Planet Atheism » Holy Prepuce

"The Mosque at Ground Zero"

Holy Prepuce — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:07:00 +0000

“Stop the mosque at Ground Zero,” screams the right-wing Internet campaign!

Newt Gingrich has weighed in: “Building this structure on the edge of the battlefield created by radical Islamists is not a celebration of religious pluralism and mutual tolerance; it is a political statement of shocking arrogance and hypocrisy.”

As has Sarah Palin: “This is not an issue of religious tolerance but of common moral sense. To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks.”

We can quibble, of course, about whether 45 Park Place is “at Ground Zero,” whether Cordoba House will be a “mosque,” and whether it constitutionally could be prohibited. But arguing about these points may be counterproductive, because to do so risks conceding that they matter. It gives credence to the idea that if this is a “Ground Zero Mosque” and can be legally prohibited, then prohibiting it could be the right thing to do.

Gingrich and Palin certainly seem to think stopping Cordoba House is the right thing to do. Here is what I would like to ask them:

Newt and Sarah, let us assume arguendo that Cordoba House is “at Ground Zero,” that it is a "mosque," and that it legally could be prevented. Please tell me which one or more of the following statements you agree with:

1. No general moral right exists to build a house of worship on one’s own land; or

2. Such a general moral right exists, but it does not apply in this case because:

a. Islam--the religion as a whole in all its variants--was responsible for 9/11, and a mosque at the site of 9/11 would therefore profane the dead; or

b. Islam is a profane religion, and to allow a mosque on the “hallowed ground” of 9/11 would therefore profane the dead; or

c. Islam is the enemy of the United States, and it is therefore an act of surrender to allow a mosque at the site of an enemy attack; or

d. All Muslims bear collective guilt for 9/11, and as a result have forfeited this general moral right; or

e. Not all Muslims bear collective guilt for 9/11, but because 9/11 was committed in the name of Islam, to become or remain a Muslim is implicitly to approve of 9/11, an immoral belief that forfeits the general moral right.

I’m sure that Gingrich and Palin would deny believing any one of these statements, if each were put to them in isolation. But if they are sincere in calling for the project to be stopped, they must believe at least one.

Unless of course, they don’t, and they’re just pandering.

There is a separate line of argument in the anti-mosque talking points, which holds that whether or not Cordoba House can be stopped by its opponents, the builders should have the “sensitivity” not to build it. The idea being that so long as some Americans, particularly survivors of the 9/11 dead, are offended by the construction of Cordoba House, its builders have an ethical obligation to prevent that offense by cancelling the project.

The difficulty is, though, that to take offense at the building of a “Ground Zero Mosque,” one must logically believe one or more of statements 2a, 2b, or 2c. If Islam as a whole is not responsible for 9/11, is not a profane religion, and is not the enemy of the United States, then a “Ground Zero Mosque”--unless built in explicit celebration of the attacks--is not offensive. (A 9/11-celebrating mosque would of course be a different story, but so would a 9/11-celebrating ice cream stand or waterslide.)

So those who advance the sensitivity argument on the basis that they personally take offense are merely affirming their beliefs in statements 2a, 2b, or 2c, with the added implication that “even a Muslim should recognize these things about his religion.”

But what most intrigues me about the sensitivity argument is those who purport to raise it only on behalf of others. Such a person says in essence to the builders, “look, you and I both know that your entire religion is not profane, not the enemy, and not responsible for 9/11. But these people... they're hurting. They’ve lost loved ones, they've been through a trauma--if they believe those things about Islam, let's not rub their noses in it."

After all, the general proposition--that looking out for people’s feelings is usually the right thing to do--is uncontroversial. But could this duty really extend to respecting others’ feelings when they are born from prejudice? Even if the prejudice is against you? That seems a step too far. Which is why I have my suspicions that, from people who have thought it through, the “sensitivity” argument in the end reduces to a general condemnation of Islam.

Unless of course, it doesn’t, and they’re just pandering.

UPDATE: a conservative friend pointed out to me that the Anti-Defamation League has come out against Cordoba House as well, and he asks whether I am “implying that it is acceptable for a civil rights organization such as the ADL to be against the mosque, but it is not acceptable for conservative politicians to take that stand?” To answer in no uncertain terms: no. I was unaware when I wrote this post of the ADL’s position, which I find equally unsupportable, and indeed more troubling coming as it does from an organization dedicated to fighting anti-religious bias.

I would put the same questions to ADL director Abraham Foxman. And in particular, to his statement that “building an Islamic center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain--unnecessarily--and that is not right,” I would respond as follows: Explain to me, Mr. Foxman, why a victim would feel pain at the building of an Islamic center unless he believes that “Islam”--all of it--is the same entity that carried out 9/11? And assuming you can’t, tell me why it is “not right” for the builders of Cordoba House to ignore those victims’ bigotry.

Wisconsin County Celebrates Send-a-Sex-Ed-Teacher-to-Jail Week

Holy Prepuce — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:35:00 +0000

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.

Mainely Bigots / Pope to Anglican Chauvanists: Come to Papa

Holy Prepuce — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:57:00 +0000

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.

The Secret Life of the American Teenager

Holy Prepuce — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:30:00 +0000

I've been working on a lengthy and pedantic follow-up to last Sunday's post about the Obama administration's brief in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. But in the meantime, I'm going to tell you why I love "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," which returned to the ABC Family Network last Monday.

First, Molly Ringwald is in it. Molly Ringwald!

Second, remember Olivia Hussey who played Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet? Well, her daughter India Eisley is in it, and she plays exactly the kind of sarcastic middle school girl I would be if I were a middle school girl.

Third, the season opener incorporated the following sequence of events:

Scene 3: Grace, abstinence-'till-marriage-pledged evangelical Christian, has not spoken to her father since he became angry at her announcement that God won't mind after all when she has sex with her boyfriend Jack. She's on the phone with her mother and brother, who are in the car after dropping the father off at the airport. Expository dialogue reveals that the father, not seen to this point, is taking off on a private plane to render medical aid in a third world country. Grace, who is sprinkling flower petals on her bed in preparation for Jack's arrival and the imminent loss of her virginity, refuses to call her father and apologize before the plane takes off.

At this point it is obvious to anyone watching that John Schneider (Bo Duke from "The Dukes of Hazzard") has not returned for a second season in his role as Grace's father, and the plane is going to crash. (Mrs. P: "Dude, the plane is going to crash." Holy Prepuce: "The plane is totally going to crash.")

Scene 7: Grace, no longer a virgin, delivers the most frank, mature, and empowered address about adolescent sexuality ever spoken on American television. She is happy, fulfilled, in love with her boyfriend, at peace with herself and God. Coming from this character, it is a stunningly bold alternative example for a generation made to feel dirty and fearful about its sexuality by abstinence-only curricula and the Promise Keepers.

Scene 8: Jack comes downstairs. Grace's mom and brother enter, crying. The plane has crashed. Jack announces that he and Grace have just had sex. Grace comes downstairs. Grace's brother, who has Down Syndrome, says (of their deceased father), "you killed him!"

Yes!

Easter Monday

Holy Prepuce — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:22:00 +0000

The Holy Prepuce would like to make clear that, should he ever be nailed to an object, he does not want the anniversary celebrated as "Good" anything.

