MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

If you have any kind of social media account, you know that state legislatures in North Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi are dithering over The Gayz.

The one in North Carolina is officially law. The one in Georgia was dropped after Gov Nathan Deal decided not to sign it when The Walking Dead team said it would film elsewhere. The one in Mississippi is pending, though Gov Phil Bryant seems pretty keen on it.

The first two are laws we’ve seen before. The NC bill basically says only the state govt can decide who gets protection under anti-discrimination laws (and BTW the LGBTs will never qualify as long the GOP runs the place). Tennessee passed a similar law five years ago (ostensibly in the name of pro-business workplace regulation consistency).

The GA bill was more like the Indiana “religious liberty” bill last year allowing business owners to refuse to cater gay weddings or refuse services to LGBTs, which Gov Mike Pence eventually amended to nullify that part.

I don’t have anything to add about the NC and GA bills that I haven’t already said about the TN and Indiana bills.

However, the MS bill is worth spending some extra time on because it goes further than the other bills mentioned above, not least in that it includes non-marital heterosex in its list of items you can legally discriminate against people for religious reasons. Which is odd because in Mississippi (and 27 other states, BTW), it's already legal to deny housing to an unmarried couple based on a landlord's religious objection to premarital sex. For that matter, it's already legal to do the same thing to LGBTs.

Consequently, I think it’s fair to say the MS bill has two main objectives for the GOP-led legislature: (1) make gay marriage illegal in MS despite the SCOTUS ruling, and (2) ensure the GOP is SEEN by their constituents fighting The LGBT Agenda™.

I suspect the second is the most important objective, as I’m sure at least some of the bill’s supporters know full well the law won’t survive a legal challenge – unless maybe they’re banking on Mitch McConnell keeping that ninth SCOTUS seat empty until Donald Trump wins the election. 

Whatever the motivation, I think it’s a bad law for the same reason the other ones are bad laws.

To be clear, I fully understand that some Christians don’t want anything to do with gay marriage because they’re afraid that even so much as providing a cake or a DJ service some how endorses or legitimizes it. I’m just not convinced the solution to what is admittedly a complex problem is to pass a simplistic law that essentially declares religious beliefs are above secular law. There’s just so much that can go wrong there.

One other thought: the MS law states that churches can’t be forced to officiate gay marriages. This is something I actually support. There’s a big difference between the state handing out marriage licenses and a church performing them, and I do think pastors should have the right to refuse.

The thing is, I’m unaware that this is actually a problem. I may be out of touch, but I don’t know of any church that has been forced to officiate a gay marriage in MS (or anywhere else), or has been sued for refusing to do so. The latter might happen at some point, but I don’t think any gay couple who tried it would succeed, because there’s no legal basis for it – churches are not compelled under the SCOTUS ruling to perform gay marriages on demand. There would also be no point in suing the ones that refuse, since some US churches have already decided to support gay marriage. So if you have yr heart set on a church wedding, it is an option.

So in that sense, the MS bill – and most bills like these – are solutions in search of a problem, and as such are likely going to create more problems than they’re purported to solve.

None of which will stop Phil Bryant from signing it. And whether he does or doesn’t, this won't be the last bill like this we will see. As the POTUS elections have demonstrated, America is angry and freaking out about everything, and people on both sides are no longer interested in compromise – it’s become an all-or-nothing game. The same is true of the LGBT culture wars.

Go down swinging,

This is dF

There is dithering about Josh Duggar. As there probably should be.

And I wouldn’t bother posting anything about it – I mean, do you really need me to tell you that molesting kids is not a good thing to be doing? – except that there is also dithering over POTUS candidate Mike Huckabee defending Duggar and saying his actions are not “unforgiveable”. And not just from Huckabee’s usual political foes – even his own fans have turned against him on that point.

As this story involves both child molestation AND politics, it’s impossible to have a rational discussion about it, and no one really wants to be rational about it. Also, I'm assuming there are probably more details about this that haven't yet emerged that could alter or invalidate this post. (They may have already, but remember I don't live in the weird 24/7 media bubble that passes for American pop culture these days.)

