Bay of Fundie

A fundie group in South Korea is going to put up three giant Christmas trees on the border with North Korea. This is part of the stupid back-and-forth provoking that these two immature siblings have been doing since the cease fire 58 years ago. They’re like little kids in the back seat on a long car trip. “Mommy! Kim is on my side!” “No I’m not. You’re poking me!”

Little kids with nukes, that is.

Maybe a better analogy is the crazy old man on the outskirts of town who has a vicious dog in his backyard. The neighbor boy thinks it’s great fun to shove a stick through the chain-link fence and repeatedly poke the dog. Not only is that a bad idea, but an even worse idea would be for someone else to go up to the kid and encourage him to keep at it. Jab that dog even more!

Well, an American fundie group thinks poking mad dogs is a splendid idea! Liberty Counsel tells us:

North Korea has claimed that South Korea’s plan to place three Christmas light displays in the shape of large trees is “a mean attempt for psychological warfare.” Their official site states, “The enemy warmongers… should be aware that they should be held responsible entirely for any unexpected consequences that may be caused by their scheme,” according to the Associated French Press.

Mad dogs are more fun to poke when they’re really mad!

This highlights the extreme hostility towards Christianity and Christmas that is still a daily part of the lives of those living in North Korea. Their government is not just content to ban the celebration of Christmas inside their nation, but is willing to declare Christmas lights seen from their borders to be similar to an act of war.

Wow. A literal War on Christmas™! It’s almost like Liberty Counsel is getting ready to make some sort of unsupportable logical jump.

Here in America, a Texas school banned Santa; a California school went another step and also banned poinsettias and Christmas trees, alleging that each was too religious. In addition, Governor Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island renamed a Christmas tree a holiday tree against the wishes of the tree’s donor and the outcry across his state. It appears Gov. Chafee is well-suited for survival at the North Korea border. His policies are better for kow-towing to the Commies than celebrating Christmas.

And another Gold Medal in the Long Jump for Liberty Counsel!

They actually open their article with this “quiz”:

You might be a communist if…

• You ban poinsettias from a government school;
• You rename a Christmas tree a “holiday” tree in a state building…or
• You threaten your neighbors with unexpected consequences if they want to put up Christmas lights.

They found a couple of instances of people being overly-cautious about merging church and state, and they think we’re on the path to living in North Korea.

Here’s a quiz for you, Liberty Counsel:

You might be a fundie if you equate the defense of the First Amendment with communism.

Last night, while you were dreaming of swimming in oceans of dark chocolate or of fluffy bunnies romping through fields of daisies, I was writing this blog article on parental consent laws. No, I don’t mean actually writing it. I was dreaming of writing it. Needless to say, I woke up exhausted. Just once, I’d like to have a normal night’s sleep.

Anyway, since I did all the hard work last night, I might as well transcribe what my brain already went through the effort of creating.

The controversy is that teenage girls are getting birth control pills, and the fundies are having a conniption. I know what you’re thinking. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation. The fundies are always having a conniption. They have so many conniptions they look like an epileptic at a strobe light festival.

In this case, though, we know the birth control pills are one of the causes of the conniption, because the fundies make sure to tell us about it. Frequently. Here’s just one example. Amusingly, the fundies aren’t just opposed to giving teenagers birth control pills, which affect the body’s hormone levels and could theoretically have adverse health effects. The fundies are also opposed to giving teenagers any form of birth control, such as condoms!

(As a funny aside, one of the reasons fundies give for their opposition to condoms, diaphragms, and other barrier methods of contraception is those methods’ allegedly-high failure rate. Then the fundies turn around and advocate teaching the rhythm method!)

OK, so let’s take a look at these laws that govern the ability of minors to obtain contraception. A website calling itself contracept.org tells us:

Twenty-one states explicitly allow all minors to consent to contraceptive services without parental permission.

The other states have some sort of restrictions, and in some of those states “the physician may, but is not required to, inform the parents.”

