Defending the barely defensible, or when a "chorus of opinions" translates into Christianity alone.

Amid the editor's recitation of "a lot of voices," I see no mention of the two weekly Christian religion columnists, Tom May and Nancy Kennedy, who have been running in the pages of the Jeffersonville newspaper for quite some time now.

May gets an additional "general interest" column placement, which often hints at the religious point of view. It's difficult to accept exculpatory pleas of "a lot of voices" when one guy gets two shots.

ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to "Pagan Life," a weekly column devoted to heathens, infidels, idolaters, atheists, non-theists, irreligious people, agnostics, skeptics, heretics and apostates.

If in fact the object of the local chain newspaper's guest column strategy is to offer a diversity of opinion, when does this noble goal extend to the practice of religion?

After all, there are a good many more religious perspectives than Christianity alone, as well as the equally compelling points of view afforded by those with no religious orientation whatever.

But wait.

I've just now searched the newspaper's cluttered on-line portal and see that no religion columns have appeared there since October. Are they still running in the print copies, obscured by the shadow of your parakeet?

Could it be my prayers have been answered? I doubt it, but a skeptic can dream, and as he does, note also the absence of African American and Latino voices from the roster.

DUNCAN COLUMN: A chorus of opinions, by Susan Duncan (Mostly Jeffersonville News and Tribune)

 ... Back to our former reader. She wrote in her letter, “There is only one Author that writes for you that is worth reading and that is Lindon Dodd.”

Well, I like Lindon’s writing, too. He can be funny, thoughtful, irreverent and more. But I believe many of our other columnists — likely she’s referencing them, as opposed to reporters who also write — have merit and are worth your time to read.

Chris Morris’ writing is replete with homespun Southern Indiana charm. Erin Thompson adds her savvy mom perspective. Terry Stawar entertains and educates. Barb Anderson challenges us to be our better selves. Amanda Beam brings both spunk and heart to her tales. Terry Cummins weaves a lesson or two into each column. Newcomer Mike Matthews brings us together. The descriptions from another Mike, Lunsford, make everyday happenings relatable. So, too, are the musings of Tom May from his view in the Catbird Seat. And we occasionally run columns by Mark Bennett, who gets to the heart of what’s important in life.

We also publish guest columns from current and former elected officials, including U.S. Sen. Todd Young, U.S. Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, and Congressman Lee Hamilton. Two of those men are Republicans, and when Democrat Hamilton was in the U.S. House, he reached across the aisle so much he created a bridge for comprise.

Other periodic columnists include Leo Morris, John Krull, Mary Beth Schneider, Shane Phipps, Bill Ketter, Kelly Hawes and Brian Howey, all more politically oriented with a statewide or national focus. Why? They add variety and cause us to evaluate our own opinions on the issues before us.

That’s a lot of voices. I add my own to the chorus sometimes, tackling issues or encouraging more intentional living ...

ON THE AVENUES: I'm a citizen of the universe, but I can't take a photo to save my life.

While lounging at Pints&union on a recent Saturday afternoon I found myself chatting with estimable local photographer David Modica. Upon returning home to the lair and glancing at the mound of old travel slides waiting to be scanned and digitized, it occurred to me how much a practiced lensman like David could have achieved in the East Bloc during the late 1980s.

However a second thought arrived quickly on the heels of the first, this being the vague memory of conditions on the ground that rendered an already poor photographer like me even worse at shutter's snap -- this in addition to my prior observation that when you're carrying enough cheap slide film to last through a six-month trip, there does not exist the luxury to squeeze off dozens of shots from which to select the best.

Of course there’s no point denying that my wretchedness as a photographer was exacerbated by a reticence to be intrusive by pointing my camera at people who might conclude this well-heeled foreigner was seeking unflattering angles. Americans tended to be well-received within the communist perimeter at the time (a Polish man once told me the only person more popular in his country than Pope John Paul II was Ronald Reagan), but matters could get complicated if they thought you were laughing at them, as opposed to commiserating with them.

I've forgotten something else during the subsequent three decades of post-communist life. There was a certain measure of self-imposed restraint felt by many visitors based on advice in then-popular travel books to the effect that visiting a “police” state meant risking problems if you photographed taboo objects or potentially embarrassing social conditions.

As an aside, friends always used to ask me if it felt dangerous to holiday in the Eastern European worker’s paradise, and I'd say no, quite the contrary; it felt very safe if the word “safety” were to be defined by the absence of violence directed against us as tourists – as opposed to pervasive bullying by the government against people living there.

In fact while abroad in 1989 I was pickpocketed, drugged and robbed, and also had my credit card stolen -- in France, Spain and Austria, respectively, not Czechoslovakia, East Germany or the Soviet Union. The one time I can recall feeling disconcerted while traveling was in 1985 when soldiers with machine guns were posted on street corners throughout Istanbul, Turkey -- a capitalist country, by the way -- because there’d only recently been a military coup. Too much Midnight Express, I suppose, although it proved to be a delightful stay otherwise.

