Right Wing World's Response to Paris Attack: Impeach Obama!

Whenever something awful happens (except for the wide berth given the Bush Administration following September 11), things inevitably get political. And each side declares that the other is "politicizing" the tragedy, usually while simultaneously politicizing it themselves. Sadly, such is the case with Friday's terrorist attacks in Paris.

And right after this left-right thing (which frankly comes with far more volume and crassness from the right*), comes the inevitable blame game. Regardless of how they get there, it's a) the fault of Democrats in general, b) the fault of President Obama, c) the fault of John Kerry, or d) the fault of Hillary Clinton. They're also apt to pick any or all of the above, and the funny thing is, it doesn't have to make sense or have any basis in reality. It's the "Thanks, Obama" punchline, except they're for some reason, serious. And then, inevitably comes the calls for impeachment. The charge? No idea, outside of "presidentin' while black."

Here's a post from Right Wing World Ground Zero, FreeRepublic.com, and not just from the page, but from site creator Rim Job Jim Rob himself.

[Excerpted entirely due to short length]

Jim Robinson of Free Republic with succubus alien being demon seed
Ann Coulter, from source.

Impeach Obama NOW!! Before the Islamofascists attack US again!!

Posted on 11/13/2015, 10:04:58 PM by Jim Robinson

Obama's wanton lawlessness, criminal incompetence, willful neglect, refusal to enforce the law, refusal to secure the borders, refusal to even recognize the obvious enemy, refusal to take Islamic terrorism seriously, etc, leaves us wide open to terrorist attack. Our borders and nation must be secured! All Islamics here on temporary visas must be rounded up and deported now! Recent Islamic immigrants should be suspect. Obama's treasonous policies are inviting ISIS to attack us!!

Don't let it happen again.


And here are just a couple of responses, just to give you some flavor.


"This is just another reason of many for Obama to be impeached."

"I agree completely except it is too late. The radical left has taken over the country and are now consolidating their power.We will never give up and maybe we can take our country back but the only way I can see that happening is an act of God."

"I believe 45 percent of the country would support a democrat even if they were brain dead on a ventilator. We MUST win the presidency with either Trump/Cruz or both."


So much for hoping that a serious event might shake loose some sense on the right.

* If you don't believe me, check Michelle Malkin's or Ann Coulter's recent Twitter feeds.

ISIS Claims Credit for French Attacks

As an atheist, coming up with a response to religious extremism can be difficult. On one hand, I'm all for religious freedom (which entails freedom FROM religion), so I'm not about to come out assailing everyone of a particular religion. On the other hand, I find all religions to be at best a waste of time, and at worst (and provably) downright dangerous. So, I am simultaneously not Islamaphobic, but also pretty much anti-theistic.

Image from source, Huffington Post

That's not to say I don't condemn--across the board--violence in the name of religion. I'm against violence in general, actually. But in the name of religion, it is particularly vexing. If your religion calls you to violence, backs up your actions, and rewards you for it? It's clearly a fucking dangerous religion. Presently, Islam has more vocal and active adherents who wish do harm to random, innocent people (not that specific, less innocent people would be better), and as such, "Islamophobia" is an inevitable result in people who would not ordinarily harbor it.

Whenever Islamic extremists create mayhem somewhere in the world, many will decry "moderate Muslims" for not speaking up, and condemning the actions. This is somewhat unfair, as it isn't difficult to find prominent Muslims doing exactly that. But I'm ready to say that it isn't enough. However badly some Muslims feel--and I do feel for your average, ordinary Muslim who is now eyed suspiciously--there isn't enough outcry. I think they need a pope-like figure, or coalition of religious and state Islamic leaders, prominently decrying at top volume, and for a sustained period of time, any violence in the name of their religion. They need to forcefully excommunicate groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda, denounce them as heretics, shame them from the faith entirely. Divorce "radical Islam" from anything approaching the actual religion.

Short of that, it seems to me we should pull up stakes. Get the heck out of dodge. Can't we do that?

[Excerpt]

Islamic State Claims Responsibility For Deadly Paris Attacks

Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for attacks that killed 127 people in Paris, saying it sent militants strapped with suicide bombing belts and carrying machine guns to various locations in the heart of the capital. The attacks, described by France's president as an act of war, were designed to show the country would remain in danger as long as it continued its current policies, Islamic State said in a statement. . .

Read more at: The World Post

Christian Radio Host Ties Ebola to Atheism, Homosexuality

Christian Radio Host, Rick Wiles. Nice hair.

