It’s all connected

Huckabee may not stand a chance of winning a presidential nomination, but he can still make his pernicious influence felt.

Next year the Texas State Board of Education will be writing the science curriculum standards for Texas public schoolchildren, and Huckabee may bring enough conservative fundamentalist voters to the polls on March 4 to swing the balance of power on the board to the supporters of creationism. “If Huckabee marshals the religious right in Texas, particularly in North Texas, it has profound implications for the state board,” says Kathy Miller, executive director of the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), an Austin-based advocacy group whose stated goal is to “counter the religious right” in public policy issues, particularly education.

Not mentioned in the article is a potential counterbalance: a lot of moderates and liberals are strongly motivated in this election cycle to boot the bozos out. At least in Minnesota we saw a tremendous surge in DFL participation in the caucuses — there are a few sensible moderates and liberals left in Texas, right? And 100% of you are going to get out and vote, right? You’d better. Complacency is not allowed.

Willfully obtuse

The principal of a high school in Texas (where else?) is censoring the school’s yearbook.

Senior Megan Estes, editor in chief of The Elk, said the point of the article, featuring two seniors who also are teen mothers, was to show fellow students how the girls are coping with motherhood and how their lives have changed. Estes said the principal told her he felt the article “glamorized” the teen mothers’ mistakes.

Principal Paul Cash said the topic of the article conflicts with the school’s abstinence-based curriculum. He also said he does not think the community would want that topic covered in the yearbook.

I think reality conflicts with the school’s abstinence-based curriculum. I wonder if he’s got an answer for that?

Probably something like “close your eyes real hard.”

Canadian bluenoses

Those Canadians have got a few prigs running things up there, and they’ve apparently trying to pass some laws to slap down those darned naughty artist types. There’s just one line from the sour old prude that’s worth mentioning, the rest is the usual noise.

A well-known evangelical crusader is claiming credit for the federal government’s move to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other offensive content.

Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, said his lobbying efforts included discussions with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, and “numerous” meetings with officials in the Prime Minister’s Office.

“We’re thankful that someone’s finally listening,” he said yesterday. “It’s fitting with conservative values, and I think that’s why Canadians voted for a Conservative government.”

I’d like to make a distinction here.

“I will not watch movies with graphic sex scenes” is a good moral value; it’s defining a standard of behavior for yourself. If McVety, Day, and Nicholson wish to abstain from watching movies with sex, then that’s fine. Personally, I am unperturbed if someone else wants to watch porn, as long as they don’t force me to watch it too, and I think that’s a reasonable value as well.

Conservative values don’t seem to have anything to do with personal standards, at least as they are expressed by politicians and the media. “You will not watch movies with graphic sex scenes” is not what I would consider a moral good. It’s the imposition of values on someone else, not yourself. There really are only two possibilities here: 1) McVety, Day, and Nicholson already do not watch movies with graphic sex scenes, in which case this law causes them no hardship and they can’t be said to be acting for their own good; or 2) McVety, Day, or Nicholson do watch movies with graphic sex scenes, in which case they are hypocrites imposing a standard on others to which they do not adhere themselves.

We’ve been living with “conservative values” here in the US for a long time now, and they rarely seem to have anything to do with a social good, or with people actually setting exemplary moral standards for themselves. It’s always about narrowing experiences, constraining others to a single permissible range of behaviors, and punishing others outside your domain of accepted social norms.

You know, it is possible to be a liberal, progressive sort of person who doesn’t do any of the “bad” things that conservatives detest — who doesn’t drink to excess, use addictive drugs, or gamble, who is faithful to a single spouse and doesn’t spend time on pornography or prostitution. That people don’t do those things is not the distinguishing characteristic of conservative vs. liberal at all. The real difference is that conservatives take sanctimonious pleasure in requiring everyone else to be just like their ideal, and seem to be less interested in measuring up to their own standards themselves than in demanding that others do so; liberals are people who put first priority on abiding by their own standards, and a second priority on allowing others to live their lives as they see fit.

Kowtowing to the worst

John Hagee is one of the most contemptible people to have an unwarrantedly prominent voice in our country. He’s an obese, smug televangelist whose claim to fame is a terrifying dedication to the apocalypse, war and death, and prophecy and damnation. He is a perfect example of how arrogant ignorance can slide directly into evil. The man is a walking talking nightmare, and even more frightening, some people take this raving nutcase seriously.