My knee-jerk reaction should be to hold the opposite opinion of the fundies. However, I have heard non-fundie parents complain about the laws that allow their kids to secretly obtain birth control pills without the parents needing to be informed. I have not heard non-fundies complain about condoms and other forms of birth control. I wouldn’t be surprised if that makes them uneasy too, but it is primarily birth control pills that get their concern, because it is a medical treatment. They feel that should fall entirely under their control as parents, not the control of the state.

That is my interest in the subject. We expect the fundies to have an irrational opinion, because it’s driven by ignorance and superstition. But what about the opinion of the people who have a rational argument?

First of all, the most compelling argument in favor of allowing teens to get contraception without notifying the parents is that it is in the teens’ best interest. If the teen knows that the parents will be informed, some will prefer to run the risk of pregnancy or STDs.

But what I want to explore here is the argument that apparently bothered my subconscious so much last night that it had to work through all the pros and cons when it should have been sleeping. That argument is whether the state has a compelling need to interfere with the parents’ rights to choose how to raise their child.

I discovered a while ago that I’m that extremely rare thing known as a liberal libertarian. Surprised the snot out of me, but that’s just because I disagree with most of what the so-called “Libertarians” of today are advocating. Those people are actually anarchists, because they want no laws or regulations whatsoever on how they make or spend their money, no matter how much harm it causes to other people. They are sociopaths of the highest order. (At least the extremists in the party are, but that’s all you hear from these days. I know they all weren’t that way in the past.)

I have always been a civil libertarian. I value our civil liberties extremely highly, and I get angry at those who take them away. However, I recognize that rights will always come into conflict in a free society, and I balance the needs of the individual against the needs of society as a whole. That’s why I support the social safety net of jobless benefits, universal health care (In some form. It doesn’t have to be a big-government Canadian-style system. I just want a system that covers everyone at a fair price and works well. The current system does none of those things.), etc. It is in the best interest of society to not throw people under the bus when they have a bit of bad luck. You don’t want welfare queens, of course, but almost none of those ever existed. (That was one of Reagan’s many deluded fantasies.)

So the question is, where in the Constitution did we turn over our rights as parents to the state? By what right or authority does the government think it has to intervene in raising our children?

My response is that that is not the appropriate question.

The real question is what gives you, the parents, the right to violate your child’s privacy?

(Actually, this is all academic to me, since I’m not a parent. Ha! The government isn’t taking my rights away!)

Rights first and foremost belong to the individual. Only when there is a compelling need can some of those rights be taken over by another entity. Therefore, the default condition is that the child has full and total rights as an individual, and has only lost those rights to the parent (or the state) as are necessary for the situation.

Before you go all bonkers on me, I am not advocating that a one-day-old infant has full rights to vote, buy booze, and drive a car. What I am saying is that we as a society long ago agreed that upon birth, a person has some rights that cannot be taken away, and we gradually allow them to acquire more rights as they mature.

You cannot kill an infant (Actually, you can. They’re quite defenseless, and they have a squishy spot on the top of their head. What I mean is you can’t legally kill an infant.). Therefore, we all agree that the infant has the right to life, and probably a few other rights. When they turn 13, they can join Facebook. When they turn 16, we let them drive. At 18, they can vote. At 21, they can buy alcohol. At 35, they can become president.

No so many years ago, we executed a 14-year-old in this country (and after a forced confession, no less!). Although we no longer execute minors, we still lock them up in adult prisons when we don’t like what they’ve done. We’ve apparently all agreed that a teenager is capable of enough rational thought to be held responsible for criminal activity, yet we don’t think they have enough rational thought to take responsibility for sexual activity?

Wrong. We have already agreed that they have they necessary capacity at that age. We have already given them those rights. That’s why the parents should not be told when their little darling is given a prescription for The Pill.

And they seem pretty proud of it, too. Be sure to tag him, or you’ll get fined.

The above image came to me via email. It’s from Truth Saves, but I was unable to find it on that site. The site has a lot of other good stuff, though.

