Category: Uncategorized

Why are liberals so intolerant?

I’ve heard this question asked a multitude of times, and I can see the confusion in it from conservatives. Indeed, liberals are significantly more prone to block people on Facebook than their more conservative opponents, and they are also more likely to buck up against or reject social norms.  If you’re so liberal, conservatives say, why don’t you just accept our beliefs?

I see such statements as fundamentally confused. It shouldn’t take long to straighten this out.

Conservatives, for the most part, protect and seek to insulate the status quo. There are those who will say that being conservative is to have small government, but here in the state (and would-be country) of Texas, where we liberals live in perpetual embarrassment of Ted Cruz (who, colloquially speaking, “shut down the government” to protect poor Americans from the travesty of receiving health insurance) and Greg Abbott (who sent Texas troops to oversee military training exercises due to fear of a military takeover), the message is not so much small government, but protective government.

Conservatives seem to be terrified of losing what they have. They will encourage us to spend trillions on war at the mere mention of a threat against what they have. They will insist on their right to misgender individuals, to deny people the right to marriage, to force public places to pay homage to the religion they like, and so on.  The libertarian side is “live and let live” to protect the status quo, as well – few libertarians have good reason why they would support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in 1963.

Conservatives, by and large, are not about small government.  They are about a large, influential, powerful government that protects the comfortable locations inherent in the status quo socioeconomic setup.  And they, by and large, seem to be insulted at the mention of people who want to fundamentally adjust the system for the sake of the people who are hurt by it.

Upset at the minimum wage? Get over it, and accept the way things are.  Upset at being assigned the wrong gender at birth? Get over it, and accept the way things are. Upset at racist cops? Get in line with the program, follow the rules, and you won’t have to worry about it.  Upset that you’re not able to get married to someone you love because you’re gay? Get over it, and accept the way things are.

And so on. Some critical of this way of thinking, as I am, might call this heartless.

The tragedy of former-conservative-turned-liberal people like yours truly is that, somewhere along the line, our hearts began beating and bleeding for those so strongly ignored by the status quo.

And it hurts. It hurts painfully to see people’s lives fed to a system that is determined to keep them down, especially when your heart knows that they do not deserve to be kept down any more than anyone else — when you realize that it’s unfair that people pile abuse on the struggling poor mother  asking for a raise and already overworked, saying she needs to work more hours, and don’t bat an eye when an attractive, wealthy white hotel heiress takes home far more for what seems to be far less work.

The poor black woman of four kids who works for minimum wage at Wal-Mart, for forty hours a week, before going to work at Target for twenty hours a week?  Who can’t see her kids, and yet is continuously guilted by O’Reilly minions for not being a stay-at-home mom and being “good enough” to keep a man at home and raise them in a nice two-story white house with a white picket fence?  Who, many conservatives seem to insist, deserves not a penny more than what she has — and perhaps less?

Our hearts bleed for such people — and, because many of us have actually done some research, we realize that it doesn’t have to be this way.  So that when we’re at the country club, and someone who has the leisure time to play golf complains about “those people,” we’re liable to blow our top.

Yes, we are closed-minded when it comes to heartless bigotry, because we have a heart and the ones most on the outskirts of your social system can feel its pulse.

That’s the thing about being a liberal and being open-minded that many don’t seem to understand.  It changes the way you love people.  The further you get from the status quo, from the conservative castle-fort of the circular logic of “the way things are, are the way things should be,” the more people you meet who are harmed by the greed and paranoia the merchants of the status quo exhibit.

Being open minded makes your care about people whose concerns have, historically, been ignoring.  Being liberal means you see the flaws in the system where other people are determined to put on blinders.

And it hurts.  It really does make your heart hurt.  And it also motivates you.  And it fuels you to reach out and empathize more, feeling the injustice even more deeply.  And it causes you to fight for others’ rights, for the world that should be as opposed to the world that is.

And it causes you to not tolerate people who want to keep the status quo, who are determined to protect the way things are – especially if these people are also determined to shut out the voices telling them they are in pain and that the status quo unfairly disenfranchises people.  We don’t tolerate your opinion because, frankly, we don’t need it.

We may not give an audience to you because you refuse to give an audience to those we care about.  If you insist on protecting the status quo and ignoring our voices – then we have no interest in yours either.  We don’t need it’ it’s getting more than enough press already.  We have higher priorities; we’re more interested in the opinion of a struggling single mother than in the self-righteous billionaire when we talk about the economic significance of “family values.”  We’ll change things without your help.

So, that’s why we block you on Facebook.  That’s why we don’t tolerate your bigotry.  That’s why we aren’t willing to hear your arguments.  It’s not because we aren’t liberal; it’s because we are and see a need to change things due to factors that, because of your closed-minded determination to protect the status quo, you do not have the heart and knowledge to perceive.  It’s because your voices are already being heard, and they are missing vital information and empathy. It’s because your voices are joining a chorus that unfairly oppresses those our open-mindedness has led us to care about as much, at least, as we care about you, and to reach out to them, many of us have forsaken the ivory castle you dwell in to embrace those in your margins.   And we can’t go back, because now these lives– not just ideas, but people and lives — are increasingly influencing our own.  It’s because our view of what is fair and what is harm has been influenced by information and experiences you have forsaken and blocked from your mind.

We are so determined to give love a chance that we are less likely to put up with hate in this, the only life and the only shot of love we’ve got. And we feel a sense of urgency…

Because the thing is…

Love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nveWCRiIlo[/youtube]

Benjamin Dixon, from the Progressive Christian channel, has recently stated that the Christian persecution complex is embarrassing the Christian faith — the gist of his article is that saying Christians here are being persecuted is an embarrassment to the faith, as people are legitimately being persecuted elsewhere.

While this is true, there seems to be an implicit message here that someone, somewhere is being persecuted for what you believe, so the little bit of difficulty you’re going through as a Christian should be disregarded in favor of respecting those who are truly persecuted.

