Cain: No Abortions Allowed ... At All

At least Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain can't be called indecisive on abortion. He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, he wants to outlaw abortion altogether.

"I believe in life from conception and I do not agree with abortion under any circumstances. Not for rape and incest ... Because if you look at rape and incest, the percentage of those instances is so miniscule [sic] that there are other options. If it’s the life of the mother that family is going to have to make that decision."

So, if a thirteen-year-old girl is raped by her stepfather, then neither she nor her mother can choose whether to carry that man's child? Even the very next day, when the egg hasn't even implanted itself in her uterus and has no spinal cord or brain cells?

Exactly. That fertilized cell, according to Cain, is a full human being with more rights than the girl and her family.

And why does Cain block abortions for rape and incest? Just because it's a rare crime. From what Cain says, it sounds like he might reconsider if rape and incest were more common. Does that make sense to you? Do you think it makes sense to rape and incest victims?

Unmarried Christians Get Pregnant More!

It's no surprise that according to a new Gallup poll, 76% of evangelical Christians believe sex outside of marriage is immoral.

But what surprises Christian commentators is that over 80% of young (18-29) evangelical Christians have sex. That's just a bit below the national average (88%). So in spite of all the preaching and moralizing, Christians are demonstrating once again that they are just ordinary humans, subject to the same healthy desires as the rest of us ... and that their religion has very little real effect on their behavior.

But the big surprise is that more of them get pregnant than the general population!

There are two pretty obvious reasons why this might be: ignorance and guilt.

The ignorance part is because evangelical Christian parents teach abstinence rather than real sex education. These poor young adults just don't know how, when or why to use condoms, birth-control pills and other contraception. No surprises there.

But guilt? That's a bit more subtle.

Best Christian Quote of the Year: Preacher Fail

This has to be the best Christian quote of the year:

"... [If] God doesn't destroy America pretty soon, He’s gonna have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."
– John MacArthur, Christian evangelical author and preacher

One of the biggest problems facing America today is that preachers like John MacArthur are diverting us from the real problems.

MacArthur is one of those doom-and-gloom preachers who love to preach darkness and damnation. He must be pretty famous because he's authored or edited something like 150 books. (One has to suspect there's a certain amount of redundancy in his writing after the fortieth or fiftieth book.)

His big show involves the classic Christian recipe:

• Convince his audience that everything pleasurable is actually a vile sin that's damned by God.
• Point out that everyone likes fun stuff, so we're all vile sinners.
• Connect this to confusing prophecies and irrelevant myths that were written by stone-age farmers two to three thousand years ago.
• The sky is falling! God is going to get us, and boy are you sinners going to be sorry!

Here are a couple samples:

“Materialism, drunkard pleasure seeking, arrogant conceit, defiant sinfulness, moral perversion, and corrupt leadership… Do you not see [them] in America?”

"What do we have here? We have here, folks, Anthony Weiner type people…corrupt leaders. Is there ever any end to this corruption... ?"

But the real danger from preachers like MacArthur is that they want to take over America and turn it into a theocracy

"No other nation has literally been born out of a desire to be faithful and obedient to the living and abiding Word of God. America is the first nation that separated Church and State."

It's sad how many people fall for this brand of doom-and-gloom speech. There are certainly problems in America and around the world, but not the ones MacArthur is talking about.

Did you see drug users causing the subprime mortgage crisis? No, it was bankers and

Phoenix Catholic Bishop Confirms: Hospital Should Have Let Mom AND Baby Die

Remember the nun who was excommunicated by her bishop for participating an emergency abortion to save a woman's life? The patient, a mother of four, developed life-threatening pulmonary hypertension while pregnant, and would probably have died along with her baby without the life-saving procedure.

Today we find the truly disgusting disregard the Roman Catholic Church has for human life and morals. Thomas J. Olmsted, the Bishop of Phoenix, has reiterated his position: the mother should have been left to die.

But even worse, he is now "pulling rank" on all of the doctors and insisting that they never again defy his authority.

He refuses to even consider anyone else's opinion. In a letter to the hospital's president, Olmsted wrote:

Teenage Sex Sleepovers: Why American Religious Morals CAUSE Abortions

There's a way we could cut abortion rates in half in the United States, but the religious right is against it! Why? Because it requires us to be honest and open about sex with our children. It means we must be pragmatic and admit that teens have sex whether we tell them to or not.

