Sieg heil!

I caught this on a perusal of Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

Regional revival tackles community standards Pornography, Harry Potter books burned at monthly meeting

About 30 people gathered for a regional revival Friday night that included a book burning as a statement to reach out to local residents.

"It is allowed for Harry Potter to be taught in our schools, but not the Bible," International House of Prayer pastor James Crawford said during the Shreveport Regional Unity of Faith Revival.

There's probably a good reason for that, Mr. IHOP. Kids will actually read Harry Potter.

That is one reason pastors from several denominations and races ripped pages from "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Those and pages from a pornographic magazine were put into a burn pit and set afire as praises bellowed from the congregation.

"As I tore the pages, I felt a generational curse of immorality and perversion breaking off my family," Adriane Banks said. "I felt it."

The book burning was a statement to reach out to people in Shreveport-Bossier City against sin, Crawford said.

"This is powerful. God looks down and sees humble hearts. That is the reality of what we're doing."

Crawford said recent natural disasters are a wake-up call.

It blows my mind that they actually think that natural disasters are Harry Potter's fault. He never actually graduated from Hogwart's for chrissake! He dropped out in the last year to look for Voldemort. If he could influence weather, I'm sure it'd be a senior level course. Or require some post-grad work.


that's enough of the cheap shots. There are many. IHOP, for instance. Harry Potter. Biblical inerrancy. Whatever.

I want to talk about book burning. It doesn't fucking work.

Some of my favourite books have been burned. A few I own simply because they were banned. For instance, I've never been actually able to finish Mien Kampf (not only is it crazy, it's pretty badly written), but I own it. Just because some people say I shouldn't be able to. I finished The Communist Manifesto, and while I agree with some of it, its main appeal is the fact that it's been burned. Same with Das Kapital. Book of Mormon. I already had the His Dark Materials books, but I reread them when I found out that they pissed people off.

I vehemently disagree with people who tell me what I can and can't read, can or can't listen to, and can or can't watch. I'll go out and arm myself with these texts, simply out of spite. And there are a lot of people like me, people who value their right to self-censor, or to not, but who abhor the idea of censoring someone else. And as a father, that's a bold fucking statement.

I expect to have some heated discussions with my wife, and some difficult discussions with my daughter (and any other kids that might come along), about what they see, read or listen to. Granted, there'll be few horror movies (and I don't think she'll be watching porn for a while, either) for Mickie until she's older, and no snuff films, and absolutely no Billy Idol, but other than that, I can't imagine why I'd want to shield her from stuff that's difficult, but often beautiful.

Here's a short list of some of my favourite books, bands and movies that have been challenged:

• The Catcher in the Rye
• Johnny Got His Gun
• Roots
• The Gulag Archipelago
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• The Adventures of Huck Finn
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Of Mice and Men
• Howl
• On The Road Again
• Vernon God Little
• A Clockwork Orange
• The Giver
• The Bluest Eye
• The Color Purple
• The Wars
• Dance Me Outside
• His Dark Materials
• The Merchant of Venice
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• The Beatles
• N.W.A
• Public Enemy
• Beastie Boys
• KISS
• Guns N' Roses
• Sublime
• Elvis Presley
• Prince
• Marilyn Manson
• American Psycho
• Friday the 13th
• House of 1000 Corpses
• The Notorious Bettie Page
• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
• Pulp Fiction
• Reservoir Dogs
• Bowling for Columbine

There are longer lists on the tubes. My list is hardly comprehensive, and I own more that have been challenged. Some of the reasons are dumb, others are interesting. They're all well-intentioned, and they're all wrong.

The cool thing about transmittable culture in text, image or sound, is that people will exchange ideas, and many of the ideas will challenge preconceived notions.

That's good.

There is no growth as a society or as a person unless our ideas, assumptions, faith, or basis of comparison is challenged. Why change, if there's no outside pressure?

And that's the problem here. These idiots don't fear Harry Potter. They are afraid that their kids might read the stupid books and figure out that, first of all, witches aren't real, and second, that they're not always evil. And if they figure out that their parents lied to them about that, then what's next?

God?

Stereotype

I subscribe to AlterNet's email feed. Every day, I get a smattering of intelligent, thoughtful, and, perhaps most important, liberal news from the US. Most of what I get otherwise is from the networks, or from NYT online, and much of it isn't good. I read it, though, for the reasons that I mentioned in my last two posts: the US is very important to Canada, and I need to keep an eye on the wingnuts.