My only problem with that is that I think that if Christians in the United States use models in other parts of the world who are going through worse persecution to say the difficulty they’re going through is no big deal, they may be more focused on disregarding the source of those difficulties than on, like, seeing if they are having a difficult time in this culture because they are actually wrong.

I’m concerned about this because I grew up hearing about the persecution of Christians, and the difficult time that missionaries had.  And I thought, as a Christian, that if they could handle horrific treatment — I could handle the fact that same-sex marriage was becoming more acceptable; the latter was no big deal.  In fact, I’ve met several Christians who are fine with same-sex marriage in the public sphere, even as they privately think that it’s somewhat of a sin. But while this may seem magnanimous to the outside world, and is certainly better than virulent anti-marriage campaigns, the effect of this attitude is to disregard the love and legitimacy in a same-sex marriage that may get in the way of bible-based conceptualizations, and to insulate my Christian beliefs from criticism.

And this insulation, I think, is why such a huge spotlight is thrown on persecution in the church that happens “out there” — with the constant reminder that what you’re going through is nothing, so you should just accept it; if others can undergo worse, you can certainly handle what you’re facing without being a crybaby.  It’s why the writer of Hebrews 11 talks about what people did, “by faith,” ending with:

Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins,destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

Compare this to Dixon’s blog, especially this section, where he states:

[Living in a multicultural secular society] is the only tension with which Christians in America must live. We don’t have to fear for our lives. We don’t have to meet in secrecy for fear of execution. We don’t have to hide our faith in the face of dictators that demand their own worship. All we have to do is live in a society where others are free to live their lives beyond the scope and influence of our faith if they so choose. Yet, this is what so many emotional and teary-eyed Christians call persecution. I call it being spoiled and weak. I call it being “ye of little faith.” And I call it an embarrassment in a world where people are dying for the faith. So, please stop with the Christian Persecution Complex.

So this has very old roots in Christendom, this use of the persecution of others — who went through far worse than you could ever dream of — to insulate the faith by saying, “Shut up, struggling Christian.  If they can do worse, stop embarrassing the faith with your complaints and get with the Christian program.”

What I’d like to say in counter to that, to any Christian willing to listen, is to…actually listen.  I was a Christian who listened and eventually left the faith because I began to see that the discomfort I felt when it came to the concept of same-sex marriage was there because I was wrong —  and I am not sure I would have ever seen that if I was more intent on seeing the persecuted in outside countries as role models that blinded me to the twinge of pain I felt when I couldn’t applaud a same-sex couple’s marriage due to my religious beliefs.

In a way, what Dixon seems to be doing, intentionally or not, is encourage people to crawl into an even more intense persecution complex — not the persecution of the United States, but that of other countries — to insulate them from serious consideration of the fact that the changing times might be coming from forces that indicate that they are fundamentally wrong.

Watch the Scientology documentary that’s making the rounds, for instance, and it’s truly surprising what people will sacrifice for their faith.  But the tragedy here, as in Christianity, is the exaltation of this sacrifice often insulates belief and mentally discourages people from leaving the faith.  To put it mildly, that’s a bit dangerous.

Lawrence Krauss has said that teaching creationism is child abuse a number of times; at about 5:45 in the following video is one of them:

[youtube]https://youtu.be/UnuS583BFto[/youtube]

Neil Carter of the blog Godless in Dixie stated that that this is not true here, and indicates that this is a smaller point on a larger issue – namely, that many atheists tend to hurt our own cause by mischaracterizing the harm religion does with over-the-top analogies.

This seems to be a trend among a slew of articles from atheists stating that many of us atheists are irrationally belligerent and need to focus on being calmer and more rational.  There is also a common thought, it seems, that expressing anger is not going to allow us to build fruitful bridges with religious people. In order to get our message across, we’re going to have to be a bit less irrationally vitriolic.

Neil Carter seems to echo these sentiments when he states:

You rob words of their meaning when you try to use them in situations that don’t merit the use of those words.  You render meaningless all the other times the word more legitimately applies because now you’ve cheapened the term.  Please stop doing this.  It’s an unfair exaggeration and it’s beneath those who purport to communicate honestly and without unnecessarily embellishing the truth.  We get onto preachers and politicians for doing that all the time, and yet here we have our own “celebrities” doing the same thing.

Fairly strong, provocative words.  So, after the stir they created, I decided to examine his logic in this discussion, point by point.  He has three.

First, he attacks Krauss’s analogy comparing depriving a child of knowledge of evolution to depriving a child of a vaccination shot that you know is available.  He also attacks Krauss’s second broader analogy, which is that not giving a child information “because you would rather them not know what reality is really like” is harmful.

Neil’s rebuttal is:

In each of those parallel scenarios a parent possesses what the child needs (or at least knowingly has access to it) but chooses to withhold it from them for whatever reasons.  That isn’t the case with teaching creationism because the parents who do that aren’t really aware that alternative explanations of the origins of the universe are legitimate.  Surely Dr. Krauss knows these parents aren’t merely pretending to believe the stuff they’re teaching their kids.  They really believe this stuff, as illogical as it sounds.

Neil Carter is partly right. If Krauss is saying that parents who know their child needs a vaccination and don’t give it to them are the same as parents who do NOT know that a child needs a vaccination and thus don’t give it to them (to state the flaw in the analogy a different way), then he’s clearly off base.

But I also suspect that, in appealing to the vaccination movement, Krauss is saying that the parents think their child doesn’t need a vaccination and, in ignoring reality (even though they don’t themselves believe it is reality), show that they do not want their child to know reality.  It’s a tortured interpretation, except that this is the way the vaccination movement Krauss seems to be referring to actually works.  They don’t deprive kids of vaccinations out of a sense of punishment, but because they genuinely believe it’s bad news.

