second place to the rights of homosexuals to be free of bigotry."

After all this time, Christian fundamentalists are still committing the same fallacy I pointed out in one of my very first posts: the erroneous belief that their free exercise rights have been violated if they haven't been accommodated in any way they demand. They've very successfully managed to remain ignorant of the fact that having freedom of religion means, if you have religious objections to performing the duties of a job, then you're free to not take that job. There are plenty of positions where you're not required to serve the public, if these people find the idea of rendering service to a gay person so utterly unthinkable.

But no. They seek the right not just to express their opinions as private citizens, but to carry those opinions over into the performance of their official duties and decide who they will or will not serve based on whom their religious beliefs tell them to hate. What next? Christian doctors who won't treat gay people because they believe God is punishing them with plagues? Christian firefighters who refuse to extinguish a burning house if a gay couple lives there? Christian policemen who refuse to arrest a person who assaults or murders a gay man? Where does it stop?

What these loathsome fundamentalists really want is to make up their own laws based on their personal religious beliefs. And once we allow them to do that in even one area - once we accept that religious beliefs ever trump the equal protection of the law - there's no consistent place where this principle should end. The only rational thing to do is to draw the line right at the beginning, and declare that bigotry and hate are never valid reasons for treating people unequally - the same argument that's already accepted in the case of race and gender. There's every reason to believe that the day is rapidly approaching when the Christians who seek to safeguard their own right to discriminate will be considered just as reprehensible as the bigots of past eras who fought equal rights for women and black people.

You've probably heard of Constance McMillen, a lesbian student at a Mississippi high school who wanted to bring her girlfriend as her date to her senior prom this year. The school officials, not even attempting to disguise their bigotry, refused to grant permission - and then canceled the entire prom rather than face a discrimination lawsuit which they'd be certain to lose. (In fact McMillen and her family did bring a suit, and the judge did rule that she had been discriminated against, but he held that it wasn't in his power to force the school to hold a prom.)

In a brilliant move, the American Humanist Association responded by offering to hold a private, LGBT-friendly prom for Constance's school in which everyone would be welcome, regardless of sexual orientation. This was made possible by a $20,000 grant from Todd Stiefel, an atheist philanthropist who serves on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America.

As I said, this was a brilliant move. Not only does it reaffirm that atheists and secular humanists support the civil rights of LGBT people, it shows the students at Constance's high school that, after their bigoted school board was prepared to deny them a prom, it was a group of nonbelievers who made it possible after all. It was clearly an excellent idea, winners all around - and everyone agreed, it seems, except the Mississippi ACLU.

To avoid further controversy, the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi has rejected a $20,000 gift intended to underwrite an alternate prom replacing one canceled by a local school district after a lesbian student demanded that she be allowed to attend with her girlfriend.

..."Although we support and understand organizations like yours, the majority of Mississippians tremble in terror at the word 'atheist,'" Jennifer Carr, the fund-raiser for the A.C.L.U of Mississippi, wrote in an e-mail message to Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the humanist group.

...Ms. Carr wrote to Mr. Speckhardt: "Our staff has been talking a lot about your donation offer and have found ourselves in a bit of a conflict. We have fears that your organization sponsoring the prom could stir up even more controversy."

Obligatory snark: The ACLU - not afraid to defend the free speech rights of Nazis, but too scared to take money from a bunch of atheists!

But I'm being unfair, because this isn't where the story ends. First, the ACLU didn't actually have the authority to decline the AHA's gift, because a different group, the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, is organizing the private prom. Second, it appears that this message didn't represent the sentiments of the ACLU as a whole, because they swiftly apologized and announced that they had no objection to the gift. This is a much better decision, and I command the ACLU and accept their apology with no hard feelings. I assume the AHA will do likewise.

Even so, this response says something about how atheists are still looked down upon. Even the ACLU - a group whose purpose is to defend the civil liberties of every American, a group that's more than willing to defend gays and lesbians even though that minority causes no small amount of trembling among Mississippi voters - even their first response was to turn down money from atheists, lest they be tainted by their association with us.

Of course, in a state as conservative-dominated as Mississippi, this may be less of a surprise than it would be elsewhere. Still, it shows how much progress we have left to make in terms of winning public acceptance. And the best way to achieve this is to make a splash, to bring light into the darkest of places - which means that Mississippi is one of the best places to start!

In the U.S., the cause of gay and lesbian rights has made major advances in the last few decades. Anti-discrimination laws are in wide effect, including a recently passed federal hate-crime law; marriage equality is already an established reality in several states; and despite setbacks, the now overwhelming tolerance and acceptance of gays and lesbians among younger generations heralds further progress in the future.

