Right-wing communication skills on display

The Heartland Institute has begun a new ad campaign. I’ll put the billboard below the fold, but first you have to try and guess what direction they’ve taken. Facts to consider: it’s a right-wing think-tank committed to climate change denial. They’re pro-corporate and anti-science, and apparently they don’t know much about logic, either. And a final hint: it’s a place full of sleazy Republicans, and this campaign aims to outsleaze their presidential campaigning.

Before you read the rest, try to imagine what kind of wretched ratfuckery they could be up to.

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Why I am an atheist – Laura Stokes

I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, in Tennessee in the 1980s and 1990s. Although I was only dimly aware of it at the time, this was a period when the virulently fundamentalist wing of that church slowly began to take over from the more moderate members, systematically driving them out of the Southern Baptist convention altogether. What this meant in terms of my religious upbringing is that I was exposed to more liberal and rational people – like my parents and some of their friends – and I was exposed to more conservative, dogmatic people – like a Sunday School teacher who once read us a “story” about how we would all have to march to heaven with all our sins visibly marked on our bodies, making us repulsive, until we got to the gates of Heaven, where Jesus would wash us clean. (You can only imagine the effect this had on ten pre-teen girls, already insecure about our bodies and our appearance.)

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I get email

Andre has the inside scoop on what his god thinks of me.

God doesn’t love you

A lot of Christians are big on forgiveness, I’m not. God fucking hates your guts. He is sitting up there just watching you, watching you with bated breath, with a stopwatch just waiting until you finally croak in 30 or 40 or however many years, and then he will do a little jig before going down to the Pearly Gares and giving Peter the day off, and he will bring you up to the Gates, and make you think that you’re going to make it in, and then PUNK’D! Into hell, where Beelzebub and Lucifer and Leviathan and Hitler will take turns kicking you right in the wiener for all eternity. Have fun, asshole.

You know, actually, not a lot of Christians are big on forgiveness. They say they are, but when it gets right down to it they’re as much into forgiveness as they are into poverty and humility — it all sounds good and noble and admirable, but they still act petty and nasty and wish the worst of everyone. Like Andre does in the rest of his email, which I pretty much ignore as Christian hate fantasy.

But I had to point out the glaring misconception in the first sentence.

Who is going to be our spokesperson on Capitol Hill?

The Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for secular causes that I generally support, has appointed a new Executive Director: Edwina Rogers, a Republican strategist and lobbyist.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I reeled a bit when I heard that, but you know, I mostly trust those people at the SCA, and I thought, well, maybe it’s a smart move…to appoint someone who could actually get a toe in the door of the offices of our most intransigent foes. Maybe it’s a good idea to bring in someone from the other side who’d be willing to work with us on advancing the cause in a government dominated by conservatism. I also thought that I should treat this as a practical, political decision, one that I find intellectually uncomfortable, but would get results going in the right direction.

And I talked on the phone with someone at the SCA who sorta gently nudged me in the direction of giving Rogers a chance. I was drifting on currents that felt obliging if I would just go along.

And then I read Hemant Mehta’s interview with Edwina Rogers, and rebellion suddenly seemed a heck of a lot more attractive.

I’m sorry, Hemant, you’re a good guy, but apparently you’re taking interviewing lessons from the Jon Stewart School of Broadcasting. Right from the first answer, I wanted to scream, “STOP RIGHT THERE! That is not an acceptable or even believable response!” He asked why we should trust someone who’s been working for the party opposed to secularism (a good question), and here’s the answer that set off great clanging alarm bells.

I think it’s a misconception that the majority of Republicans are lined up against the secular movement. As someone who has been an insider within the Republican Party, I’m certain it’s not the consensus of the majority of Republicans to have an [overt] influence of religion on our laws. Having said that, no one agrees with everyone they work with on every single issue. In these roles I never worked on anything having to do with issues of religion — I worked primarily on economic issues.

Wait, wait, wait. I think the number one value for atheists is truth and honesty — are we seriously supposed to believe that answer? Are we supposed to trust the competence of someone so deluded they can say with a straight face that a majority of Republicans want religion out of government?

She’s also said something similar to the right-wing press:

“The majority of Republicans just haven’t thought about” secularism, said Rogers. “They were probably a little like me, a little laissez-faire, that they didn’t see it as a problem because the country is pretty secular.… There are still areas that need improvement, of course.”

Holy shit…we now have a lobbyist for secularism who thinks the country is already pretty secular, and just has a few areas that need improvement. Does she think this job is some kind of sinecure? She hasn’t thought much about it, and she thinks all her Republican buddies are similarly casual about religion?

This is where I’m really getting worried. She doesn’t see a problem.

She worked in the god-soaked Bush administration, for a president who thought his office was a divine gift.

I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can’t explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen… I know it won’t be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.

She worked for Trent Lott, the racist opponent of gay marriage.

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.

gay liberation “makes a mockery of other legitimate civil rights that people have worked at for years.”

