Unlike the woman in the above picture, the only pain in my ass is how many hours I’m working these days. It has been difficult to sit on the sidelines while Proposition 8 was declared unconstitutional. The fundies are throwing a fit! They’re having a conniption! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the fundies this worked up! Oh, happy day!

They’re upset for a lot of reasons. For one, they somehow think that their religion gets to make the laws of our land. The last time I checked the Constitution, that wasn’t how it’s done.

There are a lot of other reasons they’re upset. Most of them you’ve probably heard. I was thinking about this, and I may have come up with another.

The fundies object to gay marriage, because it legalizes anal sex.

In fundie-land, any form of sexual activity outside of marriage is forbidden. Certain activities (the ones they refer to as “unnatural acts”), though, are so heinous that you’re guaranteed a trip to hell just for contemplating them.

You’re also guaranteed a trip to prison. Most states, in fact, used to have laws against sodomy (some states still do). They’ll throw your ass in the slammer if they catch you, which, ironically, just guarantees you’ll be having a lot more anal sex.

But once you’re married, all of the taboos are lifted. You’re supposed to have sex. It’s your moral obligation. God is watching you have sex, and if he doesn’t see enough of it, you’re in trouble!

You can see what the problem is. Legalizing gay marriage legalizes gay sex. That probably bothers many fundies more than the idea of two men playing house together.

Surely you must be gay by now. After all, the homosexuals have been promoting their agenda and shoving their lifestyle down your throat for several decades now. If the conversion hasn’t stuck yet, well then, I guess it never will!

I was reminded of this agenda by seeing an article on Yahoo that Constance McMillen just won her court case and turned the whole country gay.

The article states:

[T]he American Civil Liberties Union won their case against the Itawamba County School District on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen!

To recap, McMillen wanted to bring her girlfriend to her senior prom but was denied this right by her Mississippi high school. School staff and students then put on a decoy prom for McMillen and other “less desirable” pupils while the majority of the student body partied 30 miles away at the real prom.

Today’s ruling means that school officials are required to implement a policy banning discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and they’re paying McMillen $35,000 in damages as well as her attorneys’ fees.

Maybe $35,000 doesn’t sound like much, but you have to read between the lines. You know, like the geniuses who left comments on that article. Here are just a few:

Jesse wrote:

Thats sweet let gays go to prom. U kno wat lets let daughters be sexually active wit their fathers and bring them to prom. If i started datin someone in jail for murder robbery or watever could they let them so i could bring them to prom. They better of il get a sh*t load of money out of it. Wat if im eighteen and im attracted to 8 year olds could i bring them to prom. U cant judge me i have my rights huh. This is sick and a bad move from this selfish D*ke. Peace i hope u sleep good knowin your rewarded for having no values.

MStoneManiac said:

Another example of the Gay Agenda and how its forcing the hetero majority to accept and affirm a lifestyle that is abberant by social standards, perverse by moral standards, an abomination by religious standards and a mutation that is essentially genocide by biological standards. Thanks gay people for shoving it down our throats!

Patriot1 wrote (and you know anybody calling himself “Patriot1” is going to be a model of intelligence and tolerance):

So yet another gay/lesbian trying to force their lifestyle on everyone else, and say “accept it and okay it, or I will find a way to force you to, because I don’t like that you don’t care for my lifestyle choice.” And yet then they have the gall to call US intolerant.

I’m sorry. I’m a little confused right now. Which millennium are we in?

I’m sure you’ve heard the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” at some point in your life. It’s allegedly the longest word in the English language. This Wikipedia article tells us there are longer words, but they don’t count.