Being a westerner in a communist country meant that one way or another, we were supplying the regime with much needed hard currency, whether via an official change bureau or by means of the helpful conduit of a black marketer. Either way, like water running downhill, “real” western money was destined to find its way to the government in the end. Acordingly, we were encouraged to spend it.

Still, there were behavioral boundaries. Only the universally adored Australians could get away with rowdiness without apparent consequence. It’s just a gift they seem to have. Addressing photography, I can remember being told not to take pictures of people waiting in line to buy things, a common sight in the USSR (less so elsewhere in the Bloc). Military installations were verboten, too, along with other locales and buildings of strategic significance, with the precise definition being left to the government’s whim.

Much of this was bluff, and yet it could be daunting. Did hospitals count? Sports stadiums? Breweries? There was no way of knowing. Once in Moscow we happened upon a tangled pile of exposed film on the ground. It was very easy to imagine it being yanked from a camera, even if we didn’t witness the policeman in the act.

How would the gatekeepers have reacted to a tourist with a camera documenting the exterior of the central prison in Prague just down the street from where I stayed in 1989 with the family of my friend, where Vaclav Havel had been incarcerated for what proved to be the final time only a couple months before I arrived? I knew what the building represented, but I left it alone. The simple point is that I didn't want to risk it, and we can add a high degree of self-editing in terms of shot selection on top of my other inhibitions.

Besides, I was born to take lousy pictures and to live vicariously through the practiced eye of artists like Modica. Had he been along for the ride, he’d have found a way to capture the essence.

---

There’s a quote I’ve been trying to locate for years.

At this point I’m forced to concede the words I recall may or may not have been spoken, even if I continue to insist they were uttered by the track and field star Edwin Moses during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

It was a hideous spectacle, the Games of the XXIII Olympiad. Good intentions notwithstanding, the modern Olympics have been politicized from the very start, as I suspect they also were in ancient Greece. Apart from the year 1984 serving as a convenient pretext for rereading of George Orwell’s novel of the same name, it also was an election year and the very pinnacle of the Cold War, Reaganism and Thatcherism.

Not unexpectedly the Hollywood filmmaker David Wolper was enlisted to “produce” the Olympics for global television, with every last movie gimmick trick from the arsenal of the Ben Hur generation in La La Land duly deployed and exaggerated for patriotic effect. Unfortunately for the RayGunners, all this mind-boggling garishness was not witnessed in person by the Warsaw Pact nations; they all boycotted the Olympics except for Nicolae "Conducator" Ceausescu’s Romania, for which the US State Department happily rewarded the dictator with enough slack to oppress his own people for another five years.

At some point amid the propaganda extravaganza Moses won yet another medal and was interviewed by a fawning broadcaster, who was no doubt scandalized to hear the athlete comment that he considered himself a citizen of the universe – or something like that.

I can’t actually prove Moses said it, but no matter. If he did not, someone else did, and either way it was a light bulb moment for me. I’d long been arguing about the impossibility of “proving” irrational religious beliefs, but it suddenly became clear that mankind’s enduring instinct for sectarianism and tribalism, amplified to deafening pitch with the inception of the modern nation state’s industrialized toolmaking, predates religious superstition. Religion is a mere symptom, not the disease.

Consequently, for me this notion of mindless patriotism in the sense of publicly demonstrating one’s “love” of country in knee-jerk, childlike ways is pure nonsense, every bit as much as the blind worship of objects, whether they come in the form of a saint’s toenail, a totem or a flag. Humans have brains, and it might be helpful to use them on occasion. Love might be a many splendored thing, but it’s better directed at other humans and not debatable abstractions that serve primarily to reinforce existing power structures.

That’s because we’re humans first. I was born the same way those guys on the “other” side were, and ultimately I’ll die in precisely the same fashion as someone from Tibet, Chile or South Africa. The rest of it is sheer serendipity, and should be regarded as such. Surely we have better things to do with the brief time we have.

Yes, “go back to where you came from” has returned to the news cycle.

Sentiments like this always have been primeval screams favor an abysmally ignorant point of view, especially as they pertain to “love” of a nation state founded on the basis of welcoming humans from elsewhere to come slaughter and enslave the ones already here.

It’s even less defensible from the perspective of humanity as a whole, although in this as in most all similar circumstances, the eternal imperatives of capital accumulation, and the concurrent preservation of wealth and privilege for the few, depend on the reinforcement of arbitrary divisions.

The disease isn’t limited to Americans, although we seem to be in the process of perfecting it. It’s neither a Republican nor a Democratic affliction, as it flourishes across the political spectrum. When you rant at another human being to conform to your precepts or else get the hell out, the sound you’re hearing off in the distance is the One Percent laughing uproariously all the way to the bank. The fewest with the most simply adore the ease with which you are distracted.

Some readers are red-faced: But what about our brave men and women in the military, fighting to preserve our freedom?

