President Jimmy Carter Endorses Marriage Equality

The 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, has given an interview to Huffington Post where he explicitly endorses civil marriage equality for same-sex couples. Like our current President, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (albeit well after his Presidency) and is a Christian, a Southern Baptist. The 87-year-old Carter is the author of dozens of books and his latest is a treatise attempting to answer difficult questions from a Biblical perspective.

Joe.My.God highlights the key responses Carter gives in the interview:

A lot of people point to the Bible for reasons why gay people should not be in the church, or accepted in any way. 

Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things -– he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.[emphasis added] 

I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I’m a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs. So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn’t require them to.

Unlike our current President, Carter is clearly not a graduate of Harvard Law or a constitutional law professor because it would be a very obvious violation of the First Amendment for any law to require a church to marry any individual or force a church to accept someone as a member.

Carter joins the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, as the only two living ex-presidents to endorse marriage equality. There are two other living ex-presidents, both with the surname Bush, but surprisingly(sic) they have not done the same. Clinton and Carter are Democrats...

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Agnostic or Atheist? Both!

For this week's Godlesss Wednesday this helpful diagram (see above) from Atheist Revolution explains the differences between being atheist and being agnostic, which very many people confuse (and conflate).

Using the above chart I would describe myself as as an Agnostic Atheist, which I usually just shorten to "atheist" since that is what most people understand. I most definitely do not believe any god exists, but I don't claim to know that no god exists. However, I think the preponderance of the evidence (i.e. there is no credible evidence that god exists) and simple logic (Occam's Razor) should suffice to allow one to come to the conclusion that god does not exist.

What do you think?

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: All Dead Mormons Are Gay

Ha-ha! I have to admit then when I saw this headline at Joe.My.God's website I had to giggle. In a clever parody of the controversial Mormon practice of baptizing the "souls" of dead people, some clever wag has decided to create a website where dead Mormons can be declared gay.

Sadly, many Mormons throughout history have died without having known the joys of homosexuality. With your help, these poor souls can be saved. 

Simply enter the name of your favorite dead Mormon* in the form below and click Convert! Presto, they're gay for eternity. There is no undo. 

Don't know any dead Mormons? Click the "Choose-a-Mormon" button and we'll find one for you. You're welcome! 

*Holocaust victims are not eligible for conversion.

If it is not wrong to baptize someone into a faith they did not believe in when they were alive after they are dead, how can it be wrong to declare someone dead to be gay?

Of course, my position is that once you're dead, you're dead. You no longer have a sexual orientation or a religion!

And that's today's Godless Wednesday, folks!

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Black Atheist Public Awareness Campaign

This is great news! African Americans for Humanism has announced a new publicity campaign to raise awareness about the presence of religious skepticism in the Black community. It is not as rare as one might think, a point a recent New York Times article raised that I promoted here on Godless Wednesday a few months ago.

Friendly Atheist alerted me to the ads and supports the campaign, as do I. Apparently they will be running in various major metropolitan areas like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas. Each ad shows a prominent historical African American (it is Black History Month after all!) along with a local Black freethinker.

What do you think?

POLL: Majority of Maryland Supports Marriage Equalty

The Washington Post published a poll on Tuesday which demonstrates the inexorable growth in the support for marriage equality in the state of marriage, indicating that it has reached majority support for the first time. 50% of respondents support marriage equality compared to 44% which oppose it.

The new poll found a sharp divide among Maryland Democrats based on race. Among whites, 71 percent support same-sex marriage, while 24 percent do not. Among blacks, 41 percent are supportive, while 53 percent are opposed. Maryland has the largest percentage of African Americans of any state outside of the Deep South.

[...]

The poll found that nearly three-quarters of those opposed to gay nuptials say their views stem primarily from their religious beliefs — a factor that makes lobbying on the issue more challenging.

By contrast, only 5 percent of same-sex marriage supporters say their views are largely shaped by religious beliefs. 

[...]

The Post poll found that among adult residents younger than 40, support for same-sex marriage is 63 percent, with 33 percent opposed. Among those 40 and older, 42 percent are in favor, while 51 percent are opposed.