In addition, Krauss isn’t just talking about parents — a fuller look at the context shows he is discussing politicians.  Notice — Neil Carter is discussing a video from 2015.  If you go back to an earlier explanation, in 2013, where Krauss had more time to give a complete discussion of his statement that the teaching of creationism was child abuse, you’ll see that Krauss is discussing politicians who he suspects will, in order to cater to their constituency, say creationism should be taught in schools even if they know that evolution isn’t true (emphasis added):

Senator Marco Rubio, who’s presumably a reasonably intelligent man and maybe even educated, was asked what’s the age of the Earth, and ultimately, either because he actually believed it or he was trying to appeal to some constituency, had to argue that it’s a big mystery, that somehow we should teach kids both ideas, that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that it’s 4.55 billion years old, which is what it is.

If you think about that, somehow saying that, well, anything goes, we shouldn’t offend religious beliefs by requiring kids to know – to understand reality; that’s child abuse. And if you think about it, teaching kids – or allowing the notion that the earth is 6,000 years old to be promulgated in schools is like teaching kids that the distance across the United States is 17 feet. That’s how big an error it is.

Now you might say, look, a lot of people believe that, so don’t we owe it to them to allow their views to be present in school? Well, as I’ve often said, the purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it. Fifty percent of the people in the United States, when we probe them each year with the National Science Foundation, think that the sun goes around the Earth, not that the Earth goes around the sun. When we asked the question – we provide the question: The Earth goes around the sun and takes a year to do it; true or false? Almost every year, 50 percent of the people get that wrong.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTedvV6oZjo[/youtube]

I think, given the fuller context, Krauss may have a point here.  If the knowledge of children is sacrificed on the alter of politics — that is a serious, serious problem.  It is disregarding the future of the children at a disturbing level.

But is it child abuse?

I think the answer is best answered in the context of Neil’s second point, where he states that there is such a thing as physical abuse, and emotional abuse, but is doubtful that there is such a thing as “academic abuse.”

Neil Carter is technically right. Technically speaking, there is not something called “academic abuse” in the way he is describing it — the term “academic abuse” refers to actual treatment in the educational environment, not what is taught (so insulting children by calling them “stupid” because they got a math problem wrong in a classroom may be an incidence of “academic abuse” — as might be assigning homework as punishment — although definitions do seem to vary, based on context).  But “academic abuse” is not a common phrase, and where it is used, it simply does not seem to refer to withholding vital educational information from a child.

But that does not mean Krauss’s analogy is wholly incorrect, necessarily.  Because not giving your child a vaccination shot also is not technically abuse. It’s serious, though.  So what do we call it?

Medical Neglect is the closest term we have for it. As one state government site states:

Medical neglect is:

• the refusal or failure on the part of the person responsible for the child’s care to seek, obtain, and/or maintain those services for necessary medical, dental, or mental health care
• withholding medically indicated treatment from disabled infants with life-threatening conditions.

Note: Failure to provide the child with immunizations or routine well child care in and of itself does not constitute medical neglect.

The American Humane Association clarifies why the italics may be there:

Medical neglect is the failure to provide appropriate health care for a child (although financially able to do so), thus placing the child at risk of being seriously disabled or disfigured or dying. According to NCANDS, in 2005, 2 percent of children (17,637 children) in the United States were victims of medical neglect (USDHHS, 2007). Concern is warranted not only when a parent refuses medical care for a child in an emergency or for an acute illness, but also when a parent ignores medical recommendations for a child with a treatable chronic disease or disability, resulting in frequent hospitalizations or significant deterioration.

So, what this seems to indicate, although the legal line seems fuzzy and somewhat complex, is that if a child does not have a treatable chronic disease or disability, or an emergency or acute illness — then you probably aren’t, legally speaking, medically neglecting them by merely failing to give them immunizations.

That’s the legal definition, it seems, best as I can see it as a layman.  It’s not saying the way the law should be written, but the way law is.  This does not mean that we can’t say that not immunizing a child is neglectful in a more informal sense.  We may even be able to argue that it’s abusive (in fact, we perhaps should, to change the legal definitions in ways that will protect children).  But technically speaking, it’s not abuse or necessarily even neglect to refuse to immunize a child under the law, unless certain other conditions are met.

Does the technical legal definition mean that we should go out and say, “Refusing to immunize your child is NOT child abuse.  It’s not.  So stop saying it is!!!”? Or is that counterproductive to raising the necessary awareness immunization requires?

1. What is your view of morality as an atheist?

Oftentimes, people ask this as if I am the definer of what an atheistic moral system is.  And yet, some of the most intense disagreements I’ve had regarding morality have been with atheists.  I mean, Christians disagree a lot within their thousands of denominations, and they actually have a Bible – who no two people seem to agree on the meaning of.  We don’t even have that.  So it’s a mess, which is why I gotta say, right out the gate, that this is the answer that makes the most logical sense to me; other atheists may disagree with me.

I see morality as the system we build to try to fulfill the most preferences for the most people in the most equal way we possibly can.  In my mind, “morality” looks like a system of complex roads, full of people trying to get to different destinations.  It’s not pretty; sometimes differences in goals lead to conflict, there are horrible “accidents” that cause catastrophic damage, and each individual has to compromise every once in a while so that the system, as a whole, can work smoothly.  It’s a work in progress, so I can’t define exactly what it will look like, though I can define what seems to be its overall goal.

2. Do you believe absolute morality exists or, at least, could exist?

I get asked various manifestations of this a lot. Usually, a Christian will assume that the only moral system is an absolute moral system, and that, because I don’t have the basis for one, I can’t be a moral person – when all they actually argued is that I don’t have an absolute moral system.

So, because we have two different definitions of morality, we usually get into a definition war until I know what the Christian means by “absolute morality” and the Christian knows the way I view a moral system.

I’ve found, in layman conversation,  that when Christians ask if I believe in absolute morality, they usually mean one or more of three things.

