Please sign NJDC's petition to urge CNN, FOX News, NBC, ABC, and CBS to stop inviting Ann Coulter as a guest to comment on politics.
Tell me more
Full Petition Text:
We are writing to ask you to refrain from inviting Ann Coulter to participate as a guest on your network's news programming.
As you know, it has long been documented that Ms. Coulter takes liberties with the facts. Furthermore, her comments -- be they about Democrats, 9/11 widows, Jews, or others -- often border on hate speech.
While Ms. Coulter has her freedom of speech, you have the freedom to exercise better judgment. You wouldn't put people who claim Martians roam the earth to frequently comment on science. It is time to stop putting Ms. Coulter on the air to comment on politics, thus giving her free publicity and attention.
Signed by:
Also, if you are on Facebook, check out and join the group: Christians Who Think Jews Are Perfect Just the Way They Are
]]>
NY Times:Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare:
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: October 12, 2007
ROME, Oct. 11 — A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.
Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely. Globally, abortion accounts for 13 percent of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and there are 31 abortions for every 100 live births, the study said.(snip)
“We now have a global picture of induced abortion in the world, covering both countries where it is legal and countries where laws are very restrictive,” Dr. Paul Van Look, director of the W.H.O. Department of Reproductive Health and Research, said in a telephone interview. “What we see is that the law does not influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion. If there’s an unplanned pregnancy, it does not matter if the law is restrictive or liberal.”
But the legal status of abortion did greatly affect the dangers involved, the researchers said. “Generally, where abortion is legal it will be provided in a safe manner,” Dr. Van Look said. “And the opposite is also true: where it is illegal, it is likely to be unsafe, performed under unsafe conditions by poorly trained providers.”
The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute.
]]>Let's start with a crucial fact. Apart from members of the corporate plutocracy, most Bush voters did not vote their economic self-interest. Pundits say they voted their moral values. Actually, I suggest they voted their psychology: their longing for meaning, identity, and community in a world of family and community breakdown. Demagogues of the far right have turned this positive and healthy longing against feminists, gays, and lesbians as the scapegoats for a very real crisis caused by a brutally unjust economy in which a growing percentage of available jobs pay less than a family wage and offer no benefits.
For the media to suggest that only Bush voters were voting their moral values is surely quite odd. Economic justice is a moral issue. Leaving trillions of dollars of debt to our children to repay is a moral issue. Destroying God's creation to make money for rich people is a moral issue. Killing tens of thousands of innocent people for a lie is a moral issue. These are all moral issues at the heart of Christian teaching. Perhaps we should say so in our public discourse. [ ]
Since the early 1970s, a dedicated alliance of corporate plutocrats and religious theocrats has been laying the foundation of their takeover of U.S. political institutions by building a powerful network of right-wing think tanks, media outlets, and churches. The think tanks frame the language and the stories of the public discourse. The media outlets and churches disseminate the language and the stories. And the churches turn out voters. This infrastructure has proven a powerful vehicle for advancing a Politics of Empire based on division, fear, manipulation, and domination. It is a bullying politics reminiscent of a childish playground brawl that substitutes name-calling and character assassination for problem-solving and undermines the credibility of our political institutions. The challenge before us is to displace the politics of Empire with the politics of Earth Community based on inclusion, possibility, and partnership -- an authentic values-based, problem-solving politics of mature adulthood consistent with the moral teachings of Jesus.
We humans long for spiritual meaning. But the only voices most people hear speaking about values and spirit in the public discourse are those of the Far Right. Virtually every progressive leader I know is working from a deeply spiritual place, but we rarely speak openly in our environmental, peace, and justice work of values or the sacred. The time has come for the nation's mainstream churches to come out of the closet and speak publicly of values and the spiritual foundations of the progressive agenda and to articulate spiritually grounded stories of human possibility and the world that the living Jesus called us to create.
"I'm ashamed to say it. ... I had a yard sign for 'Bush-Cheney 2000.' I was really going for those guys," said Brandon Rhodes, a 23-year-old graduate student at the Multnomah Biblical Seminary and an evangelical Christian.
Rhodes, who considers himself part of the emerging church, said he and his peers are rejecting an individualistic "Marlboro Man spirituality" in favor of a more inclusive faith. "Whereas maybe the fundamentalist in 1980 said, 'We can't do social programs for the poor&that sounds like communism,' this generation is like, 'So what?' If it's the right thing to do, we have to do it," he said. "It's politically ambidextrous."