Ebola is a horrible virus that kills quickly and gruesomely. Most of us know what we know about it from terrifying novels by Robin Cook, and scary medical thriller movies. So, when it rears its real head in the world, it can kind of freak people out. Which is why the CDC immediately came out and said: you can't get this easily, it's only transmitted through body fluids.

The infected doctors who came here are in isolation, and presumably not sharing any body fluids with anyone. If another healthcare provider gets a needle stick or something, they're sure to be popped right into a plastic bubble. This is not a third-world country. Ebola is very unlikely to become a runaway plaque in the States. It's not airborne. But fearmongers know that there is money to be made by scaring the crap out of people. And they've coupled it with other well-known pocketbook opening boogeymen: atheists and homosexuals (oh my)!

Honestly, can anyone make excuses for this guy? And he's not alone either. I heard our local right-wing radio doofus, Kevin Wall, trying to tie Ebola to the border immigration story. I mean, WTF? Ebola, untreated, kills rather quickly. The quarantine time is something like three weeks, because by that time, you either live or die. How likely is it that these kids can traverse all the way across Mexico from Central America with a disease that wipes you out and quickly? And how did it get there from Africa? It's absurd.

[Excerpt]

‘Christian’ Radio Host: Ebola Will ‘Solve America’s Problems Of Atheism And Homosexuality’
 
Some people, when they look at the worst Ebola outbreak in history, hope for its quick end and for the safety of those in the communities affected. But others, like Christian Radio Host Rick Wiles, hope it spreads to the US and wipes out every last atheist and gay person in the country. . .

Read more at: AddictingInfo

EDITED: I got an odd tweet, taking me to task for not knowing what a virus is. It is totally possible I zipped this post out more quickly than I should have, so I've fleshed it out a little more. Funny, the guy was an atheist (and proudly so), so we'd actually probably get along.

Lawrence O'Donnell Rewrites Kentucky's "Noah's Ark" Theme Park

Who knew there were cranes in Noah's day? Image from Inquisitr.

Oh, this is good. As an atheist, it's not often you get something this good from a religious person. And Lawrence O'Donnell is a good (though perhaps not devout) Catholic. Like me, he has a few problems with some of the Bible's wackier stories, notably the one about Noah's Ark.

The Noah story figured prominently in my slide into atheism. In my confirmation classes, it was clear that everyone around me took Genesis, up to that point, as literal truth. I was having enough trouble with that, but Noah's Ark? Plot holes you can drive an ocean liner through. It cannot be taken as a literal story, unless one is a child, one hasn't really thought about the story since he was a child, or with an economy-sized tub of faith spackle.

So anyway, they're building a theme park in Kentucky, based around the Noah story, complete with a "replica" of the ark. Kentucky is apparently going to give this entirely religious production millions of dollars worth of tax credits. To a heathen like me, this is very irritating. So, I was relieved to find Lawrence on my side. And his piece is also quite entertaining. Especially his pronunciation of "Ark Park."
 

Bill Maher's New Rule on Noah's Ark Story Makes Right Wing World Angry

As an atheist, I can tell you that of all of the books in the Bible, it's Genesis that marks the spot for me where I started to doubt the story. Literally on page one, with the firmament, and the order of creation, then the separate, contradictory story of creation. And lots of other things. But it's the Noah's Ark story that made me think, "surely, nobody really believes this."

The story can't be taken seriously without enormous faith goggles. There are plot holes galore, not to mention that the moral is really questionable, and this God guy comes off more like a monster. And yet, this fable is often presented as a children's story! God killed every human except for one family, and presumably all of the plants and animals that didn't make it on the boat. Imagine the stench of that impossible amount of animals on a boat for six months. It's not a story for kids, it's a horror. [Story continues below]



Amazingly, this has been made into a major motion picture starring Russell Crowe. I may have to watch it, just to see how they gloss over the big potholes in the story, like how one family could play zookeeper to the entire world's remaining animals for so long. How and what they fed them. How they kept them from eating each other. Where and how they stored the insects, arachnids, viruses snd bacteria. How they managed to clean up all of that animal waste . . . gaaahhhhhhh. . . Just, nasty.

Because of the movie, Bill Maher devoted a portion of his "New Rules" to it on this past weekend's Real Time. From my perspective, Maher was dead on the money with every line, and was funny while doing it. But Right Wing World is aghast, appalled and offended. Surprise!