As you’ve noticed, I’m still having a lot of trouble finding time to post new articles. Since I very much would like the site to continue, I’ve been pondering how to do so given the changes in my life’s priorities.

I have an idea on how to proceed. Long-time readers (if they all haven’t wandered off due to no new posts) might not be completely happy with the changes, but the site probably can’t continue in its current form. I hope to have some news about that shortly.

I was cruising the internet looking for good photography, as I’ve been doing more often lately, and I came across this amusing advertisement from 1989:

Jesse Helms was one of the most destructive senators we’ve ever endured. One of his little side projects was trying to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, because the angry voices in his head told him that some art is obscene.

The ad above was made by a feminist group called the Guerrilla Girls. Wikipedia tells us this:

Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group of feminists devoted to fighting against sexism within the visual fine art world internationally.

The ad apparently was trying to embarrass the big art museums into displaying more than just white guys’ art, so it’s not really an open letter to Jesse Helms. What does it say about fundie Republicans when they’re being used as examples of shame?

I think the reason the teabaggers and other extremists hate intellectuals and other educated people is they know we’re laughing at them, but they can’t quite figure out the joke.

I went looking for a gun graphic to illustrate a quick point I wanted to make. I couldn’t find that image, but I found this (on a gun nut’s page) instead:

Since I know a thing or two about school shootings, that image was begging for me to shoot it full of holes.

First of all, like all subjects, there seems to be a diversity of opinion on guns, and that’s fine. Some of those opinions are held by rational people, and that’s even better.

The problem is, there are some people out there with extreme opinions, who think and behave irrationally. Those are the people who bother me. They poison the well. They’re so extreme that they make it impossible for rational people in a rational society to have a rational national discussion on the topic.

There are several topics that seem to attract a disproportionately-massive share of the lunatic fringe. Abortion is one. Guns are another. I don’t know which has the craziest crazies, but I do know which are the most dangerous. Never combine irrational extremist emotion with firearms.

(BTW, just so you know where I’m coming from, I don’t like guns, but I have no desire to repeal the Second Amendment. I do question the sanity and/or logical capabilities of the most rabid of the gun supporters.)

Let’s start with the logic of the argument expressed in the above image.

Problem #1: Correlation ≠ causation. For example, CBS began broadcasting color television signals in January of 1950. Joseph McCarthy began his witch hunts less a month later. Therefore, color television caused McCarthyism!

Problem #2: Children did not take machine guns to school. Therefore, the “fact” that they could, in theory, purchase the gun had no bearing on the safety of their school.

Problem #3: It’s just plain incorrect. There were numerous school shootings prior to 1934! Where’s your machine gun now, Charlton?

For example, the earliest known school shooting was the Enoch Brown school massacre (a.k.a. Pontiac’s Rebellion school massacre) on July 26, 1764.

Wikipedia mentions a few shootings in the 1800s. By the early 1900s, school shootings were all the rage. Wikipedia lists eleven shootings between 1900 and 1934. That’s an average of one shooting every three-and-a-half years. That’s not very rare, is it? Sounds a lot like our modern era, doesn’t it?

So tell me, gun nuts: How is allowing students and teachers to pack heat going to keep our schools safe?

BTW, I just wanted to point out one of the especially unpleasant school shootings of the early 20th century. Read the Wikipedia entry for the San Francisco shooting:

February 12, 1909 San Francisco, California. 10-year-old Dorothy Malakanoff was shot and killed by 49-year-old Demetri Tereaschinko as she arrived at her school in San Francisco. Tereaschinko then shot himself in a failed suicide attempt.

OK. Murder-suicide. We’ve seen that pattern play out numerous times. It’s this last part that’s especially disturbing:

Tereaschinko was reportedly upset that Malakanoff refused to elope with him.

She was ten years old!!! WTF!!! I know standards were different then. I know teenagers often got married, sometimes to much older men. But she was ten freakin’ years old!!!

Who the hell did that guy think he was? Mohammed?

Ed Brayton and Cabin Campbell have a new comic series, Life on Planet Wingnuttia. Here’s the first one.

