On Saving Us From The Immoral, Or “Ready, Fire…Aim!”

It was about a week ago that we saw the ruling throwing out California’s Prop 8; that decision has now been appealed, and we will see, at some point in the future, how the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handles the matter.

A couple of days later, I had a story up that walked through the ruling, describing the tactics used by the Prop 8 proponents, which, in the opinion of the Judge who looked at the evidence, were basically to try to scare Californians into thinking that gay people, once they’re able to get gay married, will somehow now be free to evangelize your kids and make them gay, too.

In the course of answering comments on the several sites where the story is up, I noticed that there were those who felt the Bible should be guiding our thinking here…that if it did, we would be better off than where we are today, with all those immoral gay people running around free to do all those immoral gay things.

This led me to an obvious question: are those who have been using the Bible as a sort of “divining rod” to figure out who is immoral and who is not…actually any good at it?

There are those who seem surprised that a defective rattrap like the Mulford law could be endorsed by the legislature of a supposedly progressive, enlightened state. But these same people were surprised when [California’s] Proposition 14, which reopened the door to racial discrimination, was endorsed by the electorate last November by a margin of nearly 2 to 1.

--From “The Nonstudent Left”, by Hunter S. Thompson, published in “The Nation”, September 27, 1965 (links were added for this story)

So as I said above, there are lots of folks who are just absolutely convinced that the Bible can effectively help us figure out who is being moral and who is being immoral; others are convinced that, with the proper application of the “Judeo-Christian values” that form the basis of our system of Government, we can protect ourselves from the immorality that constantly threatens out American Way Of Life.

Let’s see how that’s been working out.

For about 400 years Christians tried, and tried again, to save Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the immoral Muslims; we know those efforts as the Crusades. In the effort to save the world from that immorality thousands upon thousands of Christians and Muslims were killed in war, thousands more Jews were killed who just kind of happened to turn up along the way, and in 1212, thousands of children either did or did not participate in another Crusade that led virtually all of them into either death or slavery.

Still another Crusade ended the immorality of rivals competing for Venice’s monopoly control over the marketing of Byzantine trade goods. (That took two years, from 1202 to 1204 and led to the sacking of Constantinople).

Here’s what happened with yet another effort to protect Europe from the immoral:

When national feeling and the adoption of religious ideas later associated with the Protestants made Bohemia a threat to European stability, at least in the eyes of the Holy Roman Empire and the pope, a Crusade was declared against Hussites, who were named for John Hus, their first leader. Some decried this as a false Crusade, saying that greed was being sanctified by ecclesiastical banners. But most of Europe endorsed the brutal warfare and the reimposition of Catholicism. This was, in their eyes, a Crusade for Christ’s church and people, as valid as any of the expeditions to the Holy Land.

It turns out that believing in “ecclesiastical poverty” was another one of those immoral things that had to be stamped out to protect the rest of us…and that’s why certain French Christians were subjected to the Inquisition, starting in the 1300s.

Being a Jew could be immoral, too, which is why officials of the Spanish Inquisition killed somewhere between 10,000 and 600,000 of those who refused to convert to Christianity as the Moors were being driven out of Spain.

Ever heard of Galileo? He became famous because he built telescopes that could prove that the Earth orbits the Sun…which was immoral because it was heretical (which essentially means the Church, who told everyone else what the Bible really means, did not agree). He did not have a fork shoved through his chest and jaw to shut him up before he was burned at the stake for those beliefs because he had friends in high places who could protect him.

Ever heard of Father Giordano Bruno? He believed the same things, he had no friends in high places…and he did get the Heretic's Fork, after which he was burned at the stake to protect the public from his particular brand of immorality.

Sorcery was immoral from the beginning for Church theologians, but magic was OK. Believing in witchcraft was immoral, before 1400, and those who believed in witches, the Bible told us, were heretics who needed to be punished for the protection of the rest of us…but by 1487, when the Malleus maleficarum was published by the Catholic Church, practicing the witchcraft which recently didn’t even exist was now considered idolatry and apostasy, punishable under law…and all that is a long way of saying that thousands and thousands and thousands of “witches” were killed, on orders of the Church and local authorities, partially to try and stop the bubonic plague, which, as the Bible taught us, was being caused by witchcraft…which only recently, the Bible taught us, didn’t even exist.

Do you know what a Bruloir might be?

It’s an oven that is specially designed to cook the living person inside in the most painful way possible (you put them in a cold oven, then heat it up)…and it really gained popularity as a moral means of killing those plague-promoting witches in the second half of the 16th Century.

I could go on and on and on…but let’s have a look at where we’ve been so far, and see what we can learn:

If you believed that the Earth orbits the Sun, and you taught that to others, you were immoral, a heretic, and a menace to society, and had to be exterminated for the good of the rest of us.

