Freedom of secularism

The Catholic bishops have been gearing up for this fight for months.

Hours after President Obama phoned to share his decision with Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, who is president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the bishops’ headquarters in Washington posted on its Web site a video of Archbishop Dolan, which had been recorded the day before.

“Never before,” Archbishop Dolan said, setting the tone, “has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.”

Ah yes Archbishop Timothy Dolan. We’ve encountered him before. [Read more…]

Grovel for the sake of it

Brilliant. The Obama admin knows the bishops and the Republicans won’t be mollified but the admin is submitting anyway. Worst of both worlds! Lose-lose! Give way on the principle but gain no actual votes or support. Good thinking!

The Obama administration, seeking to rein in a runaway political furor over birth control and religious liberty, is set to announce a possible compromise on Friday that is meant to calm ire from the right about a new administration rule that would require health insurance plans — including those offered by Roman Catholic hospitals, universities and charities — to offer free birth control to female employees.

Administration officials called the expected announcement an “accommodation” that they said sought to demonstrate respect for religious beliefs. [Read more…]

The sleep of reason

One of the things “faith” is good at doing – giving people a feeling of righteousness about doing something poisonous and horrible. Like the woman whose daughter

who suffers from bipolar disorder and limited cognitive abilities, went missing last Monday.  For more than 48 hours, we had no idea where she was.  Without all the gruesome details, after she was found, it came to light that she’d been brutally and repeatedly sexually assaulted.

A nurse gave the mother Plan B and told her she had 24 hours to use it.

But no. The woman decided not to give it to her daughter. [Read more…]

Your personal freedom? You must be joking

A candidate for Egypt’s presidency by the name of Hazim Abu Ismail, “with affiliations to both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis,” says how things are.

Host: You have already begun to try to impose a particular dress code for us.

Abu Ismail:  I’ve begun to? It’s the Lord of the Worlds [Allah] who said so. I have nothing to do with it!

Host: Allah left it for me to decide as a personal freedom.

Abu Ismail: Who said that?  Where’d you get that from. See, that’s the whole point: If you claim that Allah considers it your personal freedom, show me your reference? Nobody has ever said that – except for people have no understanding of Sharia.

Admirably blunt. Makes it very clear what is wrong with theocracy. It’s not the clerics or “scholars” who make these rules, it’s “the Lord of the Worlds” – who is not currently available, so the rules can’t be amended – nor, of course, can they be ignored. They can only be obeyed.

Host: So when He says “today I have perfected your religion for you” [Koran 5:3], He is only talking about the “creed.”

Abu Ismail:  Yes; for example, when you say “no coercion to join the Military Academy,” it means that you are free to join or not—but if you do join, then you are obliged to wear their uniform, to attend their classes, to attend the training with them, and to obey their leader.

Host: There is a problem here—shall I say to the unveiled woman who wants to avoid hijab that she should change her creed?

Abu Ismail: Exactly, bravo.  If she is a Muslim. You see, this is the difficulty; this is Islam.  Does she want to be a Muslim and not obey Allah’s rules? Let them say so; that’s all I ask; let them be honorable and just speak up.

What does he mean “Does she want to be a Muslim and not obey Allah’s rules?” What does wanting have to do with it? Most Muslims are simply born as such, and they are never given the opportunity to say they don’t want to be a Muslim and are therefore going to stop being one. It’s an incredibly obnoxious, taunting question. It’s like kidnapping someone and then asking, “Does she want to be kidnapped and not obey the kidnapper’s orders?”

What a joke: in one breath saying that order are orders, and they come from the Lord of the Worlds so they are absolute and permanent, and that people “want” to belong to this authoritarian system.

This god certainly hates women

Another one gets away. Deborah Feldman was raised in the reactionary Hasidic Satmar community based in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. She escaped.

In her memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” out Feb. 14, she chronicles her oppressive upbringing and arranged marriage.

At 23, emboldened by classes at Sarah Lawrence College, she left her husband and the community for good — taking her 3-year-old son with her.

So often the way – college classes inspire and/or embolden people to escape. Fundamentalists are right, in their terms, not to want their children to get tertiary education.