First, they may be defining “absolute morality” as a morality that draws the line between right or wrong in a way that is never swayed by personal preference, culture, or any other universe-bound forces.  I don’t subscribe to this view of morality — but it’s not because I’m an atheist, because some atheists do subscribe to this mode of morality.

And they can do it even more easily than theists.

They may say, for example, that rape is wrong – just because. And, by definition, that is an unassailable position. How would you rebut it? You can’t use personal preference, because the principle is outside of personal preference. You can’t use culture or any other world-bound force, because the principle is outside of these things.  You can’t even really use God, because if the principle depends on God’s existence it wouldn’t be absolute according to this definition, but dependent on something else.

So an atheist can almost have a more absolute morality than many Christians, because a Christian would say, “rape is wrong because God,” while an atheist could simply say, “rape is wrong because it’s wrong because it’s wrong.”  See?  Absolute morality, not dependent on any external factors.

That’s an easy route to go on. So I’m not saying I can’t embrace a morality like that as an atheist.  I’m just saying that I choose not to; it doesn’t seem very helpful or useful for me.

Second, the Christian may be defining “absolute morality” as a moral code that is the best for all people, at all times, in all circumstances.  My answer to the question of this kind of absolute morality’s existence is the same to the question of whether we will ever find a cure for cancer – I don’t know.  I would like to find such a system, sure.  And I think that there is some value in trying to make our moral system (again, defined as the system we build to try to fulfill the most preferences for the most people in the most equal way we possibly can) as streamlined as possible for the benefit of all involved.  But this is a work in progress.  Just as I wouldn’t depend on a book on road building that was written 2000 years ago to build major highway intersections, so I don’t see the sense in using a 2000+ year old book to figure out what our rules for sexual behavior should be.  It seems that the most useful way, in each case, to improve on a moral system is to figure out preferences of those the system is serving, and then study and do serious research to build the best possible system for all those preferences in the most equal way we possibly can.

Is there a perfect major highway intersection that we can name, “the absolutely best possible highway intersection”?  Is there a perfect morality that we can name “the absolute morality” (in this sense)?  I don’t know, but that’s not exactly my goal.  My goal is to continuously hear the concerns and preferences of those involved, try to figure out the best systems to put in place by way of careful research, and keep improving the system as we find out new information.

Third, they may be defining “absolute morality” as a morality that is valid because God makes it valid. Obviously I don’t believe this absolute morality exists, but I think this question of whether I believe in absolute morality that defines it this way actually means to challenge the “basis” of morality or the “right” I have to morality. The question seems to be, “How can there be an enforcer of morality if God doesn’t exist?”

My answer is that we are the enforcers of morality.  This is uncomfortable for many people, because it seems that most people don’t really want to see themselves – or others to see them – as the only real enforcers of the morality they claim to hold. It feels awkward, like it’s just you, and no one else outside of humanity will necessarily enforce it. If you’re against homosexuality, it’s just you. You can’t say that it’s because of God.

But, the Christian usually retorts, the same goes for something like murder.  If God doesn’t punish murderers, they’ll get away with it.

And they’re right (although, to be sure, a murderer who comes to Christ at the last minute goes to heaven, right?). If we’re against murder, there’s no external being, in my view of morality, to back humanity up. It’s just us.

I totally get how that can make us feel a bit awkward about morality.  I also get that this awkwardness can be especially acute when you are being treated unfairly, or not living the kind of life you want to live because of forces of oppression that are beyond your control.  I get that you may want to believe that someone is going to set everything right, and that the people causing your state are going to be punished (or, at least, that someone has been punished for them).

But I simply see no evidence that this is the case. So that makes it more important for me to, as much as possible, make things “right” here on earth. This requires examining people’s preferences and figuring out how to create moral systems that will ensure that the most preferences are fulfilled for the most people in the most equal way we can.  So I’m for rolling up my sleeves and getting to work.

3. If you don’t believe in God, why don’t you murder people?

The flippant answer is, “Because I don’t want to.”  But I think there’s a bit more behind this question that I’d like to address.

Usually Christians seem to answer this question (or something similar) because they think that in order to do something for someone else, you have to dedicate yourself to something outside yourself.  It doesn’t make sense to dedicate yourself to another human being, because 1) they won’t necessarily pay you back and/or 2) they’re just another human being, on your level – there’s no reason to do something for them as opposed to yourself.

There are a lot of problems with inserting God as an answer to these two “problems” – because God has an arguably unfair “pay you back” system (there are a slew of examples in the Old Testament, and the concept of hell in the New Testament is problematic) and because any reason God would give you to do something for someone would still be a reason that would fulfill your selfish desires.  Arguably, doing something because God told you to do it is doing it to gain something – good favor or something similar – from God (without higher regard for God than for the other person), which can lead to you doing what God says is best for someone, whether they think it’s best for them or not.

But I don’t think I have to point out the problems with inserting God here to answer the question.  When I left Christianity, I found I did not want to live in a world in which people murdered each other.  This is a strong value I have that I embrace.  Many of us do not want to murder people, and we have to combat the people who do want to murder people in the most intelligent ways we can, and that’s just the way it is. Though this may be a rude truth, if it’s the reality, it’s what I’d like to embrace in trying to make the world a better place.

It really surprised me how empathetic I became as an atheist, simply because as a Christian I was so strongly told that my sense of empathy came from God, and that if I left Him I wouldn’t have it.  In fact, it was my empathy for other people who I thought were going to hell that led me to check out the Christian claims more thoroughly and eventually leave Christianity.

But yes, I’m also empathetic when it comes to myself and caring about my own needs.  So, in addition to making sure others are cared for because it satisfies my sense of empathy, I also try to make sure people are cared for so that, if I am ever in their shoes, I will be decently cared for.  This is why I’m such a liberal – I want to do my damnedest to make sure that the person in the street is cared for not only because I empathize with them, but because that might be me one day.  It’s why mere charity isn’t enough for this atheist; I also think it’s healthy to have something of a welfare system that acts as “insurance” for us.

