My brother!

Dan Savage

I am feeling a strange and somewhat unwarranted affinity to Dan Savage right now. Apparently he’s going to be on some new television show (that’s the unwarranted part: there’s no comparing our relative popularity or cultural influence), and certain people are rising up in protest because he’s too rude.

Dan Savage’s vulgarity and violent rhetoric is well-documented. Savage is unapologetic in his promotion of filth masquerading as humor. His new show, ironically titled “The Real O’Neals,” is a platform he does not deserve. Even so, Disney ABC continues to remain silent as pro-family and pro-faith organizations call for it to reconsider its decision to promote this bigoted, hate-filled man.

"Disney ABC continues to circle the wagon and ignore the anti-religious bigot in their midst,” said MRC President Brent Bozell. “We will not relent in exposing Dan Savage for the vile hate he spews at conservatives, Catholics, and evangelicals. Disney ABC’s silence is shameful.”

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What exactly do you want, Jonathan Chait?

Chait is complaining about “political correctness”. Fine, complain away; there are even lines I would draw that partly coincide with the lines he draws. He begins with an anecdote about angry students who littered a conservative columnist’s hallway with defaced copies of a ‘satirical’ column, and threw eggs at his door.

Don’t throw eggs at people’s doors, OK?

There are things you shouldn’t do, like damaging property or sending death threats or harassing people to interfere with their lives in destructive ways. Sometimes people on the left do cross those lines; I’m happy to join Chait in deploring those acts.

But don’t call it “P.C.” That’s a term that raises my hackles straight from the onset: it’s the disparaging phrase used solely against liberals, judging them not by their actions but their purpose. Vandalism and harassment are not ideologically-specific tools, used only by the left; let’s deplore the tactics no matter who employs them, but as soon as you attach the P.C. label, I know right away that you are trying to target liberals only.

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Satire is not the problem

Joe Sacco has drawn a genuinely excellent, thoughtful cartoon about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It made me stop and think, so I think it was a very effective use of the medium, and I recommend you all go look at it now.

But it has one problem: it did make me think, and think about the attacks, and the outrage of the people who committed them, and the cartoonist who was commenting on them. And I didn’t find myself entirely in agreement with Sacco.

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May all my enemies be this stupid

I really, really don’t understand the minds behind this: I’m getting a bunch of messages from sniggering puerile slymepit types who have jumped on a hashtag bandwagon, #wherespzmyers. They’ve got a photo of my face photoshopped onto a plush doll, and then they photoshop that into various scenes.

Warning: the very first image that turned up at that link above is a smiling picture of me spliced into a graphic ISIS beheading photo.

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David Silverman did kick butt

Ophelia has the video of Bill Donohue, David Silverman, and Schmuley Boteach on Fox News — and she’s right, the two flanking nutcases were embarrassing, while Silverman was the voice of reason. The two theistic cranks kept whining about Satanists! Ruining Christmas! while Silverman just pointed out that yes, you don’t get to decide which religion gets to be the right one in a pluralistic country, and that means you have to give satanists the same accommodations you do Christians. But Satanists! How can you support Satan?

I found out what that was about. Oklahoma has a Ten Commandments monument on their statehouse steps…so a Satanist Temple has asked for parity. Seems fair to me. Cue predictable dismissals:

Rep. Bobby Cleveland, who plans to introduce a one such bill next year, said many Christians feel they are under attack as a result of political correctness. He dismissed the notion of Satanists erecting a monument at the Capitol.

"I think these Satanists are a different group," Cleveland, R-Slaughterville, said. "You put them under the nut category."

Brady Henderson, legal director for ACLU Oklahoma, said if state officials allow one type of religious expression, they must allow alternative forms of expression, although he said a better solution might be to allow none at all on state property.

But I think Baptists belong in the “nut category”! Can we have the Christian monument taken down? Although I think Henderson is actually the voice of reason here.

Also, the Hindus want to put a monument to Hanuman there, too. Are they in the “nut category”? How do you decide which religion is nutty?

I would also point out to Donohue and Boteach that there has been a long history of discrimination against both Catholics and Jews in the US — they won’t disagree, I’m sure both are far more aware of that history than I am — so it’s a bit weird for them to be participating in a discussion that attempts to label one religion as fringe and undeserving of recognition, support, or even respect. I guess empathy is not one of those “Judeo-Christian” virtues.

An obsession with permanence and secrecy

The next few months may prove to be very interesting — and damning — for the Catholic Church. The courts are poised to crack open a huge trove of church files, files that document the worst behavior of some of its priests, from child rape to murder. This facet of Catholic culture which insists on preserving every record, which was historically useful in preserving records of the past, is about to bite them in the butt, hard.

Why did the church hold on to decades-old evidence of its priests’ sins?

The explanation lies in centuries of Catholic Church history and is a tale involving secret betrothals, scandal, even a murder or two. Since the time of the Enlightenment, the Catholic Church has maintained two sets of records: one for the mundane and a second "secret archive" for matters of a sensitive nature. The cache — known as sub secreto files, Canon 489 files, confidential files or C-files — was to be kept under lock and key, only for the eyes of the bishop and his trusted few.

