Dear Reverend Harold Camping:

You must be very busy, what with the Rapture coming tomorrow and all, but I’m hoping for just a minute of your time. Actually “a minute of your time” is exactly what I want to ask you about. Because what’s really extraordinarily clever about your Bible calculations is that you’ve not only figured out God’s super-secret plan to Rapture the Earth on May 21, 2011, but also that he’s going to do it one time zone at a time. According to press accounts of your discovery:

the massive doomsday earthquake will start at the International Date Line before moving west. New Zealand . . . will get hit first – at 6 p.m. local time. And then that wave of destruction will roll around the world, wreaking havoc at 6 p.m. in each time zone.

Not only was it smart of God to come up with that cool plan for phased destruction--I mean, Rapturing the whole Earth at once would be kind of unwieldy, especially the Christian parts where there are so many souls to collect--but it’s especially neat how he wrote down the whole plan in code all those thousands of years ago in the Bible. Pretty funny that he tried to throw us off the trail with that whole “but of that day and hour knoweth no man.” He sure fooled me, but he didn’t fool Harold Camping!

I do have a couple of questions, though.

No, I’m not going to ask “what about Daylight Saving Time.” Please. Obviously because God knows everything, he knew that we humans were going to invent Daylight Saving Time, so he factored that into his Bible code.

And same goes for the whole time zones / standard time concept. Sure, in Biblical times and for practically all of human history time was reckoned locally based on the position of the Sun. But again, I’m sure God foresaw that one day there would be railroads, telegraphs, and a corresponding need for uniformity. And because His plan was to Rapture Boston and Cincinnati at exactly the same moment, instead of the 52 minutes apart that 6 p.m. would occur in those cities if we still used “Local Apparent Solar Time” like Abraham and Jesus, God just coded that into the Bible, too.

But here’s the thing. Not to second-guess God or anything, but actually doing it the old fashioned way would kind of make more sense. Because you can totally see how a continuously moving wave of destruction, travelling at an equatorial velocity of just over 1500 feet per second so as to hit each spot at “true” 6 p.m., would work.

Whereas the whole-time-zones-at-a-time model presents some difficulties. Take for example a town that straddles the Texas / New Mexico border. When the Doomsday earthquake flattens everything on the Texas side, will it be made up of some kind of special shockwaves that know to stop at the state line? And what if it turns out that I’m one of the saved, and I get Raptured while straddling the border? Do I risk the right half of my soul being “left behind” for an hour?

And actually, speaking of Daylight Saving Time, did God make clear how your calculations should deal with places that don’t observe it? Like if I’m in Arizona do I get an extra hour, even though Armageddon is already in full swing due North in Utah? But if I step onto the Navajo reservation, which does observe Daylight Saving Time, then I’m toast? What if I’m a member of the Hopi nation, so my land is within the Navajo reservation, but my tribe keeps with the rest of Arizona in not observing Daylight Saving Time? Supposing I’m off the reservation at 5:15, and I want to get home before the Rapture to make sure I didn’t leave the oven on? Will God understand that I’m only passing through Navajo land to get to the Hopi section, and give me the extra 45 minutes?

Even apart from Daylight Saving issues, it seems like the Rapture is going to have to do some jumping around. If you look at a world time zone map, it’s pretty complicated. For all kinds of political reasons you’ve got places where it can be 6 p.m. already even though somewhere to the East still calls it 5 p.m. (Or 5:30 or even 5:15.)

And then you’ve got places like Kashmir, where no one can agree whether it’s part of India (GMT + 5:30) or Pakistan (GMT + 5:00). Do the Hindus get Raptured half an hour before the Muslims? I mean, I understand they’re all going to Hell anyway because they haven’t accepted Jesus, but it would be useful to know.

Also what about at the South Pole? By convention, Amundsen Scott Station uses New Zealand time, but technically speaking the Pole is in every time zone. From what I’ve heard, that place can become a den of iniquity for the “winter-over” crew, owing to the gender imbalance and prolonged isolation in darkness.  So the schedule on which their souls will be called to account is not just an academic question.