A fascinating report by Advocates for Youth proves what many of us have known intuitively for a long time: America's religion-based "morality" doesn't work. In spite of the good intentions of Nancy Reagan and her followers, the "Just Say No" policy for sex education actually increases pregnancy, abortion, venereal disease and poverty.

Check out these disturbing facts from the Advocates for Youth report:

	United States	Netherlands
Pregnancy per 100,000	72.2	11.8
Births per 1,000 ages 15-19	42.5	4.8
Abortion per 100,000 ages 15-19	19.8	7.8
HIV/STI Rates all adults	0.6%	0.1%
Syphilis cases per 100,000 adults	2.7	1.0
Gonorrhea cases per 100,000 ages 15-19	458.8	13.92
Chlamydia cases per 100,000 ages 15-19	2,862	150.4

If the United States could match the Netherlands' abortion rates, there would be almost 125,000 fewer abortions per year!

You'd think any anti-abortionist would take a look at these numbers and say, "Gosh, let's get on board with their program! It works!" But no, they can't. Why?

A Truly Moral Preacher? Gay Megachurch Bishop Comes Out ... for a Good Reason

Now here's a story I like. Jim Swilley is gay, but few people knew it. He kept his sexuality a secret for decades because he was founder and bishop of Conyers’ Church in the Now, a "megachurch" in Rockdale County, Georgia.

Last week Bishop Swilley decided it was time to stop living a lie and come out as gay. But it wasn't because of a scandal, or because someone was threatening to "out" him. Bishop Swilley came out as openly gay to support the gay youth of America.

"I know a lot of straight people think it is a choice. It is not. ... As a father, thinking about your 16, 17 year old killing themselves, I thought somebody needed to say something.

What a wonderful, generous man.

Those of us in the atheist/agnostic/secular/humanist blogosphere are quick to point out the flaws of church leaders who are caught in scandals. We're fast to report on a megachurch leader caught with a prostitute,

Ted Nugent: Is He the Real Threat to America?

Ted Nugent is the poster child for why evangelical Christianity is the enemy of the American Constitution and why mainstream Christians, Jews and Muslims should join secularists and atheists to defend and honor the separation of church and state clause of our Constitution.

CNN was on the TV this weekend, and I happened to walk by as they were showing live coverage of Ted Nugent's rally for Republican Senate candidate John Raese in Charleston, West Virginia. Mostly it was the usual conservative Tea Bagger exhortations, but then he said this:

"It's not good versus bad ... it's good versus evil.

This sends a chill up my spine.

Any living, healthy, thriving society is full of strong opinions and dissent, and part of that dialog must include respect for those who disagree with you. I might argue vehemently that the Republican platform is wrong and will lead to catastrophe. They might counter that my politics will lead to socialism and a big-brother state. But as long as we keep arguing, we'll be OK. We'll rant and rail at each other, but somewhere in all the smoke and noise, we always manage to find a middle path that works.

But when Ted Nugent claims that God is on his side,

Sexual Revolution: How One Pedophile Destroyed America

I know most of my readers are strong advocates of the wall of separation between church and state, but if you ever had even the slightest doubt, read this article on World Net Daily. It's scary stuff.

They start with the laughable claim that Alfred Kinsey, the sex researcher who pulled us out of the dark ages of sexual repression, was a pedophile. From there, they build a case against every advance we've made about sex and sexuality since 1950, and conclude that our legal system should return to Bible-based laws!

Here is what these ultra-conservative religious nutcases would do:

"Pre-Kinsey, sex laws were based on biblical authority and considered an area of 'public rights,' meaning we recognized sex had civil consequences on society," Reisman said. "Post-Kinsey sex laws are based on 'scientific authority' and are considered 'private rights,' which claims sex has no social consequences."

In other words, if they were in charge, the government would have the right to peek into your bedroom and decide what's legal and what's not.

Strippers Force Meddling Church to Back Off

I'm on a bit of a holiday, so today I'll just leave you with a great little follow-up story. Remember the exotic dancers in Warsaw, Ohio who'd been harassed for years by a church and started picketing the church every Sunday in their skimpies? The story apparently was rather an embarrassment to the church when it made news and blogs nationwide.

Well now the church has backed off. According to The Columbus Dispatch via Yahoo! news, "It's over. The war is over."

It's not clear yet what the final resolution is – club owner Tommy George is still wary. The church hasn't actually promised to stop harassing the club, to which George says, "I think this is a very good first step. But I will be here until they stop."

Strippers Turn Tables on Picketing Church

A strip club has turned the tables on a local church that's been harassing it for years. The dancers are protesting outside the church!

