Moral DNA?

Please, someone, tell the priests to go tend to their rituals and quit pretending to ha have any understanding of reality. A new archbishop has tried to use biology to argue for his archaic moral position, and I just want to slap him.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan yesterday said advocates of gay marriage “are asking for trouble,” arguing that traditional, one-man/one-woman marriage is rooted in people’s moral DNA.

“There’s an in-built code of right and wrong that’s embedded in the human DNA,” Dolan told The Post in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview, a week after becoming the New York Archdiocese’s new leader.

“Hard-wired into us is a dictionary, and the dictionary defines marriage as between one man, one woman for life, please God, leading to the procreation of human life.

Every word an ignorant lie. There is no genetic basis for a moral code except, perhaps, in the broadest sense of intrinsic rewards for social behavior — Catholicism is not biologically heritable. There is nothing in us that hardwires simplistic monogamy — human cultures have had a wide range of different patterns of sexual behavior. And gay people do not have desires in defiance of their biological impulses, but as consequences of them.

Ah, well, I’m sure Timmy Dolan will go far in the Catholic hierarchy — it doesn’t reward intelligence or knowledge, and he’s got neither.

Catholic geezers deny biology in Louisiana

Legislators in Louisiana are considering a bill to prohibit human-animal hybrids. We’ve been all over this subject before — it’s ridiculous and founded on complete incomprehension of what the research is all about. How ridiculous is it? SB 115 bans the “mixing of human and animal cells in a petri dish”!

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Guess who is pushing this ban? The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, a collection of professional ignoramuses, like this guy, Archbishop Alfred Hughes: old, white celibates with clerical collars and heads stuffed full of decaying dogma.

Look, Hughes, let’s face up to reality. You aren’t promoting this ban because you have any knowledge of the science; if you knew anything about the subject, you’d know that culturing cells of different species is common. Those cell lines to which George W Bush limited government-funded research? Many of them are grown on beds of mouse feeder cells. We could grow specific human cell lines on human feeder cells, but you’d freak out over that, too. There are gene mapping procedures that use fused rodent/human cells to produce cell lines with partial chromosomal losses. Monoclonal antibodies are made by combining immune system cells with immortalized cancer cell lines. And then there’s the ultimate miscegenation: bacterial cells made with copies of human genes, to make human gene products, like insulin. You look old enough that if you aren’t diabetic yourself, you probably have friends who are…and they’re shooting up the product of a human-non-human hybrid. Are you going to ban those next?

Let’s not pretend this is a decision based on morality, either. People are not harmed in the production of these hybrid cell lines, the work is biomedical in intent and produces knowledge and treatments that help people. The decrees of the Catholic church seem to have little to do with human values any more; they’re all about enforcing a rigid dogma and regimenting people, not in mutual cooperation to help one another, but instead to perpetuate your authoritarian hierarchy.

You aren’t promoting this silly because it’s good science or good morality: it’s simpler than that. You’re doing this because biology disgusts you. This isn’t unusual at all — many people are squeamish about the oozy, squishy, squirty, gooey, slimy, sloppy, messy wet business of what goes on beneath their skins. That it makes you feel icky is not grounds for demanding that others unburdened by that bias must follow your taboos. Your personal sense of revulsion is not an argument for your position.

Worse, this is a topic all tied up in your, umm, issues with sex. Your priesthood is just plain weird in its denial of a basic and healthy human urge and its obsession with regulating the private behavior of others. You are not normal. You are the wrong people to be taking on the responsibility of dictating anything about human sexuality — you’re just too far out on the fringe of perversity. There are a lot of weird sexual practices out there, but I’m afraid denial and repression and the kind of self-loathing that characterizes the professional celibates of the Catholic church are among the weirdest. That doesn’t mean you have to stop, of course — your kinks are your kinks, and I will defend your right to not do whatever you want in the privacy of your bedroom — but you have to realize that in the face of the riotous diversity of human sexual behavior, no one gets to use their personal preferences to instruct others on what they may do in private and between mutually consenting adults.

And that includes using a little polyethylene glycol on an assortment of cells in a dish to encourage a bit of fusion. As long as no aware, autonomous individuals are slithering out of the dish, you don’t get to argue that it is wicked and hurting people.