I remember looking up the definition years ago and not really getting it. I looked it up again today, and found it related to this blog. Wiktionary explains it well:

Said by Weekley to be first recorded in Gladstone’s “Church and State”, in reference to a scheme directed against the Church of England. From establishment in the sense of the ecclesiastical system established by law; the Church of England.

establish
to set up, put in place, or institute (originally from the Latin stāre, to stand)

dis- + establish
ending the established status of a body, in particular a church, given such status by law, such as the Church of England

disestablish + -ment
the separation of church and state (specifically in this context it is the political movement of the 1860s in Britain)

anti- + disestablishment
opposition to disestablishment

antidisestablishment + -arian
an advocate of opposition to disestablishment (alternatively, but less likely and quite similar in meaning, “opposed to disestablishmentarians”, depending on what “anti-” is taken to belong to)

antidisestablishmentarian + -ism
the movement or ideology of advocates of opposition to disestablishment; the movement or ideology that opposes disestablishment (simply not wanting a separation of church and state)

Whew! That’s quite word. So the official definition is:

antidisestablishmentarianism
A political philosophy opposed to the separation of a religious group (“church”) and a government (“state”), esp. the belief held by those in 19th century England opposed to separating the Anglican church from the civil government.

As you can see, it arose out of an effort to disentangle church and state in 19th century England. This definition also implies that it can be used more generally.

That means that I am a disestablishmentarian (21 letters), and my philosophy is disestablishmentarianism (24 letters). The modern fundies, therefore, advocate antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters).

But I study the behavior of these people. You could say that what I do is antidisestablishmentarianismology (33 letters). This, of course, makes me an antidisestablishmentarianismologist (35 letters). Beat that, fundies!

I received an email from the “Family” Research Council (and “Family” is probably an accurate description). The email states:

When the North Carolina legislature asked Ron Baity to serve as a guest chaplain at the state house, the pastor of Berean Baptist Church said it was an honor. What he didn’t know was how short-lived that honor would be!

Short-lived? It shouldn’t have lived at all! A legislature has no business establishing a state religion, which is exactly what they are doing every time they open their session with a prayer.

During the last week of May, when Pastor Baity was scheduled to open the session in prayer, a House clerk asked to first review the text.

Well that sounds a little ominous. Why would a government bureaucrat need an advance look at the text of the prayer?

When she noticed the last line, she said, “We would prefer that you not use the name of Jesus. We have some people here that can be offended.”

It doesn’t matter to me whether Jesus is mentioned or not. I’m offended that it mentions God. So what this bureaucrat is telling us is that the state of North Carolina only worries about offending one branch or another of the Abrahamic religions. They all pray to the same god, so as long as we only talk about him, it’s OK.

Well what about non-Yahwehans? I guess the Constitution doesn’t protect Hindus, Jains, and Wiccans. They’re also ignoring the non-religious completely. After all, there are only 34 million of those in America (a mere rounding error!).

But it was Pastor Baity who was most offended.

No. It’s the scores of millions of Constitution-lovers who are the most offended.

When the clerk raised the issue with House Speaker Joe Hackney,[…] Hackney decided that the pastor could offer his prayer—but that it would be his last one. After that, Baity’s services would “no longer be needed.”

Wrong tense. Try “never were”!

But I think Baity is about to have a revelation:

A stunned Baity told Fox News Radio, “When the state tells you how to pray, that you cannot use the name of Jesus—that’s mandating a state religion. They talk about not offending other people but at the same time, if they are telling me how to pray—that’s the very thing our forefathers left England for.”

Now you get it, moron! That is why you keep religion out of government! It isn’t just so “a few people won’t be offended”. It isn’t even because mixing one religion with government imposes that religion on people of other faiths. It’s because the contamination goes both ways! The taint of religion ruins government, and the taint of government ruins religion!

Now get your taint out of my face. I’m tired of smelling it.

I heard a great documentary on public (read: socialist) radio tonight. It’s called “The Great Textbook War”. It’s about a controversy in Kanawha County, West Virginia in 1974 about some new school textbooks. You can find the documentary’s download link in the sidebar of their website.

The whole thing sounds eerily contemporary. The one difference is that racism was one of the underlying issues of the 1974 controversy. Teabaggers aside, that is much less of an issue today.