This year, as every year, Christians around the world celebrated Good Friday with reenactments of the Biblical Crucifixion. And, again as every year, residents of Bulacan Province in the Philippines took things just that one step further by actually nailing each other to crosses. The ritual is a perennial journalistic standby: it's easy to schedule coverage, it's always photogenic, and typically there's some hook. Last year's hook was the government health advisory warning penitents to receive tetanus vaccinations, to ensure that they self-flagellate only with "well-maintained" whips, and to disinfect their four-inch nails prior to hammering them through each others' hands and feet. More comprehensive health warnings, such as "don't nail yourself to crosses, you crazy bastards," apparently went unspoken. This year's angle was the revelation that Jewish Australian comedian John Safran was discovered among the penitents, being crucified under an assumed name.

Every now and again, I like to do some original reporting for this blog, so I asked the one person I know in the Philippines what she thought about the practice. Her comments suggest that middle class Manilans have approximately the same relationship to Bulakenyo crucifixion as most Americans have to Appalachian Pentecostal snake handling: it's deeply weird, it's faintly embarrassing that people in other countries know about it, and they've only ever seen it on TV.

My source, who prefers not to be named out of fear at what she described as a reflexive tendency toward "butthurt" against public criticism of Filipino cultural institutions, went on to say the following:

[M]y only opinion on the matter, with my limited knowledge on the subject, is "Holy SHIT that's gotta hurt." I mean, they use real nails and shit. (I always change the channel.) But for a more insightful opinion for your piece, I'll actually quote my Dad, who had some interesting comments when they showed it on TV: these people go through all of that excruciating physical pain every year, then they go home and beat their wives and children, gamble, drink, steal, and engage in all sorts of debauchery.

They're probably in it for the attention they get from the townspeople, like, "Wow, you're so brave and self-sacrificing." I think it takes the concept of the act of confession, in Catholicism, and then magnifies it hundredfold, so these people think that if they just commit to this torture once every year, it makes up for the less godly things they do the other 364 days, in God's eyes.

In other news on the Easter-related themes of corporeal punishment, resurrection, and redemption, I would direct your attention to:

This article on Alabama judge Herman Thomas, indicted for (among other things) allegedly checking male inmates out of jail, taking them to a specially-furnished storage room near his chambers, and "forcing [them] to expose their buttocks to 'paddling and/or whipping.'"

The reference, in this article, to the "National Organization for Victims of Juvenile Lifers." The NOVJL website does not disclose the source of its funding, but one suspects that like many "victims' rights" groups, NOVJL is a front organisation for the Corrections Corporation of America or the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. (Both lobby aggressively against bad-for-their-business reductions in incarceration.) But seriously, what kind of an asshole joins a group specifically founded to advocate continued sentencing of 13-year-olds to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole?

This article on a Maryland plea bargain, under which all charges will be dropped in case of the victim's resurrection. Said a spokeswoman for the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office: "This would need to be a Jesus-like resurrection. It cannot be a reincarnation in another object or animal."

On the Origin of Vaccine-Autism Fundamentalism, by Means of Unnatural Credulity -or- the Preservation of Ill-Favored Ideas in the Struggle for Reason

Holy Prepuce — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:57:00 +0000

Last Thursday, a special federal court ruled in three test cases that the petitioners' autism did not result from the measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine. Finding that the petitioners' families had been "misled by physicians who are guilty . . . of gross medical misjudgment," the court denied compensation and decried the evidence for a vaccine-autism link as "bad science conducted to support litigation rather than to advance medical and scientific understanding.''

The decision's release on Charles Darwin's 200th birthday was fortuitous, the "vax/aut" crowd having not a little in common with the fundamentalists who so despise the father of evolutionary biology. Like fundamentalists, vax/aut proponents have become so invested in the truth of their particular idea that they ignore, rationalize, or attack as fraudulent any evidence to the contrary. Evidence in favor of their idea is distorted and endlessly repeated, and gaps in the evidence for alternative ideas are treated as further proof.

I suspect that fundamentalists' ire for Darwin goes beyond evolution, and stems as much from the approach to knowledge for which he stands. Setting out on the Beagle, Darwin held an idea common among 19th century Anglicans: that modern plants and animals descend from nearly identical ancestors created by God at the beginning of the world. But when Darwin's observations in the Galápagos suggested an alternative hypothesis, one that better fit the newly available evidence, he abandoned the old idea. This methodology for approaching ideas--evaluating them for explanatory success and then refining or discarding them in light of new facts--poses an existential threat to the entire project of fundamentalism.

The genesis of the vax/aut hypothesis was not in itself irrational. Certain forms of autism tend to manifest around the age at which most children receive MMR. And mercury, an ingredient in the vaccine preservative thimerosal, is known to cause neurological damage in vastly larger quantities.

But subsequent analysis has revealed the conclusions drawn from timing of onset to represent a simple post hoc fallacy. The incidence of autism turns out to be the same among children receiving vaccines with and without thimerosal, or receiving no vaccinations at all. And here is where the vax/aut enthusiasts show their fundamentalist stripes. Like the contrarians who insist the moon landing was faked and Snapple is sterilizing African-Americans, vax/aut types are unmoved by the evidence.

It's not that vax/aut believers aren't sympathetic--many are parents of autistic children and understandably yearn for any explanation of the otherwise inexplicable devastation wrought upon their families. Often they have been seduced by cure-peddling quacks and book-hawking celebrities.

But the vax/aut faithful provide red meat to the "anti-vax" movement: parents who refuse to vaccinate their children and think you shouldn't either. The obscenity of this movement's attack on perhaps the greatest public health achievement in history is stupefying. A campaign to reinstitute open sewers or ban refrigeration could scarcely threaten greater violence to the general well-being.

Tragically, anti-vaxers may be validating Darwin as we speak. More than survival or even reproduction, the traits most favored by natural selection are those that ensure an organism's offspring survive to reproduce. If credulity is a heritable trait, forgoing vaccination is an excellent way to boost the odds your children won't pass it on.

Friend of the Court, Heiress of the Almighty Eternal Creator

Holy Prepuce — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:47:00 +0000

Throughout the campaigns for and against California's execrable Proposition Eight, faithful HP! reader FearlessLeader compiled the crème of supporters' virulent, idiotic, and unintentionally hilarious statements on her blog Fundamentally Flawed. There was little I could add. But now that the briefing is underway in the California Supreme Court challenge, I must bring your attention to this amicus curiae submission filed by one "D.Q. Mariette Do-Nguyen, Heiress of the Almighty Eternal Creator."

Although not an attorney, Ms. Do-Nguyen has done a respectable job of formatting her brief in accordance with typical appellate practice. The Brief begins with the required statement of amicus' interest in the matter: Ms. Do-Nguyen explains that she is "[a]cting on behalf of the Almighty Eternal Creator, who is holding sole ownership to His creations, all planets, including the earth and everything above, below and on it, myself as His heiress...."