[Excerpt]

Bill Maher Slams Christian Films: God 'Psychotic Mass Murderer'

God is a "psychotic mass murderer" who "drowns babies," HBO's Bill Maher says in a rant about the upcoming film "Noah," slamming Christians for believing in in a deity that he says isn't true. Maher, on his "Real Time With Bill Maher" program Friday night, kicked off his rant — which left few religions untouched — by complaining he is sick of seeing ads for the Russell Crowe movie, calling it a "floating piece of giraffe crap,". . .

Read (if you must): Newsmax.com

God Smites "Creation Museum" Employee with Lightning

Kidding. Sort of. I'm actually an atheist, but a Creation Museum employee getting struck by lighting on the grounds? Erhm. . .that's just too funny, sorry. I mean, I'm sure it hurts like hell. I wouldn't wish it on anybody. But hey, this is literally what people mean when they say, "act of God," is it not? Oh, and for the record, the Creation Museum is ludicrous in virtually every way. Maybe God's a critic?

[Excerpt]

Creationism museum employee injured by lightning strike while on the job

A bit of the idiocy at the Creation Museum

An employee of Petersburg, Kentucky’s Creation Museum was struck by lightning Wednesday while clearing guests from a zip line attraction at the museum during a thunderstorm. According to Kentucky’s WLWT.com, the man was helping guests down from the wires as thunderstorms rolled into the area. . .

Read more at: Raw Story

Captain Obvious: Dictionary.com Doesn't "Get" Atheism

In my previous post, I acknowledged my difficulty with all of the talk of "prayer" and God whenever we have a natural disaster like the tornadoes of the last couple of days. I even got some fairly large readership out of it on Tuesday, for some reason. And a bit of back-and-forth with readers here on the blog, on Twitter and on The Huffington Post. It struck me--since religious people often do not take atheists' word for their lack of belief--that I ought to look up the dictionary definition of "atheism."

I was disappointed, to put it mildly. My understanding of the word is "without religon," or perhaps "without god(s)." The second version is problematic because there are religions that don't have gods, per se. To me, what my atheism means is: I don't have a religion. That's it. I don't have a doctrine, don't have holy books, a place of worship, a congregation, the belief in a higher power, "spirituality," or even a vague notion that there is an entity or entities with magic powers who oversee the universe and/or my sex life. I have no portion of my life devoted to any sort of religion, beyond whatever arguing I do about it in forums like this.

Fig. A - Dictionary.com's first set of definitions.

But, back to the dictionary. Dictionary.com is, of course, the easiest to remember site to go to online to look up the definition of a word, unless you just Google it. Maybe Google would have been the way to go though, because--as you can see in Fig. A--the definition offered up first by Dictionary.com is not good.

First, check out the two ads. Kind of goofy, at least from my perspective. Then, there is the first definition, "1. The doctrine or belief that there is no God." What's wrong with that? Well, there is no doctrine, for one. You can be an atheist without ever having heard of God, gods or even atheism itself, for that matter. And secondly, as I said before, it's a lack of belief in religion as well as any particular god, which covers more than "God." Second definition: "2. Disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings." This one is closer, though it doesn't adequately cover all religions. I'd also substitute "lack of belief," rather than "disbelief," because the latter sounds a bit too active for me, as though it takes effort.

So, I scrolled down to see if somewhere in there was something that I recognized as atheism. Fig. B shows what I found next. The Word Origin and History's "1580s, from Fr. Atheisme (16c.), from Gk. atheos 'without god,'" may reflect how the word came to be, but it still is narrowly focused on apparently the Christian God (though it is not capitalized). Moving down to the World English Dictionary, it gets worse, "Rejection of belief in God or gods." This one is really bad, because "rejection" denotes a strong action, as though one is belligerently casting aside a known truth or something. See, this is something many staunchly religious people believe about atheists, that they are really believers who have rejected God/Jesus. Not true. We simply don't believe. And then, the Cultural Dictionary's "Denial that there is a God." is a mixture of all of the above, focusing on a solitary God, with a strong action of denial.

Fig. B - More not quite right stuff.

So, let me make simple what the dictionary can't seem to do. Atheists merely lack belief in religion in all its forms. That includes God, gods, angels, saints, all doctrines and edicts, spirituality, and anything supernatural. There are "strong" atheists who won't much mind the "rejection/denial" type language, and they'll vehemently state plainly: "THERE IS NO GOD!" There are agnostics and agnostic atheists who simply don't know and/or care if there are gods or true religions. And there are people like me who find all that I've heard on the subject to be preposterous and vanishingly unlikely. Nearly all of us simply lack religion in our lives. It's not there at all. And yet, people will still insist that we have a "religion." It can be frustrating. . .