You’ll hear the roots of our modern culture war playing out in microcosm. The textbook war of ’74 turned violent toward the end, with Christians justifying the violence with quotes from the Bible. Sadly, that was also a precursor of what we see today. Extremist fundie violence is rare in this country, but as any dead abortion doctor will tell you, it does still happen.

As for the controversy itself, listen with an open mind. The conservatives make one or two good points. I might agree that maybe the books went just the slightest bit too far. Including the writings of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver, for example, would certainly be appropriate at the college level, and maybe even 11th or 12th grade. It isn’t clear from the documentary which grades included their writings.

Likewise, raising the issue of moral relativism is OK, even desirable, at any of the high school grades, but kids may not be equipped mentally to process such an abstract thought at a younger age. Again, the documentary does not tell us at which grades that issue was raised. (That is one of my few gripes with the documentary.)

Other than these points, I am completely on the side of the “liberal, academic, socialist elites” who tried to shove progress down the throats of a backward county in 1974. And who continue to do the same to a backward country in 2010.

That’s right, Mr. Owl!

You might recall that three months ago, I discovered that some stain named Orly Taitz was running to be the Republican nominee for California Secretary of State. I hadn’t heard of her at the time, but apparently she was well known as the Queen of the Birthers.

I don’t know if anybody really thought she stood a chance. You might be curious about the election results. Here is a (only slightly-tampered-with) screen capture of the official election results page:

I’m disappointed, but not at all surprised, that she polled as well as she did.

Actually, I am surprised. Surprised that only 25% of the Republican party is batshit insane.

As you’ll recall from my last post, I was trying to figure out whom to bless with my vote for Superintendent of Public Instruction. One of the candidates, Lydia Guitiérrez, sounded like she just might be a fundie. I searched the internet to find out more and discovered ElectionForum.org, a fundie website that was full of suggestions on how I should vote to support the fundie agenda.

I dropped by ElectionForum.org again today to see how well their recommendations fared. They still have the thumb-rating system. The more (white!) thumbs up a candidate receives, the more of a fundie they are:

To this they have added green/pink happy/sad lumps of human tissue, which I can only assume are aborted blastocysts:

So for example, we can scroll down to the Senate race and see what happened to their recommended candidates:

This shows us that on the Republican side, the candidacy of their favorite, Chuck DeVore, has now been aborted. Their abortion of a second-choice pick, Carly Fiorina, won the nomination.

California considers the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction to be “non-partisan”, so all of the candidates were lumped together. Since this is a primary election, the top-two vote-getters will compete in a run-off in November.

Lydia Guitiérrez, dangerous fundie, came in fourth (yay!), which means her opportunity to destroy California schools has passed, at least for the moment. Alarmingly, Lydia wasn’t the only fundie running for schools chief. Let’s check in with ElectionForum.org to see how they did:

Abortions all the way around!

As typically happens, I’m up late studying the ballot the night before the election. I’ve been reading over the candidates’ statements trying to figure out who is worthy of my vote.

I really should do more research than I have, but (like most voters) I have many demands on my time and have to jam what I can into the amount of time I can spare. That’s actually a pretty sad commentary on democracy, and it probably explains why we’re in such dire straights. (How did GW Bush get elected in 2004? Only criminal blindness on the part of voters can explain it.)

In my defense, I pay attention to the major issues for several months leading up to the election, so I am already fairly well informed. Plus, my liberal values are vastly superior to conservative values, so my worst choice would still be better than any conservative’s best choice. (I am normally opposed to the SarcMark, but that last sentence is in great need of it, lest I be quote-mined for the rest of my life.)

Anyway, the only part of the election I’m still trying to figure out at this late date is some of the lower-profile offices. Take, for example, Superintendent of Public Instruction. In California, there are 12(!) candidates vying for that position. Who the hell are all these people?