If you believed that being Islamic and living in Jerusalem was no big deal…you were immoral, a heretic, and a menace to society, and for hundreds of years entire Christian armies were going to try to exterminate you for the good of the rest of us.

Protestant?
Immoral, at least once.

Jew?
Immoral, at least twice.

Exterminations all around, please.

When the witches caused crop failures, or the plague, or engaged in their orgiastic behavior, we were darn lucky to have the Bruloir available for the protection of our collective morals…eh?

Even to this very day, theologians warn us to beware of rock ‘n’ roll, I kid you not, because “these musicians have been primarily responsible for the dramatic rise in Satanic practices among young people today.”

And now it’s the damn homos, wanting to destroy our American Judeo-Christian Bible Law And Morality with their efforts to get fag married and turn our babies into lesbian cannibals…even though Pastor Fred Phelps very clearly tells us that God hates Fags….which they somehow can’t seem to understand, which is why we have to pass laws to try and protect our Judeo-Christian values.

Now I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade here, and I know this is a great campaign issue for Republicans, but if you’re standing in front of the “Protecting Morality Scoreboard”, and the score reads, say, 0-11, and you’re the 11, and every time you’ve screwed it up so far piles of bodies end up strewn all over the place…and now you’re here to tell us that God and the Bible want to shut down the same-sex weddings because you just absolutely know that they’re a moral threat to society…why, exactly, are we supposed to believe you have any idea what you’re talking about?

On Religion, Or, Is It Time For A New Martin Luther?

“Above all things I beseech the Christian reader and beg him for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, to read my earliest books very circumspectly and with much pity, knowing that before now I too was a monk, and one of the right frantic and raving papists. When I took up this matter against Indulgences, I was so full and drunken, yea, so besotted in papal doctrine that, out of my great zeal, I would have been ready to do murder -- at least, I would have been glad to see and help that murder should be done -- on all who would not be obedient and subject to the pope, even to his smallest word.

Such a Saul was I at that time; and I meant it right earnestly; and there are still many such to-day. In a word, I was not such a frozen and ice-cold champion of the papacy as Eck and others of his kind have been and still are. They defend the Roman See more for the sake of the shameful belly, which is their god, than because they are really attached to its cause. Indeed I am wholly of the opinion that like latter-day Epicureans, they only laugh at the pope. But I verily espoused this cause in deepest earnest and in all fidelity; the more so because I shrank from the Last Day with great anxiety and fear and terror, and yet from the depths of my heart desired to be saved.”

--from “Dr. Martin Luther to the Christian Reader”, 1545

486 years ago come April 16th Martin Luther appeared in Worms to be offered the opportunity to recant his statements (“The 95 Theses”) regarding the power of the Pope to sell dispensation (Indulgences) for earthly sins to the living and the families of the dead.

What do you mean "dispensation"? Early in the sixteenth century the Church discovered a new business opportunity-why limit yourself to offering forgiveness to the marketplace of the living, when you could “grow the brand”, as it were, and offer the same services to the deceased for sins they committed during life?

How can you make money from the dead? Easily, if you convince their living descendants that forgiveness in the “afterlife” (the ability to move from Purgatory to Heaven, for example) depends on a steady stream of payments from the living. And thus the “Indulgences” industry was born.

How far had the Catholic Church strayed from Christian principles? In 1536 William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake (taking no chances, apparently) for translating the Bible into English-versions of the Bible not translated by the Church were listed in the Church’s “Index of Banned Books”, and violation of the rule was a capital offense.

He declined. With that act, resistance to Church authority achieved moral authority-an authority that needs to be exercised today.

The actions of Martin Luther are the basis for the formation of the Protestant Church (“Lutheran” of course, being derived from his name).

So here we are, 486 years later, and the wheel seems to have turned full circle.

It is not difficult today to find examples of those who would teach hate as enlightenment, or those who would assert the gathering of wealth is serving a higher purpose.

It is easy to find those who call themselves Christian, but who would ignore the missive “...If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (John 3:16-18).

There are even those who suggest that a final battle will cause the death of the Unbelievers, and bring, in a final show of God’s love, the Second Coming-and that we should do all we can to encourage the process.

With all this in mind, I humbly offer a few New Theses for today.

--Hate is not a tool for spreading understanding.

--Revenge is not a means to achieve righteousness.

--Taking away from the poor because you need the money to kill others will not get you into Heaven.

--If your religion is guided by voices from Heaven, be careful of voices from Earth.

--I don’t care who you are, if you think you understand the One and only Truth about anything metaphysical-you don’t.

--As regards a Second Coming: be careful what you wish for-you may get it.

This is a community.
Let’s all be Martin Luther today.

Do you have a thesis of your own?
Add it to the list-think of it as your own Easter egg to the rest of us.