I'll put a button on this by saying that we're all born atheists. Nobody has religion downloaded into their brains on day one, it has to be learned. And almost everybody is an atheist as it pertains to ALL other religions but their own.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer Embarrassed On Camera by Atheist

Image from source, Raw Story

As an atheist, I can get tripped up on language, so I shouldn't be too hard on Wolf Blitzer. I had to train myself to say gesundheit when somebody sneezes, rather than "god bless you." But not all nearly automatic religious phrases are so easy to extract from the vocabulary. There are so many, most people probably don't even realize they come from the Bible. "Oh, god," and "Jesus Christ" are just the most obvious ones. But then, I'm not a high-paid journalist on CNN, I'm a hobbyist blogger.

What Blitzer does in this clip is make the assumption that if you are from Oklahoma, you must be a Christian. And while it is kind of the default there, and in much of America, it's not something you should assume. It's like assuming that the person you are talking to is heterosexual, it's not always the case, and could be embarrassing, depending upon the question. Anyway, part of Blitzer's mindset may have been that so many people when commenting upon a tragedy automatically resort to "prayer."

Whether it's a sincere belief that it will somehow do some good, or it's just a reflexive thing to say, "I'm sending my prayers" and similar phrases just filled Facebook and Twitter, not to mention the news channels*. Most people probably mean well, and surely some are in the same situation as I am, with a religion-saturated mental English phrase book. It has something to do with why I haven't blogged about the Oklahoma tornadoes until now. What can I add to this discussion?

Sure, I'm sorry, and it's heartbreaking to see and hear the details of what's going on. I can say "my heart goes out to the survivors," of course, which is exactly as helpful as prayer, which is to say, not much. So, I donated to the Red Cross. And I'm asking you to do it too. It's not even difficult.

Just get out your cell phone, start a new text to 90999 (where you'd ordinarily put a phone number), with the message:  REDCROSS   That will automatically donate $10 to the American Red Cross, and will be added to your phone bill. It literally couldn't be easier.

[Excerpt]

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer tells atheist tornado survivor: ‘You gotta thank the Lord’

With the number of atheists continuing to rise, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday afternoon learned the danger of assuming on live television that his interviewee is a Christian.

“I guess, you gotta thank the Lord, right?” he told the survivor of a deadly tornado that ripped through Oklahoma. “Do you thank the Lord?. . .”

Read more at: Raw Story

*As an aside, I've got to say that I find the notion of prayer in these situations to be hard to fathom. To me, prayer is basically wishing, hoping, begging to get what you want, with the intensity going up according to the direness of the wish. When something good comes to pass (survival, good health, good fortune), "God answered our prayers." When something bad happens, you have to get down on your knees and pray some more. And have people pray for you, even if who you're praying for is already dead, or missing. For the missing, prayer is really perplexing. It's almost like a Schrödinger's cat exercise. Since we don't know whether the missing person is alive or dead, offering up a prayer essentially makes them that cat in the box, and our prayer can decide its fate. When in reality, that person is either really alive or dead. The prayer isn't going to change that. And you're offering these prayers to a deity that is responsible for the natural disaster in the first place! Further, what are the implications of being saved by a prayer, when there is death and devastation all around you? They didn't pray (or have loved ones who prayed for them) hard enough? They weren't worthy? 

So, now maybe you understand why I have such difficulty expressing myself and dealing with others' expressions after tragedies like this. When you are a person who puts "God" (as a concept and a being) on more or less equal footing with Superman and Yosemite Sam, it is difficult  to hear this imaginary being invoked repeatedly as though it does any good. Besides making the person who expresses the sentiment feel better, of course.

Michigan Bill Would Allow Refusal of Medical Treatment for Religious Reasons

Image from source, Addicting Info

I know that atheists, agnostics and other non-religious people get a bad rap for knocking religion, and sometimes making a spectacle of themselves. This is because it is so rare that they do it. Religious people have a hard time conceiving of a life without religion. So much so, that they will insist that atheism is itself a religion, despite it's very definition meaning "without religion." Many, if not most religious people see much of life through a religious lens. They think that people can't be moral without God (or at least, their idea of God). They think that among every religion that exists or has existed, theirs is the correct one. And though they'll find other religions to be false and frankly kind of weird, they see no weirdness in their own wacky religion (and they're all wacky from outside them, sports fans).

