Let’s try it this way: a president says they’re atheist, hypothetically

I’m sorry for being a jerk in comments before. Let’s try this: A president who was in the past tepidly agnostic comes out and says he’s thought about it, and now he’s an atheist. And in a doomed to fail preemptive qualifier, I know this is not the same thing. Let’s go ahead stipulate it’s not the same thing.

So, if that happened, should we as atheists react with “It’s too late or not enough” and be angry, should it not affect our view and other issues be more important, or would we think this a positive change, or something else not shown here?  Should we reward that, not care either way, or be angry about it? Which of those reactions would help atheism in general and which might not? I personally would lean toward rewarding it but other issues would still matter too. Your turn: Go!

Three conservative reactions to gay marriage

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Via TPM: 1) the Log Cabin Republicans, gay conservatives, sort of the Clayton Bigsby of equal rights. 2) Follow the money, as in ““God is the author of marriage, and we will not let an activist politician like Barack Obama who is beholden to gay marriage activists for …”. And last and arguably the least, the Fox News/Limbaugh axis of evil, “War On Marriage!”

This is a knife fight in a telephone booth over marriage rights along with women’s rights, minority rights, the 99% vs the masters of the universe, education, Social Security & Medicare, tax rates, defense, child care, and just about any other issue you can imagine where conservative zillionaires see a chance of ripping off and disenfranchising the rest of us. Choose wisely my friends.

The post on equals rights that wasn’t

It’s always a gray margin between rightly criticizing someone on “our team” and providing fodder for the other jokers to use. See Gingrich, Newt, for an example of how that works and how effective it can be. Nevertheless, I was hesitant to write anything that might have resulted in a flame war below — between people who agree on most everything and need one another’s support to win in 2012 — but my fellow blogger in disgust-at-conservatives John Cole saved me: [Read more…]

Gay Marriage: let the concern trolling begin … and end

I see the Beltway has their feinting couches (And I mean feint) and smelling salts at the ready, always important should they need to be revived after passing out at the latest manufactured crisis that’s all the right-wing rage today. Concern trolling on gay marriage was going gangbusters among the Morning Joe gang, especially with GOP Joe, but they didn’t invent the genre or create this particular iteration of it. [Read more…]