Do-Nguyen then provides a Statement of Facts, which informs the court that

Through elections and appointments, Global government leaders and officials are selected by the Almighty Eternal Creator to serve the people.... Without any exception, all human souls are created by the Almighty Eternal Creator! All souls arrive at the time of conception. The power of human souls works through male sperm and female eggs to form human physical bodies!... Earth is a copy of Heaven and this means all things must exist in the spiritual realm before coming down to earth, such as the three branches of global government: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. These three branches must have rules and regulations that must pass by an executive of the Almighty Creator’s laws.

The Statement of Facts goes on to explain that the A.E.C. forbids gay marriage because he has "ordered human souls to be fertile and multiply, fill the earth with human natural bodies!" (For similar reasons, the A.E.C. also takes a dim view of in vitro fertilization and abortion.)

Do-Nguyen transitions to an Argument, in which she explains that the courts of California do not have the authority to reverse the A.E.C.'s ban on gay marriage. She illustrates her contention with the following example:

Example: If an individual attempts to assassinate the State of California's Governor or the United States President, and the person got caught, surely the person would be charged with attempted murder of the State of California's Governor or the President of the United States, and jurors would sentence him to prison without parole or to capital punishment in accordance with established laws.

At this point, Do-Nguyen departs from orthodox formatting to include a section entitled "Consequences After Each and All Actions." Here she explains the genesis of her decision to submit an Amicus brief:

After a night full of dreams, before dawn of November 11, 2008, before I woke up in the morning, the Almighty Eternal Creator ordered me, saying, "You explain to them the consequences that follow each and all actions. Once they understand, they will listen!"... [T]he Almighty Eternal Creator instructed me to explain the consequences in writing and file with the California Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court, as well as the United States Federal court regarding certain individuals and government agencies for each and all actions. He seriously emphasized that world government leaders and high-ranking officials are like religious leaders and officials, and they must assist each other to comply with the Laws of the Almighty Eternal Creator/sole Owner of the earth and human race.

In particular, Ms. Do-Nguyen appears to be concerned with "the consequences" of "people exercising their free-will rights for wrong purposes." These incorrect exercises of free will include not only homosexuality and abortion, but also the war in Iraq, Eliot Spitzer's interstate transportation of a prostitute, the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, the U.S. Supreme Court's establishment clause jurisprudence, and an ongoing plot by George Bush and the CIA to "rob monies from innocent people after intercepting the telex transfer."

The negative "consequences" of these actions include the present financial crisis, Bill Clinton's coronary artery bypass surgery, an unspecified illness suffered by Sandra Day O'Connor, and global warming.

Do-Nguyen returns to traditional format with a Conclusion, in which she urges the Justices to uphold Proposition Eight, thereby rendering their souls eligible to "receive an energy supply directly from the Creator." (By contrast, striking down the Proposition would result in receipt of "an energy supply 'indirectly' from God, through a destructive channel known as the Devil or Satan.")

When she is finished, Do-Nguyen further complies with the rules by attaching a Certificate of Service listing all parties and their attorneys, and affirming that she has mailed a true copy of her brief to each. She also includes the following language, which I intend to incorporate into all my future Certificates of Service:

I declare that I am, and was at the time of the service hereinafter mentioned, at least 18 years of age and not a party of the above-entitled action. I am an heiress to the Almighty Eternal Creator, and I am fully God and fully human. My natural business mailing address is 9450 Mira Mesa Blvd. B417. San Diego CA 92126.

S. palin / D. melanogaster

Holy Prepuce — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

The Holy Prepuce agrees with Sarah Palin that we should not fund any more fruit fly research. Fruit flies couldn’t possibly present a useful model for human biology unless both were descended from a common ancestor--maybe through some process by which species change over millions of years as a result of random mutations leading to traits more or less likely to result in successful reproduction. But since we know that God created humans and fruit flies in their present forms approximately 6000 years ago, it would be foolish to waste money on such nonsense. Especially if it's happening in France.

The Politics of Fear -or- America Celebrates We Can’t Take a Joke Day, courtesy of The New Yorker

Holy Prepuce — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:24:00 +0000

In case you've spent the last 24 hours under a rock, below you will find "The Politics of Fear," the upcoming New Yorker cover by Barry Blitt.

In a display of monumental disingenuity, some members of the national news media are pretending not to recognize this image for what it is: a tongue-in-cheek depiction of certain idiotic beliefs currently bouncing around the right-wing echo chamber. Specifically: that Barack Obama is a Muslim (Mr. Obama shown sporting a dishdasha and taqiyah); that Michelle Obama is a Black radical who rails against "whitey" (Ms. Obama depicted with Afro); that the Obamas' celebratory fist-bump on June 3rd in St. Paul was a "terrorist fist-jab" (fist-bump featured at center of image / Ms. Obama wearing camouflage pants, combat boots, Kalashnikov, copious ammunition); that Obama sympathizes with al Qaeda (portrait of Osama bin Laden); and that the Obamas are unpatriotic (Stars and Stripes burning in fireplace). The blindingly obvious--and profoundly sad--message of this cartoon is as follows: some Americans are so mind-bogglingly bigoted and uninformed that they believe this idiocy.

Who knew that quatorze juillet was also We Can't Take a Joke Day in America? Reading news, blogs, and comment threads throughout the day, I have become increasingly despondent at the the vigor with which my fellow citizens insist on demonstrating their collective lack of any sense of humor. To rescue myself from this despondency, I have attempted to distill their commentary to four key objections, which I will now endeavor to answer as self-appointed defender of Mr. Blitt and the magazine.

1. How could The New Yorker make such libellous implications about the Obamas?

As stated above, where this objection comes from members of the national news media, it is surely disingenuous. I find it inconceivable that one could work for a media organization of national scope and be unaware of The New Yorker's editorial orientation. If you are a left-wing journalist, you probably read The New Yorker. If you are a right wing journalist, The New Yorker is well-known enemy territory. Is it remotely possible that this fiercely intellectual, resolutely pro-Obama publication would not only tack 180 degrees but also embrace the lunatic slurs of the Right's imbecile caucus? The image is satire, and anyone from Rush Limbaugh to Amy Goodman pretending not to understand that is insulting our intelligence.

Where this objection comes from someone else, that person is clearly unfamiliar with The New Yorker--not in itself a crime--but also rather dense: if we cannot hear the screams of "satire" as Old Glory burns in the Oval Office fireplace beneath a portrait of bin Laden, we are a nation struck deaf indeed with literality.

2. Okay, I get it, but lots of people won't, and so it will just fan the very rumors it is mocking.

I don't buy this. If there is still someone out there who a) has never heard that the Obamas are America-hating Black separatist Muslim terrorists, but b) would believe as much if he heard it--is it really very likely that the cover of The New Yorker will provide his first exposure to those ideas? I'm guessing that such fellows do not figure heavily in The New Yorker's subscriber base. Of course, the image has been disseminated widely in both mainstream media and the blogosphere, but anyone frequenting these outlets already has access to either the rumors, the truth, or both.

3. This is so racist.

No, it's not racist, and it's not even ironic-making-fun-of-racism-racism-that's-actually-still-racist. Given that Muslims can be of any race, the only racially specific elements of this image are Michelle Obama's Afro and, arguably, the fist-bump. But those elements are not included to say "ha ha, look at Black people's funny hair and greeting rituals." They're not even included to say "ha ha, look at the stereotypes White people have about Black people's hair and greeting rituals." Rather, those elements allude to specific accusations leveled at the Obamas--the Afro evoking a particular "radical Black activist" image cultivated by, e.g., Black Panther Angela Davis, and the fist-bump of course referring to the pair's much-discussed Minnesota greeting. The right's coöption of each concept is fair game for satire, and it's not clear how Blitt could have depicted them in a non-racially specific way.