And of course there’s the International Space Station to consider. Here we see why it was definitely smart for God to choose standard instead of solar time. Can you imagine if he had to Rapture the astronauts 16 times in one day?! My only question is whether He’ll use Greenwich Mean Time, which the station normally follows, or adjust for the crew’s current temporary shift to Space Shuttle Endeavour’s Mission Elapsed Time. Your Bible calculations take that into account, right?

I would appreciate the courtesy of a prompt response to these questions, preferably by 6 p.m. tomorrow. 6 p.m. my time, I mean.

In anticipation of Friday’s vote on the marriage equality bill, you will no doubt desire the benefit of public comment on the measure. Not all of you were able to attend the bill’s House Judiciary Committee hearing. Committee hearings are streamed on the Internet, but surely no one but an obsessive-compulsive state government groupie would record the audio, transfer it to his MP3 player, and listen to all 8+ hours.

I did. As the hearing was not transcribed, I have taken it upon myself to distill for you some highlights.

The standard arguments for and against same-sex marriage are so well-worn that there is little point in going over them again. And while some rather novel religious arguments were offered, all fall within the familiar heading that God wants you to vote No and you’d really do better not to piss off God.

Instead, I bring to your attention some of the more original and surprising secular arguments marshaled by opponents, because you may not have thought of these:

1. If the bill passes, the Eastern Shore will be forced to secede from the state of Maryland. Quite possibly Western and Southern Maryland will secede also.

2. A marriage can involve many things, such as holding hands, going hiking, or watching football. The word “homosexual” describes just one thing: sex. To talk about “homosexual marriage,” just because a husband and wife can have sex and two men can also have sex, makes no more sense than to talk about about “hand-holding marriage,” “hiking marriage,” or “football marriage.”

3. The availability of marriage will cause gay couples to move to Maryland. Because gay couples can’t have children, their children can’t grow up to become Maryland taxpayers. Therefore Maryland’s tax revenue will suffer -- something we can’t afford in this recession.

4. If we have same-sex marriage in Maryland, nine- and ten-year-old boys in public schools will be taught to urinate on each other for sexual gratification.

5. The Greeks allowed homosexuality, and they were conquered by the Romans. The Romans allowed homosexuality, and they were overrun by barbarians. The same thing could happen in Maryland.

Fatti maschil, Parole femine, Honorable Members.

HP

The Internet is ablaze today with reports of a South Dakota bill that would "legalize murder of abortion providers." An examination of H.B. 1171 leaves me of two minds as to whether the bill is insidious or just poorly drafted, and whether the Mother Jones Article is a dire warning or irresponsible scaremongering. Regardless, the episode brings to mind a larger question that has often nagged me: Why aren't there more Scott Roeders?

Imagine that a mass murderer of children, one who openly admits his intention to go right on killing, is loose in your community. And imagine that your government not only has failed to prevent the slaughter, but perversely has enshrined in law this killer's right to murder. Would you not be morally justified in ending this man's rampage by killing him? Indeed, if presented with the opportunity to kill him, would you not be morally negligent in permitting him to go on living and murdering more children each day?

Scott Roeder, as you may recall, murdered Wichita, Kansas abortion provider George Tiller in 2009. Listening to Roeder explain at his sentencing why he killed Tiller, it is clear that his actions made perfect sense in light of a belief professed by him and millions of Americans. That belief: A fetus is a human being with the same right to life as you or I, and killing a fetus is murder. If you believe that, then you believe that to kill George Tiller was to stop a mass murderer against whom the government could do nothing.

Yet since 1977 there have been only 8 murders and 17 attempted murders of American abortion providers or clinic staff--fewer than one such incident per year. Which is why I don't believe that Americans believe what they say about abortion.

The moral right to use deadly force in defense of another is recognized almost universally. And although the law limits this privilege to situations of immediate peril, surely that restriction has no moral force when its premise--that government (e.g. police) will step in given time--is untrue. Some abortion opponents who condemned Roeder fell back on the old standard that you can't kill in the name of "respect for life," but if you really believe that George Tiller was a serial killer on the verge of striking again, this is akin to saying that out of "respect for life" police ought not to have shot Charles Whitman as he picked off passers-by from the University of Texas bell tower.