So I’ll just post a few bullet points here hat reflect my current POV and leave it at that.

1. The irony about Huckabee’s statement is that technically, he’s doing exactly what Christians are supposed to do in these situations. Grace is the core tenet of Christianity. That’s a hard nugget for most people to take (including most Christians) because it doesn’t come easy to humans, especially for something as heinous as child molestation. But we are called to offer forgiveness for anyone who really wants it. (Calm down and keep reading – this is not an apologetic.)

2. In Huckabee’s case, it’s hard to know how sincere he is, as he’s also a politician with a point to make. This also isn't the first time he’s defended sexual offenders – he even helped one get released from jail whilst governor of Arkansas (on the apparent grounds that conservative Christians at the time believed the man was a political prisoner of Bill Clinton – as you did back in the 90s).

But assuming Huckabee is sincere, in order for it to mean anything, Huckabee has to extend the same level of grace to all sinners: gays, liberals, Beyonce, and other people he has publicly complained about in terms of being morally terrible and dangerous people. Grace is for everyone, not select people you happen to know and/or like.

3. But however Huckabee may feel about it – and I can't really stress this enough – it’s really not up to him to forgive Duggar, and it’s not up to Duggar's parents who knew what he did and covered it up. It’s up to his victims. I haven’t heard either Huckabee or the parents say very much about the victims and how they feel about all this. Maybe they want to keep that private, though maybe it’s a little late for that. Which brings me to this:

4. For people who want to condemn Duggar’s parents for covering it up, it’s worth remembering that – in that respect – their actions were sadly typical of cases where parents catch one of their family members doing something like that. The instinct is to keep it quiet and (hopefully) seek help privately instead of calling the cops. That’s not necessarily the right thing to do for something like child abuse – and it’s certainly not an excuse – but people who are shocked and afraid don’t always make good decisions, regardless of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof).

5. Having said , most families who find themselves in that situation don’t go on to build themselves up as a national voice for Christian living and sexual morality, and warning everyone that LGBTs are dangerous pedophiles, much less start a “reality show” to let TLC document their lives. The nicest thing you can say about this is that it was dumb and irresponsible, and has done more to harm the image and core message of Christianity than promote it.

It’s especially dumb and irresponsible when taken in the context of the long and sad history of dumb and irresponsible decisions in the name of evangelical Christianity. Time and time again we’ve seen self-established leaders of Christianity scolding the nation about morality only to be revealed as failing to live up to their own standards – often dramatically so. I mean, come on, even the person who ran the “treatment center” where the Duggars took Josh turned out to be not the most qualified person when it comes to correcting sexual impropriety.

Well, nobody’s perfect. But if you’re going to actively promote a lifestyle based on a code of morality based on your religious beliefs and promote your own family as a model of that lifestyle – especially on national television – you have to be in a position to set a good example.

Some example. It’s no wonder so many people think Christians are joyless hypocrites motivated by vanity and pride who just want to tell people how to live their lives and get rich while telling them.

6. Although it hasn’t been mentioned in the media yet (as far as I know), it would be really really great to know if the Duggars sought help for Josh’s victims as well. If not, then one could argue their priorities are seriously misplaced (see Points 3 and 5).

7. One final point on forgiveness, because some people get confused on this point: grace and justice are two different things. Put another way, forgiveness is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you kill someone, the victim’s family may choose to forgive you. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to stand trial or serve any time. And it doesn’t mean it’s okay if you commit the same offense again.

Unforgiven,

This is dF

ITEM: David Van Vleet of Pierce County, Washington has filed court papers to get the personal information of local strippers – i.e. names and addresses – that's on their state entertainer licenses in order to pray for their salvation.