Well, wouldn’t it be great if the deprived weren’t compelled by threat of violence to preserve wealth and power by killing others who are in precisely the same predicament?

Since the dawn of civilization wars have been fought by humans who quite honestly are chosen to die for someone else’s money, property, status and religion, not their own. Violence is an abomination at any level of the human experience, but it doesn’t get much worse than when it is amalgamated and wielded at the nation state’s massive economy of scale.

I respect the soldiers quite a lot -- so much so that I’d like to join with other fellow humans to determine ways of making their sacrifices less predictably common. If this requires a certain redirection of pitchforks, all the better.

Today’s column closes with the thoughts of Jason Williamson, one half of the Sleaford Mods, an English punk band.

“Racism is not the answer to your misery or feelings of alienation. It just isn’t. It never was. It’s just one of the many tools to keep you locked in a small room for the entirety of your life. Thank you. Look after each other. If you can.”

---

Recent columns:

July 11: ON THE AVENUES: Trieste, New Albany and the meaning of nowhere.

July 4: ON THE AVENUES: The 2019 remix, "You want some fries with your redevelopment?"

June 27: ON THE AVENUES: Mourning (and alcohol) in America, circa 1984.

June 18: ON THE AVENUES: Let's lift our voices for another verse of "Talking Seventh Inning Blues."

Come with me and escape ... from the Watch Tower: "Armageddon is always coming tomorrow."

Photo from Insider Louisville.

Kevin Gibson has written a fine article about (Insider Louisville) "a former Jehovah’s Witness and his quest to help others."

First, an excerpt from Wikipedia about the ... Christian denomination -- or is it a cult? Definitely a fringe sect among believers, claiming a mere 8.5 million adherents worldwide.

Jehovah's Witnesses are best known for their door-to-door preaching, distributing literature such as The Watchtower and Awake!, and refusing military service and blood transfusions. They consider the use of God's name vital for proper worship. They reject Trinitarianism, inherent immortality of the soul, and hellfire, which they consider to be unscriptural doctrines. They do not observe Christmas, Easter, birthdays or other holidays and customs they consider to have pagan origins incompatible with Christianity. They prefer to use their own Bible translation, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, although their literature occasionally quotes and cites other Bible translations. Adherents commonly refer to their body of beliefs as "The Truth" and consider themselves to be "in the Truth". They consider secular society to be morally corrupt and under the influence of Satan, and most limit their social interaction with non-Witnesses. Congregational disciplinary actions include disfellowshipping, their term for formal expulsion and shunning. Baptized individuals who formally leave are considered disassociated and are also shunned. Disfellowshipped and disassociated individuals may eventually be reinstated if deemed repentant.

Read Gibson's articles here:

Shunned: A former Jehovah’s Witness and his quest to help others (part 1)

Shunned: A former Jehovah’s Witness and his quest to help others (part 2)

 ... (Mike) Shemwell, now 41, hosts a podcast called “Shunned,” through which he not only tells his own story, but allows guests to tell their stories about escaping religious cults and other oppressive situations.

The podcast has more than 100,000 unique downloads, and Shemwell has found himself a guest on several other such shows.

The number of those excommunicated, often by choice, from such religions is growing, Shemwell says. He wants to help people not only escape their situations if they so desire, but also to heal once they’ve moved into a more “normal” lifestyle.

For the Shemwells, they faced a life of never seeing or hearing from their families again when they left. They faced a world in which they had no friends.

But they’ve not only survived — they’ve thrived. They now have a legion of friends, ironically, in people they knew before they were “disfellowshipped” from the religion as clients of their cleaning business. They’ve visited Niagara Falls and hiked the Adirondacks. They live a happy, American life.

But from the time Shemwell was 8, life was not so free, nor was it always happy ...

Ark Encounter humbuggery: "No Help From Noah."

If Noah had been truly wise,
He would have swatted those two flies.

No Help From Noah: The County That Banked on a Religious Theme Park to Solve Its Money Problems, by Alan Greenblatt (Governing)

Facing bankruptcy, Grant County, Ky., invested in the park hoping for a new revenue source. But cash has yet to start flooding in.

It’s possible that Grant County, Ky., has touched bottom. The county, which lies midway between Cincinnati and Lexington, almost ran out of money this spring, which would have prompted a state takeover.

In March, county officials approved a 2 percent payroll tax on local workers. This will bring in more than $3 million in the coming year, enough to avoid bankruptcy. But things will still be a bit dicey. Collection of the new tax won’t start until the beginning of the fiscal year, July 1 -- the same day the county faces a $500,000 payment on the debt it owes for jail operations. “We think we can make it to the end of the fiscal year,” says County Judge Executive Steve Wood, “but we may have to take out a loan.”

For a while, the county thought Noah’s Ark would save them. Desperate for a new revenue source, local officials gave hefty land grants and tax incentives to the Ark Encounter, a religious theme park that includes a “life-sized reconstruction” of Noah’s ship, along with a creation museum. The park opened last July, but due to the tax breaks, it hasn’t translated into any sort of public revenue windfall for the county.