Then there’s also the fact that “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” works in society.  So, I’m a black man but I’m not a woman.  If I stand up for women’s rights to an equal wage – in addition to my doing it because I care about women (and a host of other good reasons – economical and social) – I’m joining a movement that says we all should have equal wages for similar positions, which benefits me as well.  If I want other people to apply a certain principle to the way they treat me, it helps to treat others in a way that I want them to reciprocate.

So it’s not just empathy for others, and it’s not just selfishness for myself, but a combination of these things that motivates this atheist to build, improve, and follow a moral system.

Hope that makes some sense!

Thanks for reading.

So, I’m at the mechanic’s getting my car checked out. This white Fort Worth cop looks to be in his late fifties. He’s slightly less overweight and a bit taller, but looks kinda like that main cop from Breaking Bad. As I’m waiting, I’m watching Sense 8 on Netflix, headphones in, holding my phone at eye level. The cop is talking at the counter about his car, and I’m sitting on his right, about 30-40 feet away.

I feel a glare, so I look up from watching the show on my phone, and he’s looking straight at me, suspiciously and nervously. Which prompts the same look from me — only a few seconds later does it dawn on me that my camera is pointed straight at his face.

I’m tired.

I’m tired of having the same debates and handwringing on whether or not trans people really have a right to the gender they choose, or whether the “love” and “sin” aspect of LGB relationships cancel each other out, or how we’re going to decide whether or not same-sex couples have a right to a wedding cake.

How long, exactly, do we need to embrace this controversy, listening patiently to people who make others’ lives a living hell?

How long are we going to tolerate opinions from people so arrogant that they feel licensed to void any claims to gender people make?

How long are people going to insist on their rights to delegitimize the love two people share?

I guess that’s the most upsetting thing for me — this nauseatingly anxious constant hand-wringing over “what we are going to do with LGBT problem” asked constantly…it feels like I’m undergoing Chinese Water Torture.

Because LGBT people are not problems.

Arrogance is a problem. A book written 2000+ years ago is a problem. Theology based on fairy tales that intrusively control our lives and relationships is a problem. The fact that some reading this are offended by my reference to fairy tales while they insist on the right to misgender people and deny expressions of love between consenting adults is a problem.

That’s what I’m struggling with. I’m tired of entering the umpteenth, “What are we going to do with the LGBT community?” discussion.  I think many of us are past that, and if we’re not, we probably should be.

Maybe our question should be, “What are we going to do with us?”  As Leelah Alcorn put it — how are we going to fix society?

The problem of the LGBT community is the religious right’s boogeyman. It’s their mirror, their reflection, their projection.

That boogeyman is not anyone’s problem but the people who created it.  So I guess…what I’m saying is that people are trying to dig for the problem in the wrong place.

It’s your complex, your struggles, your fears, your desires, your insecurities that created this problem, this obsession with denying someone the right to their sexuality or gender.

No, I’m not saying that to make you feel guilty. I am saying that as the psychologist leaning back in his chair after his client complains about a person that isn’t there. It’s a projection of your mind, and it says more about you than it does about the other person.

I suppose what tires me is that these phantoms so many Christians (though not all) seem to chase just aren’t synonymous with the LGBT community.  And I just want to get beyond people’s imaginations of what’s sinful and so on and talk about the world of humanity we’re actually living in.

I guess that’s a major part of why I left fundamentalism for secular Humanism; I just noticed people who thought it was time to stop talking to the mirror and to God and to ancient texts and start talking to each other, and I identified with that.

It was not easy. It’s a frightening thing to love beyond your demons, but it’s also the most beautiful thing I know.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZZHaVIxUfA[/youtube]

I am finding that, for many, when God becomes the center of one’s life, it is easy not to care about what others think or feel. Only God’s stance matters.

The result can enforce the appearance of altruism or cruelty, depending on socioeconomic position, culture, and temperament. What it precludes is any sense of self-worth or empathy that threatens to violate the opinions of God.

This is why I think that although the death of God will not guarantee wide-ranging empathy, it is a necessary prerequisite.

I think the best version of God is one of a being who doesn’t really matter except as a metaphor for the flexible and changing understanding of a community, or as a being permanently behind a veil that may give someone comfort but about which we don’t know anything about. The moment the concept of God becomes one of a being outside of our existence who has something to say about it that some of us have some knowledge of, I begin to get concerned, because this is a nonexistent being whose opinion supposedly trumps ours.

It’s why my Humanism makes me an anti-theist. If we are going to freely embrace humanity, any nonexistent being who governs the terms of that embrace and existentially lies outside of or supposedly “transcends” the empathy we have in our hearts for each other has got to go.

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[Image Courtesy Of  The All-Nite Images under CCL]

It’s hard to explain “#blacklivesmatter” to people.

Most people seem to complain about the term.  Some think it’s bringing up a non-issue — that the real issue is black-on-black crime, or even black-on-white crime.  Indeed, most white people think that today’s major problem is not discrimination against minorities, but discrimination against white people.  Those of us who insist that black lives matter are often accused of being deeply prejudiced ourselves. The solution, according to many conservatives, is for black people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and stop getting bogged down in the past and seeing racism where there is none.

Coupled with this is the fact that many black people deny that racism is a problem, for whatever reason.  White people are in the majority here in the United States, so black people saying what the majority of the population want to hear get an audience.  It’s no secret that Fox News can (and does) put together all-black panels that assure America that racism is no big deal.