I get discouraged about a lot, and not just the news from the States, but I do get upset. The erosion of your liberites, your reputation, your economy, your democracy. It all affects me because it could happen here. And that scares me. As far as democracies go, yours is pretty old, and if the current status of the US is a glimpse into my country's future, I think we might want to rethink this constitutional monarchy thing and just let the Queen run the show.

Some of the news from the US just annoys me. I read that there are now two candidates for the White House. I count five. How does he do it, you ask? Well, first, I don't discount anyone who has not ceded a nomination. Therefore, Ron Paul is in the race. Then I look at other parties that have nominated candidates: the Greens have nominated McKinney, and the Libertarians have nominated Barr. These "fringe" parties have gone to the trouble of holding conventions and naming candidates, so the least I can do is recognise that they seek the seat. And finally, I note that a high profile candidate has said he is seeking the presidency as an independent: Nader.

Feel free to tell me that none of these losers have a shot. Allow me to point out that they don't as long as Americans don't vote for them. A two-party system is flawed, especially when corporate interests own both parties. Barack is all sexy and charismatic and shit, and he's also not substantively different from Clinton. McCain is a "maverick", or has been in the past, but now he votes the party line (about 95% of the time: a real loose cannon, that guy).

But it's McCain's "maverick" image I want to address.

A summary look at McCain's history from AlterNet indicates that he has often voted against party lines when it comes to crucial issues:

...for a substantial part of his political career, he was a Republican maverick
on a variety of issues, including the environment, immigration, campaign reform,
taxes and the budget.

I'm assuming the source is sound. I have neither the time nor the inclination to check McCain's stance on every vote taken since he ran for office. But look at that list: he voted against the party on some pretty vital issues. Where has he agreed with the Republicans? Crime, I guess. Apparently foreign policy. And presumably he followed the evangelical crowd to the right on social issues (In theory, social issues should be irrelevant because of the constitution. The question is not what a person's rights are, but who actually gets them. It has never actually really meant "everybody", but you're getting there...)

But if you find such a large chunk of the Republican platform disagreeable, then why the hell are you a Rebulican? What is it (since it's a two-party system) that prevents you from crossing the aisle? Do the Democrats have cooties or somthing? They didn't really want to fight yet another stupid, pointless war? They're not frothy enough when it comes to their support of Israel? Too many black people?

[Incidentally, he seems to have sorted it all out. He loves the GOP and its Fearless Leader® these days. He's hot for it. He digs it. When Bush says sic 'em, McCain starts barking. He likes Iraq. He likes tax cuts. He likes privatizing the military. He likes cutting the balls off (small as they were) the EPA. He wants more fucking hippies and protesters in prison, and he like fucking Gitmo. He's all over the GOP these days. He's regained the faith.]

The same things apply to religion, for most people. My wife is a Catholic (I believe I mentioned that). She goes to church, takes communion, had the baby baptised, prays to the saints, and thinks that Pope Benedict has the ear of god. More or less. However, she disagrees with the Church on some fundamental issues:

• Abortion--While she would not have an abortion herself, she recognises that she doesn't get to choose for other women.
• Education--She recognises the inherent discrimination in a publicly funded Catholic school system.
• Catholic Supremacy--She's pretty sure that other churches are at least as correct as hers is (So am I. Ha!). This guy is not so sure...
• Gay Marriage--She is still getting used to the idea, but the fact that my brother will be marrying his boyfriend in a year or two is helping her along.
• Contraception--Because having a lot of babies is just medieval, and only funny in the right context. Further, telling people that protected sex is a sin amounts to genocide, and while she wouldn't go that far, she knows it's stupid and evil.
• The finer points of the theology--She didn't know about limbo until I told her, and the idea that unbaptised babies had a special afterlife struck her as stupid. I don't think she actually believes in transubstantiation, either.

So the question is, why the hell is she still a Catholic?

And I don't mean in one of those tick-the-box-off-on-the-survey Catholics, or one of the Christmas-and-Easter Catholics, but an actual go-to-church-every-Sunday-and pray-and-donate-and-join-St.-Vincent-De Paul-society Catholics. She's a real Catholic. Believes that the Church is the True Church. The Pope talks to god. Mary was the mother of god. Miracles and saints and the whole nine yards...