4. I get it, but the fact that people are bigoted idiots is not funny; it's pathetic.

It is pathetic, and the most pathetic part of it is that we live in a society where almost no one, including Barack Obama, has the guts to stand up and say "shame on you, America, for making 'Muslim' into a slur" instead of "no, I swear to God I'm a Christian." But what makes life livable and humans interesting is our capacity to weep at the Holocaust Museum one day and scream with laughter at The Producers the next. If you don't believe that something can be both pathetic and funny, I will direct you to a syllabus beginning with Aristophanes, and continuing through Shakespeare, Chaplin, Brecht, Emmet Kelly, and The Sopranos. If you've completed my assignments and still object to this magazine cover, I will present you with the complete Family Circus and we will just have to agree to disagree about the nature of humor.

High Stakes Softball at the FDOC • Brokeback Mountain ≠ Sodomite Recruiting Video

Holy Prepuce — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:35:00 +0000

In a fit of nerdiness, the Holy Prepuce has added to the site a "random toke" feature. For those readers insufficiently puerile or pretentious to interpret H.P.'s direct allusion to drug culture and oblique reference to French obscenity, this means that if you click in the left-hand column where it says "[c]lick here for a random toke on the Prepuce," the site will redirect you at random to a prior Holy Prepuce post. (Feed and email subscribers will need to visit the website to make this work.)

But enough of the past -- what is tickling the Holy Prepuce right this minute? First, this article concerning "a startling list of alleged abuses and crimes" at the Florida Department of Corrections. The inmate abuse, kickbacks, and misuse of public funds are nothing remarkable for a state prison system. But worthy of note is FDOC's innovative personnel policy: the awarding of promotions based on home runs hit in the inter-departmental softball league! And how did department employees react to this policy? Why, just as anyone would adapt to an environment in which career advancement depends on slugging ability: steroids. Oh yes, and apparently each game was followed by an orgy.

Second, Heath Ledger's hasty addition to this year's "let's play John Williams music under a montage of everyone who's died since the last Oscars" reminds H.P. of the always-reliable Westboro Baptist Church, which picketed the actor's memorial services because of his role in Brokeback Mountain. According to WBC, Ledger's portrayal of a gay cowboy has rendered him a "fag enabler" and condemned him to an eternity of torment in Hell. (As this site has noted before, WBC believes Ledger will have a lot of company there, most recently the victims of the Northern Illinois University shootings, smitten by God because of a 2000 NIU "conference for fags . . . headed by some preacher who had a sex change operation.")

The thing that H.P. has never understood about the religious and other anti-gay opposition to Brokeback Mountain is this idea that the movie is some kind of recruiting commercial for gayness, ready to lead young Christian men astray. But if we take the film's plot as a sort of road map for the gay life that awaits young recruits, what is the take-home message? Basically that (warning: spoiler) your one carefree summer of mountaintop sex will be paid for with a lifetime of broken dreams, divorce, alienation, and either violent death or a middle age lived out in a ramshackle trailer, talking to your dead lover's cowboy shirt. This is an advertisement for the ways of Sodom?

Holy Quid Pro Quo

Holy Prepuce — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:05:00 +0000

Friday night found the Holy Prepuce channel surfing over to the Christian Broadcasting Network membership telethon. My interest in Pat Robertson's flagship media organ had been piqued by Robertson's Charles Foster Kane-worthy plan to buy the Virginian-Pilot newspaper, presumably in order to shut down its critical coverage of him. (Among other topics, the Virginian-Pilot has exposed Robertson's non-profit Operation Blessing as a front for his commercial diamond mining enterprise.)

The segment in progress as I tuned into the telethon concerned the proprietor of a Florida-based Karaoke entertainment company, who attributed his growing success to the favor of Jesus Christ. A few years ago, this fellow had been nearly bankrupt. God had spoken to this man and told him to spend his last dollars not on, say, rent, but instead as a "seed offering" to CBN. Sure enough, within a few months the karaoke business took off, and three short years later he employed eighteen DJs and a fleet of as many mobile karaoke units. And all because he had "sown" his cash with CBN--a practice he now continued through tithing, which he emphasized was "not about the money, but about obedience."

Following a brief intermission of typical telethon fare (donation thermometer rising, bells ringing, operators cheering) a new segment began. This vignette concerned a young couple who had been scrounging to make ends meet. But after sending one dollar, just one dollar to CBN, the wife found a ten dollar bill in the laundry. She sent this money to CBN, and three weeks later, her grandmother's estate settled (it had been tied up in the courts for over a year) and she received $10,000. God then spoke to the husband "in that way that God speaks to you," and directed that 10% of this windfall be "sown" with CBN. Flash forward one year, and the couple now lives in a beautiful home, with new cars, a thriving business, etc., etc.

Occasionally the program would cut away to a segment about the relief work performed by Operation Blessing in some developing nation, but clearly such details about what CBN planned to do with the money were secondary to the monetary payback the almighty had planned for viewers who would only pick up the phone and "seed."

This was not the first time I had encountered the sow/reap metaphor from a Christian "ministry"--I have received several appeals in the mail from an Arizona outfit known as the Don Stewart Association, promising me "an Unveiling of Money Blessings" if I would "stretch [my] faith and Prove God with a Seed Faith Gift of $30." One of the mailings even included a packet of oil, with which I was instructed to anoint my "purse or wallet, some financial papers, or bills."

But something else struck me as familiar about CBN's appeal--a feeling that I had seen all of this before on cable television. And then it dawned on me where: those "No Money Down" real estate infomercials! The plot lines were nearly identical: an impoverished protagonist makes a small investment, and through some mysterious process (the details of which are never very clear), winds up rolling in dough. The visual elements are interchangeable--well-coiffed white people in big houses with oversized furniture, interspersed with cutaways of expensive cars driving along the ocean. Of course, the paths to riches being sold are different--I'll leave it to the reader to predict whether slipping Jehovah a sawbuck for some Karaoke bookings has greater prospects for success than hitting up complete strangers for seller-financing--but the central concepts are the same.

Part of me feels that anyone credulous enough to believe the creator of the entire universe will go to bat for them in probate court if they send $20 to some cable channel deserves to go broke. But another part of me, the part with empathy for those less fortunate, wishes there were a way to shut down these con men who wrap themselves in the mantle of spirituality while shaking down the desperate for their last dollars.

I am all for religiously-based charitable appeals when there is some trace of theological content to the request. If you want to get on the air and ask for money to feed the children of Madagascar because that's what Jesus would have done, more power to you (assuming the money goes where you say it will.) But the telethon I saw was strictly a dollars-and-cents proposition: lay a C-note on God (who doesn't handle cash directly, so CBN will gladly accept it on his behalf), and the big guy will hit you back with a grand. If CBN's message were directed at rich people, I would shrug and say a fool and his money are soon parted. But when it is so obviously targeted at people struggling to ends meet, I say it's nauseating.