Lott was also an opponent of secularism.

I have consistently advocated strong legislative action in support of the rights of students who wish to participate in voluntary prayer in their schools.

That sounds mild…except that there has never been any effort to squelch the right of students to voluntarily pray on their own.

She made political contributions to Rick Perry… you know, the presidential candidate wanna-be who launched his campaign with a prayer meeting.

It[America]’s in jeopardy because of taxes; it’s in jeopardy because of regulation; it’s in jeopardy because of a legal system that’s run amok. And I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God and say, “God, You’re going to have to fix this.”

I think it’s time for us to use our wisdom and our influence and really put it in God’s hands. That’s what I’m going to do, and I hope you’ll join me.

Why would someone who claims to be a “strong secularist and a firm believer in the separation of religion and government” give one penny to that clown? You’d think that if she were sincere in that long term interest, she would have been working to promote the more moderate conservatives…but no, she’s standing right there with the worst of the Rethuglicans.

That’s a lot to answer for. How do you throw a thousand dollars at the guy who makes this video:

…and then tell us you believe that most Republicans are secularists at heart who don’t even think much about religion?

Also, it doesn’t salvage her reputation to announce that she didn’t work on religious issues under Bush — just economics and health issues. Economics. And health. Under George W. Bush. Yeah, that fills me with confidence.

SCA, your executive director has a serious credibility problem. If she can’t even be forthright and honest in a friendly interview with a sympathetic interviewer, what is she going to do in the shark tank of the atheist movement?

See also Daniel and Stephanie and Greg and Jen. No one is enthusiastic. Everyone is wary. The only thing keeping us from blowing up and flinging fireballs right now is that we like and respect the SCA. Do they realize that their reputation is on the line, and is the only thing keeping us from angry rebellion? They better not blow this.

Converge on Convergence

Freethoughtblogs and Skepchick are collaborating and conspiring together to promote science and skepticism at Convergence, in Bloomington, MN, on 5-8 July. You should go! The skeptic track at this con have been steadily growing over the years, and there will be lots of wild discussion and fun. FtB is new to the game (although several of us have attended in the past) but we’re making a big push to join in with SkepchickCon 2012 and make ourselves known here.

We’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes — one of the essential elements of participation is to put on a good party, and this year Freethoughtblogs has booked a party room right next to the Skepchick party room. In fact, we’re meeting this weekend to work out all the details. Those of you who’ve attended in the past know that Kammy Lyon has been the Skepchick hostess and organizer for their party, and this year Mary Myers (the “Trophy Wife”) is teaming up with her to be the hostess and organizer for the FtB party. You got that? Not only do you get a weekend of skepticism and science and weird science fiction and fantasy, but you get two big parties going the whole weekend long. You want to be there.

The Skepchicks also sponsor bringing in speakers to participate in the events, and they need a little help raising money for that. Join in if you can’t make it, and especially if you can.

Celebrate the National Day of Reason with resistance and rebellion

Obama is getting everything wrong lately. First he declares 1 May to be Loyalty Day, in which we are to pledge allegiance to the flag; what a horror. To me, May Day will always be International Workers’ Day. It is not a day to pledge blind obedience to authority, but the exact opposite. But of course, Barack Obama, corporate tool, would want to subvert that.

And he also wants us to kowtow to nonexistent deities today, by going along with this horrible right-wing notion of a national Day of Prayer. Fuck that noise. Today is the National Day of Reason, and I will bend no knee to ghostly vapors, nor will I beg any gods for favors, ever.

No Gods, No Masters!

That should be the theme for this time of year, our Atheist Spring. It’s also fitting that that slogan was the product of the International Workers of the World, and was adopted by early feminists.

If we do not strike the fetters off ourselves we shall be knocked about until we forget the fetters. To our society apologists, and to their plausible excuses for modern impression, the only adequate answer is — we have done with your civilization and your gods. We will organize society in such a way as to make it certain for all to live in comfort and leisure without bartering their affections or their convictions. Let us turn a deaf ear to the trumpet-tongued liars clamoring for Protection, Patriotism, Prisons, Police, Workhouses, and Large Families. Leave them to vomit their own filth and let us take the good things mother earth daily offers unheeded, to us her children.

Things haven’t changed much since Sanger wrote that in 1914.

Why I am an atheist – Christie

My parents lied to me incessantly as a child: about the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, that they were happy in their marriage, that my mother got along with her mother and sisters, that I was an intended pregnancy. I learned that I would eventually discover or be told the truth about everything they told me. I learned the tooth fairy was a lie. I learned that cigarettes didn’t turn you into a psychopathic crackhead junkie murderer. I waited for someone to come clean to me about god. They never did. As a high school freshman, my twenty-something brother asked me why I hadn’t been confirmed. I told him I didn’t believe in god. (After reading the bible I was more sure than ever I didn’t want that.) He still tells people I’m devout.

Christie