Visitors to the Ark complex also haven’t been spending as much money as had been initially hoped. In part, that’s because there are few other attractions nearby to entice them to stay. There also aren’t enough hotel rooms to accommodate tourists or restaurants to draw them into local business districts. “We haven’t had anything really built yet,” Wood says. “That was probably wrong on our part” ...

Dunman on personal beliefs, public office, marriage licenses and why Dan Coffey should (but will not) read this.

It couldn't get any clearer.

Could it?

Opinion: County clerks cannot use the power of public office to impose personal beliefs on others, by Joe Dunman (Insider Louisville)

 ... But more troublesome than the logistical problems these bills create is the idea that state or county officials can even have religious objections at all. It’s important to understand that public officials like county clerks are government actors. While they’re at work, they’re not acting as private individuals. They’re acting as the government. When they stand behind that counter and issue licenses, or enforce the law in any way, they effectively cease to be individuals and instead become the government.

“The government” is people. It requires public officials to act in order for it to function. And those public officials swear an oath to uphold the constitutions of Kentucky and the United States (the latter trumps the former). In exchange for the power, prestige and compensation of public office, they agree to enforce the law and perform their duties regardless of their personal religious views. It’s critical that they do so, because neither Kentucky nor the United States is a theocracy.

FUCKIFINO: The words of this prophet were written on Facebook walls.

I usually manage it without any religion at all. 

I trust JeffG won't mind my reprinting this, seeing as it "won" the Internetz yesterday.

Yes, it's satire, which for those not allergic to it, exists to make important points, like this one: Religious persuasion is the choice, not sexual orientation.

On second thought, this may not be satire at all, in which case I wanna be a profiteering prophet of FUCKIFINO. After all, it's tax free.

---

In response to RINOs, DINOs and probably Quentin TaranTINO, we're pleased to announce the entirely sexless birth of FUCKIFINO, though as a church instead of an almost political party. Don't want to have to mess with those pesky rules and responsibilities. Plus, it's tax free. Congregant discounts are available for the first 1,000,000 applicants. And, yes, we're open to all.

Our tenets and practice guides will be community driven-- or crowd sourced, as it were. For every $50 tithed (15% off for the first 1,000,000 as mentioned), congregants earn the holist right to write the holy writ, randomly and permanently inscribing exactly one thing into the officially sanctioned and legally binding scripture that they either want to never have to do again or want to do every day without hassle.

Thus, when encountering intrepid statists inquiring as to the supernatural source of entirely personal preferences and habits, one need only respond "FUCKIFINO" in order to be covered by any number of RFRAs at the state and federal levels. The first three beloveds to openly declare their faith in court and under oath will be granted probationary prophet sharing privileges and refunded their initial $50 (or prorated discount amount), though we reserve the right to use their image and likeness on candles, condom carry cases, and any other fund-raising materials sufficiently consecrated as lucrative.

[insert legal disclaimer].

Amazingly, on RFRA, the farcical pharmacist Ron Grooms has voted against Indiana's best business and economic interests.

When old white guys live in cultural bubbles, this is what happens.

Hoosier business boosters battle boycott from 'religious freedom' bill ahead of Final Four, by Maureen Hayden (CHNI)

... (Chris) Gahl, along with a small army of Indianapolis boosters, is now scrambling to mitigate the public relations damage done by the controversy with this message: “No matter what a signed piece of paper says, it doesn’t kill Hoosier Hospitality.”

Back to the Ghetto: "Religiously conservative businesses" amid their own kind?

I recall the words of my hero Christopher Hitchens, even as I read about various legislative efforts (Arizona, Indiana) on the part of soon-to-be-extinct elderly white theocrats to sanction discrimination based on religious indoctrination:

"There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking."

First, the dawdling old white guys, cluelessly pandering.

Anderson Cooper Demolishes Arizona Politician Supporting Homophobic Bill, by Jack Mirkinson (The Huffington Post)

Then a journey into the "fully intended consequences" labyrinthe.

Arizona bill’s other outrage: Why anti-gay bigotry is just the beginning; Legalizing discrimination is horrible enough. But a sneaky pro-corporate provision in the bill will also shock you, by Emmett Rensin (Salon)

Of course, not excepting the propensity of theocratic fascists in Indiana to gaily hop aboard the discriminatory train.

Indiana official slows bill to allow some religious bias, by Tony Cook (IndyStar)

But let's also acknowledge a contrarian point-of-view, as offered with customary aplomb by RV:

From what I understand, the Arizona bill is a reaction to the New Mexico photographer who refused to work a gay commitment ceremony, & was subsequently sued for refusing. Should a gay caterer be forced to cater an event at Westboro baptist Church? Should a Muslim DJ be forced to spin records at a Satanist wedding? Should a Nation of Islam drycleaner be forced to clean Klan robes?

