A church in Connecticut holds an “exorcism” of a homosexual male and posts the video on YouTube. Unbelievable. One cannot force a gay person to be straight just as no one can force a straight person to be gay. It’s absolutely horrifying, appalling that this is going on in this country, in this day and age. They basically reinforce to this boy that there is something terribly wrong with him, and has to be extremely psychologically damaging to him. And these people think they are helping, they have no clue.

Conn. church creates stir with gay exorcism video

The video shows the 16-year-old boy lying on the floor, his body convulsing, as elders of a small Connecticut church cast a “homosexual demon” from his body.

“Rip it from his throat!” a woman yells. “Come on, you homosexual demon! You homosexual spirit, we call you out right now! Loose your grip, Lucifer!”

The 20-minute video posted on YouTube by Manifested Glory Ministries is being called abuse by gay and youth advocates, who are demanding an investigation. But a church official this week denied that the teenager was injured or that the church is prejudiced.

*snip*

It’s nearly impossible to say how often similar exercises occur in churches nationwide. But Kamora Herrington, who runs a mentoring program at True Colors and has worked with the youth, said she believes it’s fairly common.

“This happens all the time,” she said. “This is not isolated.”

Robin McHaelin, executive director of True Colors, an advocacy group for gay youths, said her organization is aware of five cases in recent years in which youths in her program were threatened with exorcism.

In one case, she said, a child called to report that his caregiver had called a priest who was throwing holy water on his bedroom door.

“I think it’s horrifying,” McHaelin said of the video by Manifested Glory. “What saddens me is the people that are doing this think they are doing something in the kid’s best interests, when in fact they’re murdering his spirit.”

I can’t tackle Dr. Tiller, VonBrunn v Holocause Museum or DHS report on wingnut hate.  At least not tonight.  Religulously-speaking, not much fun-die is going on today.

So, tackle these.  Or talk about whatever.  Everything is on-topic.

From my clipboard, Bad Religion:

News of the Weird, 04.05.09

The Homeland Is Secure

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration ruled in January that a post-9-11 federal maritime law, which requires comprehensive background credentials for mariners holding U.S. Coast Guard authorization on U.S. waters, applies even to the two “mule skinners” who work, in tourist season, dressed in colonial costumes at the Hugh Moore Historical Park in Easton, Pa. The park’s lone mule-pulled boat is operated in a 2-mile-long canal that is near nothing of strategic significance, said the park director. [CNN, 2-25-09]

In addition to addressing the usual state homeland-security concerns, Kentucky’s statute requires anyone licensed as a first responder to disasters to take an oath against dueling (”I, being a citizen of this state, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons … nor have I sent or accepted a challenge (to duel), nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge (to duel), so help me God”). Another provision requires the state Homeland Security Office’s executive director to “publicize” a legislative finding that “reliance upon Almighty God” is necessary to homeland security. [Kentucky Statutes Section 39G.010(2)(a), as reported in the lawyers' blog LoweringTheBar.net, 2-23-09]

Recurring Themes

That Sacred Institution (as practiced in villages in India): To prevent mysterious illnesses in the village, two 7-year-old girls were married, separately, to frogs (Pallipudupet, Tamil Nadu state; January). [The Times of India, 1-17-09]

To bring prosperity to the village, an elder married off two trees to each other (Subhasnagar, West Bengal state; February). [The Times of India, 2-9-09]

To overcome the effect of a baby’s odd-looking tooth, which is said to portend death by a tiger unless remedied, the 18-month-old boy was married off to a female dog (Jaipur District, Orissa state; February). [Agence France-Presse, 2-18-09]

For KA:

In November, the Swedish national newspaper Expressen revealed a 30-person bestiality ring operating out of a farm in southern Sweden, but the 45-year-old man who allegedly headed the group said his members were always respectful of animals: “Any of the times I did anything with (the dog), she was the one who backed into me and provoked it. She was in heat and made herself available. … There were also times later when she didn’t want to and then I backed out immediately.” [The Local (Stockholm), 11-11-08]

This is why bitches need  back-up alarms.  Beeh-beeh-beeh-beeh…

I have been made aware of Peter Singer and his utilitarianism, through blogversations with atheists and theists alike – I cannot say I approve enthusiastically. In fact, I’d go as far as saying I disagree, with a slight curl of the lip. Of all the –isms to choose from, I find this one less than satisfactory.

Just because I agree with his take on religion, is not an agreement in toto.

Utilitarianism:

Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all people. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. Utility, the good to be maximized, has been defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus suffering or pain), although preference utilitarians like Peter Singer define it as the satisfaction of preferences. It may be described as a life stance, with happiness or pleasure being of ultimate importance.