Note that phrase again: 74% of people who oppose providing civil marriage licenses to same-sex couples cite their religious beliefs as a reason for their opposition. What part of civil marriage do they not understand? Just because someone has a marriage which your religion does not support or sanction is no reason to impose your religious beliefs in an area of public policy which applies to everyone. Civil marriages  are completely separate from church (mosque/temple) weddings!

It is so mind-boggling to me that religious people never think that they could be discriminated against because of their religious beliefs but they have no qualms about discriminating against other people who do NOT share their religious beliefs. Have they never heard of the golden rule (do unto others as they would do unto you)?

O Flying Spaghetti Monster, this just makes me so happy that I'm an atheist!

Godless Wednesday: God and Politics

Since, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Willard Mitt Romney all apparently feel that God spoke to them to encourage them to run for President, who is lying, God or the presidential candidate?

Hat/tip to Friendly Atheist

Godless Wednesday: Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

This week on Godless Wednesday we are commemorating the untimely passing of Christopher Hitchens, who has been the public face of godlessness for a decade at least.

Here's an excerpt of part of an obituary of Hitch from Slate magazine:

Born in Portsmouth, England, in 1949, Hitchens studied at Oxford before launching his journalism career in the 1970s with the magazines International Socialism and the New Statesman. In the early 1980s, he emigrated to the United States, where he was a regular columnist at The Nation for two decades before parting ways with the liberal magazine after proudly disagreeing with its editors about the Iraq war.

Hitchens won the National Magazine Award for commentary in 2007, the same year that he became an American citizen on his 58th birthday. Foreign Policy named him to its list of the top 100 public intellectuals the following year, and Forbes magazine labeled him one of the 25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media in 2009, a distinction that took some by surprise given Hitchens's vocal support of George W. Bush's war on terror.

He was a frequent guest on news programs and at public debates, and rarely passed up the opportunity to defend his positions when given the opportunity to do so. He was the author of nearly 20 books, including God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Hitch-22: A Memoir, and Arguably, a collection of his more recent essays that was published earlier this year.

Hitchens remained steadfast in his criticism of religion even in the face of his grim prognosis. In an August 2010 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, his colleague at The Atlantic, Hitchens made it known that even if he were to somehow recant his devout atheism on his deathbed, any apparent conversion would be a hollow gesture. "The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain," he said. "I can't guarantee that such an entity wouldn't make such a ridiculous remark. But no one recognizable as myself would ever make such a ridiculous remark."

Prop 8 Repeal Initiative Can Begin Signature Gathering

The organization Love Honor Cherish announced this week that it has been given the go-ahead by the Attorney General of California to begin circulating ballot petitions to repeal Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment which purports to ban people of the same sex from marrying in California.

The text of the amendment is:

This amendment would amend an existing section of the California Constitution.  Existing language proposed to be deleted is printed in strikeout type.  Language proposed to be added is printed in underlined type.

Section 1.  To protect religious freedom, no court shall interpret this measure to require any priest, minister, pastor, rabbi, or other person authorized to perform marriages by any religious denomination, church, or other non-profit religious institution to perform any marriage in violation of his or her religious beliefs. The refusal to perform a marriage under this provision shall not be the basis for lawsuit or liability, and shall not affect the tax-exempt status of any religious denomination, church or other religious institution.

Section 2.  To provide for fairness in the government’s issuance of marriage licenses, Section 7.5 of Article I of the California Constitution is hereby amended to read as follows: Sec. 7.5.  Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Marriage is between only two persons and shall not be restricted on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

The ballot summary is:

Reinstates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.

Summary Date: 12/15/11 | Circulation Deadline: 05/14/12 | Signatures Required: 807,615

Proponent: Thomas B. Watson

Repeals the current provision in California's Constitution that states only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Provides that marriage is between only two persons and shall not be restricted on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. Clarifies that the initiative shall not be interpreted to require any priest, minister, pastor, rabbi, or other person to perform a marriage in violation of his or her religious beliefs. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Over the long run, this measure would likely have little fiscal impact on state and local governments. (11-0058) (Full Text)

Of course, Love Honor Cherish also went forward with a signature-gathering campaign in two years ago in Winter 2009-Spring 2010 to repeal Proposition 8 which failed miserably. Gathering enough signatures to get a measure on the ballot in California is a resource-intensive task, not one that has been achieved by a mainly volunteer or unpaid effort in years.