Stop the presses: Pat Robertson enticingly close to reasonable in rejecting Ken Ham's 6,000-year-old planet.

There's something almost epochal about Robertson, who has been batshit goofy in so many bizarre pronouncements for so very long, waxing quite near coherence on the topic of dinosaur bones and rock formations.

Of course, it all remains rooted in the doctrine of necessary mover, linked by theists with unverifiable notions of a supreme being. At least Robertson accepts scientific tenets of evolution. The net effect is to render Ken Ham and his drone followers more laughable than before ... and how is that possible?

Pat Robertson implores creationist Ken Ham to shut up: ‘Let’s not make a joke of ourselves’, by Scott Kaufman (The Raw Story)

Pat Robertson responded to the recent debate between Young Earth creationist Ken Ham and Bill Nye, a.k.a. “The Science Guy,” by reiterating his disagreement with Ham’s form of creationism.

“Let’s face it,” Robertson said, “there was a Bishop [Ussher] who added up the dates listed in Genesis and he came up with the world had been around for 6,000 years.”

“There ain’t no way that’s possible,” he continued. “To say that it all came about in 6,000 years is just nonsense and I think it’s time we come off of that stuff and say this isn’t possible.”

It's another Secular Sunday: Localism, creationism and the Ark Encounter.

Digressions like this one are perfect grist for quiet Sunday mornings at home, with coffee and kippers, far from the churchgoing population.

I suppose it's true that any reference to localism in the context of our region, in one or the other well-intentioned efforts to locate the components rendering us distinct and different, must be inclusive and recognize the self-defeating prevalence of superstitious nutjobbery.

What makes it even harder is that we cannot blame it entirely on Kentucky, or else Rhonda Rhoads would not be an Indiana office holder. Does it get any more representative than a Creation Museum?

Creationism, its museum, and Idiot America.

While founder and chief cartoonist Ken Ham is little more than a caricature, albeit it influential among the numerous delusionists, Bill Nye says quite sensible things, like this:

"We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future."

Meanwhile, LEO reports that Ham's next great revenue stream is in trouble. As an atheist and secular humanist, I can only hope that my psychic energy has played a part in depleting Ham's investment coffers.

Ken Ham: Ark Encounter close to failure because of “atheists,” “secular” media and possibly the devil himself, by Joe Sonka (LEO Weekly)

... How dare the Enemy — capitalized — trick people into not giving millions of their dollars to a man who makes his living getting rich by telling people that humans used to ride through the desert on saddled dinosaurs?

Photo credit

ON THE AVENUES: Back alley white male power abortions.

ON THE AVENUES: Back alley white male power abortions.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

It's rather difficult to properly denigrate Richard Mourdock's ridiculous conception-via-rape comments when his congregation thinks he was directly quoting a Commandment, which is to say, one more time with feeling: GOP stalwarts like Mourdock don’t have a platform problem. Rather, they have a supporter problem.

And so the usual talking point screaming lines are drawn, and I am struck, though not surprised, that as “traditional” white bread America inexorably diminishes in demographic terms, marginalizing the rural areas that are its last bastions, the need for its cohorts to define themselves according to increasingly narrow ideological parameters and to aggressively inflict these cultural boundary markers on the rest of us becomes ever more pronounced – and expressed through a dialect of sheer intolerance that seems to date from antebellum times.

Thus, when it comes to my own support for enlightened self-determination in the area of reproductive choice, it isn’t any longer the case that I’m merely a dastardly secular humanist, or a garden-variety, wicked atheist, or even a dreaded Obama-ite. These days, I’m also certifiably, indisputably un-American.

Unfortunately for them, this is badge of honor territory for me.

It’s also the perfect example of the tactics of fanatics unable to successfully foist their personalized God on a nation presumably founded (albeit seldom consistently administered) according to religious diversity in a secular framework. Instead, they seek to exalt the secular American framework alongside their own specific religious worldview, fuse them into a theocratic duality, and ceremoniously drum those like me straight out of it, too.

I used to advocate that they take their zillionaires’ financial backing and use it to buy me out. Hell, it’d be a good deal for them; for the money required to buy an evening’s worth of GOP-cum-Nurnberg television ads, they could have the Confidentials flying to exile amid Europe’s civilized glories.

However, lately I’m finding merit in the pleasurable idea of waiting them out, because the irony of the white fundamentalist’s lament is that apart from Mormonism, there are too few of them, birthing far too seldom, to reverse demography’s future verdict. It couldn’t be that Republican women have abortions, too?

Back in July of 2009, one of my newspaper columns was taken up by Romanian film reviews: “The Way I Spent the End of the World,” “12:08 East of Bucharest,” “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” “Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days,” the latter a gritty, harrowing and compelling account of a Romanian university student’s illegal abortion in 1987. This is what I had to say about it.

---

Romania became Communist shortly after the conclusion of World War II, and during these years of postwar economic and political dislocation, reliable contraceptives generally were unobtainable. However, owing perhaps to the custom followed by Romania’s overlord, the USSR, abortions were readily available and absurdly cheap, and it is suggested that there were four abortions for every live birth by 1966.