"May Affect Individual Salvation"

Holy Prepuce — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 15:52:00 +0000

Vote for a pro-choice politician and burn in Hell. So said the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at this week's annual meeting. (Technically, the Bishops said such voting "may affect individual salvation," but we all know that's intellectual theologian code for pitchforks and eternal roasting.)

Guys, this is so not playing fair. By all means, go ahead and encourage the faithful to vote consistently with Roman Catholic teachings on abortion. There are perfectly logical arguments available as to why Catholics should vote for pro-life politicians. For example, if one believes that humans are ensouled from conception, and that the ensouled have a God-given, inviolate right to life, it's easy to see how this right could outweigh any maternal interest in reproductive autonomy and could require not only abstaining personally from abortion, but also voting to proscribe other citizens' acts that are tantamount to murder. I reject the supernatural premise of this argument, and independently reject its conclusions, but it's certainly a fair argument to raise among believers.

What seems unfair to me is to threaten voters with catastrophic supernatural consequences for not towing the line. Threatening catastrophic Earthly consequences for political decisions is one thing--voters can presumably evaluate for themselves the chances that impeding the Bush administration will result in "the smoking gun . . . be[ing] a mushroom cloud." But to suggest that Jesus is peering around the curtain at your Diebold Accuvote TSX--and will cast you into the abyss if you touch "Giuliani"--crosses a certain line.

Because, really, how can any pro-choice argument hope to prevail in this version of Pascal's wager? As long as one believes there is any non-zero probability of eternal punishment for voting pro-choice, the disutility of such a vote registers at infinity. The utility of a pro-choice vote--in support of rights exercisable only during the finite human lifespan--is necessarily lower.

To be fair, the Bishops also encouraged voting against evils such as racism, and there is a lot to like in the Church's social policy positions on poverty. I do consider it my ethical duty to vote for poverty relief and against racism. But I'll thank you, Conference of Bishops, to let me get there without supernatural threats of eternal torment.

Still More Creationism Museum Fun: Barista Wanted (The Damned Need Not Apply)

Holy Prepuce — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:01:00 +0000

The Answers In Genesis Creation Museum is open at last! From previous posts, you will know of my fascination with this institution. The finished product has by all accounts exceeded my expectations. Animatronic tableaux feature human children frolicking alongside dinosaurs; videos demonstrate how metaphorical interpretations of Genesis lead inevitably to internet pornography and abortion.

And the really excellent news is that the museum is seeking a qualified barista. Faithful reader Eliza R. alerted me to this opening at the Museum's "Noah's Cafe." The key job responsibility is the preparation of "fine coffee and other related gourmet beverages," including espresso, latte, and something called "Frappes Chai." As one might expect, other duties include working the register, clearing dishes, and taking inventory.

But the ability to discharge these functions is hardly the sole qualification. Along with her resume, an applicant must submit a "creation belief statement," "salvation testimony," and a written confirmation of her agreement with the museum's Statement of Faith.

Exactly what must one believe in order to serve up a skinny half-caff at Noah's? Some key elements are as follows:

"No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record"

"The only legitimate marriage is the joining of one man and one woman. God has commanded that no intimate sexual activity be engaged in outside of marriage"

"The Noachian Flood was a significant geological event and much (but not all) fossiliferous sediment originated at that time"

"Those who do not believe in Christ are subject to everlasting conscious punishment."

Nice. When I visit the museum (and I will), perhaps the successful applicant will kindly leave some room in my mocha. It sounds like there's no extra charge for a shot of eternal damnation.

Paring Down The Prepuce II / Fred Phelps Sings!

Holy Prepuce — Fri, 25 May 2007 13:29:00 +0000

Astute readers may note that today is Friday. More astute readers may note that today's post is thus two days late on the every-Wednesday schedule that this blog has followed for most of its existence. This is by design, because I have decided to downshift Holy Prepuce! from a weekly to a whenever-I-damn-well-feel-like-it-and-no-whining-because-it's-free schedule.

This change will, of course, inconvenience those among you who visit the blog on the web each Wednesday for your weekly toke. Your dedication makes me happy with each mid-week spike on the usage stats, and I apologize. But I can promise that if you sign up for the email service, or subscribe to the site feed, updates will be yours as they happen.

Two factors have influenced this decision. First, I am starting a new job and so will have different demands on my time and the predictability thereof. Second, I have come to realize that arbitrary self-discipline is overrated; and it is sometimes OK to peel off the gimp mask and whisper the safeword.

Now then:

The mad, mad world of virulent anti-gay Christianism got a little more fun Wednesday, when a student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University was arrested for cooking up a batch of homemade napalm in preparation for Falwell's funeral. Mark David Uhl allegedly planned to use the explosives against the Rev. Fred Phelps and his congregants from the Westboro Baptist Church.

Westboro Baptist, you may remember, is the organization that attends gay funerals toting banners with such charming slogans as "AIDS cures fags," and "Fags die, God laughs." The group also protests at productions of The Laramie Project, and maintains an online clock ticking off the days that Matthew Sheppard, the young gay man on whose murder the play is based, has been in Hell.

More recently, the church has taken to protesting at the funerals of U.S. service members killed in Iraq, on the theory that God smites soldiers out of hatred for America's tolerance of homosexuality. Of course, there can be little doubt that Phelps' vitriol stems from his own repressed homosexuality, since no human being in history outside of a Queer Studies department has spent as much time obsessing on the subject of gayness.

In any event, Westboro Baptist announced that it would protest at the funeral of Jerry Falwell. Now, you might think that Phelps would be a fan of Falwell, fellow travelers as they were on the anti-gay hate-mongering circuit. But there you would be wrong. According to Phelps, Falwell "split Hell wide open the instant he died" because he espoused "false doctrines like 'God loves everyone,'" and believed in free will. (Phelps is an old-school Calvinist and as such believes in strict predestination.) So, Westboro planned a protest, Falwell supporters planned a counter-protest, and Mark David Uhl planned to napalm the whole thing.

But all of this is old news for finger-on-the-pulse information mavens such as Holy Prepuce! readers. What may interest you more is something I discovered while browsing through Westboro Baptist's website, GodHatesAmerica.com. (Lest you think the church insular, it also maintains GodHatesCanada.com, and GodHatesSweden.com.) No, it's not their list of the recently-damned-to-Hell; although that is certainly informative, including as it does Coretta Scott King, Gerald Ford, and all 31 Virginia Tech shooting victims.

What caught my eye--and ear--is that Westboro Baptist has a choir. And you will be pleased to know that this august ensemble has made its recordings available on the Internet! So as a public service and for your listening enjoyment, I present Westboro Baptist's adaptations of several patriotic standards. (Clicking on a title will launch the corresponding .mp3 recording.)

Original	Westboro Baptist Version
God Bless America	God Hates America
Proud to Be an American	Ashamed to be an American
This Land is Our Land	This Land is Fag Land
America the Beautiful	Wicked Land of Sodomites
The United States Marine Corps Anthem	Semper Fi Semper Fags

Classic!