This newfound communal faith doesn't just include people, but the environment as well.
"The first time I broke ranks with the right it was about the environment," Rhodes said. "What good was it to the unborn if my Republican votes saved them from the abortion clinics, only to deliver them into a resource-scraped world of want, devoid of wild places?"
]]>c/o NY Sun:
Fox Is Pushing For Iran War, Senator Says
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 23, 2007
Senator Sanders of Vermont is backing a campaign to warn Americans that Fox News is using jingoistic programming to push the nation into a military attack on Iran. Mr. Sanders, a self-described socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, joined with a liberal filmmaker yesterday to denounce the popular cable channel for leading a drumbeat in favor of a military strike against Tehran.
"The leader of that effort is Fox News, which, in many ways, is a propaganda machine," Mr. Sanders said during a conference call with reporters and bloggers. He said the network was echoing "increased rumblings" from President Bush and Vice President Cheney about the prospect of an attack on Iran.
]]> "We have got to put pressure on the mass media not to play the same craven role that they played in Iraq, where they essentially collapsed and became a megaphone for Bush's policies," the senator said.The call was arranged by Robert Greenwald, who skewered Fox for conservative bias in his 2004 film, "Outfoxed." He released a Web video yesterday juxtaposing stark warnings the network offered recently about Iran with similar clips about Iraq before and after the American-led invasion in 2003.
c/o Think Progress: Bolton: I ‘Absolutely’ Hope The U.S. Will Attack Iran In The Next ‘Six Months’
Yesterday, Raw Story pointed out that former CIA operative Bob Baer told Fox News that the Bush administration will likely attack Iran in the coming months. “Iran policy is on close hold, but the feeling is we will hit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps sometime next six months or so,” said Baer.
Today, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton appeared on Fox News and responded. He said that while he couldn’t confirm Baer’s statements, he “absolutely” hoped they were true:
HEMMER: One final step here, too, that I want to take with you. You told one of our producers earlier today that you don’t know if it’s true — and you’ve made that clear in our interview here, that you don’t know what the odds are or are not against that — but you hope it’s true. Why do you hope it’s true?
BOLTON: Absolutely. I hope Iran understands that we are very serious, that we are determined they are not going to get a nuclear weapon capability, and unless they change the strategic decision they’ve been pursuing for close to 20 years, that that’s something they better factor into their calculations.
]]>But, if I approached this story with all of the nuance of a New Atheist, I would have to conclude as follows: once again, moderate and progressive new atheists are secretly at fault because they assume that the Atheist viewpoint is entitled to automatic respect, when we all know that deep down, all new atheists love to torture Buddhist monks and nuns-- and to wear endangered tiger skins into the bargain. (That's right, the Chinese Government ordered Tibetans to wear animal skins and fur--because the Dalia Lama, who is sensitive to endangered animal issues, opposes their use in religious and cultural ceremonies.)
]]> If I reasoned like a bestselling New Atheist, I'd have to say something profound and "reasonable" like: "The very ideal of aggressively pursuing a world without religious belief--born of the notion that no person can choose for themselves whether (or to what extent) they want to believe--is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss." If pressed for proof, I would say something pithy like: "After all, the new atheist Christopher Hitchens has diminished the harm of torture at Abu Ghraib, and the atheist Chinese torture Buddhist monks, and besides, what about those endangered tiger skins?"Thanks to your calls to Congress & our collective efforts we earned a major victory for children's health. Last week, before going on recess, the House and Senate each passed separate bills to renew the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Both bills commit additional funding for the program over five years and ensure that millions more children will have access to health care.
But our work is not over. The President has threatened to veto these bills and send millions of children to the ranks of the uninsured. We must keep this from happening by securing enough Congressional support to override a veto and by convincing the President that providing children health insurance is the right thing to do.
Build support for SCHIP and send a strong message to our leaders on children's health:
Sign an SEIU petition to Congress requesting full funding for children's health.
Join First Focus' letter writing campaign directed to the First Lady Laura Bush
]]>That Republican strategist Karl Rove has pandered to the religious right is not a reason for his opponents to do their own pandering. I say this not to disparage the integrity of the candidates, but to name the nature of the game they are playing.
