Rick Perry's rally

 By Mustang Bobby.

I don't really care if Texas Gov. Rick Perry's upcoming prayer festival is a big hit or not; hey, whatever gets you through the night, right?  But the folks that he's invited to participate have some interesting interpretations of holy writ, including Oprah being a sign of the Apocalypse, birds dying because of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Statue of Liberty is a pagan idol, and the perennial favorite: Hurricane Katrina was divine retribution for New Orleans being a fun place to visit.

This weekend's prayer rally is intended to serve as the overture to Mr. Perry's run for the presidency, which is all well and good because there's no reason that a person of faith shouldn't run for office... any more than a person who doesn't believe in magical sky faeries or Flying Spaghetti Monsters shouldn't run for office either.  After all, the Constitution is clear on the prohibition of a religious test as a qualification for office.  And I don't have a problem with a candidate or an office holder relying on his faith as a part of his daily life in or out of the office.

What I do have a problem with is a governor or a president or a city council member substituting their dogma for reality or proven fact and turning it into law or public policy.  You can believe all you want in the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis, but you don't get to impose that in place of the glaring proof that the universe was not formed 6,000 years ago and that Adam and Eve palled around with triceratops.  You do not get to proclaim that being gay -- or straight -- is a choice because you're obsessed with other peoples' sex lives and you can't get beyond your adolescent fixation with genitalia.  You don't get to assert that some supernatural being has it in for a major American city because too many people are having altogether too good a time at Mardi Gras.  You can't warn the nation about the non-existent threat of the imposition of Sharia law while defending the right to post the Ten Commandments in a court house, and you can't inform the rest of the world about your stunning lack of irony by condemning Harry Potter for being a harbinger of magic while you're on your way to Mass to eat a cookie and sip some wine that has been magically transformed into the body and blood of Jesus H. Christ.  In short, you can't project your own psychological shortcomings onto the rest of society and use your religion as the excuse for your behavior.

Certainly a man of faith can run for the presidency and win.  We all remember the administrations of Presidents William Jennings Bryan, Pat Robertson, and Mike Huckabee, right?  The electorate of America may have its flaws and foibles, but it has so far done well by applying the doctrine of the separation of church and state to candidates as well as the Constitution.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Herman Cain ramps up the anti-Muslim bigotry, says communities should be able to ban mosques

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There is ample evidence out there that Tea Party pizza mogul Herman Cain, a presidential favourite for many in the GOP, is an ignorant anti-Muslim bigot. For example, he has proposed a loyalty test for Muslim Americans who would serve in his administration (not that he'll ever be president). In this regard, he fits in nicely with the Republican Party, which houses a good deal of such bigotry, from Peter King to Allen West to Newt Gingrich to so many others, bigotry widespread throughout the grassroots.

Well, Cain is ramping up the bigotry, or at least just being more open about his own views:

Herman Cain says voters across the country should have the right to prevent Muslims from building mosques in their communities.

In an exchange on "Fox News Sunday," the Republican presidential contender said that he sided with some in a town near Nashville who were trying to prevent Muslims from worshiping in their community.

"Our Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state," he said. "Islam combines church and state. They're using the church part of our First Amendment to infuse their morals in that community, and the people of that community do not like it. They disagree with it."

Asked by host Chris Wallace if any community could ban a mosque if it wanted to, Cain said: "They have a right to do that."

Cain, an African-American who grew up during the civil rights era, claimed he was not discriminating against Muslims. He said it was "totally different" than the fight for racial equality because there were laws prohibiting blacks from advancing.

Totally different? Hardly. What we're talking about is the right to worship freely and without either government interference. And any community that were to ban a mosque would be interfering in the exercise of that right. The fact that Cain is black and supposedly knows firsthand what such discrimination is all about only adds to the craziness of his position.

What's more, Cain apparently knows nothing about Islam. Are there some Muslims who wish to combine church and state? Sure, but in America there are many more Christians who do. Is Cain proposing that communities should be permitted to ban churches? Of course not.

But this is just the sort of bigoted fearmongering that spews forth from Republicans these days: Muslims are all the same, all trying to impose Sharia law on an otherwise free society. Which, of course, is utterly ridiculous. The vast majority of American Muslims are good, decent, and honest people who only wish to live like other Americans while also being free to worship as they please. And, again, if you really want to find religious types who seek to "infuse their morals," you need look no further than the Christianist right, a core Republican consituency. They're the ones who want to restrict your freedom in the name of their "faith."

But of course it's easier to scapegoat Muslims, especially if you're a Republican trying to win over your party's core supporters. As Doug Mataconis writes at Outside the Beltway, "[t]he Herman Cain boomlet is dying, because its becoming clear that everything that comes out of his mouth is utter nonsense." Yes, the boomlet is fading, but he still has his support, which goes to show that this sort of bigoted nonsense actually has some traction in today's Republican Party.

For more, see Think Progress, which also has the video (see below). We've also written previously about the efforts to build a Muslim community center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, efforts that have met with violent resistance from locals in lockstep with the likes of Herman Cain -- see here and here.

Apocalypse fer sure

By Capt. Fogg

Well folks, here it is again. The doomsday circus is back in town and guess what's happening in the big top in less than three days - that's right, it's the rapture and we're all gonna die screaming! OK, maybe some of y'all are actually Holy Smoke Church members and won't have to sit here through the tectonic shimmy, the lakes of fire and all the other rides while Jesus, like some Mexican wrestler with a gruesome mask is gonna kick some infidel ass, but not yours, Mr. camo pants. You get to go to the magic kingdom. You'll have to leave the truck behind, of course.