On Winning, Or, Democrats, Meet Joe Wood

In a recent conversation (“On Shrinking the Tent, Or, Why Third Parties Don’t Elect Presidents These Days”), I posited that the bloc of voters who have drifted away from being reliable supporters of the Democratic and Republican Parties to the middle (I call it the “gap”), are not fertile hunting grounds for a potential alternative party candidate.

History has shown us however, that these voters are often the crucial difference in election after election for established party candidates. To put it in stronger terms, no Democratic Presidential candidate has a chance in winning in 2008 without successfully piloting these waters.

If you are considering running as the Democratic candidate for President in 2008, I humbly offer you the following navigational chart.

I’ve never personally met Joe Wood, but it’s fairly easy to get to know some things about him.

Mr. Wood has a blog on the TPM Café website.
Here’s an entry: http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/28223

From taking the time to read what he says, we can learn the following:

Mr. Wood is quite conservative regarding values and morals issues.
Mr. Wood supports an aggressive national security posture.
Mr. Wood is very comfortable with the commingling of Church and State.
Mr. Wood has opinions strongly at odds with the available, demonstrable facts from time to time.
Most important of all, and the source of his feelings above, I believe, is that the central and defining component of Mr. Wood’s belief system is his faith in the Christian God.

In all these areas Mr. Wood and I hold diametrically opposite positions.
(Except one: frankly, I’m completely wrong about things from time to time, as well.)

Despite all the opposites, Mr. Wood and I have plenty in common:

We both strongly support this ongoing American experiment in Democracy.
We both fear, however, that Government no longer works for all its citizens as it should.
We both want to reduce homelessness, and poverty, and crime.
We both want to breathe clean air and drink clean water.
We don’t like flag covered coffins.
We are both concerned about our economic futures, and those of future generations.
We are both willing to listen to and respect reasoned, cogent, civil argument supported by facts.

What did Bill Clinton do that Al Gore and John Kerry couldn’t that allowed him to grab a decent chunk of the gap?

I submit he spoke to the God in the gap.

That he was willing to go to churches and talk about social justice with passion, and in a way that reminds Christians that Jesus was a social justice crusader.

A big, big, big “L” Liberal.

It worked, too. Twice he was able to keep the core Democratic constituency on board, while grabbing enough of the gap to get over the top.

Never got the universal health care passed, and also missed on other big L social justice reforms; but there’s an argument to be made that winning elections and governing are two different forms of political calculus.

However, I digress.

On how to apply the lesson offered above:

If you want the votes of Evangelical Christians, and other social conservatives, aim for the weak points in the Republican platform.

Have the guts to walk into a megachurch, stand there facing Mr. Wood and the other congregants, look them straight in the eye,
and ask this question:

“What Would Jesus Do?”

If Jesus was President, would He be fighting “the terrorists”, or Islam, or whatever we’re calling it today?
If Jesus was President, wouldn’t He be trying to create an Axis of Love?
If Jesus was President, wouldn’t we be fighting homelessness?
If Jesus was President, would 40,000,000 Americans have no health care?
If Jesus was President, would the number of working families stuck in poverty be increasing or decreasing?
If Jesus was President, wouldn’t His Administration respect His Father’s creation, the Earth, in ways it isn’t respected today?

Maybe these aren’t your exact preferred questions, but the concept is clear: show Christians in the gap that this Administration is as far from Christ-like as you can get.

John Kerry might tell you that if you try this, you’ll get Swiftboated.
So what?
That just means what you’re doing is working.

James Carville might tell you that you absolutely must respond to a Swiftboating in the same news cycle.

The problem with that is you allow the opposition to define your “brand”, and you don’t promote your message.

Here’s another possible approach: call ‘em on their desperation, respond to charges, but at the same time…

…The best defense is a good offense.

Never let the gap forget this Administration’s policies (and presumably, any likely R opponent’s) are less reflective of the Christian belief system than yours.

That the Rs are the moneychangers in the temple.

That your platform, while respecting the separation of Church and State, is still more reflective of the Ten Commandments than your opponent’s.

Remind everyone who will listen that Jesus was a Liberal.
God willing, the opposition calls you one.
Embrace the title with gusto.
Then, once again, remind everyone who will listen that Jesus was a Liberal, too.

Here’s the best part:

While Senator Obama and the Reverend Sharpton have plenty of Jesus cred, and have a sort of “home court advantage” here, you don’t have to be Christian or a religious person of any sort at all, for that matter, to use this strategy.

All you need is respect for Mr. Wood’s point of view, the willingness to engage him in a way that’s compatible with his belief system, and some good ideas that reach for the common ground you and I and Mr. Wood share.

(A side note: if your platform concentrates on the issues above, the strategy also works for Buddhists, Hindus, and followers of Islam; as virtually all the members of those communities also like breathing, good health, a place to live, and food on the table. Bonus!)

I’ll make the last thing I say today the first thing I said today:

Democrats, meet Joe Wood.
You’ll be glad you did.