But in spite of these hopeful signs, the hatemongers and bigots of the religious right aren't giving up. As their cause slowly, but inexorably dries up at home, they're spreading their poisonous seed to foreign countries where it takes root in more welcoming soil.

Such is the state of affairs in the country of Uganda, where American evangelicals have long enjoyed a disproportionate degree of influence over the government. Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda and has been for a long time, but Ugandan religious conservatives have learned from their American counterparts that even an oppressed and politically powerless group can easily be depicted as a menacing enemy in propaganda campaigns intended to stir up fear and hate among their followers. Just such a campaign has led to a proposed "Anti-Homosexuality Bill", which threatens to open the floodgates for the state-sanctioned mass murder of gay and lesbian people.

As previously discussed on Daylight Atheism, this bill would imprison homosexuals for life, and in some cases, would establish a crime of "aggravated homosexuality", which is punishable by death. But what I haven't discussed as much is the shockingly large role that American evangelicals played, both in the propaganda campaign that led up to it, as well as in the actual drafting of the bill itself. An article from the New York Times from earlier this month has the details, including the names of several key figures:

Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including "7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child"; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads "healing seminars"; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is "mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality"...

As the article explains, these missionaries visited Uganda in March 2009, giving a series of talks about how "the gay movement is an evil institution" which seeks to prey on boys, eliminate marriage and replace it with "a culture of sexual promiscuity". And just a month later, a Ugandan politician introduced the bill, which threatens to punish gays and lesbians with death.

Naturally, these American evangelicals claim they never wanted this outcome and profess shock that anyone could have misconstrued them in this way. But before Western media picked up on it, they were far less reticent:

But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to "a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda."

Whether Lively and the others knew specifically about the death penalty provision is uncertain - but to claim that they were entirely ignorant of what the government was planning is a claim that strains credulity.

In the face of Western threats to withdraw millions of foreign aid, the Ugandan government has backed down slightly - offering to change the death penalty provision to life imprisonment, as if that was an improvement - but whether the bill will pass, and what its final form will be, are still very much open questions. A hint of the attitude that still prevails comes from the Ugandan minister of ethics and integrity, who recently said, "Homosexuals can forget about human rights."

If this bill passes, the evangelicals who played a role in its creation will have bloody hands. All their pious pleas of naivete and innocence cannot change what their actions have wrought. They chose to travel to an extremely anti-gay country and try to whip the populace up into a frenzy of hatred and fear. And they profess shock at the outcome, but they shouldn't be surprised: all that's happened is that the Ugandan government has taken them at their word and proposed a policy that's the logical conclusion of their starting premises.

How else did they expect the government to react to claims, like these ones made by Lively, that the gay movement is raping and preying on children, that they're recruiting and bribing young boys to engage in sexual relationships with older men, that they're importing pornography "to weaken the moral fiber of the people", that they want to abolish marriage and replace it with a culture that embraces "sexual anarchy"? They've systematically portrayed gays and lesbians as evil deviants defying the law and engaging in a malevolent conspiracy to destroy Ugandan society. Did they really think the Ugandan government would do nothing more than build some Christian therapy centers?

To be absolutely fair, I don't doubt that Lively and the others are sincere when they claim they weren't seeking the execution of homosexuals. It's just that their brand of shrill, hysterical rhetoric is what they're accustomed to using; in America, it often gets them their way. But in America, this intemperate language is counterbalanced by a strong feminist movement and an effective system of constitutional rights. In Uganda, neither of those things exist; and again, the Ugandan government didn't treat their speeches as rally-the-troops political posturing, as American politicians and media usually do. Instead, they treated them as literal truth and acted accordingly. This potential theocratic horror is the result.

But this outcome was completely predictable, which is why the American evangelicals will have bloody hands if this bill does pass. If they haven't acted with malice aforethought, they've shown reckless indifference at the very least. Like the right-wing pundits whose deranged rhetoric pushes some of their more unstable followers over the edge, they will bear moral responsibility for whatever may result. (A little more credit, but only a very little, goes to Rick Warren, who after weeks of silence and an onslaught of bad press was finally shamed into offering a grudging condemnation of the bill.)

So, the next time the gay-bashing evangelicals claim to know what's best - the next time they claim to have moral authority over the rest of us - remember this moment. Remember their bloody hands. Remember their guilt and their responsibility. They'd clearly love for this whole sordid story to be forgotten. That's an opportunity we should be certain to deny them.