According to Tommy George, the owner of a strip club in Warsaw, Ohio, "We had Pastor Bill Dunfee and his followers show up about four years ago and ... it's been continual harassment virtually every weekend since then."

It seems Pastor Dunfee is a meddling goody-two-shoes who reportedly has admitted to adultery. Dunfee decided that it is his right and duty to put Mr. George out of business and his dancers out of work. Never mind that the strip club is licensed, legal and pays its taxes on time, and that most of the dancers are supporting children. In fact, one is supporting six kids, something you'd think Pastor Dunfee would applaud.

Dunfee makes it clear. "As long as [The Foxhole strip club] exists we will not share territory with the Devil. What it comes down to is this ... In this world there is good and there is evil. There's right and there's wrong. There's light and there's dark. ... Whenever you take a look at the strip club, it's evil."

In other words, the typical black-and-white view of an unthinking Christian, the same view that has been used to justify so much evil down through history.

Well, now Mr. George and the dancers have turned the tables on this meddlesome church.

Another Fraud: Christians Cure Female Pornography Addiction

Our friends over at Westside Family Church, the monstrous Kansas corporate megachurch, have started a program to cure women who are "addicted to pornography."

Addiction is a bad thing, right? Of course! But wait, women addicted to pornography? I've never heard of that. I always thought it was the men who go for dirty pictures. Women, I am told, often prefer erotic literature to visual stimuli, and so why would they get addicted to porn? But hey, I'm a modern guy, equal opportunity advocate, and definitely not a sexist, so why not? Wouldn't it be sexist to assume women couldn't be addicted to pornography. Maybe this is just one of those problems we've never heard about because we're a sexist society that assumes women are somehow more "pure" than men about porn.

OK, so I'll go with it. Let's read the NY Times article ... wow, interviews with actual female porno addicts. Now let's read the Dirty Girls Ministries forum where these ladies go to confess ...

Wat a second ... were are the porno confessions? Most of these women are talking about having normal sexual feelings. Their big sins are having desires? Feeling lustful before they're married? Masturbating? These sound like healthy, happy women to me. Where is the self-destructive addiction? Where is the part where they are ignoring their work, families and health and destroying their lives?

Reading through these confessions, there are indeed a few women who talk about pornography. But most of the confessions seem to be about normal sexual feelings. These women are "confessing" to simply feeling lust, as any healthy woman should. In other words, they're nothing wrong with them at all!

Then I realized that their lives are being destroyed ... by the Westside Family Church. WFC is teaching these women that normal, healthy sexuality – you might say God-given sexuality – is disgusting. WFC tells them they should be ashamed of the natural feelings that any healthy, happy adult feels. They're taught to suppress their desires and passions. They're told that they are unworthy sinners merely for being normal women.

WBS is perverting these women's healthy attitudes about sex into shame and and teaching them to loathe their own bodies.

Celibacy IS the Issue: The Catholic Elephant

Did you know that only two percent of Catholic Priests keep their vow of celibacy?

"Survey and statistics that show only two percent of priests have been absolutely faithful to their vows of celibacy. Adjustment problems abound as demonstrated by repeated reports of priests abandoning their callings, fathering children, being charged with child molestation."

This is from a thesis written almost twenty years ago, back in 1992, entitled Celibacy Is the Issue by Thomas G. Lederer, which explains and predicts the current crisis of pedophilia in the Catholic Church.

Here are a couple interesting quotes.

"In late 1990, A.W. Richard Sipe's book, A Secret World – Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy, caused a veritable flood of controversy. The author, psychotherapist stated that that at least half the U.S. Priests at any given time are involved in some pattern of sexual activity."

Doctor Death is Back! Kevorkian on CNN 360

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the famous or infamous "Doctor Death" of euthanasia, is back, and is a powerful advocate for the rights of terminally ill patients to have doctor-assisted suicide. Kevorkian spent six years in prison and two on probation after his conviction for assisting a suicide, and now that he's off probation, he's free to speak again.

Anderson Cooper on CNN had an amazing interview with Kevorkian last night. Here is one of my favorite exchanges. They were talking about one particular suicide Kevorkian assisted, and Cooper asks:

Cooper: "Did you find it sad?"

Kevorkain: "Well of course! You don't like to end a life. ... If someone has cancer of the hip, you don't take the leg off ... because you want to do it. ... Nobody says, 'I can't wait to take that leg off.'"

Cooper: "But a lot of people say that you're playing God ..."