We are not morally obligated to prevent every harm that may befall another. But if we know where a serial killer lives, works, and worships, to stand by while he strikes again and again would be an indefensible omission. If you believe about fetuses what Scott Roeder believes about fetuses, then killing abortion providers is not only justified, but virtuous and perhaps morally imperative.

And yet it happens so rarely. Why? Fear of punishment, lack of opportunity, and cognitive dissonance in light of apparently conflicting moral duties may provide partial explanations. But I don't think these rationalizations alone--or indeed primarily--explain the scarcity of such killings.

In a 2008 essay for the Times of London, philosopher Jamie Whyte suggests that the apparent persistence of Christian belief, which he regards as "pre-Enlightenment gobbledegook," has a simple explanation: people don't actually believe it. Rather, he argues, people who profess Christian beliefs "are expressing their hopes rather than their beliefs--substituting 'I believe' for 'I wish' in the unconscious endeavour to convince themselves." "The real test for genuine belief," Whyte argues, "is not what people say, but what they do. To believe something is to be disposed to act upon it. The vast majority of Western Christians fail this test."

As one example, Whyte examines abortion. Imagine, he suggests, a network of government slaughterhouses in which a million children are exterminated each year.

It is a horrifying idea. Anyone who believed it to be happening would surely rise up against the regime, with violence if necessary. . . . To do nothing . . . would display despicable moral complacency.

Yet British Roman Catholics allegedly believe that such slaughter is really happening. They claim that humans have immortal souls from conception, and that killing a foetus is no less murder than killing a ten-year-old. . . .

If they believe what they claim to, they are no better than those who turned a blind eye to Nazi atrocities. But I do not think they are that wicked. It is just that they don't really believe the things they say about foetuses and immortal souls.

I don't know that I would go so far as to conclude that Christians don't believe in Christianity. But I do take Whyte's point that most people who believe abortion to be murder act in a manner inconsistent with that belief. In America, there are no government-run abortion clinics. But there are individual abortion providers who, it would seem, believers in fetal equality should regard as justified, and even morally imperative targets for assassination. And like Whyte, I suspect that most people's unexpressed beliefs about fetuses can be discerned from their illogically peaceable behavior.

I suspect that most people don't kill abortion providers because in their heart of hearts they intuitively recognize that fetuses are not equal to born human beings. The magnitude that individuals assign to the fetal life-right may differ signifcantly. (If you think you place it at zero, imagine abortions were free but contraceptives cost 25 cents per month. Would you find no moral problem in foregoing contraception solely because aborting would be cheaper?) But by not acting like Scott Roeder, nearly everyone reveals they believe the right falls somewhere below the level meriting defense by deadly force. And to believe that is to accept that fetuses have a lesser right to life than you and I--because our lives are subject to that level of protection.

If nearly everyone believes this, why will so many not admit it, even to themselves? I suspect it is because they at some level recognize their intuition is fatal to the anti-abortion cause. It is self-evident that citizens of a free society possess a strong interest in exercising bodily autonomy without government interference. It is further obvious that women can have powerful motivations to abort. Among the most universal are escaping the continued agonies of pregnancy and childbirth--for all women a physical toll, for some the risk of intra-family violence or social opprobrium; and, for the many who know they could not bear to surrender an infant to adoption, the avoidance of undesired parenthood.

If a fetus had a life-right equal to yours and mine, these interests and motivations would be of little consequence to the anti-abortion position. No matter how strong a pregnant woman's interests in obtaining an abortion, short of saving her own life few would say those interests justified the killing of a being with rights exactly equal to the woman's own. (There are arguments defending abortion even assuming fetal equality--Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist is perhaps the best known--but they are too elaborate to persuade many but the already-persuaded.)

But to admit that the fetal life-right is less than equal with your own is to admit that the morality of abortion is complex, and susceptible at best to a case-by-case balancing of interests. If that is true, then justly-administered state prohibition of abortion is hopelessly impractical. Such an admission also risks acknowledging that the true magnitude of the fetal life-right could be so low that a woman's interest in bodily autonomy--regardless of her other motivations--is always sufficient to outweigh it. If so, the government could not justly prohibit abortions even case-by-case.

Many Americans claim to believe abortion is the same thing as murder. Their refusal to stop it by violence suggests to me they know it isn't. Thankfully, there are very few Scott Roeders.

