Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1943

Now That the Primaries Are Over, Two Red States Will Have Atheists on the Ballot This November

… Sure, they were both running unopposed, but this is still a big deal. They got further in the election cycle than Eric Cantor! (That has to count for something, right?)

James Woods, the progressive, legally blind, condom-sending, proud atheist running for U.S. House from the 5th Congressional District of Arizona, is now the official Democratic candidate in the race.

He’ll be facing incumbent Republican Matt Salmon this November. Salmon opposes federal funding of abortions, gay marriage, and gay adoption (despite his own son being gay). He also voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

In an ideal country, those things would convince voters he had no business representing them. But Salmon has a pretty safe seat right now going into the general election.

Still, if you want to support a progressive atheist candidate, then consider making a donation to his campaign. Not just because he’s an atheist, but because you support his values.

(And because he’s an atheist.)

…

Meanwhile, in Texas, Daniel Moran is the official Democratic candidate for State House District 63, having “won” his primary earlier this year.

When he launched his campaign last year, Moran made it very clear he’d be fighting on behalf of those who are often ignored by other politicians:

I will never give up working and fighting for those in Texas who feel that they are not being represented or are being disenfranchised because of their race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, age, or socio-economic status, and that is one of the many reasons why I am running for House District 63.

Moran will be running again Tan Parker, a fourth-term conservative Republican who won his 2012 election with 85% of the votes. If you’d like to support Moran, you can donate to him right here.

…

Yes, these are both tough races, but it’s incredibly important to have Secular Americans on the ballots. It makes a huge difference down the road, and it’ll be fascinating to see if their atheism becomes a political liability or doesn’t get brought up at all.

An Interview with the Man Behind Oklahoma City’s Black Mass

I’ve posted a few articles about a Black Mass taking place in Oklahoma in September. It’s so controversial that the Governor has spoken out against it. More recently, Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley sued Adam Daniel and his Dakhma of Angra Mainyu Satanic church because they supposedly stole consecrated communion wafers from the Church for their event. (Daniel returned the wafers to Coakley while saying they were sent to him legally by a priest in Turkey.)

Damion Reinhardt, a blogger at Skeptic Ink, lives in Oklahoma and hosts a podcast… so he decided to get some first-hand information by visiting Adam Daniel himself.

Since this is a local story, and since we have a local podcast, we decided to dig down a bit further and find out what really happened. I’m still waiting to hear back from the Catholics (who sort of scare me, to be honest) but the Satanists were fairly forthcoming when I visited their church last weekend. Learned quite a bit from them, including why the Satanists in OKC aren’t exactly in communion with those in NYC, why a conducting a true Black Mass requires a level of sexual confidence and lack of performance anxiety usually reserved for porn stars, and why goats are considered symbols of the left-hand path.

You can hear that (possibly NSFW) episode right here:

Kudos to Damion for getting the interview. It’s much more enlightening than anything I’ve seen in the news so far — and you get a much better sense of Daniel’s personality and motivations.

(Image via Shutterstock)

Pat Robertson Says Gay Teen Needs “Male Companions” To Be Straight

Today on The 700 Club, Pat Robertson gave unhelpful and unnecessary advice to a woman concerned about her teen stepson’s budding attraction to other guys.

Right Wing Watch tracked down the video of Robertson asserting that being gay is the result of nurture instead of nature and that it’s apparently caused by the absence of male role models in a boy’s life. Here’s the clip:

Anguished viewer Kristi writes in:

Recently my step-son told us that he is having crushes on boys. He is 13 and lives with his mother most of the time. How do we approach the situation? What are the next steps we should take? We have 2 other boys, ages 3 and 1. What is your suggestion?

Here’s what Robertson says in response:

I know a lot of people disagree with this. They think that they’re born that way. But I think nurture has a lot to do with it. I mean, he’s being raised by a mother. So his attraction is now toward other men because he’s raised by a woman.

I think before I did anything else, I would get him male companions. I’d get him some man to help him, some mentor or someone who cares about young men in a fatherly, older brother type of way, and let the kid grow up with a male role model and see what happens. Right now he’s being raised by a single woman and that may be skewing his orientation.

So… presumably straight single mothers turn their sons gay? As if a single mom’s attraction to the opposite sex is going to magically transfer over to her son because he has no way to “learn” attraction to women otherwise? (Poll for straight readers: At exactly what moment in your life did you decide to be heterosexual?)

Also, it’s disturbing the way he says “see what happens,” as if this whole thing is an experiment. Yes, sexual orientation is fluid, to an extent, but it’s not as easy as changing out a few variables and seeing what you get.