Around this time (Nicolae) Ceausescu, who dubbed himself the "Genius of the Carpathians" in spite (or perhaps because) of his background as a semi-literate, peasant cobbler, came to power and commenced grafting the personality cult of North Korea’s Kim Il Sung onto the pathetically grandiose public theatrics of Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy, creating a stunted and strangulated fiefdom in one of the continent’s least equipped socio-economic milieus. The result was a tragic quarter century.

In 1967, concluding that his impoverished country needed more citizens, Ceausescu decreed abortion illegal overnight, bringing the full powers of Romania’s police state to bear in enforcing the ban. The immediate effect of the decree was an abrupt doubling of the birth rate. This bulge was followed by a fast and steady decline in births, and by 1987, the country’s population had ceased to grow at all, but Ceausescu had already moved on to other, equally catastrophic projects, including the systematic bulldozing of countryside villages and the transfer of their inhabitants to virtual enslavement within “agro-industrial” complexes.

Significantly, one Romanian population statistic steadily increased during the years following the abortion ban: The maternal mortality rate tripled. Demographers have since learned that in terms of statistics, the deaths of women succumbing to botched illegal abortions in Romania were included with those of women dying during childbirth.

At the time documented by “Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days,” all parties involved in transacting an illegal abortion faced lengthy jail terms if caught. In addition to the threat of maiming and even death, and in the continuing enforced absence of legal contraceptives (a ubiquitous black market notwithstanding), a Romanian woman who sought to terminate a pregnancy could be arrested, convicted, imprisoned and her career left in ruins.

Taking all these dire factors into consideration, the film serves as a chilling case study of what happens when a government bureaucracy denies women control over their bodies, their destinies and their very lives. In Romania, the interference stemmed from a psychotic dictator’s whim, and his motivations were purely secular. Far more often in places like America, they are religious in nature.

Reproductive decision-making in many locales tends to reflect the patriarchal concerns of men rather than those of women, even as females remain responsible for bearing the children. It is a regrettable state of affairs that cuts across religious and secular concerns.

Oddly, when I heard the news of Dr. George Tiller’s (2009) murder by a terrorist during a church service in Wichita, it made me think of gray, desperate, soot-stained blocks of flats in Bucharest, along with legalities, illegalities, ideologies and the universality of human suffering.

"Having sex before marriage is the best choice for nearly everyone."

I've tried everything imaginable to lure Healthblogger back to the comments section. If this one doesn't do it, nothing will.

The moral case for sex before marriage, by Jill Filipovic (guardian.co.uk)

Condemning premarital sex and promoting abstinence are not working. Lasting, loving relationships are made through intimacy

... Our state and federal tax dollars have long been spent promoting "chastity". While conservative commentators are happy to assert that waiting until marriage is the best choice for everyone and people who don't wait aren't doing marriage "the right way", sex-positive liberals hesitate to say that having sex before marriage is an equally valid – if not better – choice for nearly everyone.

So here it goes: having sex before marriage is the best choice for nearly everyone.

Atheism, employment discrimination, and New Albany's embryonic Human Rights Commission.

Jerry DeWitt was a small-town Louisiana building inspector and a firebrand preacher. When his faith disappeared, so did his job.

From Bible-Belt Pastor to Atheist Leader, by Robert F. Worth (New York Times Magazine)

On Dec. 1, his boss asked to meet him at a diner in town. Sitting at the table, the man took out two printouts from secular Web sites with DeWitt’s name on it. “He told me: ‘The Pentecostals who run the parish are not happy, and something’s got to be done,’ ”DeWitt recalled. “Half an hour later I was out of a job.” (His former boss did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.)

New Albany's new human rights ordinance prohibits discrimination on the basis of religious belief. Atheism is an absence of religious belief. But doesn't the DeWitt case amply illustrate that employment discrimination can be based on atheism?

If so, shouldn't the human rights ordinance be amended to boldly say precisely that?

33.145 - Public policy and purpose.
It is the policy of the city that it does not discriminate in the provision or implementation of its programs and services on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. It is the public policy of the city to provide all citizens equal opportunity for education, employment, access to public accommodations and acquisition through purchase or rental of real property, including, but not limited to housing, and to eliminate segregation or separation based on race, religion, color, sex, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, since an equal access to and use of public accommodations and equal opportunity for acquisition of real property are hereby declared to be civil rights.

Rubber Room Chronicles: Pat Robertson's been talking with God again.

No word on whether the Broncos have a chance in the playoffs. Anyone seen my butterfly net?

It's about time. There may be hope yet.

Encouraging reading on gorgeous autumn free-thinking Sunday.

Rising atheism in America puts 'religious right on the defensive', by Paul Harris (Guardian).