In my blogging experience, American atheists tend to, by and large, be a bit averse to discussions on race.  But I talk about it frequently anyway, because one of the reasons I became an atheist is that I looked at the history of Christianity in this country and its affect on black individuals, and in doing so found that the best way for me to embrace my humanity and sense of dignity was to discard a God that had all too often been used to make blacks subservient.  People like Langston Hughes, WEB DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and other major black figures in history wrote criticisms of religion that set my brain and heart on fire.  Some left Christianity because of a sense of science.  Although it is true that I left Christianity because evidence for its truth was lacking, I was also motivated by a strong sense of justice that continues in my current expressions of disbelief.  This motivation remains to this day.

It’s why I identify as a Humanist.

Which, by the way, is why I was intrigued by a recent video from Foundation Beyond Belief.  Not only does it give an excellent discussion of how Humanism relates to the “#blacklivesmatter” movement — it also announces that “#blacklivesmatter” will be the theme in the next Foundation Beyond Belief meeting — which is coming up soon, on July 25th, in Boston.

I think this five minute overview is the best summary I’ve seen of why Humanists should care about “#blacklivesmatter” as a social movement — one of the highlights is that it provides a very diplomatic, reasonable response to the question of why the movement is labeled “black lives matter” instead of “all lives matter.”

I’m glad I watched it.  Here it is for you to check out, as well.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdnfrR8Zk-U[/youtube]

By the way, the event the video introduces has the following intriguing description, which can be found here:

[The Foundation Beyond Belief annual conference] will be centered around the theme #blacklivesmatter: listen, learn, think, discuss, act. Sikivu Hutchinson will deliver the keynote speech: Colorblind Lies & Meritocracy Myths: Moving Secular Social Justice. 50% of the proceeds from this event will go to Community Change, Inc., a charity working directly on anti-racism education and advocacy. 

Here’s your chance to say goodbye to outgoing Executive Director Dale McGowan and meet the incoming executive director Noelle George. This unique event will include the following: 

• TED-style presentations relating to our theme
• updates on FBB’s newest programs (including Humanist Service Corps and Humanist Disaster Recovery Teams)
• 2014 Heart of Humanism awards dinner
• a Q&A panel on the topic of #blacklivesmatter

Some of the voices you will hear at the event are Professor Monica Miller of Lehigh University, Professor Fiery Cushman of Harvard, Shane Slone (a fresh new voice on race relations sponsored by Black Nonbelievers), and FBB staff members Rebecca Vitsmun, Conor Robinson and AJ Chalom, and more.

It is truly heartwarming to see this timely subject highlighted here.  The teaser of the video seems just a taste of a larger conversation that should do much to clarify very important connections between Humanism and social action — a connection that will be further discussed in overviews of the work FBB has done and will continue to do.

If you want to register, you can do so here.

Thanks for reading!

There was a rumor about a pastor setting himself on fire if same sex marriage became legal.  Many of us gathered around in anticipation, eyes on Texas, where the pastor resided, waiting for this claim to become a reality.  But the pastor came out and said that people misinterpreted his words, and that he was here to stay.

In contrast, a pastor, nearly exactly a year ago, actually DID literally set himself on fire.  An article discussing this suicide and the reasons for it states:

In addition to his hometown, Moore faulted the United Methodist Church for failing to reverse what he saw as backward, discriminatory practices like homophobia and support for the death penalty.

He ostensibly set himself on fire because of how bothered he was by the lack of civil rights people were given in this country — at 79 years old, after a lifetime of fighting for them.

This is who you’re going up against, anti-lgbtq folks.  I wouldn’t bet on you for a million bucks.  I have yet to hear of anyone who has similarly died or sacrificed themselves to the opposite cause, behind all the sanctimonious rhetoric.

I mean, in spite of all the grievance Christians have claimed over their supposed religious liberties being intruded on because two people of the same sex can get married, none of them committed suicide, that I know of, this weekend (or ever, for that matter).  No one set themselves on fire, swallowed deadly pills, blew through their skulls with a shotgun, jumped off of any bridges, or committed any other form of suicide because they were so upset about gay marriage being legal.  So it must not have bothered you too much.

And no lgbtq people, at least in the news I’m seeing, killed any straight people because gay marriage became legal. Y’all are breathing and doing just fine, from what I can see.  I haven’t seen one suicide note even remotely resembling that of Leelah Alcorn, who said she wanted her death to “mean something” and asked us to “fix society, please.”

This is very different from what would have happened if there had been another decision.  If bans against same sex marriage had been upheld, the conservative Christian base would have cheered about its religious “freedom” to continue denying people who love each other the right to marry each other.  You would have done it sanctimoniously, calling hate “love,” and patronizingly saying that your heterosexual proclivities were better than any other position on the Likert scale.  And you would have felt all smug and self-righteous while doing it. And in response, lgbtq people would have died. There would probably have been  a lot of suicides due to the way you would self-righteously treat them, and some people would be so zealous about winning that the self-righteous pricks would see license to verbally and physically abuse and even kill members of the lgbtq community for even looking at them.  I mean, the suicide attempt rate among transgender individuals  stands at around 40% (which is about 9 times the general suicide rate of 4.6%) — and it’s because of the way they’re treated — according to, like, actual studies as opposed to your bigoted, heartless opinion.

Maybe your smug, holier-than-thou visage is thinking, “Then good. We’ll intimidate them into silence.” You’re wrong. As this case indicated, the lgbtq community is invigorated, not discouraged, by its history. Even your pillar of white heterosexual superior masculinity, Caitlyn Jenner, has had the courage to give the middle finger to your bullshit gender ideals and openly join the relentless cause. And it makes a difference — I’m hearing that people who didn’t understand the plight of lgbtq people before are much more open to it now, after Caitlyn Jenner’s reveal, and are actually much less averse to opening doors for trans people. It’s a shame it took a celebrity to do it…but yes, it’s happening right in front of your face, and it’s going to happen more.