You’re being a sour old prude trying to impose your quaint morality on situations in which you are probably among the least qualified people on the planet to judge, and I have no sympathy with your position at all. But I’ll make you a deal. If you grim old white male virgins leave sex and science alone, I won’t suggest that your sexual pathologies could be treated with regular exposure to the soft and slippery bits of living, squirming human women (or, if you prefer, the flesh and fluids of human men)…you know, all that biology you deny. Even if it would be good for you.

Chaplains begone!

I’m impressed. Usually, a blunt statement of religious belief can be remarkably offensive, but in this case a Harvard chaplain used weasel words to magnify the appalling nature of his remarks.

Harvard Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser ’96 has recently come under fire for controversial statements in which he allegedly endorsed death as a punishment for Islamic apostates.

In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser wrote that there was “great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand.”

One could argue with the interpretation that he “endorsed death as a punishment” since he didn’t actually say that outright. Instead, we got implications.

  • He says death for apostasy is an “established and preserved position”. This is probably the least ghastly of his claims, since it is at least true in some places.

  • There is “wisdom” in murdering people who reject your beliefs? Where? So, if I said Abdul-Basser was betraying an important academic tradition of open thought, would I be wise to suggest he deserves execution? I think not, and I add, I definitely would not under any circumstances endorse such an evil proposition.

  • He thinks killing people who leave Islam might make “some uncomfortable.” Uncomfortable? Uncomfortable? If my neighbor suggested that they were thinking of painting their house in green and pink stripes, then I might reply that that made me “uncomfortable”. If he seriously suggested that it might be a good idea to execute registered Democrats who didn’t vote for Obama in the last election, I think I’d be calling the police and the hospital…and freaking out just a little bit.

  • If pushing human rights for all people is hegemonic, who is being oppressively dominant? Do we really need to respect the right of a priestly class to dictate what others are allowed to believe?

I have a suggestion: dismiss Abdul-Basser out of hand. To be fair, fire every single one of the university chaplains, and send them packing. Universities should not be in the business of pandering to student superstitions; it’s not as if there is a dearth of churches and chapels and religious organizations already surrounding and intruding upon the campus — remove the official endorsement of the administration and banish them all from the secular business of running a university.

No shout out for Jes at that speech

Obama is going to rouse the ire of the religious right yet further: he wisely opted not to endorse Jesus while giving a speech on economics by having a Christian symbol on the lectern covered up while he spoke. Good move, I think — let’s not get secular economic decision making all muddled up with Catholicism.

Amidst all of the American flags and presidential seals, there was something missing when President Barack Obama gave an economic speech at Georgetown University this week — Jesus.

The White House asked Georgetown to cover a monogram symbolizing Jesus’ name in Gaston Hall, which Obama used for his speech, according to CNSNews.com.

The gold “IHS” monogram inscribed on a pediment in the hall was covered over by a piece of black-painted plywood, and remained covered over the next day, CNSNews.com reported.

As even us Lutherans learned, once upon a time, IHS is just the transliterated first three letters of Jesus’ name — IHΣOYΣ — which always struck me as weirdly informal. They call their god “Jes”? Can we get really casual and call him “Jezzy baby”, too?

Anyway, of course there is a poll, and of course the irate believers are peeved that our president didn’t stand up behind good ol’ Jes and talk about the bailout. Maybe some other real Americans should also make their voices heard…

Do you support Georgetown’s decision to agree to cover up religious symbols at President Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday?

28%
Yes
72%
No

Thinking outside the traditional box

This is an entirely sensible ad promoting safe sex from Botswana. How do you think it would be received in the US?

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We already know. Remember Jocelyn Elders, fired from her position as Surgeon General because she said of masturbation that “I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught”? One brief sentence on this taboo subject led to her dismissal. Amusingly, the president who fired her was that dismal old prude and paragon of propriety, Bill Clinton. I guess that’s an indication of just how narrow and strait-laced this country is.

Love in Afghanistan

Spring is in the air! Young hearts turn to thoughts of love, and romance flowers everywhere, even in the darkness of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. A young couple there, their union frowned upon by their families, eloped to marry anyway, a gesture I find wonderfully romantic and sweet. I’m a little biased — my own parents were discouraged from marrying by their families, and they too ran off to marry without permission (in liberal Idaho, in their case). I wouldn’t be here without youthful affection and passion!