I was among those Christians who reacted to the Christian right by joining "People of Faith for Kerry." Our group met weekly, bought ads in newspapers across the state voicing our support for Kerry as Christians, and had T-shirts made that carried our message. I spent a large portion of my day at the Minnesota State Fair talking to people who stopped me because of the T-shirt I was wearing.
Looking back, I see this as a colossal blunder. I was committed to making a public statement that Christians could in fact be Democrats. But like members of the Christian right, we were aligning ourselves with partisan politics, leaving us vulnerable to the charge that what we believed in as Christians was nothing more than partisan politics. We ignored the fact that liberal politicians use religion to their political advantage just as conservatives do. The goal of the Kerry campaign in creating People of Faith for Kerry was to elect John Kerry. That, after all, is what political campaigns do.
The DNC is also working with the College Democrats of America's faith caucus on outreach.
"We are broadening the discussion," said Melissa Roberts, a junior at Jesuit-run Boston College and chair of the College Democrats faith caucus. "People are realizing we can define our political beliefs by more than two issues. We can reach beyond abortion and gay marriage."
Emily Holmes, a senior at Bethel University, an evangelical school in Arden Hills, Minn., said a desire to expand the political discussion led her to form the evangelical school's first College Democrats club three years ago. Since then, she said, she has observed a change in
her classmates' political interest.
"Within the past three years, I've noticed a subtle change in our campus dynamics," Holmes said. "We are a Christian school and social justice tends to be the core of a lot of what we care about. It's just the way we want to go about taking care of it is what really separates the political parties."
At Calvin College, a moderate evangelical school in the Republican stronghold of Grand Rapids, Mich., there is no student Democratic organization,but several clubs have been formed to address issues traditionally associated with the left.
This insanity doesn't compare to me, somehow, on the moral scale with all of the religious folks,from all faiths most recently half a million liberal Catholics, who have opposed the War in Iraq. But how is this relevant to Hitchens' new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything? He makes similarly repugnant arguments there--including willing away the historical challenge to the moral superiority of atheists presented by mass murderers Pol Pot and Stalin--as this excellent review by associate Atlantic Monthly editor Ross Douthat points out.
]]> From the Summer 2007 issue of the Claremont Review of Books: Lord Have Mercy; A review of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher HitchensBy Ross Douthat
Posted July 9, 2007
...The book has been written with two main purposes in mind: to show that all religions are false, and to prove that their effects are near-universally pernicious. In each case, Hitchens's argument proceeds principally by anecdote, and at his best he is as convincing as that particular style allows, which is to say not terribly. He succeeds in demonstrating that many faiths are frauds and many prophets have been fakers, that believers commit all sorts of terrible crimes and that Buddhists are no more pacific than Southern Baptists, and that the Bible is neither a work of academic history nor a biology textbook. Then again, I was convinced of these points already, and hoped that Hitchens would pick a fight on more contested territory, such as the origin and nature of spiritual experience, which seems a more likely source for man's persistent religiosity than, say, the fear of thunderstorms or the stubborn refusal to crack open The Origin of Species. But like most apologists for atheism, he evinces little interest in the topic of religion as it is actually lived, preferring to stick to the safer ground of putting the godly in the dock and cataloguing their crimes against humanity. (snip)
It might be argued that the brevity of the book and the amount of ground it covers should excuse the less-than-rigorous fashion in which it advances its more controversial arguments. But the demands of brevity should clarify and hone, whereas Hitchens manages to be both short and sloppy. To dispense with both the Old and New Testament in 25 pages is a difficult task, but if he was limited by considerations of length he might have found better evidence for the fraudulence of the Christian witness than, say, the less-than-earthshattering revelation that non-canonical gospels circulated in the centuries after Christ; or the news that the well-known passage in the Gospel of John dealing with the woman taken in adultery was not part of the original Johannine text; or the self-evidently specious observation that the New Testament authors "cannot agree on anything of importance." Hitchens might also have better disguised the fact that he seems to have consulted no New Testament authorities more distinguished than the latest publications from Elaine Pagels, the doyenne of the "lost gospels" industry, and Bart Ehrman, the ex-fundamentalist who abandoned Christianity once it became clear to him that there might have been actual human beings involved in the composition of its sacred texts. (snip)
Every book has its errors, of course, but few are quite so tendentious in their interpretation of the facts they manage to get right. Like an overzealous Christian searching pagan texts for anything that could be construed as foreshadowing Christ's coming, Hitchens scours the record of man's inhumanities to man for any hint that they might have been motivated by piety, prophecy, or dogma. No atrocity has been committed and no tyranny established, if you believe his theocentric history of violence, that did not have religion at its root somehow.