I guess what bothers me is that the short list of disagreements are not insignificant (with the possible exception of the last one). She, in effect, says, "I disagree with some of the fundamental doctrines of the church, but I'm still going to go, and give it some money."

If she were a not-really catholic, like most of the ones I've met, I think I'd understand. It's more of a cultural identification, then. But at the same time, the label does not apply. So why don't you get a new label? But even the label thing bugs me.

If your faith (or your party affiliation) is only a way for people to stereotype you, then you really ought to do some rethinking.

A Letter to Uncle Sam

Canadians have a funny relationship with the US. It's complicated, to say the least. The US is our single largest trading partner, we share the longest undefended border in the world, and American movies and television keep bleeding into our airwaves. As a result, the CRTC enforces rules on the amount of Canadian content our broadcasters must use.

It's not all sunshine and ass-kissing, though. We are critical, very critical, of American foreign policy (some of us not so critical, but most Americans would agree those guys are idiots), and a good deal of your domestic policy. The whole "right to bear arms" thing is baffling to most of us, and the "church and state" thing gets some of us angry. We don't have any such policy, but oddly, we don't have any problems with it, either (except Catholic education, but don't get me started).

We are attracted and repelled at the same time, annoyed and affectionate, comfortable and frightened. The sheer volume of the States is deafening, and we're too close to hear anything else too clearly, so our historical ties to Britain and France mean less than our proximity to the Great Elephant (to borrow an image from Trudeau).

On the whole, though, I want to see the US succeed, flourish and prosper, and I'd like to see my neighbour become a force for good in the world. Unfortunately, though, that train has sailed, and I think the American Empire has met its Endor.

There are several reasons for this, of course, including your soaring debt, your oil dependant culture (ours is no better), your idiotic wars that can't be won, the essential unsustainability of your economic model, the fact that you've consumed most of your resources without regard to the future, the essential fraud of the democratic system (ours, too) and the bitterness of the other 190-odd nations on the planet. The last thing the US needs is another fatal flaw.

But you've found one: biblical inerrancy.

The idea that a single religious text, especially one so riddled with contradictions, is flawless, is a uniquely American idea, and it is eating away at everything from your relations with Middle Eastern countries, to your presidential campaign, to your Constitution. In fact, it is irrevocably tied into all the crises that face your nation, and it's making it worse:

• Climate change looks a lot like the End Times.


• Israel must be protected at all costs.


• Russia is evil.


• China is evil.


• God chooses your president.


• God will provide, so conservation is blasphemous.

It all looks scary up here from the north, and I wish you'd do something about it.

One phenomenon that doesn't affect anyone but you guys, but still strikes me as spectacularly dumb, is the emergence of Creationism (under any guise) in your science classrooms. Why anyone would want to take as truth something that is so clearly allegorical (at best), and handicap your children with nonsense is beyond me. It's another nail in the American coffin, my friends, and you really ought to rethink it. Things are bad enough for your republic, my friends.

There's nothing to be gained from letting god into your science class. Even if he does exist, god's not particularly helpful in predicting the behaviour of the universe. In fact, god makes a habit of fucking up the natural order of things. It's what makes him special, right? That he can change natural law? Not helpful, whether you're plotting the course of a planet or projectile, predicting the behaviour of organisms, or studying why volcanoes blow up.

There are voices of reason, like the New York Times:

The trouble is, a creationist system of science is not science at all. It is faith. All science is “naturalist” to the extent that it tries to understand the laws of nature and the character of the universe on their own terms, without reference to a divine creator. Every student who hopes to understand the scientific reality of life will sooner or later need to accept the elegant truth of evolution as it has itself evolved since it was first postulated by Darwin. If the creationist view prevails in Texas, students interested in learning how science really works and what scientists really understand about life will first have to overcome the handicap of their own education.

...and you'd do best to listen to them. There are no quick fixes to the Middle East, climate change or peak oil, but you can do something about your children's education with very little pain or effort at all.

The Bible is a religious book. It is not a science text. Just try to remember that.

Breaking News!

I like to keep an eye on the ultra-right, the neocons, and the bigots. For one thing, they amuse me; they're like super-villains in Marvel Comics, but without super powers, money or brains. They're evil, but not Evil. They hate the gays, the liberals, the women, the taxes and the media, but they're impotent and frightened.

On second thought, they're nothing like Marvel Villains. They're more like the little angry dog that freaks out as you walk by in front of their house.