But you know what, that's cool. As an atheist, I really don't care if you believe in talking snakes, a somehow populated Land of Nod, that all of the animals on earth arrived in pairs in the Middle East in time for the great flood, or that a virgin got pregnant by a disembodied deity. But you can't make the rules for others who don't share (or even do share) your faith. You can't write laws based on your beliefs, when those laws affect the general public. If you are a doctor or a pharmacist or other healthcare provider, you don't get to withhold treatment to people based on your faith. If you're treating a patient, it's not about you!

This should be clear, but suddenly there is a mass confusion around "religious freedom" in this country. Suddenly a pharmacy is a church? An insurance company is a church? You've got florists, bakers, photographers and inns refusing to serve gay couples, because it violates their faith. . .what? How? Do they interview all of their customers to make sure their lives match up with the business owner's beliefs? It's bonkers. I've actually seen the argument made by The National Organization for Marriage (NOM)--an arm of the Catholic Church--that same-sex marriage violates religious freedom! Whose? How? You don't get the freedom to not be offended. If your religion bans pork, you don't get to outlaw it for others. It's long past time for religious people--particularly the very loud, very bitchy version--to stop pretending that they're persecuted in this country. And to stop trying to make us live by their rules.

[Excerpt]

Religious Beliefs Would Kill Patients’ Rights In New Michigan Bill

In December, the Republican dominated Michigan Senate slammed through a bill that would have allowed medical professionals to deny care to patients for religious reasons. The bill wound up going nowhere in the House and died after the legislative session ended. But now, a similar bill is once again making it’s way to the Senate floor for a vote. . .

Read more at: Addicting Info

Crazy Creationists: Dinosaurs Fled the Flood!

Last night I posted a piece about Mitt Romney' literal belief in his wacky religion. And, I noted that as an atheist, I find 'em all wacky, so I'm not so much singling Mormonism out, as I am saying it's just extra special goofy. But Mitt's not alone in his belief in unbelievable things.

Somehow, I got on the Creation Ministries International mailing list. And these folks are literal believers in the book of Genesis. Just FYI, that's the book that set me on the road to atheism, because it was taught to me at the same time as freshman Earth science. Guess which book won? Anyway, Genesis is chock full of ridiculous things that only the deeply deluded could believe are literal. From the "firmament" to the items set into it, from the cleanliness rules to the list of sacrificial requirements, from the conflicting dual creation stories to there being light before there was a light source? All of it is frankly unbelievable.


























But nothing is more ridiculous than the flood story. Forget that there are (again) two conflicting Noah's Ark stories, and different numbers of animals in each. There are problems with the size of the boat. There are problems with the technology of building such a boat. There's the problem of how every kind of animal got to the middle east, and then re-dispersed themselves back to from whence they came. There are the uncomfortable facts about feeding and housing these animals for such an extended period, and what they would do about the waste. How did they keep the animals from eating each other, or the humans? How did they transport the bacteria, viruses, insects, arachnids and amoeba? How did the sealife and freshwater animals survive in the stirred up, seawater/rainwater/sediment-filled water? How did plantlife and fungi survive submerged for 100 days? And we're not even talking about where the water came from, and where it went! Why would an "all-loving" god murder his "children," no matter how disobedient they were?

Creation Museum folly. Image from Bay-of-Fundie.com

On top of this is the question of dinosaurs. Why doesn't the Bible mention dinosaurs? Well, some try to parlay allusions of "dragons" and whatnot into dinosaurs, but it's a stretch. It actually makes the bible sound more like a bunch of fables to me. So, the question is, if man coexisted with dinosaurs, why do they get such scant coverage in the Bible? Why weren't they on the Ark? Did Noah take dinosaur eggs, rather than full-grown T-Rexes and Stegosauri? Why isn't it mentioned?

Obviously, it isn't mentioned, because the writer(s) of Genesis never heard of dinosaurs, and thus couldn't write about them. They didn't realize that the sun is the source of our light, so they could say it was created after light. They didn't know how clouds, the atmosphere, the orbits of the moon and planets, or stars in the universe worked, so they made crap up about the celestial bodies being placed in a bowl that separated the waters of heaven and earth. There are so many, countless, obvious problems with Genesis, an irreligious person like me just stands with my mouth agape. How can any adult take these fairy tales seriously?

And then I get my latest installment of further attempts at devising a narative that makes sense out of a book that really doesn't.  You know what I liken groups like Christian Ministries International to? I liken them to Rankin-Bass. You know, the studio that made such holiday classics as, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Year Without a Santa Claus. In those holiday specials, they took all of the implausibilities in the Santa Claus story, and explained them in such a way as to keep kids believing it just a little while longer. And as kids, we wanted to believe. That's all this foolishness is.

