Roy Ashburn outs himself

Roy Ashburn, California legislator, opponent of gay equality, unwilling to even recognize gay rights activists, has admitted at the age of 55 that he is gay.

That is so sad. To live a half-century in denial, to be so steeped in self-loathing that you build a career on stamping down people just like yourself, and to only now wake up and confront the truth…assuming he lives into his 70s, that’s an admission that two thirds to three quarters of your life was spent living a lie.

This one life is all you’ve got, Roy. Live it by being true to yourself.

A hero in the Philippines

The Philippines has a problem with a rising number of AIDS cases every year, and members of the government have been promoting a sensible response: Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral has sponsored a program that distributes free condoms, for instance. You can guess who opposes prophylactics, though.

“The condom business is a multimillion dollar industry that heavily targets the adolescent market at the expense of morality and family life,” said Bishop Nereo Odchimar, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. He called fidelity and premarital chastity “the only effective way to curb the spread of AIDS.”

The Catholics have informed Cabral that she has “one foot in hell.” How sweet. They are also actively campaigning against any politician who promotes birth control.

I’m so sorry that the Philippines is so deeply afflicted with forces for insanity and irrationality, but at least they’ve got brave people like Esperanza Cabral standing up for what is right.

Hey, Floridans, you aren’t really going to vote for this jerk, are you?

Here’s a personal account of how Charlie Crist deals with atheists:

Last night as I was leaving a pizzeria in Downtown St. Pete, I ran into a small group of people around Florida Governor Charlie Crist who was campaigning for a US Senate run. So, I walked over waited a moment to gain his attention and shook his hand. As we were shaking hands I asked him if he really believes that the letters he sent to Jerusalem prevent hurricanes from hitting Florida.

His smile immediately dropped and he replied “Who’s more powerful than God.” That wasn’t really an answer so asked him again to which I got a similar reply. While this was happening one of his people put a “Charlie Crist for US Senate 2010” sticker on me. Then when I told Charlie that I did not believe in God he turned beat red and ripped the sticker off of my chest. He did a 180 to start shaking other peoples hands, and turned to scream over his shoulder that he feels sorry for me.

Do you think there are any ‘militant’ atheists out there in the leadership of our movement who would react in the same way if a Baptist or a Catholic or a Muslim came up to shake their hands? Not one.

Please, Sarah Palin, go away

She’s as funny as a clown’s pratfall, but she’s also as fascinating as a head wound. I hope she’ll vanish from the public discourse, but here I am, at the same time gawking over her latest inanities.

Remember how she was caught looking at really trivial notes written on her hand? She’s got a new excuse. God does it, too, and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for Sarah. It’s in the Bible, in Isaiah 49:

15Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.  16Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.  17Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee.

This is one of those stories where God tells the poor oppressed Israelites that he really does love them, and will take care of them, and will deal with their malefactors appropriately. And in Old Testament terms, “appropriately” means in as grisly a fashion as possible.

25But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children. 26And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.

That Jehovah. Keeps track of his loved ones by scribbling their names on his apparently very large hands, and punishes their enemies by making them eat their own flesh and drink their own blood.

And if that isn’t enough Palin stupidity for you, look at this: she hates that socialist health care, but she admits that she would regularly hustle across the border to take advantage of Canadian health care. I think it’s really cool that she so willingly identifies herself as a parasite, a thief, a hypocrite, and a good Christian.

Now…can we have Canadian-style health care put in place here in America? It’s good enough for Sarah Palin, so it must be good enough for God, so it must be the right thing to do.

That incompatibility problem

On Saturday in Melbourne, I’m going to be giving a talk on the incompatibility of science and religion. Now what happens? Another eruption of those accommodation arguments, and I’ve got this big pile of stuff I could say right now, but I’m going to hold it in, so it’s at least a little bit fresh for the end of this week. Until then, read Larry Moran, who has it covered.

I am particularly appalled that Larry’s comments contain that hoary old chestnut, “science can’t explain love,” with the bizarre claim that “No scientist that is also a decent human being subjects all her/his beliefs to scientific scrutiny.” I think otherwise. There is a naive notion implicit in that statement that scientific scrutiny is somehow different from critical, rational examination. I’d argue the other way: no decent human being should live an unexamined life.