A casual reminder here that the vast majority of LGBT people are born to straight parents because — surprise! — the vast majority of people have straight parents. You don’t need a dad around to grow up to be a straight man. (One of my role models for the LGBT parenting movement is Zach Wahls, a straight Boy Scout who’s the son of two moms, but obviously there are thousands of other kids of same-sex parents who aren’t LGBT themselves.)

More importantly, if you grow up and you’re not a straight man, regardless of who your parents are, that’s okay.

Throwing a wrench in his “logic,” Robertson’s co-host points out that the child’s dad probably is in the picture, based on the tone of the letter:

You know, this is his stepmom writing this saying, ‘He told us,’ so that’s his dad… his dad could step into that role a little more in his life.

Maybe Robertson didn’t get that part? He agrees anyway.

His dad should, absolutely.

The correct “answer” to this nonexistent problem is simple: Let him be. Support him. Love your child as he is, for crying out loud. And never, ever ask Pat Robertson for parenting advice.

Women’s Rights Activists Bleed and Defecate on ISIS Flag to (Apparently) Protest Islamic State’s Misogyny

[Note: All links in this post should be considered Not Safe For Work!]

Egyptian women’s rights activist Aliaa Elmahdy isn’t afraid of a little controversy, to put it mildly. For a few years, she’s been issuing bold fuck-yous to the forces of patriarchy and religion, appearing without clothing (and often with slogans on her body) on Facebook and in a Swedish mosque.

On Saturday, Elmahdy, who’s been living in exile in Europe, posted her most daring and controversial photo yet. She is seen squatting over a black ISIS banner that contains the words “There is no God but Allah.” Elmahdy is menstruating on the flag, while a second woman, dressed in an Islamic veil, simultaneously defecates on it while holding up a middle finger to the camera. This is just a crop:

Reason has the unedited picture (insert obvious NSFW text here).

According to Liveleak,

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy did not specify why she posted the photo, though past controversies, such as a 2011 incident in which she posed in only stockings and red shoes for her blog — to protest against Egypt’s conservative culture — suggest that she was opposing the Islamic State terror group’s brutally restrictive and misogynistic ideology.

I can hardly wait to hear how outrageous this ultra-defiant image is (especially from people who have hardly said a word about ISIS’ robbing, raping, and murdering their way through Syria and Iraq).

Nick Gillespie at Reason says of the photo:

When you consider what Theo Van Gogh was killed for and all the violence caused by the Mohammed cartoons, this sort of imagery becomes even bolder and more powerful than it immediately appears.

I fear that Islamic fundies’ target-for-murder list (which includes journalists, cartoonists, and novelists, none of whom match Elmahdi for sheer brazenness) has a new number one — with a bullet.

North Carolina’s Religion-in-Schools Law Wrongly Suggests Teachers Can Participate During Student-Led Prayers

Earlier this summer, legislators in North Carolina passed Senate Bill 370, which (unnecessarily) reiterated the rights of students to express their faith in school. These rights were already protected under the law, but you can never appease religious voters too much…

The Republican-dominated House and Senate voted overwhelmingly in support of the bill, with plenty of Democrats helping them out. The Republican governor, as expected, signed it into law.

But there is reason to be worried because the bill included this line:

Local boards of education may not prohibit school personnel from participating in religious activities on school grounds that are initiated by students at reasonable times before or after the instructional day so long as such activities are voluntary for all parties and do not conflict with the responsibilities or assignments of such personnel.

According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, that’s unconstitutional:

“When a public school teacher prays with students, he or she is endorsing religion,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “Even if the prayer is supposedly ‘optional’ it amounts to coercion when a teacher joins in. The U.S. Constitution has been interpreted to strictly prohibit this sort of behavior, and it doesn’t matter that some lawmakers in North Carolina or any other state disagree.”

That coercion factor still applies even if the prayers happen before or after school. If a faculty member is participating in a student-led prayer — let’s say a football coach or a strict teacher — it’s reasonable to think other students may be pressured to participate in order to remain on the adults’ good side.

AU sent a letter to school district leaders across the state reminding them of these issues.

I suspect it’ll likely go ignored until there’s a legal challenge, putting the state law in conflict with how the Constitution has been interpreted for decades now.

Harlem Church Rails Against Obama, Muslims, “No-Honor” Blacks; Wishes “Cancer, HIV” on Gay-Friendly Believers

A friend from Europe took a stroll through Harlem, New York yesterday, and encountered this church sign on West 123rd Street.

Image © Rudie Kagie

All churches & members that support homos cursed be thou with cancer HIV syphilis stroke madness the itch then hell 1 Cor. 6:9

“Isn’t it nice, all those little church communities, each of them with their own vision of the surprises that God has in store for humanity,” my friend deadpanned.