If you are interested (and I hope it's only for amusement value), you can find this group here: Christian Ministries International.

Romney Gets Testy About Mormonism

I'm frankly amazed that Mitt Romney's religion hasn't come more into play in this election. As an atheist, I find all religions to be on the edge of wacky. But Mormonism has that extra layer of crazy frosted with a thick layer of WTF? icing. So, when I see a video of Willard very clearly completely believing his religion's spiel (Jesus is coming to Missouri!), It just makes me freakin' terrified that this man could get this close to the presidency.

Video found at: JoeMyGod.com

Much Ado About "God" in the DNC Platform

Oh, good GOD. Image from MediaMatters.

As an atheist, I'm delighted to hear that one of the nation's two major parties has no reference to "God" in its platform. We're not voting for bishop or priest or vicar, are we? We do have separation of church and state--something that's good for both church and state--right? The platform does address religion and the Democratic Party's positions on same, right? So, what's the friggin' problem?

Honestly, I've actually seen it written that "the name of God" has been stricken from the DNC platform. It was never there! "God" isn't a name, it's a noun. "God's" name is Jehovah or Yahweh or Jesus Sr. or some such, yes? And if this really bothers you. . .attention evangelicals: you have a Mormon and a Catholic on your ticket. Both are uneasy allies with your more "fundamentalist" faith. Sort that out, and forget the party platform of a party you weren't going to vote for anyway.

Sorry, but stirring religion in my politics really ticks me off.

[Excerpt]

Dishonest Fox Graphic: God Edition

Fox News has fixated on the fact that the Democratic platform for 2012 does not mention the word "God," and used a misleading graphic that points out that the Republican platform for 2012 references "God" more often than the Democratic platform has in any of the last four election years. The graphic ignores that in 2000 and 2004, the Democratic platform contained the word "God" more times than the Republican platform in those years; moreover, the 2012 Democratic platform has a section on faith. . .

Read more at: Media Matters

Lawrence O'Donnell Rewrites Paul Ryan's Love Affair with Ayn Rand

How can a person go on at length for years about how much they love the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and then--once a potential candidate for Vice President--say that you disagree with her philosophy? Paul Ryan couldn't have overlooked that she was an atheist, and kind of a nutjob, cold he? And how could Rand's philosophy of selfishness put Ryan on the idea of public service anyway? I'll never understand Republicans.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Captain Obvious: On Gays and Atheists (Or GAYtheists)

I wasn't sure if this should be under the banner of Captain Obvious, or one of my other loosely structured banners. What the whole post is about, is the extremely odd place I hold in today's America, that of the gay atheist. Or Gay-theist if you will. Which is awkward, because it reads like a theist who is gay. But I'm an atheist who is gay. Which makes me ready to call myself a gatheist, which isn't right either. I therefore coin the phrase, GAYtheist, and hope that people can suss out the meaning, without a literal Latin interpretation, mmmkay? Mmmkay.

My understanding of my personal sexuality (Kinsey-six gay) and my personal religion (none: strong agnostic/atheist) was on a parallel track, and has its. . .I want to say Genesis, but really I think crux is better. . .at about 14 years of age. I knew I was different at a very, very early age. I knew that the term "sissy" was bad, and had the internal realization that it simultaneously applied to me, and that I needed to do all I could to hide that fact. This is at four to five years old, you understand. No frills, no lace, no ruffles, no dollies. And truth be told--other than the Easy Bake Oven and other such gadgets--I was cool with that. I liked trucks and Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs and Erector Sets.

Jimminy Cricket seems oddly appropriate here.

But, I also wanted a boyfriend in kindergarten. I was strangely intrigued by a kid named Jay, who in kindergarten, got confused about propriety, and came out of the in-classroom restroom with his butt showing. I wanted my one-year younger brother's classmate Rhett to notice me (in second grade!). When playing with my brother and my same-aged friend as a threesome, I was the "housewife." While I didn't identify or want to be a female, I was different. This shit dates back to the beginning.

Complicating matters for me, was the fact that I and my siblings had an interloper in our midst, a family member who inappropriately insinuated their self. One of the things that is problematic about sexual molestation for the survivors is that people lay a whole psychological profile upon them. For future reference, lay off of them. The fact that a person has been molested is not a reflection upon their identity.

What do I mean by that? Only that my siblings are heterosexual. I'm homosexual, no ifs-ands-or-buts. and it has zero, and I mean zero to do with what happened back at the 12-14 age range. In fact, that shit made it tougher to come out, because I knew that once I was public, some people would draw those conclusions. My realization at fourteen that I was gay was a culmination of facts in evidence from my earliest recollections. The unwanted attentions of a relative were a confirmation of that, not the instigator of it.