Exposing myself to their ideas is like playing with that flap of skin you get on the roof of your mouth after you burn it with pizza or from eating Cap'n Crunch. You probe at it with your tongue, because it hurts a little bit, but the sensation is fascinating. Don't lie. You do it, too.

So I subscribe to a few of the more choice email bulletins, and one actual paper magazine, and I read their columns in the Sun. The Philadelphia Trumpet is delivered to my home free of charge, and thanks to this wonderful publication, I have learned that climate change is not man's fault, that in fact the earth is cooling, and there's nothing we can do about, because the Bible says something somewhere that contradicts the evidence. Further, China is on the rise, not because they hold all of America's debt, still have a manufacturing economy and a few resources to spare, but because Revelation says something about it. Because clearly John the Divine knew a great deal about the Chinese. Also, Karl Marx is the devil.

I also get regular email updates from Worldview Weekend, which reminds me often that the gays are bad. Their motto is, "Think and live like a Christian", which judging by the commentary they feed me, really means "Think like we tell you, and live like the gays are on the march, and will anally rape you and your children." They also keep trying to sell me stuff with will help me become more judgemental. Hate is a hell of an industry, apparently.

I got a special update from them today. It was "Breaking News!". Three guesses what it was about.

Got it in one!

Breaking News: This could happen to your child or grandchild. Brannon Howse takes on Barnes and Noble for what they allowed to happen to his minor son.

What happened? Wet floor? Collapsing bookshelves? Mein Kampf? Comic books?

On June 5th, my eleven year old son joined me in a visit to our local Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Collierville, TN. I was horrified at what my son saw. Open on
a table was a very large, full-color, picture book displaying a man in full frontal nudity. The cover was two men kissing with the title GAY SEX.

OMG! Penises! And other penises! And maybe the penises are touching!

Note that he's only horrified that his son saw it. Did maybe Howse like the penises? Not likely! He's a conservative! Probably votes Republican. No gays here...

The assistant manager told me that this was the second time that night this book had been laid open in the store.

Ever seen So I Married and Axe Murderer? Remember the scene when Charlie is making fun of his mother for reading The Weekly World News, and makes that fake screaming sound by inhaling? Imagine I'm making that sound right now. Clearly, the gays are everywhere, leaving their dirty gay spoor about, to entice unsuspecting eleven-year-old Christians into the "gay lifestyle".

She also informed me that such books were regularly found in the men's room.

That's kinda gross. Not because gay men might be committing the sin of Onan in the john, but because they might get some on the book, and then that book is reshelved...

Also, masturbating in public restrooms is a bit queer, if you'll pardon the pun.

She said a young boy had been sexually assaulted in the bathroom at this store and the man was never caught.

Which, admittedly is a problem, but has nothing to do with gay men liking to look at naked men, and jerking off in a washroom stall. However, the two are equated, because obviously, most pedophiles are gay, and most homosexuals are pedophiles. Gay people are bad.

The assistant manger walked me to where the book was normally kept. Was it behind a counter? No, it was on the top shelf of a bookcase that any 13 year old
could reach.

Not only could any 13-year-old reach it, but a tallish 12-year-old might be able to, if he stood up on his tiptoes! And not just gay 12-year-olds, straight ones, too! You also have to wonder why Howse asked to see the "GAY SEX" section of the bookstore.

Welcome to the 21st Century where being gay is mainstream and celebrated as
normal in a family bookstore.

Allow me to submit that being gay is relatively mainstream, is relatively normal, and this attitude should penetrate to bookstores. You see, the problem is that you were in a bookstore, Mr. Howse. There are often books there. Books are useful for facilitating an exchange of ideas. A liberal exchange of ideas. Bookstores, in many ways, are antithetical to the idea of censorship, and books are sometimes supposed to make you uncomfortable.

Listen to my national radio program to find out what I am going to do.

What ARE you going to do? He spoils the surprise by telling us:

Collierville, TN does not have an ordinance that requires this type of material to be behind a counter out of reach of children or moved into a restricted area that requires a person to be 18 or older to enter. This is one more example of where elected officials have the opportunity to implement public policy that protects the innocence of our children as well as accounts for their physical safety. You can bet I will be working for such a city ordinance as well as working to make sure state law 39-17-911 is enforced and there is a penalty for robbing my son's innocence.