Utilitarianism is described by the phrase "the greatest good for the greatest number of people". Therefore, it is also known as "the greatest happiness principle". Utilitarianism can thus be characterised as a quantitative and reductionist approach to ethics. It can be contrasted with deontological ethics (which do not regard the consequences of an act as the sole determinant of its moral worth) and virtue ethics (which focuses on character), as well as with other varieties of consequentialism. Adherents of these opposing views have extensively criticised the utilitarian view, but utilitarians have been similarly critical of other schools of thought. And like any ethical theory, the application of utilitarianism is heavily dependent on the moral agent’s full range of wisdom, experience, social skills, and life skills.

Easily dissected, I cannot agree. As human beings (both on an individual basis as well as collective) have proven multitudinous times, the strong swim towards pleasure can often lead towards disastrous results. The sexual revolution, for instance, came about because of the ability to treat STDs like gonorrhea and syphilis with the pop of a pill (there are other reasons of course, but I consider that a primary). Decades later, penicillin-resistant strains of these poxes bedevil us still.

Singer is the foremost proponent of animal liberation:

In Animal Liberation, Singer argues against what he calls speciesism: discrimination on the grounds that a being belongs to a certain species. He holds the interests of all beings capable of suffering to be worthy of equal consideration, and that giving lesser consideration to beings based on their having wings or fur is no more justified than discrimination based on skin color. He argues that animals should have rights based on their ability to feel pain more than their intelligence. In particular, he argues that while animals show lower intelligence than the average human, many severely retarded humans show equally diminished, if not lower, mental capacity, and intelligence therefore does not provide a basis for providing nonhuman animals any less consideration than such retarded humans. He also points out that many primates have learned to communicate with American sign language (ASL) or symbol languages. These include chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and an orangutan. Primates that have learned ASL or symbol languages include Washoe, Koko, Chantek, and Kanzi. Likewise, pigs, birds, primates and cetaceans can rank as being as intelligent as children. Singer does not specifically contend that we ought not use animals for food insofar as they are raised and killed in a way that actively avoids the inflicting of pain, but as such farms are uncommon, he concludes that the most practical solution is to adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet. Singer also condemns vivisection except where the benefit (in terms of improved medical treatment, etc.) outweighs the harm done to the animals used.

I am foursquare and unapologetically a speciesist. Because of the commonality of biology I share with my fellow human beings, I will likely rate them higher on the value scale (there would be exceptions: people who would prey upon animals for the mere enjoyment may incite me to some level of anger, and devalue themselves). So I would still value a human being (mentally challenged) higher than a primate. I am not in favor of animal suffering: I see that as irrational.

Abortion:

Singer states that arguments for or against abortion should be based on utilitarian calculation which weighs the preferences of a mother against the preferences of the fetus. A preference is anything sought to be obtained or avoided; all forms of benefit or harm caused to a being correspond directly with the satisfaction or frustration of one or more of its preferences. Since a capacity to experience suffering or satisfaction is a prerequisite to having any preferences at all, and a fetus, at least up to around eighteen weeks, says Singer, has no capacity to suffer or feel satisfaction, it is not possible for such a fetus to hold any preferences at all. In a utilitarian calculation, there is nothing to weigh against a mother’s preferences to have an abortion, therefore abortion is morally permissible.

Similar to his argument for abortion, Singer argues that newborns similarly lack the essential characteristics of personhood — "rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness" — and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."

I would go along with the first paragraph, but no to the second – again, my speciesist tendencies revolt. This is an evolutionary mechanism built into us. It is not the only yardstick. There is the potential future folded into the infant – it is a (non-supernatural) wonder waiting to blossom, a flowering of a new being…I could go on some rhetorical flourish, but the short version is I’d likely give my life to save a baby. Hard to argue with that, I think.

I have no argument with his stand on poverty – it’s sensible.

Zoophilia – now I have an issue.

In a 2001 review of Midas Dekkers’s Dearest Pet: On Bestiality,^[35] Singer stated that "mutually satisfying activities" of a sexual nature may sometimes occur between humans and animals and that writer Otto Soyka would condone such activities. Singer explains Dekker’s belief that zoophilia should remain illegal if it involves what he sees as "cruelty", but otherwise is no cause for shock or horror. However, Singer does not claim to endorse the views of either Dekker or Soyka, merely to be explaining them. Singer believes that although sex between species is not normal or natural, it does not constitute a transgression of our status as human beings, because human beings are animals or, more specifically, "we are great apes". Some religious individuals and animal rights groups have condemned this view.