This would seem a rather difficult case to make, since a cursory reading of history suggests that loyalty to one's kin, one's tribe, and one's nation—not to mention sundry political ideologies—has sparked at least as much violence as any theological controversy. But fortunately for Hitchens's polemic, religion is so woven into human affairs that nearly every war contains some religious element for his monomania to batten on. And perhaps some readers will even be persuaded by, for instance, his peculiar suggestion that the Hutu-on-Tutsi carnage in Rwanda had less to do with ethnic grievances and the pernicious legacy of Victorian Europe's racial theories than with some minor Marian visionaries, whose prophecies, which included dire and all-too-accurate predictions of imminent mass murder, were briefly co-opted by Hutu thugs.
More likely, though, the reader will come away unpersuaded of anything save the self-evident truth of the matter, which is that human beings, being a clannish and quarrelsome lot, tend to find all sorts of things to fight over, and that nearly every aspect of human affairs can serve as a powerful spur to actions both heroic and deplorable. So religion produces both Torquemada and Dorothy Day; philosophy spurs Socrates to die for truth and Heidegger to prostitute himself for Hitler; science cures polio and speeds our missiles on their way; the bonds of family provide the foundation for innumerable happy childhoods, but also for the Wars of the Roses. None of this is to excuse the crimes of religious believers; it's merely to suggest that the line between good and evil runs through every aspect of human affairs, and denouncing belief in God for poisoning the world is as absurd as denouncing "democracy" because it has empowered tyrants from Hitler down to Hugo Chavez, or "equality" because its partisans have included the Jacobins, the Khmer Rouge, and the KGB.
Of this last objection, at least, Hitchens seems well aware, and he devotes an entire chapter to arguing strenuously that both the Nazis and the Communists were effectively religious and effectively theocratic, their secular experiments poisoned by religion. But with this move he begins sawing off the very branch he occupies, since if faith tends to infect even secular politics, then what separates Hitchens from his religious enemies? (Continues)
FP: If this is the best the New Atheists can produce--the highly intolerant Sam Harris, and the repulsive Mr. Hitchens--then this new movement is in trouble indeed. When the New Atheists announce that a half million of them have come together to oppose this War, or poverty, or something other than freedom of conscience, I'll start looking up them as role models. Until then, or until they get more honest and attractive leaders, not so much
]]>
Did Jesus laugh? The fictitious dispute in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose “is more than fiction. It reflects a line of tradition which really existed, from John Chrysostom through Augustine to Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugo of St Victor, of the Christian denunciation of laughter” (Karl-Josef Kuschel). Nor is such a “theology of tears” limited to the world-denying, death-obsessed zeitgeist of the Middle Ages. John Wesley once disciplined a preacher on the charges (in ascending order?) of heresy, adultery – and the man’s proneness to “break a jest, and laugh at it heartily.” Here, from Beckett’s Molloy, Moran debates the issue with Father Ambrose, who sides with Eco’s Jorge (a Dominican – who is blind):
“What a joy it is to laugh, from time to time, he said. Is it not? I said. It is peculiar to man, he said. So I have noticed, I said. A brief silence ensued. […] Animals never laugh, he said. It takes us to find that funny, I said. What? he said. It takes us to find that funny, I said loudly. He mused. Christ never laughed either, he said, so far as we know. He looked at me. Can you wonder? I said.”
You laughed, right? Christ, I reckon, would have cracked up too! Did he not have a Beckett-like sense of the absurd (gnats and camels, logs and splinters), the ironic (calling Simon a Πετρος, telling fishermen where to fish), and even the coarse (suggesting that one go starkers in court [Matthew 5:40], insinuating that the Pharisees are full of crap [Mark 7:15]). And is anyone going to tell me that a man who likes to party, with a reputation to go with it, doesn’t like a laugh? So with many a Renaissance Humanist, Eco’s William of Baskerville (a Franciscan, one of God’s “merry men” – who can see because he wears spectacles) was surely right: of course Jesus laughed!