Alas, no such happy result comes from a region poisoned by fanatical Islam. Mullahs seized the rebellious couple, issued a religious decree, and had them shot on the street in front of a mosque, symbol of their religion of peace.

I think the true symbol of their religion should be a pair of bloody corpses, dreams dead, hopes destroyed, all joy crushed.

Spring will still come and the poppies will blossom, and the air will warm and the sun will shine—but where is the meaning of it all when minds are shackled and love is shunned, when happiness is replaced with regimented dogmatism? A season of rebirth should be accompanied by an expansion of ideas and feelings and human connections, not repression. There can be no springtime for the Taliban, except as a series of dates on a calendar.

Mac Brunson, Baptist tyrant and greedy Pharisee

What can we expect of a theocracy? One thing is for sure: you won’t be able to criticize the church or church leadership. Here’s an example from Florida.

Mac Brunson is the pastor of one of those awful megachurches, an organization that has been growing fast and sucking up lots of money for expansion. A member of his flock who was a bit concerned at the direction the church was taking set up a blog, FBC Jax Watchdog, and anonymously expressed dismay at the way the church was being run.

I saw possible abuses at our church shortly after our new pastor arrived, regarding acceptance of a $307,000 land gift just three weeks after he arrived – even though his own Pastor’s Guidebook cautions pastors against accepting large gifts! I watched as we spent $100,000 to renovate 3600+ square feet of our newly constructed children’s building to provide the pastor and his wife and secretary luxury office suites. I saw the preacher vacate the pulpit unannounced, I heard him say he took several Sunday nights off because he had to finish a book manuscript. I saw us spending money on the A-Group, a church marketing consultant and promotions firms. The head of this firm, Maurilio Amorim, came to be involved in personnel decisions at FBC Jax the first year of Mac’s tenure, at a church and city that he knew nothing about. I saw us develop promotions plans to “raise revenue” at our pastors conference through charging for advertising and selling “promotions packages”.

The pastor also gets a salary of $300,000. The universe is always telling me I went into the wrong line of work.

Simple public criticism — it’s a good thing. As you might guess, though, Pastor Brunson did not appreciate the inquiries into his cash flow (which, as we all know, is the principle purpose of a church), and hired a private investigator to find out who this critic might be. This is where it gets ugly. The blog did not post anything illegal, was not doing anything but documenting problems in the church, but the investigator successfully got a subpoena and compelled Google to release the identity of the blogger. The blogger is now banned from the church (which, to my mind, is a net positive), and his name has been exposed.

What is most troubling is that the investigator was able to get a subpoena and expose the identity of an anonymous blogger on the sole grounds that a disgustingly rich pastor was annoyed by him — not by citing any actionable behavior. You might want to think about this if you’re on google/blogspot and think that your anonymity is safe. It apparently doesn’t take much effort to crack open google and fish your name out of it…perhaps only a local judge with sympathies for some religious goofball who doesn’t like you.

Oh, wait, actually…what’s most troubling is the pastor’s salary. And he claims “he is one of the lowest-paid mega-church pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention”. Gee, so all I have to do is start lying for Jesus and maybe I can make those kinds of wages? I guess a biblical piece of silver has been inflated to be worth about $10,000.

The only good news here is that Pastor Mac Brunson’s high-handed behavior should focus a little more scrutiny on his money-making enterprise. Could we please start taxing the churches?

(via Daily Kos)

So that’s what “Focus on the Family” means

James Dobson always seemed a little too obsessed with spanking and checking out penises to be entirely healthy, and now one of his employees has been outed as a pedophile.

Juan Alberto Ovalle, 42, thought he was corresponding with a girl under the age of 15, but instead it was undercover officers with the Jefferson County district attorney’s office, according to court documents.
Ovalle works for a Spanish-speaking arm of the Colorado Springs Christian group Focus on the Family and narrates Biblical text for CDs, according to Internet websites that sell the products.

“We’re shocked,” said Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman with Focus.

Schneeberger said the group “is beginning its own process of looking into the allegations” and that it “will work with authorities” if asked.

…Ovalle asked the teen specific sexual questions and told her about sex acts he would perform with her, according to an arrest affidavit. According to the affidavit, during one exchange, Ovalle asked: “Would you like to meet?”

What is it with these repressed, abstinence-only organizations that promote unrealistic views of sex? They seem to attract people with warped views of sexual behavior that violate reasonable patterns of respect for a partner.