Last weekend, I went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. It isn’t the sort of event where I expected to encounter the forces of superstition, fear, and misinformation. Oh what a fool I am.

Overall, actually, I was rather impressed. Although ostensibly a harvest festival, the event overall contained all of the images of the season, which includes that most evil of holidays, Halloween. (BTW, harvest festivals are also pagan, so really, the entire event is non-Christian.)

Despite the festival’s pagan undertones, several of the food booths were run by churches. I also noticed that some of the churches in town were decorated with witches, black cats, and other Halloween imagery. It struck me that if this were held in the Deep South, not only would the churches not have evil, satanic, pagan decorations, but all their members would be out picketing.

(That’s right. I live in one of the least fundie regions in the nation, and I run an anti-fundie blog. That’s because if I lived anywhere else in the country, my brain would explode. That’s what happens when you put something filled with matter into a vacuum.)

But, as I alluded to at top, the event wasn’t devoid of superstition.

Park Place

My first encounter occurred as I was driving into town. This event attracts 200,000 people over two days, so I got there early to avoid traffic. There isn’t much on-street parking, so all of the locals seize the opportunity to let you park in their lot—for a fee, of course.

I passed numerous signs advertising parking. “Park here! $5!” (I’m assuming they don’t mean 5-factorial. “What do you mean $120? Your sign said $5!” “Exactly!”)

“Park here! $10!”

“All-Day Parking! $15!”

I was able to get fairly close. Then I came to an intersection and had a dilemma. I saw two parking signs.

The one on the left said “Park at our church! Only two blocks from the festival! $5!”

The one on the right said “Park at our elementary school! Only four blocks from the festival! $10”

Hmmmmm… decisions… decisions…. I can spend $5 and only have to walk two blocks, but my money goes to brainwash the gullible with misinformation. Or I can spend twice that, have to walk twice as far, but my money helps to buy supplies for a destitute school.

Without even pausing long enough to blink, I turned right and parked at the elementary school.

No Comfort

As I was walking toward the festival, I saw a couple of guys standing on a street corner. They appeared to be handing something out.

Some people have “gaydar”. I have “fundar”. I know that isn’t a good pun, but you try to come up with a funny name for it. It’s actually not a special skill. Anytime you see somebody handing something out on a street corner, it’s virtually guaranteed to be a fundie.

I immediately realized that this could be something I could make fun of on my blog! (I’m always working for you folks, even when I’m doing other stuff!) Sure enough, it was!

“Would you like to have a $100 bill?” one of the fundies asked, holding up an oversized $100 bill.

Woohoo! Jackpot! A giant $100 bill!

That could only mean this is one of Ray Comfort’s fundiebots! I’ve been reading Ray’s emails for quite a while. He always has oversized crap like this to pass out. On the back, of course, is a Bible tract.

I was excited, because I knew these guys were out there. They stake out high-traffic areas, trying to snare the unwary, but I had never seen any in the wild. I was beginning to think they were extinct in Northern California (sort of like the grizzly bear, and just as dangerous).

“Is that Ray Comfort’s tract?”, I asked.

“Yes sir!”, the fundie said.

“Sure, I’ll take it!” I folded up my prize and stuffed it into my pocket, so no one would be able to steal it from me.

If you folks are lucky, and I have time (HA!), I’ll dissect the thing in a future article.

BTW, this thought occurred to me: Couldn’t I take Ray Comfort’s $100 bill and use it to pay for parking at that church up the street? Shouldn’t it be legal tender for them? “Keep the change!”, I’d tell them. I’m so generous at times!

The Twelve Commandments

As I continued my long, four-block slog to the festival, I passed a church (There were quite a few churches along that short stretch of road. What is Half Moon Bay’s problem?).

They had posted the Ten Commandments out front:

Umm… I mean Twelve Commandments.

A-OK Psychic Readings

Wandering around the festival, I happened upon this sign in the window of an alleged psychic:

Obviously, her powers do not extend to spelling.