Fortunately, seven of them have submitted statements to be included in the Voter Handbook. That rules out five right there! If they can’t be bothered to submit a statement, then I can’t be bothered to vote for them. OK, so then it’s just a matter of reading the seven statements and seeing if one of them jumps out at me as profoundly better than the others. At the very least, maybe I can weed out a few more.

One of the statements that caught my attention was by Lydia A. Guitiérrez. She said a few things I liked. I thought maybe she should be on my short-list of candidates to consider. For example, she says:

Prioritize reading, math, science, and other core academic courses with highly qualified teachers and extended classroom time.

She specifically includes science as a core academic subject! She definitely has my attention. But then she says this:

Affirm accuracy in textbooks in all content areas…

Umm… What exactly do you mean by that, Lydia?

There’s no question that textbooks are imperfect. In fact some of them are quite bad. Richard Feynman talked about that problem when he was on a textbook review committee. But these days, you have to read such statements carefully to understand what the speaker really means. She continues:

…including our Founding Fathers…

Oh! She must mean how many of our Founding Fathers weren’t Christians! I’m sure that’s what she means.

…the Constitution…

Of course! She must be referring to the fact that the U.S. Constitution does not mention God even once. Our non-Christian Founding Fathers and Godless Constitution make it clear that this country was not founded on the Bible, the Ten Commandments, or other religious dogma. Smart cookie, that Lydia!

…and the sovereignty of the United States of America.

Umm… What? The only thing wrong with that statement is it’s usually conservo-speak for “OMG!!!! The United Nations! The New World Order! The One World Government! They’re demolishing the Canadian and Mexican borders! The dollar is being replaced by the ‘amero’! They’re going to vaccinate us! They’re tattooing and implanting RFIDs! The death camps! Everywhere we look we see death camps!”

Surely she isn’t one of those. Is she?

What ever did we do before the internet?

I did some Googling and found a very interesting site, which I have bookmarked. It’s called ElectionForum.org. It’s a fundie site telling you how to vote. All you have to do is look at their recommendations and vote the opposite.

For example, here’s what they say about the Senate race:

Notice how they list Democrats as well, just in case you’re one of those people who accidentally checked the wrong box when you registered to vote and didn’t discover the error until it was too late to change it for this election.

They actually manage to dredge up some tepid support for one of the Democratic candidates, although I suspect that’s just to prevent you from voting for the true Anti-Christ on the ticket.

You’ll notice there is a link there to find out a little more detail about how they arrived at their recommendations. If you click it, you’ll see:

I’m really surprised Quintana managed to eke out even one whole thumb in their recommendation list. The other two Democrats must have negative 100s for their “Conservative Christian” and “Low Tax” scores.

This is all rather amusing, but I came here to find out more about Lydia Guitiérrez. Is she really an ultra-conservative unbalanced teabagging Fox News junkie? Or am I projecting onto her my fears of California schools being taken over by Texas-school-board-style lunatics?

Let’s have a look, shall we?

Nope! Not projecting!

I took a lot of photographs. Those are taking me a while to cull through and crop and enhance. I guess I won’t get that article written until next weekend. I’ll try to post something shorter before then.

In the meantime, enjoy the following, which is one of many great images at Shorthand Hero’s Deviant Art page.

My cousin alerted me to an article by an Aussie named David Thorne. It’s actually an email exchange (that presumably happened, but you never really know on the internet, do you?) between Mr. Thorne and the “Christian Volunteer” at his son’s school. The first email says:

Dear Darryl,

I have received your permission slip featuring what I can only assume is a levitating rabbit about to drop an egg on Jesus.
…
As I trust my offspring’s ability to separate fact from fantasy, I am happy for him to participate in your indoctrination process on the proviso that all references to ‘Jesus’ are replaced with the term ‘Purportedly Magic Jew.’

Regards, David.

The email exchange goes downhill from there. Check it out.

The liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is not a government endorsement of religion, even though not all religions believe in God and many Americans are not religious.