I mean…these people, they’re so goddamn tenacious, that the military — that bastion of highly policed gender roles — has an openly trans male sergeant even though it’s supposedly against the law. And you know what? His fellow soldiers love him to death and respect him profoundly. No, I’m sorry, you’re not going to have the privilege of a sanctimonious smile, like you have with other transgender individuals who have given their lives to fight for you, only to come back home and be rejected by you, you disrespectors of the troops.  And soon, bigots, relentless trans people, like the relentless lesbian and gay people can do already, will be able to openly enlist and defend their country from people who, like you, want to take away their freedoms.

And we’re taking over your pastors, too.  Oh, we love your pastors. Some of your most sanctimonious “Hate the sin, Love the sinner” pastors and politicians are also secretly relentlessly gay.  Here’s a small recent list. Must be so terrifying for you.  I mean, you can’t even trust your own leaders!  At least we know ours are who they say they are. When yours get revealed, they are some of the best goddamn (involuntary) advocates we’ve got, haha.

It hurts, doesn’t it, you bigots?

Yes, I called you a bigot. And you’re free to be offended by that, but, um…did you die? No. Did you commit suicide just now? No. So I do not care. I’m gonna call a spade a spade, and it’s hypocritical of you to call me rude. No, I’m sorry, we’re not all going to just politely stand by while you make the misery of the lgbtq community your little plaything.  You’re in our house, now, know it or not.  Chickens coming home to roost.

You can go to your bigoted churches and use the bigoted words of bigots who wrote years ago that lgbt “lifestyles” were a sin. You can say you’re going to fight against this decision so that your heterosexual relationships will reign superior. But you’re gonna lose.  The lgbtq community and its rapidly growing band of allies is strong, it’s determined, and it’s not gonna stop.

As a reminder, today is the 46th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.  The lgbtq movement before 1969 hid in corners, intimidated into silence. You all routinely beat people for their orientation. I mean, it was even against the law to serve an openly gay person at a bar (as the video below discusses), and you guys could beat up lgbtq people without fearing the police (indeed, your police beat them up, too), and you could shame them into silence.  You may long for those days to continue, or dream of them coming back, but they aren’t gonna. Why? Because they sat there and took it? No.

It’s because in 1969, something snapped.

When policemen tried to kick them out of an illegal gay bar called Stonewall, where they hid to drink because they could not drink publicly, they fought back.  They fought back the riot police, and won — for the next year, thousands strong, they marched, openly gay, thousands strong, through goddamn Central Park.  And every year since then, in Pride Parades.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nFxpQG7nBQ[/youtube]

No longer would the lgbtq community sit down and take it.  The fight had begun, and it continued in marches, in speeches, in academia, in politics, in churches, in the streets, in families, in celebrity culture. Everywhere. And it’s determined and strong.

Yeah. This is who you’re dealing with.

I mean, as recently as 2008 over half the states had constitutional amendments denying the right to same-sex marriage. And now, in record time, just seven years later and after rapid invalidation of all those bullshit amendments, same-sex marriage is completely legal.

And public opinion is relentlessly in favor of same-sex marriage, as well.  Ten years ago, in August 2005, 37% of people were in favor of same-sex marriage, and 59% were against it.  Now, in May 2015, 60% are in favor of same-sex, and only 37% are against it. And the numbers are climbing.

You think you’re motivated? You should see the lgbtq community and its allies.  You don’t know motivation. You have no idea what’s coming when people are this relentlessly lgbtq. We’re loud, we’re proud, we’re strong, we’re strategic, we’re exuberant, we’re determined, and we’re not going to stop.

Oh, you thought we were done?  We’re not done. Not by a long shot. We hardly even got started. Because we’re going to make lgbtq people a protected class in this country. That’s what’s coming next.  I know you love having the right to fire people because of their sexual orientation or chosen gender, but we’re going to make sure we don’t give you that pleasure.  You may smile today as the same-sex couple tries to check in their hotel room, all smiles, because of your smugness about “the proper role of marriage,” but tomorrow you’ll have to book that couple while they make out right in front of you at the check-in counter. You may be able to evict same-sex couples when they declare their married status because you would rather them be homeless than be an eyesore, but tomorrow you’ll have to just get over it, and if you don’t congratulate them everyone will see you as the bigot you are.  You might deny a loan to someone because they are married to someone of the same sex, but tomorrow you’ll have to grant it and just sit there and fucking take it while they look lovingly into each other’s eyes. You may be able to expel their children from your whitewashed, sanctimonious Christian colleges, but tomorrow you’ll have to watch your words when they talk lovingly about their parents in class if you don’t want to get a pink slip.

You didn’t think this was the end, did you? We’re just getting started. You’re angry? You think that’s going to motivate you? Well, we’re looking at casualties right and left of people we love, widespread abuse, and we’re angrier. You think you love your spouse and children and want to protect the “sanctity of marriage” so that you can have sex without worrying about “the gays”?  Well, I’ve seen ceremonies of same-sex couples finally getting married after years, having the love they have not granted, but denied.  Some couples have fought for 50 years to get married.  They aren’t going to stop now.

You’re still alive and breathing? You’re able to make out in public without being afraid of getting pummeled? You can adopt children? You don’t have the discrimination lgbtq people face?

Then excuse me if I don’t give a shit about your bigoted feelings. I’m too busy fighting for the people your smug self-righteous bigoted ignorance is murdering and abusing.

And we won, and we’re going to keep winning, and you’re going to join us either willingly or kicking and screaming, but these changes are going to happen.

Your sermons and your money and your power is no match for the true love the lgbtq community feels.

Join the movement of love or get pushed out the goddamn way of the relentlessly lgbtq community and its allies.

Thanks for reading.

Background: A Conversation At IHOP
(To skip ahead to my reaction to the speech, Click HERE)

First, a bit of background on a recent development that took place regarding an experience with an Episcopalian church member the night before the speech.

I live in the Bible Belt, in Fort Worth, Texas. As an atheist who thinks it’s important to inform people that the concept of God is a bad idea (thus a major reason I write this blog), I often attend venues that encourage candid religious debate. One I attend about once every five weeks or so these days is on Thursday night. It’s at this highwayside IHOP about 30 minutes east of where I live.