The latest to bend over and praise this demented fuckwit is none other than John McCain.

It’s unbelievable. The Republican party is still in thrall to these vile goblins of the religious right.

I am underwhelmed

Perhaps I’m not as disappointed as Greg, but I am unimpressed with the ‘presidential’ debate at the AAAS. What we had was two assistants to the Clinton and Obama campaigns (the Republicans were complete no-shows) pop in to run through some canned promises. There was no debate. There was no commitment from the candidates themselves.

I think that the ScienceDebate2008 idea is a great one, and the failing is really on the part of the candidates and the parties themselves. Obama will happily leap to appease the faith-heads of an organization like Call to Renewal; Clinton thinks the Decorah First Methodist Church is an appropriate campaign venue; the Republicans traditionally kowtow to training grounds for anti-science morons like Bob Jones University; but none of them could invest a day speaking to scientists at one of the biggest science conferences in the country, sponsored by a prestigious organization like AAAS? Their priorities are clearly screwed up.

A presidential science debate is a grand idea. What we need to do now, though, is not praise them for a pathetic, back-handed, minimal effort, but rake them all over the coals for their inadequacies.

Institutionalized misogyny

Saudi police arrested and strip-searched an American businesswoman for the crime of visiting a Starbucks with a male colleague.

“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?’ I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” she told the Times.

It could be worse. In Iraq, women who violate “Islamic teachings” are tortured and murdered. The “Islamic teachings” that are so important that violators must be tortured and beheaded involve wearing a headscarf.

You can imagine the reaction, then, when the Archbishop of Canterbury suggests that England ought to legally recognize Sharia law. It’s foolishness with well-meaning intent — let’s help the waves of Islamic immigrants acclimate — but it’s also a perfect example of why even moderate religions are dangerous. What he proposes is outrageous appeasement, an accommodation to a primitive religious tradition, when what ought to be said is that the uniform application of secular law is what a civilized society demands, not a patchwork of piecemeal laws which apply differently to different people, and especially not the corrupting insanity of irrational, hateful, vile nonsense like Islam.

Perhaps the Archbishop was concerned that if he didn’t support the Islamic version of irrational insanity, people might notice that the Anglican church is also a bastion of irrational insanity. Let’s hope that instead this will help open people’s eyes and get them to wonder, “why the hell do we even pay attention to old fools whose only claim to authority is their position in an antiquated ecclesiastical hierarchy?” Go away, archbishops and imams — you harm our culture.

As Morris goes, so goes the nation

Turn off your TVs. Don’t bother watching the election coverage. I know you’ve all been wondering how little rural Morris, Minnesota, population 5000, would vote in the super Tuesday voting.

Turnout was heavy, with between 400 and 500 people showing up for the caucus, and the results were … (drumroll, please) … about 2:1 in favor of Barack Obama. A landslide victory!

The full, final, official tally for Morris:

Biden 1 0%
Clinton 139 26%
Dodd 0 0%
Edwards 8 1%
Kucinich 2 0%
Lynch 1 0%
Obama 387 72%
Richardson 0 0%
Uncommitted 2 0%

We had a turnout of 540 people, over 10% of the residents of the town. For a caucus. The Democratic base is motivated and ready to get out and change things. Now all we have to do is get the Democratic leadership to go along.

What would you ask Huckabee and Romney?

I would be the first to admit that the readership of Pharyngula is not a representative slice of America. We’ve self-selected for cynics and skeptics and atheists and science-minded people, and that’s all right … that’s the way I like it.

The viewership of something like ABC News, on the other hand, is something different. There you are getting a wider segment of the citizenry, including a lot of people who would faint and have heart palpitations if they were exposed to what Pharynguloids consider routine. You’ve got to appreciate it when John Allen Paulos uses his ABCNews soapbox to criticize the religiosity of our politicians — apparently he’s gotten a few savage emails over it already.

The comments on the article are a good mix, too — some are looney-tunes outraged Christians, but there are a number of relieved atheist/agnostic/non-dogmatic types who are pleased to see someone speak out against the poisoning of politics with faith. Maybe it would be a good idea for more godless people to head over their and express support for a good and frank columnist…hint, hint.