Yes, May 21, 2011 is right around the corner and Doomsday, as it has been countless times before, is almost here. For perhaps the first time however, these prophets have recognized that there are a dozen time zones and so Saturday at 6:00 PM, starting at the International Date Line out in the pacific, the apocalypse will march across the planet at a thousand miles per hour - boy can those horses move! That means we'll get to watch it all on TV as that Titanium robot, or whatever Jesus comes dressed as these days. kicks hell out of Asia and moves on toward Europe. That will give a lot of people her in God's own US of A enough time to convert and yes, you can do it on line through Paypal.

Not me though, It's going to be months before the planet is cleansed of disbelief and animal life and since the righteous will no longer be here, I get to grab their trailers and second hand pickup trucks and ATVs and firearms and stuff and me and the other heretics can shoot guns and barbeque like Ted Nugent. It's gonna be a hell of a party -- as long as the beer don't run out before that lake of fire thing.

Anyway, the Rapture should hit the fan at my house at 7:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time according to God's infallible plan and I'll be watching it all unfold from poolside and I'll have plenty of ice on hand. Perhaps I'll live-blog the whole thing. Stay tuned.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Rebels without a cause

By Capt. Fogg

To be honest, I've come to hate activists, even when I agree with them. The passion behind so many crusades has often rendered the crusaders irrational, intemperate and more than half blind. It prompts them to accept spurious facts and figures and sometimes to invent them and in too many cases there's a kind of regenerative feedback that mimics a PA system with too much gain. It begins to howl and screech. Whatever was said into the microphone and what the howling is about matters little, only the joy of crusading, which not only surpasseth understanding, but prevents it.

Take genital mutilation, for instance. On the list of people I hate well in excess of my general contempt for humanity are those who painfully slice up young girls in a way that is intended to prevent them from enjoying sex as an adult. Yes, we have a constitutional ban on government interference with "free exercise" of religion, but we have a long standing interpretation of it that limits that free exercise to otherwise legal actions. We are, even so, usually able to make fair decisions because we distinguish between minor cosmetic surgery and malicious mutilation without a lot of hysteria. We can sometimes tell whether a comparison is ludicrous or not. We're able to take notice of the testimony of close to a billion males that it's not an impairment; unless we're prone to activism, that is.

Is circumcision, demanded by two of the major religious categories, really the kind of "mutilation" that falls outside of constitutional protection? To the activists of San Francisco, there are no uncertainties and certainly no distinction between something that is initially agonizing and a cruel lifelong impairment and something that isn't either. And let me be clear, this isn't a subject that will be illuminated by our traditional, left-right dichotomy. It simply doesn't matter whether it's liberals or Conservatives behind it; whether it's neither or both. I'd go so far as to say that the stated justifications for banning the circumcision of male babies is irrelevant to the passion for it and has too much to do with "aesthetics" to be more than an excuse. So I'm not going to indulge myself in modern fashion by invoking the traditional straw men ( and women of course) and restrict my contempt for people who need to have a cause and need it so much they aren't quite scrupulous about the high contrast, black and white scenarios they use in their passion plays.

If the crusade succeeds, much like the one that captured Jerusalem in 1099, the City by the bay will be as slippery a thing to hold on to. Jews and Muslims will simply use maternity facilities elsewhere or have the religious rite performed elsewhere. The Brit Milah, given in Gen. 17:10-14 to Abraham and in Lev. 12:3 is carried out on the eighth day. Muslims have a similar guideline. The law them would be only an inconvenience, like having to drive to the next town to purchase alcohol is in some places.

What then will it accomplish than, after all the sound and fury and obsession with penises wanes? Certainly nothing to stop what was intended to be stopped unless a further incursion by the dominant religion into the neighborhood of tolerance was part of the game all along.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

No circumcision for you!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Generally, and admiringly, I find San Francisco to be one of the most progressive places in America (not that that's really saying much, but still).

Take same-sex marriage, for example: Harvey Milk's city is well out in front of most of the rest of the country, which lingers still in vicious bigotry.

But sometimes it can go too far, and not even in a progressive way. Sometimes it's just nuts:

A group opposed to male circumcision said on Tuesday they have collected more than enough signatures to qualify a proposal to ban the practice in San Francisco as a ballot measure for November elections.

But legal experts said that even if it were approved by a majority of the city's voters, such a measure would almost certainly face a legal challenge as an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of religion.

Circumcision is a ritual obligation for infant Jewish boys, and is also a common rite among Muslims, who account for the largest share of circumcised men worldwide.

The leading proponent of a ban, Lloyd Schofield, 59, acknowledged circumcision is widely socially accepted but he said it should still be outlawed.

"It's excruciatingly painful and permanently damaging surgery that's forced on men when they're at their weakest and most vulnerable," he told Reuters.

Oh please. A ban may or may not be unconstitutional -- I suspect the current Supreme Court would rule it as such -- but it would certainly be stupid. Male circumcision isn't female circumcision, after all, and it's hardly -- sorry, Kramer -- the "damaging surgery" its opponents make it out to be.

The spread of disease may not be much of an issue anymore, given our penchant for hyper-hygiene, and so, if it isn't religion, it may just be parental preference. But what's wrong with that? This hardly rises to the level of a choice that needs to be taken away from parents.

Thankfully, not all of San Francisco is this crazy. A vote would likely fail.