]]>With many other Christians in the United States and many more abroad, I have watched with horror in recent years as the name of Jesus has been used to serve national ambitions and justify war. Forgetting the difference between discipleship and partisanship, and with complete indifference to the wisdom and insights of the Christian tradition, we have recast the faith according to our cultural preferences and baptized our prejudices, along with our will-to-power, in the shallow waters of civic piety. [ ]
Like Bonhoeffer, I fear that the gospel has been humiliated in our time. But if this has happened, it is not because the message -- the good news that God loves us unconditionally in Jesus Christ, that we are freed and forgiven in God's amazing grace -- has changed. Nor is it due to the machinations of secularists, or because the post-Enlightenment world has dispensed with the hypothesis of God. The Christian faith has not only endured modernity and post-modernity, but flourished in its new settings.
The gospel has been humiliated because too many American Christians have decided that there are more important things to talk about. We would rather talk about our country, our values, our troops, and our way of life; and although we might think we are paying tribute to God when we speak of these other things, we are only flattering ourselves. [ ]
Franklin Graham, the evangelist (and son of Billy Graham), boasted that the American invasion of Iraq opens up exciting new opportunities for missions to non-Christian Arabs. This is not what the Hebrew or Christian prophets meant by righteousness and discipleship. In fact, the grotesque notion that preemptive war and the destruction of innocent life pave the way for the preaching of the Christian message strikes me as a mockery and a betrayal.
But if Franklin Graham speaks truthfully of the Christian faith and its mission in the world -- as many evangelicals seem to believe -- then we should have none of it. Rather, we should join the ranks of righteous unbelievers and big-hearted humanists who rage against cruelty and oppression with the intensity of people who live fully in this world. I am certain that it would be better for Christians to stand in solidarity with compassionate atheists and agnostics, firmly resolved against injustice and cruelty, than to sing "Amazing Grace" with the heroic masses who cannot tell the difference between the cross and the flag.
The author shows that the most prominent voices in American evangelicalism have arrogantly redefined Christianity on the basis of partisan politics rather than scripture and tradition. The role of politics in distorting the Christian message can be seen most dramatically in the invasion of Iraq, he argues: Some 87% of American evangelicals supported going to war, while every single evangelical church outside the United States opposed it.
“With many other Christians in the United States and many more abroad,” says Marsh, “I have watched in horror as the name of Jesus has been used to serve national ambitions, strengthen middle-class values and justify war. ...We have recast the faith according to our cultural preferences and baptized our prejudices, along with our will to power, in the shallow waters of civic piety.”
Marsh argues that the Christian Right must move away from the divisiveness and fervor of the political arena and return to bearing quiet witness to the Gospel in the practices of hospitality, peacemaking and contemplative prayer. "Wayward Christian Soldiers" is a meditation on keeping the mysteries of the faith from political misuse while offering ideas on how to be a Christian after George W. Bush. Offering an authentic Christian alternative to the narcissistic piety of popular evangelicalism, "Wayward Christian Soldiers" represents a unique entry into the increasingly pivotal debate over the role of faith in American politics.
As former leaders of ex-gay ministries, we apologize to those individuals and families who believed our message that there is something inherently wrong with being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families. Although we acted in good faith, we have since witnessed the isolation, shame, fear, and loss of faith that this message creates. We apologize for our part in the message of broken truth we spoke on behalf of Exodus and other organizations.
We call on other former ex-gay leaders to join the healing and reconciliation process by adding their names to this apology.
We encourage current leaders of ex-gay programs to have the courage to evaluate the fruit of their programs. We ask them to consider the long-term effects of their ministry.
From Michael Bussee's statement of apology:
Thirty years ago, I helped create EXODUS International. Today, I am here to apologize. Today, I am a licensed Marriage and Family therapist, a father, a born-again, evangelical Christian—and a proud gay man. [ ]
In the midst of all of this, my own faith in the EXODUS movement was crumbling. No one was really becoming “ex-gay.” Who were we fooling? As one current EXODUS leader admitted, we were just “Christians with homosexual tendencies who would rather not have those tendencies.” By calling ourselves “ex-gay” we were lying to ourselves and to others. We were hurting people. [ ]
Since then, I have remained one of EXODUS’s most persistent critics – not because I want to “deny hope.” On the contrary, I want to affirm that God loves every person—and that God’s love and forgiveness does indeed change lives. It has certainly changed mine. It just didn’t make me straight. I have found harmony between my sexuality and my spirituality—and I am hopeful that others can do the same.