Just when you thought the forces opposing sensible sex education couldn't stoop any lower, the self-described evangelical District Attorney of Juneau County, Wisconsin sends this letter to county school board members and district administrators. In his correspondence, DA Scott Southworth offers his "review" of Wisconsin's new sex education guidelines. And what friendly advice does the good District Attorney offer? Only that teachers who follow the guidelines might just wind up in the pokey courtesy of, well, Scott Southworth:

[I]f a teacher instructs any student aged 16 or younger how to utilize contraceptives under circumstances where the teacher knows the child is engaging in sexual activity with another child--or even where the "natural and probable consequences" of the teacher's instruction is to cause that child to engage in sexual intercourse with a child--that teacher can be charged [with contributing to the delinquency of a child.] The teacher need not be deliberately encourage the illegal behavior: he or she only need be aware that his or her instruction is "practically certain" to cause the child to engage in the illegal act. Moreover, the teacher could be charged with this crime even if the child does not actually engage in the criminal behavior. Depending on the nature of the child's behavior, the teacher could face either misdemeanor or felony charges with maximum punishments ranging from 9 months of jail to up to six years of prison.

If it weren't so despicable, Southworth's transparent threat would be amusing. Later in the letter he warns that the new guidelines "may expose your district to civil litigation." This is so not only because parents will sue for the "sexual assault, unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, emotional trauma, etc." that will inevitably result from learning how to use contraceptives, but also because "the ACLU of Wisconsin has previously made it clear that it wants to monitor sex education programming in Wisconsin Schools."

Beautifully, it is Southworth himself whose conduct has most likely bought the taxpayers of Juneau County an ACLU-funded lawsuit. Ordinarily, one can't sue to prohibit a future prosecution. You need to demonstrate a substantial likelihood that you personally will be targeted, and most people can't show that. But when a teacher shows up with a letter in hand from the DA saying "if you follow the new state law I will put you in jail," I think she's going to get her day in court.

The Holy Prepuce hereby suspends his blogging hiatus to deliver an important message to (1) voters who repealed Maine's same-sex marriage provision on Tuesday; and (2) Anglicans accepting the Pope's invitation to a special Catholic "communion" featuring Anglican liturgy but none of those pesky women priests, gay bishops, or same-sex blessings. The message is: What the Hell is wrong with you people?

Let me explain.

We're all busy, and there are lots of good causes out there, so I don't expect that everyone is going to carry a sign or staff a phone bank for marriage equality. I'm even willing to say that if there were a ballot initiative to create (rather than repeal) a marriage equality law, I'm OK with people who don't care much about the issue staying home and not voting. And I recognize that there is a principled conservative objection to the process by which marriage has been judicially redefined in Massachusetts, Iowa, and, before Proposition 8, California.

But, people: to get in your car and drive down to the community center for the express purpose of voting against marriage equality -- for this there can be no excuse. There is no objection to marriage equality that does not, in the final analysis, reduce to anti-gay animus.

Now, as to the Anglicans. There are plenty of acceptable reasons to remain or become a Roman Catholic. If you were raised a Catholic, and that's your family heritage and culture and for those reasons you stay in the church in spite of, or without really thinking much about, the whole women-can't-be-in-charge-and-gays-will-burn-for-their-sins thing, that's fine by me. If you were raised in another religion, but after a process of spiritual discernment you come to believe in Roman Catholic theology, and you join in spite of the aforementioned issues, more power to you.

But, again, people: to join a religion specifically because it forbids women clergy and condemns homosexuals -- that's not OK. And it won't do for you to hide behind the claim that you sincerely believe God forbids women priests and homosexuality. Otherwise we enter a world of complete ethical relativism, where any chauvinism imaginable may be absolved by the profession of faith in its divine origin.

Furthermore, by defecting to Catholicism, what exactly are you saying about core Protestant beliefs? Suddenly the Pope is infallible, transubstantiation and the immaculate conception are real, and justification is by works as well as faith? All those Huguenots got slaughtered, all those Belfast pubs blown up for nothing?

Perhaps we are witnessing the birth of a new Christian ecumenicalism: "Let's put aside our differences and focus on the core beliefs that unite us: men are in charge, and gays are going to Hell."

Jesus Christ.