Van Vleet is unhappy because, while he has a technical legal right to ask for the information, the judge opted to give a heads-up to all of the strippers involved, which allowed strip club managers to sue the county, thus delaying the release of the addresses – and thus violating Van Vleet’s 1A right to pray for the strippers:


The rest of the story is worth reading, but I’m going to end it here on the ponderous concept of needing the street address of the person yr praying for. 

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m a Christian, and I don’t pretend to understand all the mysteries of faith, but I’m reasonably sure God doesn’t require a street address to answer prayers.

Who’s that knocking at yr door,

This is dF

Or, more specifically, my only post about the Hobby Lobby case currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.

Actually, there are two cases – one with Hobby Lobby, and another with Conestoga Wood Specialities, but I guess more people are familiar with Hobby Lobby, plus it rhymes and sounds a little silly in a courtroom setting.

Anyway, as you probably know, both cases focus on the same two legal questions:

1. If corporations are people, are they also religious people?

2. If they are, does that mean they’re exempt from Obamacare, which requires you to pay for contraceptives for all the sluts who work for yr company female employees?

As usual, there is a lot of debate about this on Facebook and Twitter. And by “debate” I mean “posting hysterical hyperpartisan memes that oversimplify a vey complex issue in the name of political convenience”.

If you prefer something with a little more depth and nuance, I recommend this piece from The Economist, this lengthy breakdown from WaPo, and this translation of the legal issues at hand from SCOTUSblog.

As a blogger, I'm required to post my own non-expert opinion on this. So let's break it down into two (2) questions:

1. Who will win?

No idea, though based on what little I’ve heard, Hobby Lobby has its work cut out for it. It will probably depend on to what extent SCOTUS decides that the law cited in the case (the Religious Freedom Restoration Act) applies to businesses. Also, even if it does, the RFRA doesn’t allow you to do anything you want in the name of religious freedom, so they may also take into account the potential can of worms a ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby will open, but that’s not necessarily guaranteed.

There’s also some indications that Chief Justice John Roberts knows all this and is looking to hammer out as narrow a ruling as possible to ensure it isn’t applied too broadly.

Meanwhile, if you have the time (which you probably don’t), you can always read this TL;DR assessment from a Stanford law professor who estimates that – if you go strictly by the legal arguments being deployed here – Hobby Lobby has a stronger case than you might think.

2. Who should win?

As you might imagine, I’m not with Hobby Lobby on this one, mainly because of the aforementioned can of worms (which is covered pretty well in the above links), even though others have pointed out that under both RFRA and various state laws already in place, the worst case scenario predicted under a Hobby Lobby victory (i.e. employers using religion as an excuse ton ignore every business regulation on the books) would have happened a long time ago.

It’s also worth mentioning – as others have pointed out to me from personal experience – that birth control pills aren’t always prescribed strictly as an anti-pregnancy tool. There are other medical applications, like treating hormonal imbalances. So it’s not as simple as the “we don’t want to pay for yr heathen slut lifestyle” argument championed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

I do understand why a CEO would want to run a business in a way that doesn’t violate his/her religious beliefs and associated mandates. (That includes, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, etc.) But aside from the fact that I think it’s impossible to stick 100% to yr ideological guns without impinging on someone else’s rights sooner or later, I admit that I have a problem with Hobby Lobby’s argument that there’s no difference between a business and the person who runs that business.

That might be technically true for start-ups and family-owned private companies like Hobby Lobby. But it’s not true for other businesses, whose boardrooms and CEOs change all the time. And either way, for all intents and purposes, Hobby Lobby does not, as an entity, believe in God – the Green family does. I don’t see how they’re the same thing.

That said, given the increasingly blurred line between religious and political speech in modern America, thanks to the conservative Christian juggernaut – and given that corporations have a right to political speech (by which we mean $$$) – it’s possible they’re confusing one for the other. It’s also possible that it’s not entirely unintentional.

Anyway, I see a lot more downsides than upsides to Hobby Lobby winning their case unconditionally, so I’m hoping that, if SCOTUS decides Hobby Lobby has a point, whatever ruling they hand down will be as narrowly tailored and cautious as possible.