She was married at 17, to a man she had met once. Their sex life was creepy beyond belief.

After the first time, you have to call a rabbi and he asks the man questions — did this happen? And he declares you either unclean, or not yet consummated. Once you’re consummated, you’re unclean, because you bled. So after the first time, your honeymoon is a no-sex period.

For two weeks every month, he can’t touch you. He can’t hand you a glass, even if your fingers don’t touch. He has to put it down on the table and then you pick it up. Secondary contact can’t happen. If you’re sitting on a sofa, you have a divider between you. It makes you feel so gross. You feel like this animal in the room. If there’s a question about your period, you take the underwear and put it in a zip-lock bag, and give it to your husband. He takes it to the synagogue and pushes it into this special window and the rabbi looks at it and pronounces it kosher or nonkosher. It’s so disgusting.

Maybe a little.

She says things are getting worse.

Over the past 10 or 20 years [the Hasidic community] has gone from being extreme to being ultra-extreme. They’ve passed more laws from out of nowhere, limiting women — there’s a rule that women can’t be on the street after a certain hour. That was new when I was growing up. We hear all these stories about Muslim extremists; how is this any better? This is just another example of extreme fundamentalism.

And notice the common element: it’s all about controlling women. It’s all about making the restraints tighter…and tighter…and tighter. God is always A Man; men are always the people, and women are always the others; the people always have to keep the others down; down down down. The people always have to strip the others of all rights, all capabilities, all modes of escape and autonomy. This kind of religion seems to be about almost nothing but puffing up men and stamping down women. It’s religion as constructed by stags in rut.

 

 

Disagreement is life

Libby Anne did a great post on disagreement the other day – on the value of it, and especially the value of being allowed it. She hasn’t always had that, you see.

Growing up on the line between fundamentalism and evangelicalism, in a family influenced by the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements, disagreement was not allowed. Or to be more specific, disagreement simply did not happen. I have to be completely honest, the first time I learned that mainstream couples are okay with not agreeing with each other on everything regarding religion or politics I was shocked. Coming from my background, that made no sense.  [Read more…]

Obama goes belly-up to angry bishops

The New York Times puts it a little differently. More politely. Too politely.

Facing vocal opposition from religious leaders and an escalating political fight, the White House sought on Tuesday to ease mounting objections to a new administration rule that would require health insurance plans — including those offered by Catholic universities and charities — to offer birth control to women free of charge.

That’s much too polite. What “religious leaders”? What are “religious leaders” anyway? And since when do they get to dictate to the elected government? Since when do unelected self-appointed so-called “religious leaders” get to tell secular representatives what to do? Since when did we give “religious leaders” a veto? [Read more…]

Why the Supremes are unlikely to overturn the Prop 8 ruling

Guest post by Rieux.

There is a very real chance that this decision has cemented marriage equality in California permanently. Yes, it’s possible that five flaming assholes on the Supreme Court will jump in and take it all away—but to my eyes that outcome doesn’t look nearly as likely as previous commenters think it is.

To explain, in inordinately long-winded fashion:

Court decisions striking down homophobic marriage laws always make for terrific reading. Goodridge in Massachusetts, Varnum in Iowa, the Marriage Cases in California state court, and the federal district-court decision in this case, Perry, are all inspiring examples of jurisprudence—I find it hard to avoid tearing up while reading them. This is what law, legal rhetoric, and legal institutions are supposed to do for human beings; decisions like those make me feel that my profession is an honorable and valuable one. [Read more…]

Oh no, the bishops are livid, we must give in!

What was that about US Catholic bishops insisting on imposing Catholic dogma on the entire US population by telling presidents and legislators to obey their rules? Well it worked.

White House advisors, including one of President Obama’s top faith consultants, are signaling a potential compromise on a controversial new mandate that requires some religious institutions to cover contraception costs for employees.

David Axelrod, a senior campaign adviser for the Obama reelection campaign, said Tuesday that Obama may be open to a compromise that would expand a religious exemption in the new Health & Human Services mandate to satisfy religious groups. [Read more…]