Matzo Lab Bust / The 50-Foot Robot King of Pop

Holy Prepuce — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 01:52:00 +0000

Looking back over the past few posts, I realize that I've been harping on some pretty heavy shit. First Ladies dying in the White House, smokers snuffing it before they can collect their pensions, families of slain police officers viewing graphic simulations of police officer slayings, racist tribal elections, Iraq . . . It's as though I had forgotten that the world is still, at base, a Zippy the Pinhead comic full of carefree aesthetic delights, free to be savored by all takers. In order to restore some balance, I would like to bring two items to your attention.

First, inspectors in Spring Valley, New York recently busted an illicit backyard matzo lab operating out of a converted school bus. Rabbi Aaron Winternitz had been running the operation for the last three Passovers, ever since he bought the derelict vehicle and installed an oven, a human-powered wheat mill fashioned from a stationary bicycle, and, more problematically, an unauthorized gas line from his house. The purpose of the gas line is unclear, since the matzo oven itself is wood-fired--as attested to by the shoulder-high stack of firewood surrounding the vehicle.

Not surprisingly, local officials found the combination of a massive open-flame oven, stacks of combustible wood and dried wheat, and do-it-yourself natural gas fittings problematic when operating 10 feet from a residential structure. Spring Valley matzo futures no doubt traded up on news of the reduced supply; at peak production, the bus was capable of turning out 100 lbs of product per day.

Second, Michael Jackson has announced plans to build a 50-foot robotic effigy of himself in Las Vegas. According to press reports, the device will wander through the surrounding deserts shooting laser beams out of its eyeballs. This is all fine and good, but I know where I'm not taking my 50-foot robot twelve-year-old boy.

Jesus is Lord of Metropolitan DC, MD, VA

Holy Prepuce — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:24:00 +0000

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be on paternity leave from blogging, but I could not resist sharing the following creed, which I spied on a bumper sticker in the parking lot of the local CVS:

The only theory I could come up with was that this is some sort of starter doctrine for new converts to Christianity. You know, for those people who really want to join up, but are finding the Lord-of-the-entire-universe thing a little hard to take on all at once? I guess the churches figured, "well, let's start them off with something manageable; something still pretty vast and important, but nothing the layman can't flip through in his ADC Road Atlas."

I'm hoping to see that car again--I hear there's an opening for Lord of the entire Mid-Atlantic Region, and I'm pulling for Jesus to get the promotion.

Demagogues United for the Real America

Holy Prepuce — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 05:49:00 +0000

If the mid-term election results proved anything, it was the fallacy of the red state / blue state "two Americas" theory hyped by the media since 2000. November taught us that if a 60/40 victory constitutes a landslide, then our most powerful political element is the vast ideological center. Pleasing "the base" on either side is useful, but races are won and lost on the shifting alliances of the pragmatic.

Despite this lesson, certain members of Congress are already out of the gate for 2008 with old-school demagoguery calculated to energize the "real America." Take, for instance, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA). Goode could not remain on the sidelines while the right-wing media lambasted incoming Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) over the planned use of a Koran at his ceremonial swearing-in next month. Never mind that the event is a photo-op, the actual oath being taken en masse and without any religious texts. And never mind that Ellison would not be the first to use a book omitting the New Testament--Hebrew Bibles and the Book of Mormon have served the purpose without incident. The good Rep. Goode felt the need to warn his constituents that

if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. . . . I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

Goode later fretted to the press that if immigration is not restricted, we may have "a majority of Muslims elected to the United States House of Representatives."

Addressing this last point first, if we assume that Goode believes naturalized citizens usually vote for their coreligionists, he must therefore believe that America is in danger of absorbing enough Muslims to outnumber our roughly 200 million Christians. I wonder how he squares this projection with the usual anti-immigration bogeyman: the tidal wave of illegal Latinos necessitating (and apparantly taking jobs on) the Southern border fence project. Last time I checked, most of these folks tend to be, um, Christian.

With regard to the proposal that Ellison be required to use a Bible, I suppose Goode has probably heard that Article VI of the pesky old Constitution forbids religious tests for office. (And indeed permits an affirmation of office, rather than an oath--an option exercised by Presidents Franklin Pierce and Herbert Hoover.) But then, politicians of Goode's stripe have never been too concerned about Constitutional restrictions on theocratic government.

One might pause, though, to consider the reason behind the use of religious texts in oath-taking. The whole idea of an oath is that it is a promise of especial solemnity, one on which the obligation to make good goes beyond the ordinary ethics of keeping one's word. Swearing on a sacred text is meant to invoke divine judgment on the oath-taker's later fealty to the promise. In earlier times, Roman Catholics swore by placing their hands on a cloth used to cover the Eucharist, quite literally swearing a "corporeal oath" on the body of Jesus Christ. So if the point of Ellison's swearing an oath of office is to make a really, really important promise to do a good job--one that he had better not break, or else--then maybe it would make sense to let him use the book he believes sacred? It seems like swearing on the New Testament for a non-Christian is rather akin to swearing with one's fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, the confirmation of federal district court appointee Janet Neff is on hold because Judge Neff, currently on the Michigan Court of Appeals, had the audacity to attend a neighbor's same-sex commitment ceremony in Massachusetts. This was not a same-sex wedding, mind you; it took place in 2002, before the Supreme Judicial Court legalized gay marriage in the Bay State. Nor did Judge Neff preside at the ceremony; even had same-sex marriages then been legal in Massachusetts, a Michigan judge would have had no authority to perform one.

Such distinctions do not matter to Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), eying a presidential run in 2008. Mere attendance at such a Satanic function is enough to taint Neff, never mind that she is a Bush appointee and already vetted by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Brownback has put a hold on Neff's nomination until such time as her confirmation hearing can be re-opened for testimony regarding her role in the ceremony, her legal views on same-sex unions, and her ability to rule impartially on the issue.

I had not realized that bias-by-association was such a concern in judicial confirmations, but now I'm worried for my own future. If I'm ever nominated to the federal bench, I'll have to explain my attendance at my cousin's public high school graduation back in 1987. I distinctly remember it opening with a prayer, and I suppose I'll have to defend my ability to rule impartially on Establishment Clause issues. Oh yes, and lately I've been seen frequenting an obstetrician's office. This is only a guess, but I'll bet that sometime in her training the good doctor has performed an abortion.

At least I could testify honestly that neither of these associations took place in Massachusetts. You know, Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts.

The Unauthorized Practice of Law

Holy Prepuce — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 04:25:00 +0000

Earlier this week, I was watching a live webcast of oral arguments in Conaway v. Deane, Maryland's same-sex marriage case. You can read the briefs here and watch the video archive here, in case you're interested. I happened to leave the webcast running through the next case, In the Matter of the Application of --- for Admission to the Bar of Maryland. (The applicant's name, along with the video archive, are online, should you care to look for them--my spider/legal sense tells me it's unnecessary to repeat them here.)

The Court of Appeals of Maryland, like most state high courts, is in charge of admissions to the state bar. While the day-to-day work is delegated to the Maryland Board of Bar Examiners, anyone denied admission by the Board has the right to argue his case before the Court.