Episode XXVII: Rumors of my birthday are premature

I could have continued the last edition of the unstoppable thread with the hot topic of the moment — race — but thought maybe promoting another controversial subject would fill up the thread far too quickly. So the other subject people were talking about is my birthday.

Gee, people, I’m not that old. IT ISN’T MY BIRTHDAY TODAY. Do I look 53 or something?

My birthday is tomorrow. I’m celebrating it by folding myself up into a narrow little airplane seat and sitting there for 19 hours. And then spending a week and a half in Australia with spasms.

This is how we spend all our birthdays after the 50th, in case you young whippersnappers had no idea.

Now the climate scientists get to suffer with the framing wars

I got so sick of dreary beancounting communications ‘experts’ telling me that we need to avoid fighting creationists … because the magical drone of framing was going to make everyone happy and persuade the jebus-loving ignoramuses that evolution was good. There are signs that these parasites are moving on now — to climate science.

Oh, great. Here’s a potentially greater material problem for us than even the sad state of science education, and now the good-haired knob-polishers are moving in to dispense their advice of indolence and tone. Dot Earth has an exchange between Matt Nisbet and Randy Olson on tactics. Nisbet does his usual blame-the-scientists routine, arguing that we out to lie back, shut up, and let the Expert Communicators smooth over public sentiment. Randy Olson is basically fed up with the faceless, passionless passivity that these guys insist is the scientist’s only allowed role.

So I’m tired of the lack of leadership and the overly academic analysis of what are the actions of basically thugs. You guys keep working on the polling data — that’s good and is equally important. But in the meanwhile, I am dragging people like Marc Morano out into the light of day for the community to get a good look at who he is, what motivates him and exactly how his technique manages to be so increasingly successful.

…

I wish it were as simple as just analyzing the situation endlessly and eventually coming up with some cool and subtle strategy where nobody ever had to get dirty. But I’m afraid there’s going to be a lot more Climategates in the near future.

I wish I could say I’m pleased to see these useless weasels have been drawn away from the science education problem, but it seems they’ve just decided to plague another science issue that needs strong activism, rather than feel-good puffery.

Polling for validation of bigotry

There was this young child at a Catholic pre-school who was kicked out because his or her parents were lesbians. Now people are protesting, because that’s not what Jesus would do (I won’t quibble over their justifications — Jesus probably would have told the mob to stone the perverted parents to death — it’s OK that they’re doing the right thing for the wrong reasons). And the local newspaper runs a poll.

Is it valid to protest a Boulder Roman Catholic school’s decision to bar the child of a lesbian couple from attending?

Yes
 43.98 %
No
 40.32 %
I’m not sure
 1.443 %
I don’t care if they protest or not
 14.24 %

For additional amusement, the good Reverend at the Catholic church at the center of this issue has a novel excuse for his actions.

“If a child of gay parents comes to our school, and we teach that gay marriage is against the will of God, then the child will think that we are saying their parents are bad,” Breslin said on his blog. “We don’t want to put any child in that tough position.”

Isn’t that sweet? It’s for the good of the child that they evict them, so they don’t hear the cruel condemnations the church will give their parents.

Dreher is really a piece of work

Jerry Coyne has unearthed a few maggoty tidbits about Rod Dreher, the Templeton director of communications. It seems the Templeton Foundation has been padding his credentials a bit, claiming that he is a 7-time nominee for a Pulitzer Prize. Dreher? A Pulitzer? Has the prize become that worthless now?

Only it turns out the operative word in that phrase is “nominee”. Anyone can be a nominee: heck, somebody could write a letter nominating me for a Pulitzer, which, if the committee has any standards at all, would go nowhere. Much like Dreher’s nominations.

The real revelation, though, is much more amusing. Dreher had one of those Templeton Fellowships, and toddled off to England to learn about the intersection of faith and science. Here’s his short summary of the experience:

The truth of the matter is that I turned up in Cambridge knowing a lot about religion, but not much about science. What I saw and heard during those two-week seminars, and what I learned from my Templeton-subsidized research that summer (I designed my own reading program, which compared Taoist and Eastern Christian views of the body and healing) opened my mind to science. It turned out that I didn’t know what I didn’t know until I went on the fellowship.

Rod Dreher is completely ignorant of science. I’d like to know how doing a compare-and-contrast essay between two clueless aboriginal superstitions gave him any exposure to scientific thinking at all. Gosh, I think I’ll go read a book about organometallic chemistry to open my mind to Zoroastrianism.