I am working with the American Family Association to have an e-mail go to 3
million people calling for a boycott of Barnes and Nobel until they put this garbage behind a counter or in a restricted area where children can not see it or have access to it.

The STRAIGHT SEX books, however, can remain on the shelves where they belong.

Welcome to the 21st Century where homosexuality is now mainstreamed into a family bookstore.

You said that already.

The chances are greater in some states that I would get charged with a hate-crime for speaking out about this rather than the store being fined.

Probably, but not in Tennessee, where men are men and fags are nervous.

A code enforcer where I live in Collierville, TN woke up my friend that other day to tell him his for sale sign was 11 feet, not 12 feet, from the curb. He had just returned from driving all night long from Houston from a doctor's appointment. He is recovering from cancer. The code enforcers have made companies move a shrub a few feet to match their original landscape plan. Yet, no town code for a store to keep porn from a child. Thus, I have to run to an official in the county for help instead of in my own town where I live.

'Scuse me? If there's no code, how is this relevant? Stay focused, Howse. GAY SEX, remember? And isn't your town in the county? Just how far would you have to go to get there?

We don't have time for you to struggle with it. The answer is: not very far at all.

Think the elected officials in my town are straining at gnats and swallowing camels?

Can someone explain that to me?

I bet during an election year they will all be Mr. Pro-family now and they will be looking for that press coverage as the town hero by offering up an ordinance. Real sincere....thanks guys for being asleep at the switch. This is the same story repeated a thousands times throughout America.

All across America, every day, GAY SEX books are left out in the open, and good, 11-year-old Christian boys see them...

Won't somebody please think of the children?

My family includes a gay man (and his fiancé, so two, I guess). That means to me your stance is, in fact, ANTI-family.

However, Howse is right in pointing out that politicians always seem to be chasing that elusive homophobe vote, in the US, and here in Canada, too. Besides, what do you care if they're sincere or not, provided you get what you want?

Incidentally, I couldn't find Tennessee State Law 39-17-911, but title 39, Ch. 17 deals with child curfew.

Religion Causes Cancer

Atheists are fond of pointing out how dangerous religion can be. Apologists are quick to point out that in fact, it's dogmatic fundamentalism that is dangerous, and moderate religion is really quite sane, sensible, and even helpful. And to be fair, the nastiest, most violent and most shocking (and most tele/photogenic) acts are committed by religious (and other philosophical) extremists and dogmatists, in defense of their faith against infidels, interlopers, crusaders and baby-killers.

But what most apologists (and some agnostics/atheists) ignore is the fact that moderate, sensible and sane religion, at its root, must sometimes deny reality, and the consequences for this are often grave. The most public example is in the States, where politicians collect pastors like trading cards--though we've all see how much havoc god can wreak once he's in the White House--but more pervasive, more fundamental, and more damaging (on an individual scale, in addition to a societal one) are the religious pre-and proscriptions regarding sex.

I've posted before (albeit briefly) about my own sexuality and how it was impacted by my religious upbringing. To be brief, no great lasting damage has been done, but I still resent that I was made to feel dirty because I was 13 and horny all the time. But god has a lot to say about out naughty bits (and in fact he's responsible for calling them naughty bits, I suppose), what we're allowed to do with them, where we can put them, when we can use them, with whom we can use them, and the fact that using them at all is really a necessary evil.

The fact that god gave us these things, made them really fun and then forbade their use as part of god's plan, or evidence of god's love or intelligent design, and not as a figurative and literal "fuck you" to mankind seems to escape them, or at the very least is blasphemy. Yet another bit of mental contortion that "moderate" religion requires.

No religion seems to be exempt, as far as I can tell. I can't imagine that the Buddha would have an issue with condoms, buttsex or the pill, but I never met the guy, so I don't know. I do know that he suggested we eliminate desire to eliminate suffering, and while that's a good idea, it takes more indifference than I have. I like sex, and I also erversely enjoy any suffering that comes along with it (because sex, while fun, is never simple, and usually very complicated). Iran doesn't have gays, apparently, because Sharia Law forbids it, and marrying several little girls seems to be cool with FLDS folks, Hindus have some funny ideas about marriage and widowhood, and gay people seem drive many religious folks into a frenzy.