In this instance, the gentleman's application had been denied on a Board finding that he had engaged in the unauthorized practice of law in Maryland. (The domestic violence, not paying child support, and revocation of his Florida license didn't help.) But he had a defense to this allegation: he hadn't really been practicing law. Yes, his two-person law firm bore the applicant's name, and yes, he did see clients. But, he claimed, his Maryland-licensed partner was handling all the legal work. Pending admission, the applicant claimed, his sole function at the firm was to lay hands on the clients and heal them through the power of Jesus Christ.

I kid you not.

Papal Fallibility

Holy Prepuce — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 20:03:00 +0000

The Pope sure stepped in it this time, didn't he? One offhand remark about the Prophet Muhammad preaching "things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached," and the whole world goes apeshit.

But let's give this thing a little context. Last Tuesday, Pope Benedict stopped by his old teaching gig at the University of Regensburg for a bit of discourse with the science faculties. In an erudite, if somewhat opaque address, the Pontiff called for re-integration of theological questions into the realm of rational inquiry. He suggested that the natural sciences necessarily give rise to questions beyond the scope of their methodology, and that only through such a synthesis can we achieve “that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.”

The beginning of the speech more or less tracked Toastmasters International Opening 2A: pleasantries about the venue, followed by a personal reminiscence, followed by a joke foreshadowing the thesis, followed by a statement of the thesis. (Yes, the Pope did tell a joke of sorts, relating a colleague's quip that the University of Bonn, with its two theology divisions, possessed two entire faculties devoted to something that did not even exist.)

The trouble started when the Pope moved into Toastmaster's Transition 3C: "I was reminded of all this recently, when I read..." 3C of course requires a quotation, and the one Benedict chose came from that well-known personality, Manuel II Paleologos, Byzantine emperor from 1391 to 1425. Manuel's point, essentially, was that religious conversion by violence is irrational because "faith is born of the soul, not the body." The Pope used Manuel's statement about Muhammad as a launching point for an examination of the historical relationship between rational inquiry and religious faith. His address never returned to the subject of Islam, nor to the question of enforced conversion.

I think we need to chalk this one up to the "everyone's an idiot" category. On the one side, you have Benedict who, needing a quotation on the theme of rational spirituality, chose one that not only denigrates the central figure and entire belief system of a 1.4 billion-member religion, but trots out the most problematic stereotype plaguing its adherents today. On the other side, you have a Simpsons-like raging horde of reactionaries, setting the world on fire over a mistaken belief that the Pope had endorsed Manuel's viewpoint.

Did any of the people currently setting churches on fire, shooting nuns, recalling ambassadors, et cetera, actually bother to read the Pope's speech? It's right there, in four languages, on the Vatican website. I only ask because I don't find the following conversation very likely:

--Aaaaaa! To the streets my brother, to the streets! The Pope has quoted, in passing, an obscure 14th century slight on the Prophet.

--No!

--It is true. He employed it to illustrate the confluence of Greek rationalism and the Judeo-Christian understanding of God in the final years of the Byzantine empire.

--How dare he! But please, tell me he did not suggest that the vision of St. Paul could be interpreted as a distillation of the intrinsic necessity of rapprochement between these two?

--He did, oh, but he did! And not only that, but he suggested that the uniqueness of the Tetragrammaton presents a challenge closely analagous to Socrates' attempted transcendence of the mythological!

--My blood boils! How could he fail to overlook the trend toward voluntarism in late medieval theology? Surely that must sunder this supposed synthesis!

--He addressed that, the dog, but he then traced in detail the history, from the Reformation to the present, of the call for dehellenization of Christianity!

--And I'll just bet he put a particular emphasis on the late nineteenth century?

--And cited von Harnack as the "outstanding representative" of that period!

--Swine!

--And just what do you think he defined as the modern concept of reason?

--If he said it is a synthesis between Platonism/Cartesianism and empiricism, one which presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, I will personally torch a basilica!

--He did.

--Enough! Bring me my placard of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, some matches, and the life-size model of the Pope I keep on hand for just such a circumstance as this. The Pontiff shall pay for this outrage!

Point being: everyone's in the wrong here. So let's let the Pope say he's sorry for selecting about the worst page imaginable from Bartlett's, let's let "the Muslim street" apologize for reflexively kirking out, and can we all please just simmer down? Jeez.

Gay / Divine Land Marching Band / Condi’s Cross to Bear

Holy Prepuce — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:59:00 +0000

Mrs. P. & I closed on the new Prepuce-Pad earlier today, so the brain is a little too disjointed for any sustained musing. Instead, I will present a few brief items:

Yesterday's "Zits" took me back to those pre-PC high school days when we went around using "gay" as a term of derision for the irretrievably unhip. In the current era of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," it strikes me that the implied stereotype was about 180 degrees off the mark. Because if you think back to high school, did the yearbook photo editor or the Oklahoma! dance captain sport unfashionable shoes? No, they had the most fabulous shoes in the entire school!

Speaking of high school, I sometimes regret not having attended one large enough to boast an old-school marching band. Through my office window, which overlooks Pennsylvania Avenue, I am from time to time treated to a mobile concert by youngsters whose directors are no doubt living it up on bus-tour operator kickbacks.

Last Thursday, my attention was drawn to an unusually skilled--and unusually loud--band. Glancing down the street, I witnessed the approach of the largest marching band I had ever seen. As they drew nearer, I noticed that the group was composed exclusively of Asian adults--not exactly the demographic one most associates with the medium.

I watched in fascination as the musicians passed, and then was alarmed to discover that they were trailed by a parade of floats bearing grotesque human tableaux. One involved a shirtless victim suspended from a torture rack, surrounded by men in military uniforms. A second tableau presented an operating table, complete with patient, around which gowned surgeons held aloft blood-stained replicas of human organs.

And then I realized what I was witnessing: this was the legendary Divine Land Marching Band, composed of more than two hundred Falun Gong practitioners! Yes, for reasons that remain clear only to leader Li Hongzhi, the 80-million-strong Chinese calisthenics cult has chosen to disseminate its message throughout the western world via the immortal strains of "Louie, Louie." It does make some sense, actually; Li's official biography states that he once served as trumpeter in a police band. That said, the bio also claims that Li can walk through walls and make himself invisible.

And finally, a cheap shot, but one I can't resist:

"Goddamn my boss is an idiot!"

More Creationism Museum Fun

Holy Prepuce — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 13:08:00 +0000

I recently was privileged to introduce to you Petersburg, Kentucky's pride and joy, the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum. I know you are revving the engines of the John 3:16-Mobile as we speak, but if you examine the museum's website carefully, you will notice a small obstacle to your pilgrimage: the damned thing isn't actually built yet.

How is a poor sinner to help, you wonder? Well, donations are of course appreciated, as are charter memberships. But if you really want to save our children from the Luciferian cesspool of "evolutionary natural history," why not sign up to pray for the museum? By entering your email address, you'll make a one year commitment to fast one day per month, and pray daily that God will "glorify His name in the specific requests relayed to me."