Kevorkian: "Isn't the doctor who takes a leg off playing God?"

Hitchins on the Immorality of Jesus

One of my favorite topics is the idea that Jesus can forgive your sins. Even when I was a little kid, I couldn't figure this out ... if I hit you on the nose, some other guy can forgive me and make it OK? It just seems wrong. No, it's more than wrong, it's immoral. So why does Christianity have this at its core?

I've written about this before, but today I want to bring you a four-minute video by Christopher Hitchens, who explains this incredibly well. Click the "READ ON" link to see the video...

Woman Preacher Gets Southern Baptist Church Expelled

It's hard to believe in these modern times that there is still overt, legal discrimination against women. But leave it to religion to be in the dark ages when everyone else has seen the light. The Druid Hills Baptist Church, a thriving Southern Baptist congregation in Atlanta, Georgia, has been declared "not a cooperating church" because its associate pastor is a woman (*gasp*!).

The official policy of the Southern Baptist Convention is that the role of pastor is "limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

Yeah, that's the right idea! Let's take the morals of a bunch of farmers, goatherds and rabbis who lived two thousand years ago, and decide that by golly, they got it right!

Roseanne Barr: Mormon Church Caused Marie Osmond's Son's Death

Update (March 8): Reports have surfaced claiming that Michael was not gay, and Roseanne has retracted her statement. Nevertheless, the underlying sentiment remains: The Mormon Church is viciously anti-gay, in spite of their professed love for everyone. They are still damaging families across America, and while we may never know the truth about the Osmond family, I'm leaving this blog intact because the message is still important.

Leave it to Roseanne to tell it like it is.

"Marie Osmond's poor gay son killed himself because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that "depression" is a lie!

"Yet the Osmonds still talk lovingly about their church, saying nothing about its extremely anti-gay Crusade. Marie also has a gay daughter! ...

"G-d is trying to use you for something good and this is your opportunity! Your church is wrong and on the wrong wrong wrong side of things! Get as vocal about that as you are about your diet. G-d bless you too, Marie.

"Take a hard look at the facts now as you use this very sad time for introspection, healing growth and prayer, and become a strong symbol for loving mothers who make no apologies for hatred against their own kids!"

Right on, Roseanne!

It makes me sick too. What a brainwashing job.

Chelsea King Murder: Lock up sex offenders forever

Our criminal justice system, much of which is based on Judeo-Christian morality, has a fundamental flaw that's directly related to its religious roots. Christians believe in revenge, redemption and forgiveness, and those are the foundations of our penal code. And the result is that sex offenders serve their time, are released, and then rape and kill another girl.

The tragic news of Chelsea King's murder hit particularly close to home for me. I used to live at Lake Hodges where her body was found, and the trail where she was jogging is a favorite of a beautiful young woman who is my stepdaughter. She walked that trail every day. There but for fortune... I shudder to think that, had it been a different time of day, she might have been the victim.

The fundamental problem with our penal code is that it has, at the very core, the belief that once a man serves his time, he is forgiven and given another chance. For most criminals, this is the right choice. We've all made mistakes, and without forgiveness, there would be nobody left to be the jailers!

Mel Gibson: More Hypocrisy from the Master

Well, Mel Gibson has once again shown what a nutjob hypocrite he is. I don't know about you, but I try to live according to my own morals, to "practice what I preach." Not Mel Gibson. As a Catholic Traditionalist, Gibson is so right-wing he thinks the Pope is a fake! Yet, although Gibson is married, he just acknowledged that his girlfriend bore Gibson's eighth child, out of wedlock!

Normally I'd have no problem with that, but I hate hypocrisy, and Gibson is the guy who turned the whole Christian world on to the sick pleasures of sadomasochistic voyeurism, with his disgusting movie about Christ. (Even Catholics complain.) And Gibson once said his wife is going to Hell because she worships Christ in the Church of England rather than the "correct" Catholic Church.

I'm not sure why I'm wasting my time writing about the guy, it's more amusing than dangerous. He's such a nutjob nobody really takes him seriously. I guess it's just because hypocrisy is one of my hot buttons. I respect most religions, even though I don't agree with them, but I don't respect those who are all talk and no walk.

Legal abortions save lives

Are the conservatives who oppose abortion committing evil, even by their own standards?

A new Guttmacher Institute report released today demonstrates clearly that the best way to reduce abortions is to improve family planning.

Duh.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud the Guttmacher report – it will add solid science to the debate. But I have to wonder: Why is such a report even necessary?