Anyway, all of this came to light at almost the exact same time that I was sussing out my opinions on religion. We'd been raised nominally Christian, with Easter, Christmas and the rest, but only lightly. There was a little church, Mom read to us from Golden Book-style kid's bibles. But it wasn't drilled into us. The emphasis on God and Jesus was about the same as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. When the latter three were revealed to be frauds, God and Jesus were left defenseless. They were never disavowed, but the writing was on the wall.

Due to an afore-mentioned best friend/not-so-secret crush, I was attending confirmation classes in a teenaged Sunday school at a local Lutheran church. The church was warm and welcoming, the fellowship strong and the donuts yummy. But ultimately, I had to back out. I was learning Freshman Earth Science simultaneously, and it quite simply cancelled out the church stuff I was learning. At the age of 15, I was internally a gay atheist. It would be many, many years before I shared that fact with anybody.

So, the point of this post is to point out some obvious facts about The Gay Thing and The Religion Thing as it pertains to atheists. And in no particular order, they are:

- Don't trust Christians to tell you what an atheist is, or believes.
- Don't trust a homophobe to tell you what a gay person is, or believes.
- Gay people do not "recruit." Heterosexual parents make plenty of gay people unassisted. There  is no need to "recruit."
- Molestation doesn't "make" a person gay, though it can complicate the process of discovery. The simple fact is, far too many kids are molested. The outcome is never pretty, but it doesn't cause "conversion."
- Atheists do not belligerently reject a god they believe in. They quite simply don't believe in the first place.
-  Similarly, atheists don't "hate" God or religion. They simply don't believe in it.
- Gays and atheists do not--broadly speaking--have monolitic beliefs. They're individuals. They're like people, that way.
 - There is no unified "gay agenda." In fact, the super-right-wing's idea of a gay agenda is far more developed than any real gay agenda.
- The "gay lifestyle" is a term with its roots in 1970s personal ads in "legitimate" newspapers. they needed a euphemism,  and that is what we've been saddled with.
- "Ex-gay" people were either never gay to begin with, are bisexuals suppressing their "gay" sides, or gay people in denial. Period. I've met too many "ex-ex-gays" to believe otherwise.  

I don't claim to have all the answers. But I can say--as a gay atheist--that I'm not unhappy with my life or my decisions. I believe this is the life you get, and there are no others. I believe there is no "higher authority," or "higher purpose." I think we're on this plane, and we're in this world. We must live life to its fullest, because it's the only life we've got. And we should live life respecting all others' lives and rights and freedoms as we respect our own.

That's pretty simple. It doesn't require God. It doesn't require anything but reason and logic. And this post is terribly inadequate to its task. As a gay atheist I will cop to the fact that I can't speak for all of us, and implore the reader to understand that no one can. No single individual should be allowed to speak for an entire group.

Another Creationist Bill in Missouri

C'mon, are they serious? When I was growing up (and I'm aware that was a while ago), there were certain things that were understood to be true. Like, child labor was bad. Unregulated, laissez faire  capitalism was bad. Combining church and state was bad. These weren't radical things, they were simply "social studies." And in science, we learned about evolution. Nobody made a big deal about it. Religious people manage to square it on Sunday with their Bibles. I, on the other hand, gravitated into the "non-believer" category.

But evolution wasn't denied by people openly, or at least not that I remember. Inherit the Wind, which chronicled the Scopes "Monkey" Trial was seen as a lesson from a less enlightened time. It was shown to us in school! Somewhere along the way, all of these "accepted" things have been seemingly coming undone. Newt Gingrich advocates forced child labor, at least for poor kids. Unregulated capitalism is championed by every single Republican candidate for president. And they're all in favor of combining church and state, going so far as to say they were never supposed to be separate in the first place! Evolution though, has been under attack going back a little longer.

As a heathen myself, I find the creationist and "intelligent design" stories to be greatly lacking as any kind of "theories." They are certainly not science. And they don't even answer the question! If a religionist is going to say that the universe is too complicated to have "just happened," how do they figure that inserting an all-powerful super-being into the story simplifies things? They've just inserted hugely complicated new step.

[Excerpt]


Missouri GOP Introduces Second Creationism Bill In State Legislature


As if one creationism bill wasn’t enough already, Missouri Republicans have introduced a second one in an attempt to force Christianity on schools one way or another. . . 