The dissenting judge understood what’s really going on here, even if his two colleagues pretend otherwise. In his dissent, Stephen Reinhardt wrote:

All that would be required would be the deletion of the two words added by an amendment designed to promote religion and to indoctrinate schoolchildren with a religious belief.

I’ve always been troubled by two things about the Pledge of Allegiance.

First of all, why does “the freest country in the world” and “the greatest nation on Earth” (according to conservative “wisdom”) even require a loyalty oath? They are generally required by fascist, communist, and totalitarian regimes.

Pardon me, but your subconscious is showing.

My second concern, of course, is the inclusion of the malevolent deity in a patriotic oath. By declaring that the United States is subservient to God, we are actually swearing allegiance to God.

As much as I believe that the Supreme Bastard needs to be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, I’m worried that Michael Newdow’s suit will fail, especially if it succeeds.

The Americans United blog agrees with my concerns:

While the lead opinion is not well reasoned, some observers think it was inevitable. Advocates of church-state separation have been divided over Newdow’s strategy. Newdow seemed to think he could prevail before the Supreme Court. But anyone can look at the composition of the conservative Roberts’ court and see that that is highly unlikely.

And what if the Supreme Court did concur and strike down “under God”? How would Congress react? In 2002, when Newdow won his first case, members of the House of Representatives and Senate in both parties practically tripped over themselves to condemn the ruling.

Had the ruling stood, some type of ill-considered constitutional amendment would have been inevitable. Could we have stopped it? Given that most state legislatures quickly passed resolutions attacking the “under God” ruling, I wouldn’t bet my rights on that.

They then make an overly-optimistic statement:

The day may come when “under God” is removed from the Pledge – not by a court ruling but simply because our increasingly diverse society realizes it’s wrong to recklessly mix religion and patriotism.

But at least they qualify their optimism:

But that day is not coming any time soon.

Yesterday’s expected miscarriage of justice gives me the opportunity to present something else that I’ve been meaning to put in this blog since day one. Red Skelton was well-known in Hollywood for his conservative leanings. Here is a clip from his TV show in 1969. You can watch the whole thing if you want, but I’ve set this clip to start at the noteworthy part at 3:23.

They’re obscene!

They are very clear violations of the Establishment Clause. They don’t belong in a classroom. Thanks to an activist judge appointed by George W Bush and rubber-stamped by the Republican Senate in 2004, a San Diego school teacher now has the right to impose his religious views upon his students.

A press release by the über-fundie Constitution-hating Thomas More Law Center tells us:

California Federal District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez ruled late this past Friday that the Poway Unified School District in San Diego, CA, violated math teacher Bradley Johnson’s constitutional rights when it ordered him to remove two patriotic banners from the walls of his classroom because they “over-emphasized” God.

Apparently the rights of the teacher, who is a representative of the state while teaching, take precedence over the rights of hundreds of students, who are compelled by the state to attend this school.

Judge Benitez’s 32-page opinion was strongly worded and critical of the Poway school districts aversion to mentioning God: “…That God places prominently in our Nation’s history does not create an Establishment Clause violation requiring curettage and disinfectant for Johnson’s public high school classroom walls. It is a matter of historical fact that our institutions and government actors have in past and present times given place to a supreme God.”

Fine. Teach that as part of the history curriculum. And also teach that many of the founding fathers were atheist, agnostic, or deist. That would put things in proper historical context. Hanging up two 7-foot pro-God recruitment banners in school is not teaching “historical fact”.

Long-time Bay of Fundie readers are familiar with crackpot creatard Kevin Wirth, his crackpot creatard buddy Jerry Bergman, and Kevin’s endless shilling of Bergman’s book Slaughter of the Dissidents. As bad as books such as The Secret and Going Rogue are, at least they’re from reputable publishers who nominally go through the motions of vetting the content. Slaughter of the Dissidents is so bad that Kevin Wirth had to publish it himself. We have to rely on his ability to distinguish fact from fiction. As we’ve seen in numerous comments he has left here, that isn’t one of his strengths. This is the guy who, in all seriousness, compared Ben Stein to Rosa Parks. Caveat emptor!