This evening was interesting. There was a die-hard Christian woman who believed the rapture was imminent, a gray-haired lanky Presbyterian criminal defense lawyer, a boisterous older man who looked like a slightly more overweight but much more outgoing Bernie Sanders (he read voraciously about Christianity and atheism and hesitatingly never gave you a clear answer when you asked what his religious affiliation was), and a Seventh-Day Adventist woman in her thirties. Several sporadic regulars like me didn’t show up this time, but we had a couple newcomers. There was trans woman in her mid twenties who seemed to identify as pagan, and there was a man in his twenties there who was Baha’i (not the trendy hippy kind – he was actually raised in the faith and took it fairly seriously). Later, a deacon who worked full-time in the Episcopalian church showed up.

And then there was me, resident anti-theistic atheist.

The discussion usually had a set format, but because we were a relatively small, yet interesting, crowd this time around, it was free-flowing that evening. The man with the Baha’i faith was pummeled with questions so that we could clarify a part of his faith that gradually came into focus. Apparently, if I understand correctly, he thought that there was a truth that was revealed in his religion, but that was expressed in all religions. The thing was that you had to study and search for it – the Baha’i faith, he said, was one that respected careful study and effort that people took part in in order to realize the deeper truth behind all religions. Or something like that.

Of course, we asked several questions, and the Christians and the man with the Baha’i faith eventually came to an understanding. They both had books they thought were sacred. They both believed that each other might have a part of the truth. Now, the ultimate truth, the thorough truth – that they disagreed on. The Baha’i man seemed less sure about it than the Christians. But there was some common ground.

I’m giving you this background because I think the Episcopalian deacon who came in at around 11pm (I had come in a 10pm) connected to this sense of community in a way that may have influenced the way I saw Obama’s speech at the African Methodist Episcopal church. For starters, she didn’t really think the Bible had as much importance as what the other Christians in the Bible Study were giving it. Her concept was basically that the church is like a sculpture of Christ, and we’re trying to get to know this Christ outside of us. Like the man with the Baha’i faith, she thought there was a truth, there was a Christ and a God, but it was something that we got to know by being in community and being aware of a sense of tradition (which seemed, when interrogated, fairly synonymous with “heritage”).

Although the man with the Baha’i faith somewhat understood her, all of us at the back room of that IHOP jumped at her. The Christians asked how she knew who Jesus or God was without using the Bible. I wanted to know if there was anything – anything at all – outside of the mere sense of community for her to know where God was coming from or who God was.

Eventually, conversation splintered. It was around midnight when she came to where I was sitting due to frustration with the other Christians, it seemed, and tried to tell me where she was coming from. We ended up talking until about 2:30 that morning. And I finally had to conclude, after trying to distinguish our positions over that time, that we were not that different; we just called things by different names.

For example, when I asked her if she actually believed that Jesus rose from the dead, she hesitated. I asked how sure she was, and she winced and said, “Maybe 60%.” Which is still insanely high, obviously, but it shows that at least she’s thinking about it. Indeed, however, the more we talked, the more I realized that the actual resurrection of Christ wasn’t the point for her.

“Christ” was a comfortable metaphor. It represented the utopia that, in one way or another, we’re all trying to get to. I mean, that doesn’t work for me – “Christ” seems, to me, too tied up with the Bible to be of much use. But for her, “Christ” was another word for the hope in a community. It was personalized because it made her comfortable, and gave her a certain amount of peace. And, having been a Christian before, I realize that there is, indeed, a sense of peace to be found in Christianity – but in my experience it’s a peace attached with just taking the Bible for granted, which is extremely problematic. Her concept of Christ – a Christ she did not know, but which she grew to love and understand as a representation of her experiences with others – was, in many ways, functionally undifferentiated from my atheism.

I don’t quite know if her views are orthodox Episcopalian views – I got the sense that she was much more liberal than the norm. But still…it was difficult to see a strong difference.

And it wasn’t for lack of trying to differentiate it.

I had to admit – I think morality is something that is created by a community, that is based on careful measures of well-being, and that seeks to avoid harm for as many people as possible, and this requires not blindly following a book. She thinks the same thing. She would just use different language (language that I think is problematic, but still) to describe it.

The biggest difference is that she thinks it’s embodied in some other entity, and I don’t. But because she relies so much on the world we experience to define that entity – without limiting it to a particular book or, it seemed, a particular church, necessarily – then functionally, we are very close in the way we operate. I mean, in most cases I would have a problem with God as a being who people give undue authority to. But if you think God exists for your own personal comfort, and yet refuse to presume you know him except through your experiences in the real world – without reference to a single book or strict cordoning off in a specific tradition – then this does not seem to be a God-concept that is invested in too much authority. It seems, rather, a way to embrace the world, so to speak, and some call that embrace nothingness, some call it “spiritual,” and some (although there is no evidence for it) call it God. God would be a metaphor for the conclusions we are trying to reach from the experiences of our existence.

Now, I don’t think there’s good evidence for consciousness existing outside the brain, but I don’t see it as necessarily a harmful conceptual metaphor for living life, if it encourages you along a road you walk anyway.

I’m not saying I believe it. But it makes sense that someone would choose this.

Now, it’s been shown that the most religious people are in places that tend to be poorest. It’s because of that that I think religion is a survival function. People are religious, I think, because they are passionate about trying to survive in a very difficult world without a friend. What’s offensive, to me, is when wealthy evangelists, preachers, political leaders, and campaign bankrollers control who people think this God is and, thus, control the people in disturbing ways. But the basic sense of peace and satisfaction some people get from believing in God that is behind all the bullshit that usually comes with belief in God (including blind allegiance to a puppet authority), I have a soft spot for, and I see how people could connect to it.