After the files became known to prosecutors and plaintiff’s lawyers, the American justice system has pried open the doors to an archive long kept sealed. Thousands of additional pages are set to become public in coming months, as more than a dozen Catholic orders — Salesians, Claretians, Vincentians and others — prepare to bare their own secrets pursuant to agreements with victims. L.A. County Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias could set the date for their release at a hearing Tuesday.

We may be about to get something as electrifying to the US as the Cloyne report was to Ireland. Poor Bill Donohue is going to be wearing out his fax machine.

What point would a protest have if it didn’t piss someone off?

Amina-Tyler

This well-written article in The Atlantic remarks on a familiar tactic. It’s about the Femen, the topless jihad, and Amina, and the complaints an annoying number of stodgy critics have made. You know the ones: the people who demand that all arguments be respectful, and insist that there are proper channels for debate, and protests that actually rile the establishment are inappropriate.

With its topless jihad and Femen leader Inna Shevchenko’s subsequent incendiary blog post on the event, Femen was both defending one of its own and upholding a right to freedom of expression (to say nothing of life and liberty) flagrantly violated by Amina’s own family and by an angry, largely Muslim, community from which threats against Amina and Shevchenko continue to emanate. It’s worth pointing out that Femen’s critics, several of whom professed concern for Amina’s well-being, did not speak out in Amina’s defense before the jihad, but only post-factum and in passing, all the while pummeling the group standing up for her with stale, politically correct shibboleths and demands to stay out of what they perceived to be their own business.

We saw this in all the battles over accommodationism: there’s always someone on your side who offended that you have chosen to battle antagonistically or unconventionally against oppression and foolishness. I think their favorite word must be “hush” — don’t upset the status quo, even if it’s the status quo you’re trying to upset. And most importantly, they insist that you have to follow their tactics, and they get to tell everyone how to engage, even if their history is one of largely sitting on their thumbs and getting chummy with the enemy.

Guess what is often at the root of that reluctance to actually confront? Yeah, it’s the same old boogeyman everytime, conservative traditionalism in the guise of religion.

There is a problem, however. The media has long fostered the view that religion should be de facto exempt from the logical scrutiny applied to other subjects. I am not disputing the right to practice the religion of one’s choice, but rather the prevailing cultural rectitude that puts faith beyond the pale of commonsense review, and (in Amina’s case), characterizes as “Islamophobic” criticism of the criminal mistreatment of a young woman for daring to buck her society’s norms, or of Femen for attacking the forced wearing of the hijab.

We’re seeing a lot of that lately, but it’s been going on for a long, long time. Point out that transubstantiation is ridiculous, and that Catholics don’t get to tell you to honor a cracker, and Bill Donohue raves that you’re an anti-Catholic bigot; stand aghast at ultra-orthodox Jews spitting on little girls for “immodesty” and you’re an anti-semite; critize the deeply rooted misogyny in Islam, a misogyny that harms men and women in the faith, and you’re declared an Islamophobe.

Just because it’s cloaked in the self-declared mystery of religion doesn’t mean it’s exampt from scrutiny and rejection.

1.5 million children stolen

If you kidnap one child, there’s an APB and a massive police response and if you’re caught, you’ll be spending a good long while in jail. If you kidnap a million children over decades, you’re a source of morality and goodness. So think big!


Just needs a clerical collar…

In some cases, mothers in Australia were drugged and forced to sign papers relinquishing custody. In others, women were told their children had died. Single mothers also did not have access to the financial support given to widows or abandoned wives, and many were told by doctors, nurses, and social workers that they were unfit to raise a child. Siewert says, “We heard practices that were either illegal or unethical and downright cruel.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me to hear the same thing happened elsewhere,” continues Siewert, “…the U.K., the U.S., Canada and Ireland. So you could, I think, expect that those countries also had these sorts of practices.”

I suspect you can guess who’s behind such contemptible acts: it’s the Catholic Church, of course, arbiter of morality, who have long held that a woman has no autonomy at all and must be supported by a good strong manly man…so single mothers are obviously unfit to care for a child.

Ironically, Bill Donohue has issued a press release whining about how the Reason Rally singled out Catholicism for venom (it didn’t). He takes vindication in our contempt for his religion.

Catholics take note: The fact that the atheists always attack us more than any other religious group is a backhanded compliment. They know who the real enemy of hate is, and who they must defeat. They don’t have a prayer.

Sorry, Bill. The record is clear. Your church is not an enemy of hate at all; it’s a sinkhole of depravity and oppression. The church is attacked because it’s a monstrous institution. And if it is attacked more than other religions, it’s only because it commits more crimes than others.

The beginning of the collapse of Catholic morality!

Hooray! You promise? Can I help?

The ever-demented Michael Voris, Real Catholic™ has a new video out in which he identifies unambiguously the first domino that will cause the collapse of Catholic morality: masturbation.

He does look like a world-class expert in wanking, and he must enjoy the subject since he promises to talk about it for hours, but I think that rather than just babbling about it, action is more important. I want you all to make some time this week to “destroy Catholicism”, my new favorite euphemism for jacking/jilling off.

You know, suddenly Bill Donohue’s mad rantings sound extremely filthy.