Where I come Down on "Faith-Based" Initiaves

From Yahoo:

"This initiative has been a failure on all counts, and it ought to be shut
down, not expanded," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of
Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

AMEN!'





Jim

Obama: Does He Or Doesn't He?

The New York Times on Obama's embrace of "Faith-Based Initiatives:"

Mr. Obama made clear, however, that he would work to ensure that charitable
groups receiving government funds be carefully monitored to prevent them from
using the money to proselytize and to prevent any religion-based discrimination
against potential recipients or employees...

While Mr. Obama opposes requiring religious tests for recipients of aid or
use of federal money to proselytize, The Associated Press reported that he
supports letting religious institutions -- in the non-federally funded parts of
their activities -- hire and fire based on faith, according to a senior adviser
to the campaign who the news agency said spoke on condition of anonymity.

These two paragraphs appear in the same article. Which is it? Does he or does he not support allowing religious organizations that get federal money to discriminate against people based on faith?

Jim

The Obama Deal Breaker For Me

As reported on Yahoo News:

"Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans
that would expand President Bush's program steering federal social service
dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support
their ability to hire and fire based on faith."

Translated: Obama will give tax dollars to religious organizations who discriminate against gay people in their employment practices.

This is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!

There is no way I will vote for Obama if this is his plan.

Jim

PHOTO: the Asiatic lillies in bloom

George Carlin Is Dead

...and so we have lost someone who got it right about the perverse effects of religion on each and every one of us:

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of
these things — bad language and whatever — it's all caused by one basic thing,
and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview.
"There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts
of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt
and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's
reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have." - from YahooNews

Yes, "wonderful" religion has caused more grief over things sexual including the demonization of gay people, yet so many gays still cling to religious beliefs in spite of the oppression that they suffer at the hands of organized religion. It's like being a gay Republican! George Carlin was right. Not me: no religion, no thanks!



Jim

What Obama Cannot Say - Sam Harris

Author and free thinker Sam Harris over at HuffPo focuses on something else that Obama cannot tackle openly (in addition to the residual racism and pervasive stupidity of many Americans):

Despite all that he does not and cannot say, Obama's candidacy is genuinely thrilling: his heart
is clearly in the right place; he is an order of magnitude more intelligent than
the current occupant of the Oval Office; and he still stands a decent chance of
becoming the next President of the United States. His election in November
really would be a triumph of hope.
But Obama's candidacy is also depressing, for it
demonstrates that even a person of the greatest candor and eloquence must still
claim to believe the unbelievable in order to have a political career in this
country. We may be ready for the audacity of hope. Will we ever be ready for the
audacity of reason?

Harris is rightly critical of the role of organized religion in the oppression of the the black community, and the corrosive and corrupting effect that it has on American politics. Harris is right: no serious candidate for public office can acknowledge such a thing. But it is there.

Jim

The Christian States Of America, Part III

Yesterday I wrote that the Europeans must be shaking their heads trying to figure out presidential campaign politics in America, which now, at least among Republicans, seems to be more like a contest about religion than about what the country needs in terms of leadership and change. Other commentators have noted that the Republican Party is now, after Bush-Rove an overtly Christian fundamentalist religious political party. Make no mistake about it: Republicans want change, but the change they want is to make America a Christian religious state. This directly contradicts the intent of the Founders, who were men of faith but realized that the new republic must be secular precisely because that is the only way to preserve liberty for all.

In today's New York Times., columnist Roger Cohen comments on Mitt Romney's religion speech:

Religion informed America’s birth. But its distancing from politics was
decisive to the republic’s success. Indeed, the devastating European experience
of religious war influenced the founders’ thinking. That is why I find Romney’s
speech and the society it reflects far more troubling than Europe’s vacant
cathedrals.
Romney allows no place in the United States for atheists. He
opines that, “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” Yet
secular Sweden is free while religious Iran is not. Buddhism, among other great
Oriental religions, is forgotten.
He shows a Wikipedia-level appreciation of
other religions, admiring “the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims” and
“the ancient traditions of the Jews.” These vapid nostrums suggest his innermost
conviction of America’s true faith. A devout Christian vision emerges of a U.S.
society that is in fact increasingly diverse.
Romney rejects the “religion
of secularism,” of which Europe tends to be proud. But he should consider that
Washington is well worth a Mass. The fires of the Reformation that reduced St.
Andrews Cathedral to ruin are fires of faith that endure in different, but no
less explosive, forms. Jefferson’s “wall of separation” must be restored if
those who would destroy the West’s Enlightenment values are to be
defeated.

If the Republicans get their way, and a Huckabee or a Romney is elected president, we will have a cultist as president. If this happens, the United States will then be held hostage to a cult, the Christian cult. Alarm bells should be sounding in the minds of all Americans who treasure freedom. If this drift toward making the country a Christian cultist bastion is not stopped, we will lose the freedoms that made this country great. These Christian cultists must be stopped.

Jim

Mitt's Religion Speech - No JFK He

“J.F.K.’s speech was to reassure Americans that he wasn’t a religious fanatic...Mitt’s was to tell evangelical Christians, ‘I’m a religious fanatic just like you.” - author and authority on Mormons Jon Krakurer as quoted by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.

PHOTO: One last beautiful fall 07 shot of these fiery maples along the path of our morning walk in Fairmount Park.

Jim

UGH! The Republicans, Again

I watched the Rockefeller Center tree lighting festivities on TV last evening, which was not all that entertaining. Some of the guest artists do not appeal to me. Some didn't even sing holiday songs. However, I enjoyed it when they finally actually lit the tree at the end of the program.

After the tree lighting show, I flipped the channels and came across the CNN/YouTube Republican debate, which I watched for as long a I could stand it, around ten minutes. The blogosphere seems to think that religious nut case Huckabee actually won the debate. Why should that surprise anybody? Bush and Rove have firmly wedded the Republican Party to the religious far right. The next American president will be a Christian fundamentalist, or under the sway of the religious far right, if he is a Republican.

PHOTO: The Water Works restaurant on the banks of he Schuylkill River, housed in an historic water works building.

Jim