The US is increasingly portrayed as a hotbed of religious fervour. Yet in the homeland of ostentatiously religious politicians such as Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, agnostics and atheists are actually part of one of the fastest-growing demographics in the US: the godless. Far from being in thrall to its religious leaders, the US is in fact becoming a more secular country, some experts say. "It has never been better to be a free-thinker or an agnostic in America," says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the FFRF.

Still accurate after all these years (3).

HB 1003: "It would shatter the separation of state funding and religious schools established by our Constitution 160 years ago."

While I've no clue as to Senator Brent Steele's overall ideological grounding, other than the generally justifiable presumption that as an Indiana Republican, his politics probably fall somewhere in the territory of a Franco or Peron, but I am struck by the tone of his thoughts in this letter, as passed along to me with last week's edition of Vic's Statehouse Notes.

St. Daniels is rushing toward an ideologue's abyss with the drooling, worshipful assistance of eager young operatives like our own state representative (Ed as smart, ambitious and conniving) and far older political has-beens like our state senator (Ron, who apparently never read a book about any human topic not directly connected to the practice and profit of pharmacy).

It looks gloomy now, but history and pendulums have a way of swinging back. It will be a laborious process, but in future years, we'll be able to gather the pieces of a fair, civil society currently being strewn around the Romper Room like plastic toys by petulant, privileged and primarily white male children, place them back into the framework of reason, and begin anew toward achieving a recognition of human life as something more than the quantification of dollars, and beyond the GOP's only genuine raison d'etre: Keeping the majority of the country's wealth in the hands of a minority of the country's inhabitants.

In the context of educational reform, St. Daniels' roughshod disregard for the principes of church-state separation is contemptible, if trendy among those who are not at all unwashed and illiterate, but sufficiently well versed to know better, and to leverage their cynicism in pursuit of political power. Whatever the fate of legislation discussed below, I nonetheless feel vindicated in my life's work of opposing the imposition of top-down Christian theocracy in America, where Godly fascism runs counter to the founders' intent -- whether or not modern day Republicans care, or are able, to grasp it.
---

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #78 – April 15, 2011

Dear Friends,

The Senate Education Committee passed the voucher bill (HB 1003) on a party line vote on April 13th. The Charter Bill (HB 1002) passed the Senate on a 29-20 vote on Tuesday. April 12th. Here are the details:

Senate Education Committee

The stage is now set for Senate floor action and the historic vote on the voucher bill. This one is for history. Following the lead of Caleb Mills and the I851 Constitution, Indiana has not given public money for private school tuition vouchers in the 160 years since the Constitution was written. The 50 members of the Indiana Senate will decide this historic issue early next week.

The Senate Education Committee amended the bill as follows:

1) Amendment #19, which passed 7-3 on a party line vote, removed the requirement that to be eligible for vouchers, the school must verify compliance with the Americans for Disabilities Act, fire safety requirements, and health standards under federal law. It also removed the requirement that eligible private schools must adhere to “state teacher evaluation requirements”, such as those in Senate Bill 1.

2) Amendment #21, which passed on a unanimous 10-0 vote, inserted “An eligible school may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin.” A similar amendment (#22) which added language implying religion could be added to this list was not considered by the committee.

3) Amendment #23, which passed 8-2, added a section “to honor the autonomy of nonpublic schools that choose to become eligible schools under this chapter.” It would be worth your time to read the rest of the amendment verbatim to fully grasp what your tax dollars would be supporting:

“A nonpublic eligible school is not an agent of the state or federal government, and therefore: (1) the department or any other state agency may not in any way regulate the educational program of a nonpublic eligible school that accepts a choice scholarship under this chapter, including the regulation of curriculum content, religious instruction or activities, classroom teaching, teacher and staff hiring requirements, and other activities carried out by the eligible school; (2) the creation of the choice scholarship program does not expand the regulatory authority of the state, the state’s officers, or a school corporation to impose additional regulation of nonpublic schools beyond those necessary to enforce the requirements of the choice scholarship program in place on July 1, 2011; and (3) a nonpublic eligible school shall be given the freedom to provide for the educational needs of the students without governmental control.”

Sen. Schneider brought this amendment, saying the language came from a Texas law to say that the “state can’t change the curriculum away from a faith-based approach.” Sen. Skinner asked if he thought religious schools should be held accountable in terms of the percentage of teachers with teaching licenses. Sen. Schneider said the amendment only speaks to private school authority.

[Editorial note: This amendment is clearly a declaration of independence for nonpublic schools. They are trying to avoid the strings that are inevitably attached to money that supports the schools. It leaves the question for Senators: Should private and parochial schools receiving public money have this kind of independence?]

4) Amendment #24, which passed 9-1, changed the tax credit portion of the bill in a significant way. Sen. Kenley brought the amendment, saying it would keep the bill from needing to be recommitted to Senate Appropriations to vote on the “enormous fiscal” related to the tax credits. He described the amendment as keeping the current (2009) tax credit “as is” but raising the state dollars available for tax credits from $2.5 million to $5 million.