This is a major problem – where one can indeed be too liberal. It may not ‘constitute a transgression of our status as human beings’, but regardless of the fact that we are animals, bestiality is rated as a mental disorder, and for good reason. An inability to form a sexual liaison with another adult, a frisson for something that’s not human, is decidedly abnormal. I am not committing the naturalistic fallacy when I state that animals are incapable of granting consent – so are children, because when it comes to human beings, either you can communicate, or you can’t. Silence as assent was bogus when Plato said as much, and it still is. And really, how many dumb animals can actually say no?

I would go as far to say – that the application of bioethics vis-a-vis utilitarianism lends itself to a breakdown of moral universalism (of which I’m a proponent). Consider:

It is widely considered that infants are a high value to any society at large, regardless of level (we shall grant this a high degree of universality, shall we?). It’s a survival mechanism to breed in numbers. By applying the above principles (i.e., giving animals a higher value rating than infants, despite the ability of the latter to develop cognition incrementally), we lose fundamental values we normally ascribe to potential moral agents. One might argue that the word ‘potential’ is meaningless, but we live in a society (and indeed a world) that is built on the concept of potentiality. Potentiality has value. “The children are our future!”, while somewhat trite and cliché, still stands.

The slippery slope is not my favorite specter to invoke -  I see it abused gratuitously on the internet. But there is merit in it sometimes. If we change the moral value of an infant in society’s eyes, it stands to reason the infant will become more abused. If we grant the non-human animal greater status than we grant our own children (a sentence that I personally never dreamed I would write or speak), then it is my opinion that we lose – both in the short term as well as the long term.

As to the zoophilia angles – well, I’m sorry, but there is such a thing as being TOO liberal. With the rising tide of pandemics (from the Avian flu to the Swine flu), this option is anything but viable.

Anyways, that’s my nickel’s worth. Flip it or spend it, it’s up to you.

Atheist nations are more peaceful

The 2009 Global Peace Index has just been released. It’s basically a ranking of how turbulent and warlike a country is. They put it together by assessing 23 criteria, including foreign wars, internal conflicts, respect for human rights, the number of murders, the number of people in jail, the arms trade, and degrees of democracy (Guardian). You can see a world map of peace at the Vision of Humanity website, and also take a look at country rankings for 2009, as well as earlier years. New Zealand came top this year. Hmm, New Zealand is a pretty secular country. In fact, if you eyeball the rankings, the top few countries are all pretty secular. What I’ve done in the figures here is to take data from the World Values Survey on the percentage of people in each country who say they are a committed atheist, and also on the percentage of people who say that they go to a religious service at least once a month. Then I split the sample into two equal groups, based on their score on the Global Peace Index. The ones in the ‘Peaceful’ group are countries with a GPI score less than 1.8. Sure enough, peaceful countries have more atheists and fewer regular worshippers. The difference is highly statistically significant (P=0.001 or less) - in other words it’s real, not just a chance finding.

Just love that connection between xianity and morality…

Suspect arrested in connection with slaying of abortion provider George Tiller

Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Tiller was serving as an usher at the church, one of six ushers listed in the church bulletin. He was handing out bulletins to people going into the sanctuary minutes before being shot. A church member who did not want to be identified said the gunman threatened another person at the church after the shooting.

And, I think we can all guess how Bill-O’s reacting to the whole thing.

On Friday, November 3, 2006, Bill O’Reilly featured an exclusive segment on his show, The O’Reilly Factor, saying that he has an “inside source” with official clinic documentation indicating that George Tiller performs late-term abortions to alleviate “temporary depression” in the pregnant woman. According to reporting data provided to the Kansas Board of Healing Arts for the year 1998, all of the post-viable partial-birth (dilation and extraction) abortion procedures performed in Kansas during that year were performed because “the attending physician believe[d] that continuing the pregnancy [would] constitute a substantial and irreversible impairment of the patient’s mental function.

And, as usual, you won’t be seeing any characterization of this as “xian terrorism.” Because, as we all know, xians can never be terrorists…

But Bill-O’s role in this, if any –

O’Reilly calls Tiller the “so-called baby killer” below. He calls his outfit a “death-mill, which is exactly what it is”

– really reminds me of that movie…

Haven’t you heard? The National Organization of Marriage is confused…

Okay, so you have your prompt; now the rest of the thread is open for all the jokes. Make ‘em good, people…

[LINK]

Anti-abortionist activists are pulling all kinds of circus-like stunts at Notre Dame in protest against President Obama being invited to speak at the graduation ceremony at the Catholic university located in South Bend, In.

An airplane dragging a banner with a picture of an aborted fetus has been flying over Notre Dame University in protest of the Catholic institution’s invitation to President Barack Obama to speak on Sunday.

The plane is just one of the tactics employed by activists who oppose Obama’s support of abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

More than 360,000 people have signed a petition asking Notre Dame’s president to withdraw the invitation for Obama to speak at the university’s commencement ceremonies and grant him an honorary degree.