The other thing I’d add is that most of the conservatives championing Hobby Lobby’s case have – as usual – gone into this under the assumption that the freedom of corporations to exercise their religious rights will apply only to Christian-owned businesses. (See Oklahoma City for an idea of the potential surprises that await them if they win.)

Get off yr hobby horse,

This is dF

Or, “Absolutely Positively My Only Post About Dan Cathy and Chick-Fil-A”.

So. Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy does not like the gay peoples, and feels strongly enough about it that he’ll go on record in public and talk about how much he does not like the gay peoples. 

My take on this is no different from similar incidents where CEOs decide to publicly take sides on emotional wedge issues like gay marriage and gay rights in general. Which is this:

( Gibbity gibbity gibbity ... )

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’ve eaten at Chick-Fil-A only once in my life. Possibly twice. I may have eaten at the one near Carbondale in the early 90s, but that was 20 years ago, so I don’t remember for sure. I definitely visited the one in Maryville-Alcoa, TN around four or five years ago, before their president’s political opinions became a Facebook meme. 

In any case, I wasn’t all that impressed with their chicken sandwich. So it’s a bit disingenuous for me to boycott a business I had no plans to revisit on future trips to the US, is what I'm saying.

Taking my business elsewhere,

This is dF

I’m from Tennessee. I don’t talk about it much. Except when I have to.

Which seems to be more and more often, now that the state govt is busy transforming Tennessee into a gun-owner’s paradise where the Bible counts as science, no one has sex until they’re married, and when they do, it’s hetrosexual sex only, even if yr just talking about it.

Their latest proposal:



I should point out that I got that headline from Addicting Info, which means it’s both overwrought and misleading.

But not entirely false.

The bill in question, SB 3310 (which passed 28-1 in the state senate) and HB 3621 (now on the floor), is an update of Tennessee’s current abstinence-mostly sex ed law. The new law does NOT say you can’t mention hand-holding or kissing. Not specifically, anyway. What it says is that teachers cannot “promote any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with non-coital sexual activity”.

“And what exactly counts as a gateway sexual activity?” you may ask.

Well.

It doesn’t say. But it does say that if a teacher mentions any “gateway sexual activity”, parents can sue them. So if yr a teacher in Tennessee, it’s probably better to err on the side of caution and not say anything except “here’s where babies come from, now don’t do any of this or anything that could conceivably lead to this til yr wedding night.”

So theoretically, yes, if yr conservative enough (and if yr a Tennessee legislator, judge, police officer, or parent, there’s a good chance you are), that could include kissing or holding hands.

Or dancing, even.

Stephen Colbert is here to give you an idea just how far this logic can go.



Needless to say, I think the idea of “gateway sexual activity” is silly. But then I think abstinence-only sex ed is a bad joke, and I don’t particularly buy the “gateway drug” argument that beer leads to heroin, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?

ADDENDUM: Oh, that part in the headline about banning teaching about contraceptives? That’s not accurate either. The law says that you can talk about them, provided you do so in a “medically accurate” way that’s consistent with the abstinence-mostly message.

Whatever that means.

And if you don’t, parents can sue you for that, too.

See what they did there?

And that’s why I don’t talk much about being from Tennessee. Though there are worse states to be from, I guess.

Don’t look at me,

This is dF

A long time ago I started a series of posts (continued by bedsitter23  for a period of time) that compared cover songs to the original versions with the thesis that it’s rare for newer versions to become the definitive version of that particular song.

One recurring theme of doing cover songs is that artists can approach them one of two ways: (1) stay true to the original as much as possible, or (2) deconstruct and reinvent the song in their own artistic vision.

Which brings us to Pat Boone.

Boone, as you probably know, established his singing career by making Fats Domino and Little Richard songs safe for white people to listen to without consigning their souls to that special Hell where the kids have premarital sex right in front of you, reefers are mandatory, and there are no separate washrooms for black people. Or something.