With that brief explanation from Sen. Kenley, the vote was taken. Sen. Yoder described this as “a tough vote” for him after he worked with Sen. Kenley on the amendment, and then he voted yes.

After the meeting, proponents of the bill were clearly not pleased with the trim given to the tax credit side of the bill.

Equally interesting is what the amendment deleted that was not discussed in the meeting. A section was deleted giving a supplemental distribution to school corporations and charter schools from the state savings due to transferring students from public schools to cheaper private school using vouchers. It is not clear why this section was taken out or why.

When all the amendments were completed, the roll was called: 7 Republicans in favor and 3 Democrats opposed. The bill will now go to the floor for second reading amendments and a vote early next week.

Now is the time to contact Senators to vote NO on the voucher bill. Much has been said, but to me, these are the key points of opposition:

It would shatter the separation of state funding and religious schools established by our Constitution 160 years ago.

It would transfer $58.5 million from public school students to private school students over the next two years.

There is no cap on private school vouchers after two years. Private school entrepreneurs will start building capacity with state support while public schools close.

The income eligibility rules leave 45% of all students eligible for a full voucher ($40,000 for a family of four) and approximately 20% more eligible for a partial voucher ($61,000 for a family of four), making roughly 650,000 Hoosier students (two-thirds) eligible for public tax money for their private school tuition.

Contact Senators on these and other points. The vote could come as early as Monday afternoon (April 18th). I have attached for your reference the letter of opposition sent to all legislators by Sen. Steele (R-Bedford).

Senate Action on the Charter School Expansion Bill – HB 1002

The final Senate vote on HB 1002 came Tuesday, April 12, passing by a margin of 29-20. Surprisingly, seven Republican senators opposed one of the Governor’s priority bills. Joining all 13 Democrats in oppositions were: Sen. Becker, Sen. Head, Sen. Landske, Sen. Paul, Sen. Steele, Sen. Tomes and Sen. Waterman.

These and all other senators should be approached about opposing the voucher bill as well.

The Senate made several significant changes in the charter bill compared to the House version. Whether the House members will accept the Senate changes or will ask for a conference committee to try to restore some of the House provisions remains to be seen.

I and others in the Indiana Coalition for Public Education had tried to remove private colleges as charter school authorizers, arguing that private entities not subject to the open door law and transparency laws like private colleges should not be given powers to commit public tax money to create public charter schools. Our opposing arguments failed. Thirty private colleges are listed by name in the bill as potential authorizers. Ironically, the 30th and final private college listed is Wabash College, founded in 1834 by none other than Caleb Mills, who had no problem with sectarian colleges but convinced his generation and many to follow, until our generation, that common school education should be non-partisan and non-sectarian.
Good luck in contacting Senators to oppose vouchers in the historic vote coming as early as Monday.

Join the Indiana Coalition for Public Education

Again I urge you to join us or ask your public school friends to join us using the form below. We need every public school advocate in our membership. Your $20, $50, $100, or $250 or other donation is vitally important to continue this legislative battle! Thanks!

Best wishes,

Vic Smith

Also, I'm not voting Republican on November 2nd because I remember why Huckabee's fairy tales annoy me so much.

Prohibition: "Millions of otherwise honest citizens routinely flouted the law."

Looking for a sobering account of the carnage inflicted by "small-town white Protestants" running amok? You know: The type tending to populate mega-churches where the regional economic development mob likes to congregate, ignoring the separation of church and state? This book, "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition," written by Daniel Okrent, sounds like a wonderful exposition of the excesses of doltery, fear and godliness, not necessarily in that order.

Temperance to Excess, by David Oshinsky (New York Times Sunday Book Review)

... Okrent resists the chance to link Prohibition to the current political scene. But the comparisons are tempting, to say the least. About a century ago, a group of determined activists mobilized to confront the moral decay they claimed was destroying their country. Their public demon was alcohol, but their real enemy was an alien culture reflected by city dwellers, recent immigrants and educated elites. Always a minority, the forces of Prohibition drove the political agenda by concentrating relentlessly on their goal, voting in lockstep on a single issue and threatening politicians who did not sufficiently back their demands. They triumphed because they faced no organized opposition. Americans were too distracted — perhaps too busy drinking — to notice what they had lost ...

Murder in the name of religion? No thanks.

The New York Times gets it right.

Murder in Kansas

There must be a sustained focus by federal and state officials to prevent further acts of violence against physicians who risk their safety to perform legal medical procedures.

While disagreeing with blogger/economist/educator/candidate Eric Schansberg's overall position on abortion, I appreciate his take on the most recent crime: Robert George on Tiller's murder.

Of course, Tiller's cowardly murderer reminds us that it's always very useful, if not "fun" and "sexy", to keep close watch on religious extremists, because the havoc they've merrily wreaked in the name of God and throughout the past few thousand years simply cannot be rationalized, and should be frequently and unequivocally disavowed by believers who aren't in favor of converting the planet at the point of a gun.