This effort does not have the backing of any of the state's major LGBT organizations (like Equality California and the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center). The proponents have until May 14, 2012 to gather well over a million signatures, in the hopes that 807, 615 will be valid.

I agree that Propsition 8 should be repealed but I do not think that the LGBT community of California has had a discussion about what it would take to repeal Proposition 8 and I think it is incredibly naive and presumptious of one organization to think that they can make the decision for all LGBT Californians to put our rights up for a public vote.

I will not be signing the petition and I urge you not to as well.

Godless Wednesday: Texas is "One State Under God"

The latest news from the Patriarchal Confederate Republic (also known as Texas) is that they have created a state-issued license which promotes the Christian Religion.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Jonathan Saenz, the Director of Legislative Affairs for the Liberty Institute, a Texas-based group which fights to 'limit government and promote Judeo-Christian values,' said critics of the religious plate are "Christian bashing." 

He said there are already several specialty license plates which feature Christian crosses. In 2007, the Texas Legislature agreed to insert the phrase "One State Under God," the same phrase that is on the plate, into the Pledge to the Texas Flag which is said by school students every day, he said. 

"This is a matter of individual free speech, freedom of choice," Saenz said, adding that he would not oppose a state license plate which bore those words and featured a Jewish Star of David, the Islamic Crescent, or other non-Christian symbols. 

"There is no requirement that you agree with every specialty license plate there is. There are people who don't like the Boy Scouts, they have a plate. There are people who don't like the Knights of Columbus (Catholic men's organization), they have a plate."

Fasconating. I'm sure that Mr. Saenz will support the application of an Atheist organization to promote their view that God not exist? Or how about a Texas state license plate that has a rainbow flag and the word: "Pride" on it?

Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath either.

Hat/tip to Richard Dawkins.net

Godless Heathens Respond To Rick Perry

Recently, Rick Perry started airing an offensive television ad which attacked gay people and complained about the attacks on religious beliefs by President Obama and liberals. Today, "godless heathens" responded to Perry's homophobic statements and so have other people.

Godless Wednesday: NYT Covers Black Irreligiosity

Praise Allah! No less an important media outlet than the New York Times has recognized that African American Atheists exist! SentientMeat brought this article to my attention and suggested it would be a good subject for a Godless Wednesday post. He reads more things than Cactus and Succulent websites after all.

In a piece published this week titled "The Unbelievers" the Paper of Record examines the (ir)religiosity of Black people in this country:

RONNELLE ADAMS came out to his mother twice, first about his homosexuality, then about his atheism.

“My mother is very devout,” said Mr. Adams, 30, a Washington resident who has published an atheist children’s book, “Aching and Praying,” but who in high school considered becoming a Baptist preacher. “She started telling me her issues with homosexuality, which were, of course, Biblical,” he said. “ ‘I just don’t care what the Bible says about that,’ I told her, and she asked why. ‘I don’t believe that stuff anymore.’ It got silent. She was distraught. She told me she was more bothered by that than the revelation I was gay.”

[...]

African-Americans are remarkably religious even for a country known for its faithfulness, as the United States is. According to the Pew Forum 2008 United States Religious Landscape Survey, 88 percent of African-Americans believe in God with absolute certainty, compared with 71 percent of the total population, with more than half attending religious services at least once a week.

[...]

According to Pew, the vast majority of atheists and agnostics are white, including the authors Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

Seeking a public intellectual of their own, some black atheists have claimed the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, interpreting his arguments against teaching intelligent design in the classroom to be an endorsement of atheism. But Dr. deGrasse Tyson is loath to be associated with any part of the movement. When contacted last week by e-mail, he noted a Twitter exchange he had in August, in which he told a follower, “Am I an Atheist, you ask? Labels are mentally lazy ways by which people assert they know you without knowing you.”

Methinks Dr. Tyson doth protest too much, don't you? Anyway, it's cool that there are blogs like Godless and Black and Words of Wrath as well as organizations like African Americans for Humanism and facebook pages like Black Atheists of America. Hopefully MadProfessah's Godless Wednesday will join this list of Black Atheist resources.