Leaders of the Catholic Church were also vocal in their condemnation.

“It is clear that Notre Dame didn’t understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation,” said Cardinal Francis George, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, who called it an “embarrassment” to “many, many Catholics.”

An “embarrassment” for a President to accept an invitation to your university simply because he is doing what he said in his oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the nation that elected him?

I would say that Catholic leaders should be embarrassed about the pedophile priest epidemic that has caused mental anguish to who knows how many thousands of their victims over the ages?

“What we’re doing is creating the crisis that forces real, constructive, positive change in America that protects human rights because social justice begins in the womb,” Troy Newman, a spokesman for Kansas-based Operation Rescue, told AFP.

What the Catholic church leaders and these activists are doing is totally non-constructive. No signs up about using contraceptives because that is not acceptable to these anti-abortionists either. They are against using condoms, against any form of birth control what-so-ever except what doesn’t work. . . abstinence.

Luckily, it appears that the tide is turning with the Catholic church members in the general population. The “controversy” is only managing to stir a small number of protesters while most are excited and optimistic about Obama’s visit.

Just 28 percent of Catholics surveyed in a recent Pew Center poll thought Notre Dame was wrong to invite Obama while 50 percent said it was the right thing to do.

And Obama remains extremely popular, with his job approval rating of 63 percent at the first 100 days in office the highest of any US president since Ronald Regan.

Obama also managed to carry the Catholic vote in the November 4 election and was the first Democrat since 1964 to win the midwestern state of Indiana, where Notre Dame is located.

While Obama may address the abortion issue in his speech, he is not going to “dwell on the things that divide us,” political advisor David Axelrod said Thursday.

“He’s very much looking forward to it,” Axelrod told PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

Most students say they are excited to have Obama visit their campus and university’s student newspaper said 74 percent of letters to editor from students supported the invitation.

The controversy, daily protests and graphic billboards being driven around campus as students prepare for final exams has taken a toll.

“People are weary of it,” history professor R. Scott Appleby told the Washington Post.

“I certainly feel this is not the best way to respect life. It makes the cause a circus.”

Yes, more and more of us are getting very weary of the boo-hooing about abortion. Education is the key. Openness to other options of birth control is the answer to the abortion dilemma.

There are so many problems in the world that need attention, and we need to start coming together in order to accomplish things and repair things that need fixing, nationally and internationally.

But, whose family values? The Roman Catholic church’s values? Surely can’t be the Pope’s because he lives a life contrary to what he himself preaches to be “nature” and “family values” by taking an oath of unnatural celibacy. I guess he can look at it from a child’s perspective of what a happy, loving home is according to him, or can he? Seeing that his sister never married and his brother also became a priest, just what sort of “traditional family values” were established in that household to have caused all of their children to remain single and childless?

Pope, in Nazareth, says world needs family values

Moving away from political issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the pope used the visit to Israel’s Galilee region, the heartland of the country’s minority Arab population, to express his concerns about what the Catholic Church sees as the deterioration of the family around the world.

More than 50,000 people attended an outdoor mass — celebrated in Arabic, English and Latin — in the area of Nazareth known as Mount Precipice, where the Bible says a mob tried to hurl Jesus off a cliff.

There, Benedict spoke of “the sacredness of the family, which in God’s plan is based on the lifelong fidelity of a man and a woman consecrated by the marriage covenant and accepting of God’s gift of new life.”

“FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH”

He added: “How much the men and women of our time need to reappropriate this fundamental truth, which stands at the foundation of society, and how important is the witness of married couples for the formation of sound consciences and the building of a civilization of love!”

And this is coming from a huge religious sect controlled by unmarried, supposedly celibate, sexually repressed MEN. The Pope’s statement “building the foundation of civilization and love” via “married couples”, he is living contrary to what he is promoting as sacred family values.

The Pope and others who promote “traditional family values” see the world in only black and white. (These celibate bastards are also hypocritical in the way they are against contraceptives and promotion of having a herd of children, however many gawd will “bless” folks with.)

They base these values on what or whom? What about the single mom’s who didn’t have a choice? What about a single folks who choose to adopt and raise kids on their own? What about that homosexual couple who could provide a loving home with all the love, comforts and care that they can give to an adopted child that he or she would not have had otherwise? What about the widows and widowers who are left to raise their families alone? What about the family who lives according the the “values” of the loving married couple and their family falls apart anyway?

These religious folks and others who have one idea of family are living in fantasy land because the family has never really been one set of ideals for all people.

All this talk about “family values” and yet no one has come up with one set of standards that cannot be provided by anyone other than married, heterosexual couples. People, from whatever walk of life and circumstances can raise their children to be good people and productive members of society.