The irony is that conservatives, in their zeal to prevent abortions, have blocked family planning, thus increasing the number of abortions performed, probably far in excess of the "babies" they've managed to save.

Twenty or thirty years ago, I heard an interview with Dr. Carl Djerassi, the inventor of the first birth-control pill. He was pro-abortion too, but when someone criticized him on his beliefs, he said something like, "The thing we all agree on is the hope that one day no abortions will be neccessary." He went on to explain that birth control was the solution to the abortion problem. If families and women have access to effective family-planning services, abortions can become a thing of the past.

So ironically, the conservative agenda that opposes abortion and withholds other family-planning services, causes abortions to increase, exactly the opposite of their intention. If the Bush administration had simply funded family-planning services worldwide, and ignored the fact that some money was being used for abortions, they could have reduced the total number of abortions, surely a good thing from anyone's point of view.

Unfortunately, there is a terrible connection between AIDS and abortions, too. It's been shown time and again that the most effective way to prevent AIDS is with condoms. Abstinence programs are 100% ineffective, and in some cases I've heard they're even counterproductive.

The Bush administration's knee-jerk opposition to abortion caused them to withhold funds from places like equatorial Africa. The direct, measurable result of that is a terrible increase in the spread of AIDS. Even if you believe the human soul is injected by God at the moment of conception, and even if you believe that many babies were saved from abortion, more people are dying in the end, from illegal abortions, starvation, and AIDS.

It's the typical head-in-the-sand attitude we see so often from religious conservatives. They get on their soap boxes and yell about some commandment from God, without ever considering the real-life consequences of their actions.

If evil is defined as that which harms and kills, the Republican leaders who set America's international family-planning policy for the last decade or so were among the most evil in history. Literally millions of people around the world today have AIDS, simply because the United States withdrew family-planning money from countries that allowed abortions at their medical clinics.

Slavery and Child Trafficking in Ireland?

What do President George H. W. Bush's chief legal counsel, a baby who was stolen from his mother and sold for profit, and a tormented gay man who suffered from depression and died of AIDS, have in common?

They're all the same man.

Few stories get me as angry as those about slavery and selling children for profit. And although today's story isn't as black and white as many such stories, the shocking part is that it took place in Ireland in the 1950's, and the perpetrators were Catholic Nuns. And in case you're thinking, "OK, just another another overblown exaggeration," think again.

Our story starts in 1952, when Philomena Lee, a young Irish lass of 18 years, became pregnant. Philomena's mother died when she was just six herself, and the nuns raised her. At age 18, she knew nothing of men and the facts of life, and became intimate with a handsome young man she met at the county fair. So far, an all-too-common story, yet hardly shocking.

But for young Philomena, the shame of her pregnancy was nothing compared to what came next. The Catholic Church was so powerful that the Irish government had abandoned its duty, and handed over responsibility – and unchecked legal authority – of all unwed mothers and their babies to the Church. The Catholic Church took full control of these young women, imprisoned them in nunneries, and managed to block all legal interference from the government.

The Church started running it as a money-making business, taking money from the government, while at the same time selling the babies for profit to wealthy Catholic couples in Great Britain and America, even against the mothers' direct objections and refusals.

And the profits didn't stop with the babies. Their mothers were kept in the convent as slaves, forced to work in gardens, kitchens, nurseries or light manufacturing, unless they or their families could buy their freedom at a cost £100, a substantial sum in those days which many couldn't afford. It was slavery, plain and simple.

Philomena's baby became Michael Hess, a chief architect of the Republican National Convention's election strategy, whose brilliant work ultimately won the presidency for George H.W. Bush (senior), and for which he was appointed Bush's chief legal counsel. But unfortunately for Michael, he was also a gay man in a political party that didn't put up with homosexuality. Mike ultimately got AIDS, and died.

But even more tragically, both Philomena and Michael were trying desperately to find each other, to reconnect. Each of them went to the convent, and begged to be introduced, mother and son. Michael probably passed within a few miles of his mother. Yet, the Catholic nuns inexplicably refused, in spite of the earnest appeals of everyone involved. Michael died without ever getting to see his mother again, and Philomena never got to see the man that her little boy had become after he was forcibly taken from her and sold.

My summary barely does justice to this appalling story. I hope you'll read the full story, beautifully and tragically written by Martin Sixsmith of The Guardian.

Those who would claim that without religion, there can be no morality (which is the Roman Catholic Church's official position), need only look at deeds such as these to see that even with religion, morality is difficult to find.