Read more at: Addicting Info

Christopher Hitchens, Dead at 62

Christopher Hitchens wouldn't want us to wax nostalgic, and long for his effervescent life force. He'd say "bollacks" to that sort of sentiment. Hitchens was a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, a confirmed anti-god sort of person. And so am I. So, I can be sad for his passing. Lament that I won't read a new volume of his musings. But I won't ponder whether or not he's suspended above me in an etheral, extra- scientific embodiment. He's just gone. And that's sad. Even if his political ideas were bollacks.

[Excerpt]

Christopher Hitchens Dead: Legendary Writer Dies At Age 62        

Christopher Hitchens died Thursday in Houston. He was 62. The legendary writer was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2010. . .

Source: Huffington Post

Atheists and Gays Against Perry

Here's a very well done, and very funny parody of (and response to) Rick Perry's anti-gay, pro-religion ad.

Please Visit Us on Facebook & Twitter

Ever since Greenlee Gazette began in June 2007, I've received valuable help from my good friend who goes by the pseudonym Stupid Monkey Planet. He fills in for me when I'm away, he descends from the canopy at irregular occasions to brighten up the blog, and he provides countless links that help me keep the blog fresh and interesting.

He has recently started the Stupid Monkey Planet Church of Primatheism on Facebook. There will be some crossover between SMPCoP and Greenlee Gazette both on Facebook and here on the blog. But you'll find countless bonuses on his site that do not appear here. 


But it's difficult to get these things moving in a vacuum, so here is an appeal to you to join us both in these other venues. Please click the links below to join us there. It only takes a few seconds! Thank you for reading, and please come back often!

   

Captain Obvious: Atheists Do Not Have a Faith

This is just a quick post, written after too many "faith" and "religion" posts that I've read recently. In America, we are not required to follow any particular--or any at all--religion, or "faith." Unfortunately for we "unfaithful," the faithful cannot comprehend our disbelief. Most religious people, particularly the devout kind, have an extremely difficult time putting their selves in our shoes. To them, unbelievers are belligerent people, denying the truth that they secretly believe to be true. No.

Again, NO. Atheists, atheistic agnostics and other irreligious people simply don't believe in god or gods, deity or deities. It isn't up to us to explain or discover the origin of the universe. We don't claim to know the secrets to all that is. We just simply state that we don't subscribe to the belief systems of the thousands/hundreds of thousands/millions of religions that have dominated the earth. We hold a neutral, non-supernatural "what is, is" philosophy. That is no more a faith than "bald" is a hair color.

I'm a Triple Minority!

How could I say such a thing as a white man in America? This is a little post about a small realization I just had. I'm gay. I'm an atheist (yeah, I'm finally going to own it). And I'm a non-sports fan! I'm a triple minority!

Big deal, you might say. And to the gay thing, I'd agree. The folks that have a problem with that are dying out, and it really isn't much of an issue in my day-to-day life. But that's just the thing.

Imagine your life as a pie chart. Most people have a "work life" wedge. Most have a "home life" wedge, and if you're lucky it is subdivided into "alone time" and "relationship" wedges. That wedge also includes "family obligations", if we still have parents, or adult children. But I'm missing two wedges: religion and sports fandom.

This is why people are wrong (even people I'm fond of, like Thom Hartmann) when they try to say that atheism is a religion in itself. No it's not. It is the absence of religon. There is no section of my life devoted to atheism, besides the odd post here on the blog, or arguments online or in real life. I don't spend time in deep thought about it, there is no list of commandments, no contemplation about "spirituality." It is simply deleted from my pie.

The same goes for sports. I can watch a game, and even enjoy it, as long as I know who I'm supposed to root for. But following sports? Having allegiences and rivalries, and "hated" teams? It literally makes zero sense to me. My brother has similar feelings, though far more militant (yes, he's a militant anti-sportsist). So that sports-fandom wedge is also absent from my pie.

Maybe that's why I simply can't figure out why coaches carry any allegiance from people. I'm from Ohio, and I couldn't understand the over-the-top love for Woody Hayes. I can't even name a subsequent coach. My sister--a diehard Buckeye, but also an atheist--probably just rolls her eyes at that one. But what can explain the people enraged by the firing of the Penn State coach, Joe Paterno (believe it or not, I had to just look up his name)? The sports wedge seems to be a whole lot like the religion wedge.

All of this is not a declaration that I'm better than you, or have life figured out. I just find it interesting that folks have entire dedicated parts of their life that I don't share. The human experience isn't the same for everybody. I just seem to find myself on the minority side of several of the experiences.

WAIT! I have no children! I'm a quadruple minority!!!