The very first blog ever to link to Bay of Fundie was Biblioblography by the Krystalline Apostate. I was over at his blog today catching up on his posts and discovered that he has been investigating Slaughter of the Dissidents himself!

His first article is “Slaughter Of The Dissidents – No Blood, No Guts, Just Whining…”. In this article, KA looks at the web page shilling the book and shoots down some of its wilder claims. (I wrote a similar article here. Read them both and compare! Collect the whole series!)

Sure enough, Kevin Wirth’s Google Alert told him that somebody was laughing at his book, so he dropped by and left a couple of long comments. He mostly argued about what the definition of “is” is, or something. My mind wandered. Kevin Wirth is like Ray Comfort. Neither is capable of comprehending what somebody has written, so they spend all their time arguing about what they think the person wrote.

A few days later, the Krystalline Apostate posted his second article in the series. In this article, he specifically looks at the case of one of the victims whiny little creatards named Raymond Damadian. Damadian was one of the contributors to the invention of the MRI. When the Nobel committee was passing out awards later for this achievement, Damadian was passed over, allegedly because he was a creationist. Defenders of the Nobel prizes said that wasn’t the reason at all. Damadian had done some essential early work, but he hadn’t contributed to the actual later invention of the MRI.

I’m on Damadian’s side in this case. I doubt he was passed over because he was a creationist. I haven’t seen evidence to indicate that. I think he was passed over because he hadn’t contributed enough to the invention. But heck! Barrack Obama didn’t do anything, and he got a Nobel Prize! The bar seems pretty low here.

KA’s next article in this series concerns the infamous non-slaughtered Guillermo Gonzalez. The short version is that Gonzalez really was (indirectly) “slaughtered” for being a creationist. What happened is that he spent all of his time pursuing his little religious hobby (creationism) that he didn’t spend enough time doing any of the things a college professor should be doing, such as research. As a result, he was denied tenure. Oh boo hoo!

Tell you what, Gonzalez. I’m going to spend all of my waking hours the next couple of weeks playing World of Warcraft. Then after I get fired for not doing my job, I’ll bitch about being discriminated against. I fully expect you and your buddies at the Discovery Institute to give me a job then. It worked for you.

KA’s next article covers Roger Dehart. He was a public school teacher who got away with teaching creationism in his biology classes for 14 years. When the district finally caught on (and why did it take that long?), did they fire him? Did they “slaughter” him? No! They should have, but they didn’t. No. All they did was take away his biology classes and made him teach geology instead. Umm… guys. That’s not such a good idea. You see, creationists have a thing or two to say about geology as well.

Anyway, this clown later resigned and got himself a sweet gig lying to kids at a Christian school. Oh, the slaughter!

KA’s final article is about Dean Kenyon, whose career was so slaughtered that he still has it.

What really makes this article such a treat is that it (along with most of the others) has a long, rambling comment at the end posted by Kevin Wirth. You have to read his comment on this article. Here are Kevin’s actual words:

After all, that’s what you evolution folks do best! You just tell the part of the story that aligns with what is consistent with your views, and ignore or trash the more challenging stuff as irrelevant! Case closed! Nice and tidy, right?

Kevin Wirth for the win!

Note: For those who are interested, here are my articles dealing with Slaughter of the Dissidents:

• How the Fallen Have Fallen: Jerry Bergman Stoops to Kevin Wirth
• Freedom Fighter Kevin Wirth Fights Freedom
• Slaughter of the Intellect
• Kevin Wirth has the Vapors

That last article has an excellent comment by Jason Failes, who researched some of the alleged victims of this wholesale slaughter of “Darwin skeptics’” careers. Jason also has a great quote in there:

Remember, you have a right to your own opinions, not to your own facts.