News Noted

Apparently the Pentagon believes Al Qaeda to be composed of gay pacifists who reside in the United States. Its so-called "anti-terrorist" efforts have recently been found to include spying on domestic political activities including anti-war student groups and gay activists. Be a good citizen! Be sure and report any suspiciously well-dressed pacifists to your local Thought Police!


In a completely unrelated story, Chris Hedges of the NYT analyzes The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism. The article is well worth reading as he describes in great detail how the fanatical/fundamentalist "Dominionist" movement, inspired by the absolutist doctrines of Rousas Rushdoony, gained influence over the Republican Party over the past 25 years, and plans to impose Old-Testament theocracy through government fiat. Plenty of very revealing quotes, including this cute little zinger from Gary North, Mr. Rushdoony's son-in-law and founder of the so-called "Institute for Christian Economics":

"So let's be blunt about it: We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God." (Christianity and Civilization, Spring, 1982)

It sounds very much like the old chestnut about democratic elections in countries dominated by Islamic fundamentalism: One man, one vote, one time.
Hedges' conclusion:

All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have "values," would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution. Our opinions do not count.

This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote "positive" Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah's voice.

The spark that could set it ablaze may be lying in the hands of an Islamic terrorist cell, in the hands of the ideological twins of the Christian Right. Another catastrophic terrorist attack could be our Reichstag fire, the excuse used to begin the accelerated dismantling of our open society. The ideology of the Christian Right is not one of love and compassion, the central theme of Christ's message, but of violence and hatred. It has a strong appeal to many in our society, but it is also aided by our complacency. Let us not stand at the open city gates waiting passively and meekly for the barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching rudely towards Bethlehem . Let us, if nothing else, begin to call them by their name.

Further information at www.TheocracyWatch.org


And speaking of anti-gay ballot initiatives.... did anyone but me notices that the ones in Michigan were worded almost exactly the same as the ones in Texas and other states? Coincidence? Not if the bills were ghostwritten by a lobbyist group like the one described by Mother Jones magazine in this article.


On a more pleasant note, AstroBiology magazine includes this interview with Brother Guy Consolmagno, astronomer to the Vatican (NOT "astrologer", as one well-meaning Stilyagi described him last year!) He's a frequent guest at southeastern Michigan science fiction conventions, so I may get a chance to hear him talk in person one of these days. He sounds like an interesting fellow, and far less scary than the Dominionist schemers quoted above, or at least, not as overtly so:

The trouble is that some people think they can use science to prove God. And that puts science ahead of God; that makes science more powerful than God. That's bad theology. In fact, some philosophers have said that's what led to atheism in the eighteenth century -- the fallacy of the God of the gaps. You say, "I have no idea how this could have happened. It must have been God's design." And then fifty years later, somebody explains how it did happen, and you say, "I don't need God anymore." If your faith is based on science, that's a very shaky kind of faith....

If you're going to be a scientist, there are three things you have to believe. Number one, the universe really exists -- I'm not just a butterfly dreaming I'm a scientist. Two, you have to believe that the universe makes sense. It's not chaotic; there really are underlying laws and we're able to find them. And the third and hardest thing, the most religious of the beliefs, is you have to believe it's worth doing.