Godless Wednesday: IL Catholic Orgs End Lawsuit On Foster Care

Ha, ha! Over the summer MadProfessah.com and other LGBT blogs reported about the obnoxious lawsuit by a number of Catholic dioceses in Illinois who were suing the state for the right to obtain payment from the government to offer foster and adoption services which would illegally discriminate against same-sex couples in civil unions.

The lawsuit was laughable on its face and last week even the religious extremists and heterosexual supremacists at the Catholic Dioceses of Joliet, Springfield and Belleville recognized that fact and dropped their lawsuit and ended their foster care services in the state.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Since March, state officials have been investigating whether religious agencies that receive public funds to license foster care parents are breaking anti-discrimination laws if they turn away openly gay parents.  

After the civil union bill went into effect in June, Catholic Charities told the state that accommodating prospective foster parents in civil unions would violate Catholic Church teaching that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.  

Catholic Charities said it would instead refer gay couples elsewhere and only license married couples and single parents living alone.  

The agency has pointed to a clause in the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act that they believe protects religious institutions that don't recognize civil unions. 

But lawyers for the Illinois attorney general said that exemption only shields religious clergy who don't want to officiate at civil unions. The policy of Catholic Charities violates state anti-discrimination laws that demand couples in civil unions be treated the same as married couples, they said.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Thankfully, there are plenty of secular foster care agencies who care more about helping children then promoting religious-based homophobic ideology.

Godless Wednesday: Myths Everyone Knows

As the season of the Joys of Rational Thinking approaches the appearance of billboards from atheist and free-thinking organizations become more prominent.

Godless Wednesday: Americans' Discomfort With Atheist President

The Friendly Atheist has a great post up today discussing the new poll results from the Public Religion Research Institute which demonstrate that Americans would be more uncomfortable with an atheist President than a Mormon President or a Muslim President!

Friendly Atheist takes a closer look at the graphic above and provides the following analysis:

67% of all voters would feel somewhat or very uncomfortable with an atheist president.80% of all Republicans, 70% of Democrats, and 56% of all Independents feel the same.So Democrats would be more uncomfortable with an atheist president than a Muslim president.
Republicans — not surprisingly, a higher proportion of them than Democrats — would be equally uncomfortable with both an atheist president and a Muslim president.
Overall, though, a non-theistic presidential candidate has a bigger hurdle to overcome than a person of any faith at all. It’s unbelievable that in this day and age, America still has this much of a hangup over a leader who would put more weight in evidence and logical thinking than in an imaginary god and ancient books.

Hear, hear! Friendly Atheist also notes that 31% of Americans would be somewhat or very comfortable with an atheist president while 33% of Americans would be somewhat or very comfortable with a Muslim president.

His suggestion to change these numbers is to encourage more people (and people who run for office) to come clean about their lack of faith and their belief in free-thinking instead of wishful thinking.

This is my first post in what is hopefully going to be a weekly series focusing on atheism and agnosticism and the foibles and failures of faith. I'd love to hear feedback from readers about Godless Wednesdays. Suggestions for a better title would be welcomed!

DVD REVIEW: Latter Days

Finally saw a movie which was in our Netflix queue for over a month (sigh!) when I was back home in Los Angeles recently. The movie is Latter Days, which is about the romance between a West Hollywood muscle twink named Christian and a blonde, innocent 19-year-old Mormon missionary named Aaron.

Latter Days had been on our list of movies to see for a long time, since the Other Half was a Mormon missionary and word-of-mouth described the film as being a heartwarming gay love story.

Even with that much information about the film, I was still pleasantly surprised by Latter Days in two ways: the script and the cast. The director, C. Jay Cox, also wrote the screenplay, and (according to IMDB) apparently based it on his own life as a Mormon missionary who went to Los Angeles and turned into a West Hollywood gay party boy. One would expect the script for what is essentially a low-budget gay film festival flick to be trite and predictable but it repeatedly surprised me with plot twists. I kept on saying "I didn't expect THAT to happen!"--this is the mark of a well-written film that captures your attention and never lets go.