And finally, we're all aware that the Vatican's position on condom use, even when it can help control an epidemic, is that condoms actually spread AIDS. To be fair, that was only one Archibishop, but the official Vatican stance is that condoms don't stop the spread of AIDS, which is a fine point, but an important one. I am constantly surprised when men who are supposed to be moral authorities baldly lie to support their dogma. It's one thing to be ignorant, another to be stupid, but to break one of the commandments like that requires real faith. I ought to be used to it by now, but I must be ridiculously naive.

And now, the statements of old virgins (in theory) about sexual morality are putting thousands of girls at risk of STDs in Ontario, and once again claiming the moral high ground. I suppose I should not be surprised by this, considering the stance of the Catholic Church on sexual morality and all the attendant problems, but it makes me furious nonetheless.

The Halton Catholic School Board has decided that it will not include a vaccination for HPV in its regular vaccination regime given to students. Here's the rationale:

Providing the HPV vaccine to Grade 8 girls in its schools sends a "contradictory" message to Catholic students and should end, says a motion before Halton's Catholic board from its vice-chair.

I know what they're trying to say about the "contradictory message". It's the same reasoning they use for not allowing condom machines in the bathrooms. It's this: "Sex outside of hetrerosexual marriage is wrong, and any actions we take that reduce the risk of negative consequences of any other sex are tacit approvals." Incidentally, the Vatican's position on condoms is killing young, married women in Africa, a fact which is ignored, because it doesn't seem to fit into the Pope's schtick. Besides, somebody, somewhere, had extramarital sex, so maybe these women deserve to die.

The message that they should be sending, in the context of their faith, is this: "Sex outside heterosexual marriage is wrong, but should you choose to do it, at least use your fucking brains."

(IMO, the message they should send is this: "Use your fucking brains, particularly about sex.")

The message that they are sending is this: "Sex outside the traditional, narrowly defined concept of heterosexual marriage is wrong, and you deserve whatever happens as a consequence, even if it's not your transgression. Incidentally, sex within marriage is for precreation, not recreation, and condoms are still bad, no matter the reason, so go ahead and kill your wife."

Shorter: "God wants you to die because you had sex."

I'm not being extreme. I'm not using hyperbole. The school board is saying that dogma is more important than the health of their daughters. The church is saying that it knew what was best for us 1700 years ago, and nothing has changed. HPV has been linked to cervical and oral cancer. It is asymptomatic, meaning you don't know you have it, unless you get regular pap smears. Men don't know if they're carrying it, until aberrant cell growth becomes malignant. It's a pretty effective virus: it hides for a long time, allowing the carrier to spread it liberally. Same with HIV. None of this matters because the Bible is clear on contraception. (Huh?)

I despise the Catholic Church for its stance on condoms, particularly in Africa, where the need is highest. This is tantamount to winking and nodding as the Third Reich went about systematically eliminating Jews, Roma, homosexuals and Jehovah's witnesses. AIDS has already killed more Africans than the Nazis ever dreamed of (more than 20 million worldwide), and a simple piece of rubber can slow it down. It almost makes me wish there was a hell so that the Pope could be punished for the millions of deaths on his hands.

The crimes of the Catholic Church against its women (and other women, too, by extension) are particularly near and dear to my heart, because I married a Catholic, and my daughter was baptised last year. Millions of dead Africans are incomprehensible, and far away to boot, but the life of my daughter is vital, and therefore a powerful symbol for me: she is every woman who will get cancer because her partner had sex with someone else, possibly before she even met him/her; she is every wife dying from her husband's visit to a prostitute; she is every woman forced into the sex trade by poverty or drug addiction, or slavery; she is every child abused and left ill-equipped by abstinence-only sex education; and she is every man, woman or other; gay, straight, transgendered, or other who feels sinful, damned and unworthy because he or she likes to have sex.

I'll do my best to protect her and equip her properly, because I can't do much for the millions of others.

My daughter will not be ashamed of her body. She will not be ashamed or afraid of sex. She will get the vaccination when the time comes. She will not get her sex education from a man who has repeatedly protected sex offenders. She will learn how to protect herself, even if her church, her school and her mother (I hope this won't happen), disapprove.

She will not die, simply because she's a Catholic.

----------------------------------------------------------

More Information:

On the Halton Board's Decision, and the reaction to it; on the vaccination in question; the original Vatican document on contraception, Humanae Vitae, and a 2003 document on family values; on Archbishop Francisco Chimoio and his horrible lie; on the Vatican's official position that condoms don't stop AIDS, and the consequences.