These specific requests, conveniently available online or by weekly email, are grouped by department. So, for instance, the Warehouse Department makes this request:

Pallet-Wrapping Machine
Department: Warehouse
Purpose: Purchase of a pallet-wrapping machine.
Specifics: Please pray as we look into purchasing a pallet-wrapping machine--that we would find the best price.
Deadline: ASAP

...while Museum Operations asks the following:

Scheduling and Tracking of Museum Projects
Department: Museum Operations
Purpose: To develop a system in an effort to track high-volume tasks for specific projects (i.e., 55 video productions, 160 exhibit areas, etc.)
Specifics: Please pray for the Museum Team to have wisdom and discernment in building the schedule and tracking system to ensure the museum will add areas of each exhibit accurately to portray the intended message and that we can meet our scheduled deadlines.
Deadline: November 30, 2005

...and don't forget Video Production, busily at work on "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made," and thus hoping you'll join them in prayer that the post-production editing will be completed on schedule.

Now, it’s true that those Godless cardiologists up at Harvard may have debunked the whole prayer-speeds-recovery-from-heart-surgery thing. But they can't prove the Almighty won't get you the Kaufman Pallet Master EXPA 25 below invoice, if you ask Him nicely.

Trump Taj Mahal

Holy Prepuce — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 04:37:00 +0000

If one is to keep company with Mrs. Prepuce on certain nights of the week, one must subject one's self to certain television programs, of a sort to which one might not otherwise subject one's self.

Tonight, the program was the season finale of "The Apprentice." This show follows the adventures of aspirants to moguldom, and therefore includes such common MBA tasks as engaging Michael J. Fox to play ice hockey at the Trump Taj Mahal hotel/casino in Atlantic City.

Two things occurred to me during this stunt. First, it may not be entirely wise for a visibly dyskinetic Parkinson's patient to engage in contact sports. That said, Mr. J. Fox is 45 years old and presumably can make his own decisions. What troubles me more is the very existence of a casino patterned after the Taj Mahal. Last time I checked, Islam regards gambling as a sin of the gravest magnitude. (See Qur'an 2:219 and 5:90-91.) Was it perhaps a bit insensitive, then, for Mr. Trump to install his gambling den inside a replica of the most famous Muslim building on earth?

Cold, Hard Cash

Holy Prepuce — Tue, 30 May 2006 18:16:00 +0000

As a public service to those of you who may not have had time to peruse the FBI's application for a warrant to search the Congressional office of Rep. Bill Jefferson, I have digested the application thoroughly and provide you with the following summary:

Dude, they totally have the goods on this guy. Unless the Bureau has engineered a frame-up more elaborate than the LAPD pulled on O.J., Jefferson has been a very naughty fellow.

What I find more amusing are the protestations that this search somehow violated the Constitutional separation of powers. Let us play a round of Armchair Constitutional Scholar, shall we? Below, I will list some instances in which separation-of-powers challenges have been raised. Your task is to identify the challenge that is full of shit:

A) President attempts to seize and federalize nation's steel mills. Mill owners protest that President may not do so without congressional authorization.

B) President refuses to spend money that Congress has appropriated for particular federal programs. Program beneficiaries protest that such refusal violates separation between Congress's power to make laws (including appropriations) and president's duty to "take care that the Laws are faithfully executed."

C) Immigration statute gives single house of Congress power to "veto" executive actions. Administration protests that separation of powers permits Congress to act only via bills approved by both houses and presented for the President's signature.

D) Congressional leadership protests that FBI search of Congressman's office violates separation of powers under the following circumstances: After Congressman resists grand jury subpoena for eight months, FBI obtains search warrant for his office based on 100+ page affidavit indicating the following: Informant wearing wire records Congressman promise to make official visits to Nigeria and Ghana to facilitate approval of telecommunications projects. In exchange for these official acts, Congressman accepts part-interest in the business, registered in his children's names. Meanwhile, businessman pleads guilty to having paid Congressman $400,000+ in bribes for prior, similar deal. Back at the ranch, Congressman tells informant he needs $100,000 to bribe Vice President of Nigeria. Informant later gives Congressman suitcase containing $100,000 in cash. Over dinner, Congressman tells informant he has given money to Nigerian V.P., then passes series of notes to informant demanding greater share of the venture. Jokes "'All these damn notes we're writing . . . as if the FBI is watching." Subsequent search of Congressman's house reveals that he has lied to informant; money has not actually gone to Nigerian V.P. but is instead in Congressman's freezer, neatly wrapped in $10,000 aluminum-foil bundles.

Did you choose D?

“But Not the Separation of God and State”

Holy Prepuce — Fri, 26 May 2006 04:11:00 +0000

Reproduced below is text from the official website of the Chaplain of the United States Senate:

Throughout the years, the United States Senate has honored the historic separation of Church and State, but not the separation of God and State. . . . During the past two hundred and seven years, all sessions of the Senate have been opened with prayer, strongly affirming the Senate's faith in God as Sovereign Lord of our Nation. . . . Chaplain Black's days are filled with meeting Senators about spiritual and moral issues, assisting Senators' staffs with research on theological and biblical questions, teaching Senate Bible study groups, encouraging such groups as the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, and facilitating discussion and reflection small groups among Senators and staff.

(Emphasis added.)

Words fail me. No, wait, here they are: what the FUCK? What the fuckity fuck fuck kind of theocracy did America become while I was busy watching paintball on ESPN2? The Senate does not honor "the separation of God and State?" Senators' taxpayer-fed staffs are conducting research on theological and biblical questions?! Can we all just move into the Creationism Museum now?

Creationism Museum

Holy Prepuce — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:54:00 +0000

The good people of Petersburg, Kentucky are building a creationism museum, and you can take an online walk-through tour. "Scheduled to open in 2007, this 'walk through history' museum will be a wonderful alternative to the evolutionary natural history museums that are turning countless minds against the gospel of Christ and the authority of the Scripture."

Among my favorite parts are the Dinosaur Bone Pit, "One set of bones, two interpretations," and the Bible Authority Room, in which an audio-animatronic St. Paul "explains God's author-itative Word," and proclaims that "everyone who rejects His history--including six-day creation and Noah’s Flood--is 'willfully' ignorant."

If anyone wants to head down there once the thing is built, I'm totally up for chartering a bus!

RaptureLetters.com

Holy Prepuce — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 04:57:00 +0000

You may or may not be familiar with the “rapture” concept in the American Evangelical Christian tradition--a reasonable description may be found here--but the basic idea is that, prior to the thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth, and just prior to the seven-year horror show known as the “tribulation,” all saved Christians will be assumed directly into heaven. This is the premise of the wildly-popular Left Behind series of books, films, radio plays, etc., and is also, some would argue, a driving force behind current U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Well, in case you’re concerned that un-saved friends and family won’t know what’s happened to you after your car is found in a ditch with your clothes in a neat pile on the driver's seat, fear no more! www.raptureletters.com will send an email to your left-behind pals, announcing that good old holier-than-them has been assumed. And, as a bonus, the standard email (alas, you cannot edit it) will also give them some handy tips for getting saved themselves--it’s not too late!

I can’t tell whether these guys believe it themselves, or whether it’s just a moneymaking scam: the site is described as a “personal ministry,” and while registration is free, a donations page is displayed prominently after you register a name. According to the donations page, “Ninety percent of all donations [they] receive are used to further the kingdom of God and 10% goes toward administration costs.” I can’t figure out precisely what this means (any better than they can figure out whether “percent” is singular or plural). I do know that if I were running that site, “administration costs” would be my salary as webmaster, and “the kingdom of God” would coincidentally be located in my apartment.