The other even more pleasant surprise was the cast. The biggest star in the movie (currently) is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was a child actor in television's 3rd Rock from the Sun but more recently has become famous for his non-threatening boy-next-door good looks in (500) Days of Summer and my favorite film of 2010, Inception. Jacqueline Bisset is also in the film, as the older sage and "den mother" who owns a restaurant in West Hollywood where Christian works as a waiter alongside his roommate Julie, an aspiring singer. The actors playing Christian, Wes Ramsey, and Aaron, Steve Sandvoss, are both very attractive in theor own way. Ramsay has a very muscular, low-fat, smooth body and a handsome face while Sandvoss has a very fit and athletic body coupled with classic blonde hair and blue eyes and a permanently innocent expression. It's fun to watch movies when there "eye candy" on the screen!

The one detraction I would make about Latter Days, although I think this was intentional choice by the writer/director to broaden the movie's appeal is that it is trying to span multiple genres simultaneously, possibly too many at once. At different points it wants to be a musical about starving artists making it in the big city, an AIDS buddy film, a Romeo and Julio love story, a gritty drama about religion and homosexuality, a (gay) sex comedy and, finally, a heart-warming story about self-actualization. It's probably a good idea for a small film to be about just more than one thing, but trying to be too many things at once can lead to a bit of dissonance as the film switches rapidly between tones.

All in all Latter Days is a very enjoyable experience, very much worth renting.

Title: Latter Days.
Director: C. Jay Cox.
Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong sexual content and language.
Release Date: July 10, 2003.
Viewing Date: September 24, 2011.

Plot: A.
Acting: B+.
Visuals: A.
Impact: A-.

Overall Grade: (3.75/4.0).

Correlation Of Bigotry With Religious Belief?

Celebrity Friday: Brad Pitt Explains Marriage Equality Support

Brad Pitt, the once and future Sexiest Man Alive, gave an interview to the widely read Sunday newspaper insert Parade Magazine which explains his unconditional support for marriage equality:

“Can you believe that we’re still fighting for equality in America? To be against marriage for everyone is utter discrimination.  I feel strongly about that because if equality of marriage doesn’t happen now, the next generation will have to deal with it.

“It is an amazing thing that New York has finally gotten same-sex marriage. But the real problem is that the federal government hides behind states on this issue. It is blatant, ugly bigotry, and the federal government shouldn’t be doing that. You’re denying some Americans the right that all Americans have, to live their lives as they choose.

“What are you so afraid of? That’s my question. Gay people getting married? What is so scary about that? It’s complicated.  You grow up in a religion like that and you try to pray the gay away. I feel sadness for people like that. This is where people start short-circuiting—instead of being brave and questioning their beliefs, they are afraid and feel that they have to defend them.

“I don’t mind a world with religion in it. There are some beautiful tenets within all religions.  What I get hot about is when they start dictating how other people must live. People suffer because of it. They are spreading misery.    

I couldn't have said it better myself. Go Brad! Looking good at 47 years old, too!

Prof. Dawkins Responds To Rick Perry's Ignorance

Wowsa. I love Richard Dawkins. Texas Governor Rick Perry is right now the leading contended for the Republican Presidential nomination, and he recently said that evolution is "a theory that's out there" in response to a question. Professor Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and former Oxford professor, one of the more famous new Atheists, responds in the Washington Post with this excoriation (emphasis added):

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.


[...]


A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.


[...]


There are many reasons to vote against Rick Perry. His fatuous stance on the teaching of evolution in schools is perhaps not the first reason that springs to mind. But maybe it is the most telling litmus test of the other reasons, and it seems to apply not just to him but, lamentably, to all the likely contenders for the Republican nomination. The ‘evolution question’ deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election.

It should be noted that, in February 2009, on the bicentennial of Darwin's birth (same day as President Abraham Lincoln, February 12, 1809), Gallup released a poll which showed that a mere 39% of Americans believe in evolution. (25% says they do not believe in evolution and 36% have no opinion.) Hopefully someone will re-do that poll again (particular to minimize the no opinion category) as Rick Perry grows more prominent in the public eye, and perhaps Mr. Perry will recognize (and be asked about) the separation of church and state that American's founding fathers believed in.

A Message From G-d...

Hat/tip to Wonder Man