I'm not finished with the church and sexual morality, but this is long enough already

The Handiman's Secret Weapon

Just had to fetch a roll of duct tape so that a volunteer here at my workplace could mount a sign.

And recalled that last year I sealed the ductwork on my furnace, and it was recommended that I use aluminum tape.

Apparently, the only thing you can't use duct tape for is ducts.

Righteous Anger

With all due credit and respect to Greta Christina.

There's a lot that gets me angry, and most of it should get you angry, too:

1. My federal government is slowly getting around to maybe implementing a climate change policy that could possibly have an effect on reducing carbon emissions below what they are now at some point in the distant future. When my provincial government porposed a system that is better (though still not enought), the federal environment minister said it was "smoke and mirrors", and would simply allow big polluters to keep polluting. The sheer audacity of his bullshit makes me mad.


2. An Iraqi woman who left her husband because he stomped his daughter to death to protect his honour has been gunned down.


3. The US dragged my country into a stupid war in a virtual black hole in a fit of uber-nationalism and bigotry, and now we're going to stay past 2011, against the wishes of the Canadian people.


4. The US government has misled and lied to its citizens, and some of them don't seem to mind, and a country that claims to be a force for good has killed nearly a million in Afghanistan, and more than a million in Iraq, in addition to thousands of its own citizens (more Americans have been killed in Iraq than died in 9/11), and the odds are very good that these men and women will never face justice.


5. Religious freedom continues to be an intellectual idea in the United States, with little support for nonbelievers, and in some places, an assumption that "religious" means "christian".

And there's way more. The list is necessarily short, but other things that annoy me include young earth creationists, IDiots, The Conservative Party of Canada, and especially Stephen Harper and John Baird, peak oil deniers, Hilary and McCain for suggesting short-sighted economic policies and then badmouthing the experts, the entire "democratic" process in the US, the electoral policies of my own nation, the fact that God is in my constitution, that there are only about eight and ahalf million athiests or other nonbelievers in Canada, that there are even fewer (on a per capita basis) in the states, and when other groups steal Green ideas and we don't get credit.

Now, I relish my anger. I live in it. I snort it up my nose, smear it on my skin, and drink deeply of my wrath. My anger is good, it is righteous, and I deserve it. It spurs me to action, and it makes me a better person. This anger does. When I get pissed at my daughter because she won't sleep through the night and I have to get up at 2am to comfort her, that just makes me an asshole.

But my righteous anger, at those who are discriminating against non-believers, at those who would export a "free market" at the point of a gun to justify their plunder, at men who lie constantly and often about evolution, climate change, or gay marriage, that makes me a good man.

Greta Christina agrees with me, and if you haven't read that blog post, I suggest you do now. Or after you're done reading mine. A long laundry list of reasons to be angry (though she's going to have to strike at least one from the list), and then a good argument about righteous anger, and what it has accomplished. It's very good, very compelling, and pretty damned astute.

Today I read the Information Clearing House's article about war crimes being committed by the US, and another wondering what the hell is the matter with the American People, and I thought of Greta Christina's point, that anger is necessary for change.

But the problem with anger is that it cannot be sustained. It's fleeting, and while it may smoulder, that's only enough for resentment, not for action. The anger needs to be accompanied by hope (which Obama has coopted), in order for change to occur. The problem is that we're in waaaaay too much trouble to deal with any one thing. Fix global warming, and we still have a food shortage. Get gay marriage, and atheists are still villified. Get rid of public funding of religious education, and you still have tax exemption for churches (Nobody in Canada ever complains about that, only that Natives don't have to pay some taxes. Oddly enough, we probably have more churches than Tax Exempt Natives...)

Anger is useful, powerful and primal, and it gets people off their asses. But it's short-lived, and it can cause impulsive, reckless and stupid action, as well. It needs to be tempered (pun intended), and it needs something else. It can't sustain action, and for the big problems to be fixed, we need more than flare-ups. We need sustained pressure.

I don't have the answer. I suggest you stay angry. Don't let your anger get away from you. Keep reading alternative news sources. For my atheist friends, especially the ones south of the border, keep on top of the IDiots and the YECs, and the bigoted Congresswomen/men and or Senators, and the televangelists (incidentally, Benny Hinn is Canadian, but you can have him) and all the other assholes who would deny you tour rights. You're gonna need that indignation. You need to keep feeding it.

But nurture your hope, too.