Anyway, Boone was so squeaky clean he made Justin Bieber look like Mötley Crüe, and while he launched a successful career as a result, when people think of “Ain’t That A Shame” today, none of them think of Boone’s version (apart from people who still watch the 700 Club, I mean). Put simply, Boone didn’t pwn any of those songs as his own.

In 1997, Boone surprised everyone – not least his own fans – by attempting to do for heavy metal what he did for 50s R&B. He did a whole album’s worth of hard-rock/metal classics – all arranged in a swinging Big Band style.

It was called In A Metal Mood: No More Mr Nice Guy. It sounded like this.



Obviously there was nothing “metal” about it (apart from the brass section, maybe – brass being technically a metal and all). At the time, people like me laughed and laughed and laughed. Although we cringed while we laughed. Some of us wept, even. Or shook our fists in anger. And not in a metal way.

Listening to it now, though, I can’t really decide whether it’s a work of clueless abomination or artistic genius. I mean, think of the work it must have taken by Boone (or whoever his music arranger was) to take these songs, disassemble them and rework them into something Billy May would be proud of, with Boone crooning Dio lyrics as though he’s singing about dancing in the moonlight or how swell Jesus is.

It’s not the stretch it might seem to be. Bobby Darin proved it was possible to set lyrics about gratuitous and graphic gangster violence to Big Band music (see: Darin’s “Mack The Knife”, also a cover song). And of course it’s always possible to make a metal song work in an entirely different musical genre (see: Johnny Cash’s cover of Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage”).

So in a twisted way, I can kind of appreciate what Boone did there.

At the same time, how many people prefer Boone’s version of any of these metal songs to the originals? About as many as the ones who prefer Boone’s version of Little Richard songs. Possibly less, since at the time many of Pat’s fellow born-again Christians were aghast that Boone would record Satan music (even if he did remove all the Diabolus chords and squiddly-doo solos and falsetto vocals and stuff).

Indeed, I fully admit I only like this in the same way that I like Dr Demento compilations and William Shatner records (and frankly, Shatner is better at this kind of thing).

Also, believe it or not, Ronnie James Dio is one of the backup singers on this version. So I guess it must be okay. Somehow.

No posers,

This is dF

So. Rush Limbaugh said something stupid and offensive again.

Which should surprise no one – he’s paid tens of millions of dollars to do just that. Which is why I don’t make a habit of posting every time Limbaugh does say something stupid and offensive, because if I did, this blog would consist of nothing but incidents of Rush Limbaugh said something stupid and offensive, and then I’d have no time to post Bettie Page pictures and amateur book reviews and crap.

Still, the whole Sandra Fluke/contraception coverage thing deserves special mention for a few reasons:

( ‘Scuse me while I get this off my chest ... )

Okay, I’m done now.

Thrills, pills and bellyaches,

This is dF

ITEM: The Westboro Baptist Church fails to make it in person to protest at Whitney Houston’s funeral, but makes up for it by Photoshopping themselves into a picture of the funeral.

Like so.



The photo was tweeted by Margie J. Phelps, daughter of Westboro founder Fred Phelps, although media reports say if the WBC was there, no one actually saw them.

All part of the Liberal Media Conspiracy, I’m sure.

The Photoshop tactic is silly, of course, and a little sad.

On the other hand, I’m sure plenty of people would rather the WBC protest funerals via Photoshop rather than actually show up. So I shouldn’t put it down.

I think the WBC should seriously look into this. I mean, think of the money they’d save on transportation costs.

Being there,

This is dF

Yr Obama-Hates-American-Jesus lede of the day:



As a professional journalist, headlines like that drive me bonkers – not just because NPR should know better than to use a question for a headline, but because they should know better than to use a silly question to which any sensible person knows the answer.

Which is: no.

Still, the article raises some interesting points about the perceptions behind the War On Religion meme – such as the tendency of Christian conservative politicians and pundits to drastically overstate the problem.

( And O Hell there he goes again ... )

You can’t always get what you want,

This is dF