What you can’t see in the photos is that the sign is topped by a big white cross with the words Jesus is Lord.

Incongruous? Pastor James David Manning of the ATLAH World Missionary Church doesn’t think so. He likes to use the sign to spread the wit and wisdom of his Savior. Here are a couple of his earlier messages.

Obama has released the homo demons on the black man. Look out black woman. A white homo may take your man.

And

Harlem is a sodomite free zone stop sodomizing our children across America

Pastor Manning’s church preachings are just as inspired.

 

I love watching his costumed helpers and choir singers in the front of the church, who all stoically act like this is run-of-the-mill Jesus-loves-you stuff. Listening to the cries and whoops of his adoring congregation is also an enlightening pastime.

To get the full effect of what Manning’s church stands for, you should probably know that he’s a 9/11 truther; is convinced that “black people have no honor“; and believes that it’s “the Biblical, noble, constitutional thing to do to drive Muslims from this land.”

He seems nice, don’t you think?

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P.S. As a young man, Manning spent three and a half years in prison in New York and Florida on burglary, robbery, larceny, and other charges, an experience that did nothing to dissuade him from pursuing a career telling other people how to live moral lives. That includes periodically advocating the stoning of “sodomites.” The ATLAH church was in the news last year when gay activist Jennifer Louise Lopez called its bluff by knocking on the door to request a stoning. The church worker who answered told her she’d have to come back the next day because he was fresh out of stones. Watch the video here.

P.P.S. You might think that Pastor Manning’s deluge of anti-Obama preaching runs afoul of the Internal Revenue Service’s no-electioneering rule, which holds that, for a church to keep its tax-free status, no overt political messages may be sent from the pulpit that favor or attack a political candidate. Americans United for Separation of Church and State thought so too, and filed a complaint against Manning’s ATLAH church in 2008. I could find no evidence that the IRS sent the church a warning letter, let alone a notification that ATLAH’s tax-free status had been revoked. Par for the course.

If God Really Loved Atheists, Maybe He’d Stop Ruining Their Adopt-a-Highway Signs

In 2013, the Atheists of Butte County (in California) officially adopted a highway and they’ve cleaned up their two-mile stretch of Highway 99 every month since.

Yesterday, they realized the sign didn’t look the same…

Group leader George Gold wonders:

Are religionists so insecure that they have to run around vandalizing California highway signs?

Are religionists so bereft of moral values that they see nothing wrong with vandalizing highway signs that promote projects that are for one reason and one reason only, the public good?

As far as vandalism goes, it could clearly be worse, but it seems likely that the culprit(s) planned this in advance. The person had to get the stickers, stop off the side of the highway, and place them on the sign. For what purpose? Who knows. Even if God loves atheists, it’s the atheists who are directly helping the community.

It’s also not the first time the sign has been altered. In 2013, someone stuck the word “PRAY” to their post:

CalTrans, which runs the Adopt-a-Highway program, has been notified about the alterations to the sign.

The Paperback Version of “An Appetite for Wonder,” Richard Dawkins’ Autobiography, is Available Today

For anyone who still buys physical books, the paperback version of Richard Dawkins‘ autobiography An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist is available today:

The hardcover version peaked at #11 on the New York Times Best Sellers list last October.

Sarah Silverman Didn’t Thank God at Emmys, but Offered These Words of Wisdom Instead

Comedian Sarah Silverman just won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing For A Variety Special for her stand-up special “We Are Miracles.”

The award was given to her by Ricky Gervais, a fellow atheist, and during her acceptance speech, she didn’t bother thanking God, but offered some scientific honesty instead:

“We’re all just made of molecules, and we’re hurtling through space right now.”

Love it.

And THAT'S how you end an acceptance speech #Emmys http://t.co/C8N5NEOKZz

— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) August 26, 2014

It’s almost as good as when Gervais, the host of the 2011 Golden Globes, ended the broadcast by saying:

“… And thank you to god for making me an atheist.”

But neither of those is as memorable as when Kathy Griffin won a 2007 Creative Arts Emmy for her show “My Life on the D-List” and gave this speech:

Can you believe this shit? I guess hell froze over… A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. So, all I can say is, “Suck it, Jesus.” This award is my God now.

(Image via s_bukley / Shutterstock.com)

Was This an Unreasonable Religious Accommodation?

The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses a particular religious accommodation that may have crossed the line:

You can read more about this story here.

A rough transcript of the video can be found on the YouTube page in the “About” section.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next!

And if you like what you’re seeing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon.