AlterNet.org: Belief

10 Most Absurd Sex Tips from the Christian Right

Amanda Marcotte, AlterNet — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:42:00 -0700

Modern conservatives can't stop talking about sex. And what they say opens a window into the strange, sexist worldview of patriarchal religion.

Modern conservative Christianity is obsessed with marriage, relationships, and sexuality to the point where these concerns crowd pretty much everything else out. Much of their obsession is directed towards trying to get the government to force you to live by their rules, but they also spend a great deal of time offering advice on these issues to each other. Unfortunately, most of their advice is utter garbage that puts prudery, unfair expectations, and strict gender policing over actual advice that can make your life better. Here are ten examples of evangelical advice that show how far adrift the Christian right advice industry is from the real world:

1) Be a better housekeeper to prevent cheating. Recently, Pat Robertson addressed a question that haunts many a woman who has a husband with a wandering eye: How to get past his cheating? Robertson all but told women not to worry their pretty little heads about their husband’s infidelities, suggesting that male infidelity in nigh-inevitable. He did, however, make some suggestions on how to minimize the straying: “What you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn’t want to wander.” On top of implying that clean floors and the smell of baking bread can prevent men from looking for strange women, Robertson asked women to sympathize with how hard it is for men, saying that they are “captured” by their sexual desires and it’s up to women to “get him free”. In general, Robertson takes the line that all problems in marriage are the fault of wives and never husbands. While most Christian advice-givers rarely go that far, most do adhere generally to the belief that keeping a marriage together is mostly a wife’s job.

2) Women need to submit to their husbands. Throughout fundamentalist Christianity, one piece of advice rings out above all others, which is that marriage only works if wives submit to their husbands. When speaking to outsiders, they often play it off like “submission” is just a bit of Biblical-language goofiness isn’t to be meant in the secular sense, but in practice “submit to your husbands” means exactly what it sounds like. Richard Strauss from Bible.org made it clear that women are to obey their husbands at all times, even when he’s being cruel. “Obedience is not to be practiced only when you feel like it, or when you wholeheartedly agree with your husband, or when he is treating you with Christ-like love, but in everything!” Michelle Duggar, right wing Christian icon and reality TV star, summarized some of the points of practicing wifely submission. She specifically singled out financial independence as something women should never have, saying, “Love is killed by self-sufficiency.” Sheryl Sandberg’s loving husband would be surprised to hear that!

3) How to make sex interesting in a Christian marriage. Conservative Christians are expected to abstain from sex until marriage, but for evangelicals, at least, as soon as you get married, you’re supposed to immediately drop years of prudish sexual avoidance and throw yourself completely into your intimate relationship. (Indeed, many proponents of wifely submission come down hard on women who are reluctant to have sex as often as their husbands want to.) In an attempt to overcome the obvious problems with these expectations, some Christians have created sex advice websites like Christian Nymphos, to get their readers in touch with those sexual desires they spent years repressing. Sadly, despite their best intentions, their advice is often the opposite of erotic. “Wake up each day, look in the mirror and ask Jesus to tell you what is beautiful about you,” they advise. Despite the winking permission to let yourself have some fun now that you’re married, Christian Nymphos can’t quite let go of the constant sex policing, either, particularly coming down hard on sexual fantasy, because it’s rarely “about a married couple enjoying each other exclusively, in a loving manner”.

4) If you’re gay, marry someone of the opposite sex and try not to think about it too much. While most people are familiar with the “ex-gay” movement that encourages people to try to turn straight, the new strategy is a bit more subtle: Encourage gay Christians to just live like they’re straight and ignore their real desires. Josh Weed, a gay Mormon married to a woman, is one of the most straightforward examples. He claims his marriage is better than ones where there’s sexual attraction, claiming that their sex life is “about more than just visual attraction and lust”, insinuating that a marriage without lust in it might even be better. Even the head of the infamous ex-gay organization Exodus International has embraced the “gay but not acting on it” line, having his wife write on their website that she doesn’t even want a heterosexual husband, because his lack of attraction to other women means “I am the only person he chooses to direct his attraction toward.” Marry a gay man and rest assured he won’t sleep with other women! It’s more foolproof than Pat Robertson’s advice to keep him at home with good housekeeping.

5) Men, do not masturbate. Women, either, I suppose, but most anti-masturbation materials on the Christian right focus on men and casually assume women don’t have the same urge towards hearty self-loving. To prevent themselves from masturbating, young men are encouraged to start “accountability groups” where they try to de-lust themselves, mostly by telling each other to think of Jesus when they’d rather think of boobs. (Unlike the Christian Nymphos, these groups understand that thinking of Jesus is not sexy.) But while there’s some small attempt to make men responsible for their own behavior, most of the attention on preventing male lust is given to young women, who are mostly told to wear more clothes.

6) If husbands want more sex, women should do everything they can to give it to them. Focus on the Family’s marriage counselor Juli Slattery is blunt about: Married men need sex, and so wives who aren’t providing enough need to step up. While she claims she isn’t trying to guilt trip women into having more sex, she argues that sex is a physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational need men have. (Though apparently not when they’re single and can’t even fill this need on their own time.) “You cannot love him as a husband but reject him sexually,” she says, suggesting that regardless of the hold-up, women whose husbands want sex more need to find a way to provide it.

7) However, if wives want more sex, they should learn to go without. Slattery has very different advice for wives whose problem is that they want to get laid more, but have unwilling husbands. While you should move heaven and earth to drum up more desire for a husband who wants more sex, if you’re the undersexed one, you’re instructed to tell yourself “friendship, seasoned love, and shared history are often enough to maintain a marriage in which sex is no longer possible”. Men who want more sex are entitled to wives who try to provide it, women who aren’t getting any are told to be happy with “forms of physical affection that don't involve the pressure of sexual intercourse, such as back rubs, holding hands, playful touching, and hugging”.

8) Men should not believe their partners who say they want abortions. While the Christian right doesn’t like to talk about it, plenty of Christian women want abortions, at about the same rate as other women. Anti-abortion activists then turn to men in an effort to prevent these abortions. Daybreak Crisis Pregnancy Center encourages men to disbelieve women who tell them they want abortions, instead saying the women were secretly “waiting for their boyfriends/husbands to stop them”, even if that means “rush through the door to rescue me and take me away somewhere safe”. Luckily for women who, generally, aren’t playing mind games by choosing abortion, most clinics have enough security to stop men who have crazed Christian right-induced white knight fantasies.

9) Handy tips to keep from screwing. The Christian right loves to chastise and scold the unmarried for having sex, but beyond a purity ring and encouragement to just say no, there’s surprisingly little advice to those who want to be abstinent on how to do it. What little advice there is out there is vague and useless. These ten tips on purity by Ron Hutchcraft at Christianity Today are typical. “You do not own the person you're dating,” he says, as if a feeling of ownership is necessary to feel desire. “That person belongs to God.” Knowing that kind of abstraction may not be that helpful, he also suggests not spending time alone with your dates, and “avoid French kissing and petting—anything that is sure to ignite the fires of passion”. Wait until you’re married, at what point you are expected to go from 0 to 60 in one night.

10) Be extremely paranoid about your teenager’s sexuality. Needless to say, parenting advice from conservative Christians is obsessed with the haunting fear that your kids are interested in sex, and no amount of guilt-tripping and shaming them for it will keep them away from it forever. Today’s Christian Woman recommends a Big Brother approach when teens bring dates home: “[T]here should never be a moment when they are alone without an adult in the house.” Turn your back for one second, and that’s the second penis slips into vagina! What Christians Want To Know recommends adding some thought policing duties to the pile. “What are you allowing your teen to watch on the TV or at the movie theatre?”, they ask. “Anything that has a rating now-a-days above “G” has sexual content.” History has long demonstrated that rebellion cannot be prevented by telling your teenager they can’t watch anything that’s not a cartoon produced by Disney. The frequency with which this useless tactic is recommended by Christians, however, suggests that playing censorship cops with your teen is its own reward.

The wide, weird world of Christian advice, when taken together, paints a grim view of what they expect out of love and sex. Mainly, it’s a world where men have very little responsibility in relationships, and women are given the job of doing most of the sacrificing and emotional work. The wedding ring is given almost magical qualities that are expected to turn nearly-asexual beings into hump monsters that nonetheless have no non-monogamous urges at all. One gets the impression that setting their followers up to fail---and therefore to turn to the church’s power for forgiveness and absolution---is the point behind all these impossible rules.

Atheists Rejoice! Pope Francis Says You're O.K.

Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:26:00 -0700

It's not about being right, it's about being loving, the unusually tolerant Pontiff tells his flock.

It likely doesn’t matter much to the atheists of the world that — of all people — Pope Francis is on their side. But he is. And that’s a cool thing for all of us.

In a message delivered Wednesday via Vatican Radio, the new pontiff distinguished himself with a call for tolerance and a message of support – and even admiration – toward nonbelievers.

Naturally, a guy whose job it is to lead the world’s largest Christian faith is still going to come at his flock with a Jesus-centric message. But he’s taking it in an encouraging new direction. In his message, Francis dissed the apostles for being “a little intolerant” and said, “All of us have this commandment at heart: Do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not (a) Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must.”

And the pope spoke of the need to meet each other somewhere on our on common ground. “This commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need that so much. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.” It was a deeper affirmation of his comments back in March, when he declared that the faithful and atheists can be “precious allies… to defend the dignity of man, in the building of a peaceful coexistence between peoples and in the careful protection of creation.”

That’s a message that’s vastly different from Catholicism’s traditional “We’re number one!” dogma. Six years ago, the Vatican reasserted the church’s stance that while there may be“elements of sanctification and truth” in other faiths, “that fullness of grace and of truth… has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.” In other words, close but no cigar, everybody else.

The pope was not, of course, addressing the non-believers of the world in his Wednesday sermon, or trying to win them over. Instead, he was telling his Catholics about the importance of cutting outsiders slack. And it’s a hugely important message for Christians to hear. It’s not about being right. It’s about being loving. And it’s a necessary concept, one that needs to be expressed again and again, in a world in which the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia is justifying his repulsive hate speech against gays and lesbians because “I’m a Christian, not because I hate anybody, but because I have religious values that matter to me.” Coming within a week when atheists have been stepping into the spotlighthere in America with their own messages of live-and-let-live tolerance, it’s downright refreshing to get a similar message from the biggest Christian in the world.

There are plenty of atheists out there who will no doubt take the pope’s message with a grain of salt or even flat-out disdain. The last thing somebody who doesn’t believe in heaven could possibly need is some guy in a funny hat telling them that they’re okay in God’s eyes anyway. But maybe, whatever we believe or don’t believe, we can consider that the man is on to something when he speaks about “the culture of encounter.”

Francis notes that the apostles were “closed off by the idea of possessing the truth,” an arrogant certainty that no one group currently has a monopoly on. Where we find each other is in practicing tolerance for our differences, and in finding the commonality of our values. “Doing good,” Francis says, “is not a matter of faith.”

It’s not that faith, for the faithful, doesn’t matter. It’s that belonging to a church isn’t what saves us. It’s belonging to each other.

Biblical Medicine? How Religious Corporations Are Gobbling Up Healthcare Facilities

Valerie Tarico, AlterNet — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:15:00 -0700

Catholic hospitals and healthcare corporations are becoming “health care ministries.”

When it comes to matters of individual conscience, Washington State voters have a don’t-mess-with-us attitude that makes Texans look like cattle—and it goes way back.

In 2012 Washington voters flexed their muscle by legalizing recreational marijuana use and marriage for same-sex couples. In 2008, death with dignity passed some counties by as much as 75 percent. In 2006, Washington lawmakers outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In 1991 a citizen initiative established that “every individual has the fundamental right to choose or refuse birth control” and “every woman has the fundamental right to choose or refuse abortion.” It also guaranteed an absolute right to privacy around mental health and reproductive issues for teens aged 13 and up. Washington state’s constitution includes an Equal Rights Amendment and (from the get-go) a stronger wall of separation between church and state than the U.S. Constitution.

In other words, west of Moscow, Idaho, and north of Portland, any bishops who want to control what they think of as their sacramental turf --birth, coming of age, sex, marriage, trippy transcendent experiences, and death—haven’t got a chance in hell at the ballot box. Washington even has extended statutes of limitations on child sex abuse—something Archbishop Timothy Dolan successfully fended off in New York and Pennsylvania. The Archdiocese of Spokane declared bankruptcy.

But the Vatican hasn’t survived for 1,500 years by being stupid. And as my devout family members like to say, “Where God closes a door, he opens a window.” The window the bishops found open in Washington takes the form of independent hospitals with financial problems.

Thanks to changes in healthcare delivery, more and more independent hospitals are being forced to merge with large healthcare corporations. The pressures include expensive equipment, complex electronic record keeping technologies, and an Obamacare-driven push for greater administrative efficiency. Rather like mom-and-pop hardware stores that survived by becoming Ace franchisees with standardized, streamlined supply and distribution systems, independent health facilities are surviving through acquisitions and mergers with other hospitals and healthcare corporations.

Of the largest healthcare corporations in the country, five of six are administered by the Catholic Church including the famously conservative Catholic Health Initiatives which operates the Franciscan brand and has $15 billion in assets. By the end of 2013, if all proposed mergers go through, 45 percent of Washington hospital beds will be religiously affiliated. In 10 counties, 100 percent of hospital facilities will be accountable to religious corporations, which are rapidly buying up outpatient clinics, laboratories and physician practices as well.

In the words of the U.S. Conference of Bishops, Catholic hospitals and healthcare corporations are “healthcare ministries” and “opportunities:”

New partnerships can be viewed as opportunities for Catholic healthcare institutions and services to witness to their religious and ethical commitments and so influence the healing profession. . . .For example, new partnerships can help to implement the Church’s social teaching.

Here is the diabolical stroke of genius. In any merger between a secular and Catholic care system, fiscal health comes with a poison pill. One condition of the merger is that the whole system becomes subject to a set of theological agreements call the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” or ERDs. Rather than care being dictated by medical science and patient preference, a set of religious doctrines place restrictions on what treatment options can be offered to (or even discussed with) patients.

Under these agreements, the patient-doctor relationship becomes a patient-doctor-church relationship: “The Church’s moral teaching on healthcare nurtures a truly interpersonal professional-patient relationship. This professional-patient relationship is never separated, then, from the Catholic identity of the healthcare institution.” Furthermore providers who work in these systems are required to sign binding contractual agreements to adhere to the religious directives, whether or not they are Catholic: “Catholic healthcare services must adopt these Directives as policy, require adherence to them within the institution as a condition for medical privileges and employment, and provide appropriate instruction regarding the Directives . . . .”

The ERDs in full are readily available to public, but here are some key samples and implications:

Fertility Treatment: “Reproductive technologies that substitute for the marriage act are not consistent with human dignity.” This provision excludes in vitro fertilization and related treatments. It especially affects same-sex couples, who may rely on surrogacy or insemination for childbearing, but it also affects the 10 percent of American couples who have fertility problems.

Contraception: “Catholic health institutions may not promote or condone contraceptive practices.” . . . “Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution.” While we don’t typically associate contraception with hospitals, state-of-the-art long acting methods like IUD’s increasingly are provided at the time of delivery, because postpartum insertion improves health outcomes. Under ERD guidelines, a woman who delivers a baby at a Catholic hospital and wants an IUD or to have her tubes tied has to have a second, separate procedure at a secular facility—if she can find one.

Abnormal Pregnancies: “In case of extrauterine pregnancy, no intervention is morally licit which constitutes a direct abortion.” Catholic practice encourages the removal of the entire fallopian tube to end an ectopic pregnancy, rather than the standard practice which simply ablates the developing fetus. That is because the standard treatment is considered abortion, while in the invasive and fertility-destroying surgery, death of the embryo is simply a side effect. More broadly, Catholic “ethics” forbid abortion even to save the life of a mother carrying a nonviable fetus. The battle to save a young woman named Beatriz in El Salvador exemplifies this very situation.

Advance Directives: “A Catholic health care institution . . . will not honor an advance directive that is contrary to Catholic teaching.” Where patient directives and bishop directives conflict, the directives of the bishops take precedence regardless of a patient’s own religious or conscience obligations.

DNR: “The free and informed judgment made by a competent adult patient concerning the use or withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures should always be respected and normally complied with, unless it is contrary to Catholic moral teaching.” Since this battle heated up, stories are emerging in which Catholic hospitals have force-fed incapacitated patients whose advance directives specifically forbid this.

Death with Dignity: “Catholic healthcare institutions may never condone or participate in [Death With Dignity] in any way.” Physicians are prohibited even from discussing options that exist in other institutions or making referrals.

To many non-Catholics, the most shocking statement in the ERDs is the suggested alternative to death with dignity: “Patients experiencing suffering that cannot be alleviated should be helped to appreciate the Christian understanding of redemptive suffering."Redemptive suffering is a theological notion that derives from the crucifixion story—the idea that the blood sacrifice of a perfect being could redeem harm done. (Theories about how this works have varied over the course of Christian history.) By extension, suffering itself has redemptive value, which is why Mother Teresa’s order, for example, practiced self-flagellation and glorified suffering of the poor, ill and dying.

Given the clash between Washington State’s independence streak and the top-down approach of the Catholic bishops, Washington citizens are pushing back. After Catholic Peace Health got an exclusive contract near her home in the San Juan Islands, advocate Monica Harrington created a website, Catholicwatch.org to complement the efforts of the national Merger Watch. Merger Watch has been fighting the religious takeover of secular systems across the country for over a decade, and sometimes winning, but describes a recent surge that overwhelms their resources. The ACLU of Washington is ramping up and aggregating funds to fight for a state-wide solution, the first in the country, and is soliciting stories (confidentiality protected) from patients and providers anywhere in the U.S. who have experienced religious interference in medical decisions.

Even so, on May 20, the Seattle Times announced an affiliation agreement between the University of Washington system and Peace Health. Even within Catholic-controlled hospitals, less than five percent of revenues come from the Catholic Church. Most are tax payer funds in the form of Medicaid, Medicare and capital grants for public services—and insurance reimbursement. So, the thought of the bishops influencing a public owned and funded institution adds insult to injury. In response, Columnist Danny Westneat, of the Times, framed a pointed question. “Most of us aren’t Catholic, so I’m guessing we’d never go along with letting the creeds of that one faith run something as universal as education [even if ‘the Catholics have a good record of running quality schools’]. So why are we allowing it with healthcare?”

Why indeed.

Atheists Rising: Wolf Blitzer Learns a Lesson and Arizona Lawmaker Says "Don't Bow Your Heads"

Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:05:00 -0700

Watch: Asked if she "thanks the lord," Oklahoma survivor tells Wolf, "actually, I'm an atheist."

You’d think by now CNN would have learned to stop treating their assumptions and as truths. But when Wolf Blitzer made a casual comment Tuesday, it turned out to be a teachable moment both for the newsman and television viewers.

Speaking live to a survivor of the deadly tornado in Moore, Okla., Blitzer declared the woman “blessed,” her husband “blessed,” and her son “blessed.” He then asked, “You’ve gotta thank the Lord, right? Do you thank the Lord for that split-second decision?”

But as she held her 18-month-old son, Rebecca Vitsmun politely replied, “I’m actually an atheist.” A flummoxed Blitzer quickly lobbed back, “You are. All right. But you made the right call,” and Vitsmun graciously offered him a lifeline. “We are here,” she said, “and I don’t blame anyone for thanking the Lord.” Nicely done, Rebecca Vitsmun.

One in five American adults – and a third of Americans under age 30 — now declare no religious affiliation. We are less religious now than at any other point in our history, and our secularism is rising at a rapid pace. Get used to it, Lord thankers.

As Vitsmun pointed out, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with a statement of gratitude or even an acknowledgment of spirituality. I recently had someone tell me that she felt very “blessed” – right before adding that she was agnostic. Where Blitzer was insensitive — and just plain unthinking — was in his no-doubt well-intentioned demand that his interviewee cough up a Praise the Lord moment for edification of CNN viewers.

And Blitzer was not the only person this week who got his expectations rocked. When Tempe, Ariz., State Rep. Juan Mendez was asked Tuesday to deliver the opening prayer for the afternoon’s session of the House of Representatives, he delivered something different.

“Most prayers in this room begin with a request to bow your heads,” the Democratic official said. “I would like to ask that you not bow your heads. I would like to ask that you take a moment to look around the room at all of the men and women here, in this moment, sharing together this extraordinary experience of being alive and of dedicating ourselves to working toward improving the lives of the people in our state.”

He went on to say, “This is a room in which there are many challenging debates, many moments of tension, of ideological division, of frustration. But this is also a room where, as my secular humanist tradition stresses, by the very fact of being human, we have much more in common than we have differences.”

It was a call to love and empathy that stands right up there next to any prayer in the book, and one that offered bonus inclusion and humanity. Afterward, he said, “I hope today marks the beginning of a new era in which Arizona’s non-believers can feel as welcome and valued here as believers.” And if the conservative state of Arizona can make it happen, there’s hope yet for the other 49, people.

In a nation in which the divide between believers and non-believers can be great and truly ugly – one of “militant atheism” on one side and unbearably ignorant religious conservatismon the other, with just a few words, Rebecca Vitsmun and Juan Mendez showed that the ideals of being respectful and compassionate belong to all of us. Whatever our personal views, we can give others space to have theirs and to express them with dignity. We can challenge assumptions, but we can conduct ourselves with kindness. Because what matters most in life isn’t what we believe in our hearts, it’s how we practice those beliefs with each other.

Holy Moly -- Supreme Court to Rule on Prayer at Government Meetings

Katie McDonough, Salon — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:26:00 -0700

The justices agreed to determine if Christian prayer at a town council meeting violated the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear a case on whether or not prayer may be offered at government meetings. The justices agreed to determine if an upstate New York town council violated the Constitution’s Establishment Clause by beginning meetings with prayers invoking “Jesus,” “Jesus Christ,” “Your Son” and “the Holy Spirit.”

As reported by USA Today:

The religious expression case, which comes to the court from the town of Greece, N.Y., focuses on the first 10 words of the First Amendment, ratified in 1791: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
That Establishment Clause was violated, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year, when the Greece Town Board repeatedly used Christian clergy to conduct prayers at the start of its public meetings. The decision created a rift with other appeals courts that have upheld prayer at public meetings, prompting the justices to step in.
Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian non-profit group, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.
In a press release entitled “Prayer will be heard on high,” the group noted the high court affirmed the practice of prayer before public meetings in the 1983 case Marsh v. Chambers, in which it cited an “unambiguous and unbroken history” of such prayers.

David Cortman, a lawyer for the town, said in a statement that prayer at council meetings is consistent with a longstanding tradition of prayer at government functions: “Americans today should be as free as the founders were to pray,” he said. “The founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.”

Executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church Rev. Barry W. Lynn countered in a statement that the Supreme Court should ban prayer in all government settings: “A town council meeting isn’t a church service, and it shouldn’t seem like one,” he said. “Government can’t serve everyone in the community when it endorses one faith over others. That sends the clear message that some are second-class citizens based on what they believe about religion.”

How the US Turned Three Pacifists Into 'Multiple Felony Saboteurs'

Fran Quigley, AlterNet — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:09:00 -0700

Feds crack down on peaceful anti-nuke protesters who exposed major security lapse at weapons plant.

In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons production facility, their story should chill every person concerned about dissent in the US.

Here is how it happened.

In the early morning hours of Saturday June 28, 2012, long-time peace activists Sr. Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, cut through the chain link fence surrounding the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility and trespassed onto the property. Y-12, called the Fort Knox of the nuclear weapons industry, stores hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium and works on every single one of the thousands of nuclear weapons maintained by the U.S.

Describing themselves as the Transform Now Plowshares, the three came as non-violent protestors to symbolically disarm the weapons. They carried bibles, written statements, peace banners, spray paint, flower, candles, small baby bottles of blood, bread, hammers with biblical verses on them and wire cutters. Their intent was to follow the words of Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Sr. Megan Rice has been a Catholic sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus for over sixty years. Greg Boertje-Obed, a married carpenter who has a college age daughter, is an Army veteran and lives at a Catholic Worker house in Duluth Minnesota. Michael Walli, a two-term Vietnam veteran turned peacemaker, lives at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house in Washington DC.

In the dark, the three activists cut through a boundary fence which had signs stating “No Trespassing.” The signs indicate that unauthorized entry, a misdemeanor, is punishable by up to 1 year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

No security arrived to confront them.

So the three climbed up a hill through heavy brush, crossed a road, and kept going until they saw the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) surrounded by three fences, lit up by blazing lights.

Still no security.

So they cut through the three fences, hung up their peace banners, and spray-painted peace slogans on the HEUMF. Still no security arrived. They began praying and sang songs like “Down by the Riverside” and “Peace is Flowing Like a River.”

When security finally arrived at about 4:30 am, the three surrendered peacefully, were arrested, and jailed.

The next Monday July 30, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli were arraigned and charged with federal trespassing, a misdemeanor charge which carries a penalty of up to one year in jail. Frank Munger, an award-winning journalist with the Knoxville News Sentinel, was the first to publicly wonder, “If unarmed protesters dressed in dark clothing could reach the plant’s core during the cover of dark, it raised questions about the plant’s security against more menacing intruders.”

On Wednesday August 1, all nuclear operations at Y-12 were ordered to be put on hold in order for the plant to focus on security. The “security stand-down” was ordered by security contractor in charge of Y-12, B&W Y-12 (a joint venture of the Babcock and Wilcox Company and Bechtel National Inc.) and supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

On Thursday August 2, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli appeared in court for a pretrial bail hearing. The government asked that all three be detained. One prosecutor called them a potential “danger to the community” and asked that all three be kept in jail until their trial. The US Magistrate allowed them to be released.

Sr. Megan Rice walked out of the jail and promptly admitted to gathered media that the three had indeed gone onto the property and taken action in protest of nuclear weapons. “But we had to — we were doing it because we had to reveal the truth of the criminality which is there, that’s our obligation,” Rice said. She also challenged the entire nuclear weapons industry: “We have the power, and the love, and the strength and the courage to end it and transform the whole project, for which has been expended more than 7.2 trillion dollars,” she said “The truth will heal us and heal our planet, heal our diseases, which result from the disharmony of our planet caused by the worst weapons in the history of mankind, which should not exist. For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of these weapons.”

Then the government began increasing the charges against the anti-nuclear peace protestors.

The day after the Magistrate ordered the release of Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli, a Department of Energy (DOE) agent swore out a federal criminal complaint against the three for damage to federal property, a felony punishable by zero to five years in prison, under 18 US Code Section 1363.

The DOE agent admitted the three carried a letter which stated, “We come to the Y-12 facility because our very humanity rejects the designs of nuclearism, empire and war. Our faith in love and nonviolence encourages us to believe that our activity here is necessary; that we come to invite transformation, undo the past and present work of Y-12; disarm and end any further efforts to increase the Y-12 capacity for an economy and social structure based on war-making and empire-building.”

Now, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli were facing one misdemeanor and one felony and up to six years in prison.

But the government did not stop there. The next week, the charges were enlarged yet again.

On Tuesday August 7, the U.S. expanded the charges against the peace activists to three counts. The first was the original charge of damage to Y-12 in violation of 18 US Code 1363, punishable by up to five years in prison. The second was an additional damage to federal property in excess of $1000 in violation of 18 US Code 1361, punishable by up to ten years in prison. The third was a trespassing charge, a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison under 42 US Code 2278.

Now they faced up to sixteen years in prison. And the actions of the protestors started to receive national and international attention.

On August 10, 2012, the New York Times ran a picture of Sr. Megan Rice on page one under the headline “The Nun Who Broke into the Nuclear Sanctum.” Citing nuclear experts, the paper of record called their actions “the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.”

At the end of August 2012, the Inspector General of the Department of Energy issued at comprehensive report on the security breakdown at Y-12. Calling the peace activists trespassers, the report indicated that the three were able to get as far as they did because of “multiple system failures on several levels.” The cited failures included cameras broken for six months, ineptitude in responding to alarms, communication problems, and many other failures of the contractors and the federal monitors. The report concluded that “Ironically, the Y-12 breach may have been an important “wake-up” call regarding the need to correct security issues at the site.”

On October 4, 2012, the defendants announced that they had been advised that, unless they pled guilty to at least one felony and the misdemeanor trespass charge, the U.S. would also charge them with sabotage against the U.S. government, a much more serious charge. Over 3000 people signed a petition to U.S. Attorney General Holder asking him not to charge them with sabotage.

But on December 4, 2012, the U.S. filed a new indictment of the protestors. Count one was the promised new charge of sabotage. Defendants were charged with intending to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States and willful damage of national security premises in violation of 18 US Code 2155, punishable with up to 20 years in prison. Counts two and three were the previous felony property damage charges, with potential prison terms of up to fifteen more years in prison.

Gone entirely was the original misdemeanor charge of trespass. Now Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli faced up to thirty-five years in prison.

In a mere five months, government charges transformed them from misdemeanor trespassers to multiple felony saboteurs.

The government also successfully moved to strip the three from presenting any defenses or testimony about the harmful effects of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Attorney’s office filed a document they called “Motion to Preclude Defendants from Introducing Evidence in Support of Certain Justification Defenses.” In this motion, the U.S. asked the court to bar the peace protestors from being allowed to put on any evidence regarding the illegality of nuclear weapons, the immorality of nuclear weapons, international law, or religious, moral or political beliefs regarding nuclear weapons, the Nuremberg principles developed after WWII, First Amendment protections, necessity or US policy regarding nuclear weapons.

Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli argued against the motion. But, despite powerful testimony by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a declaration from an internationally renowned physician and others, the Court ruled against defendants.

Meanwhile, Congress was looking into the security breach, and media attention to the trial grew with a remarkable story in the Washington Post, with CNN coverage and AP and Reuters joining in.

The trial was held in Knoxville in early May 2012. The three peace activists were convicted on all counts. Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli all took the stand, admitted what they had done, and explained why they did it. The federal manager of Y-12 said the protestors had damaged the credibility of the site in the U.S. and globally and even claimed that their acts had an impact on nuclear deterrence.

As soon as the jury was dismissed, the government moved to jail the protestors because they had been convicted of “crimes of violence.” The government argued that cutting the fences and spray-painting slogans was property damage such as to constitute crimes of violence so the law obligated their incarceration pending sentencing.

The defense pointed out that Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli had remained free since their arrest without incident. The government attorneys argued that two of the protestors had violated their bail by going to a congressional hearing about the Y-12 security problems, an act that had been approved by their parole officers.

The three were immediately jailed. In its decision affirming their incarceration pending their sentencing, the court ruled that both the sabotage and the damage to property convictions were defined by Congress as federal crimes of terrorism. Since the charges carry potential sentences of ten years or more, the Court ruled there was a strong presumption in favor of incarceration which was not outweighed by any unique circumstances that warranted their release pending sentencing.

These non-violent peace activists now sit in jail as federal prisoners, awaiting their sentencing on September 23, 2013.

In ten months, an 82-year-old nun and two pacifists had been successfully transformed by the U.S. government from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism.

Pat Robertson's Latest Ridiculousness: Forgive Your Cheating Husband Because "Well, He's a Man"

Brian Tashman, Right Wing Watch — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:47:00 -0700

The 700 Club nut job also reminds women that they live in America "and good things are happening."

Pat Robertson has advice for women who are struggling to forgive their cheating husbands: “Well, he’s a man.”

On today’s 700 Club, Robertson told a woman whose husband was cheating on her that she should stop focusing on the adultery and instead ponder, “Does he provide a home for you to live in, does he provide food for you to eat, does he provide clothes for you to wear, is he nice to the children…is he handsome?”

After encouraging the woman to focus on the positives rather than her husband’s adultery, which Robertson imagined to be a one night stand with a stripper in a hotel room, he said she should “give him honor instead of trying to worry about it.”

He also suggested the woman could have done more to prevent her husband from cheating: “But recognize also, like it or not, males have a tendency to wander a little bit and what you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn’t want to wander.”

“What you have to do is say, ‘My husband was captured and I want to get him free,’” Robertson said, concluding that the woman should still be grateful that she lives in America: “Begin to thank God that you have a marriage that is together and that you live in America and good things are happening.”

Watch:

Finally! Researchers Clone Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Steven Hsieh, AlterNet — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:45:00 -0700

Medical breakthrough brings us one step closer to tissue replacement therapy.

Scientists in Oregon successfully used cloning to harvest human embryonic stem cells, a major scientific breakthrough that could help doctors develop tissue replacement treatment for various diseases ranging from Parkinson’s to diabetes.

Here’s the New York Times on how they did it:

The researchers, at Oregon Health and Science University, took skin cells from a baby with a genetic disease and fused them with donated human eggs to create human embryos that were genetically identical to the 8-month-old. They then extracted stem cells from those embryos.
The embryo-creation technique is essentially the same as that used to create Dolly the sheep and the many cloned animals that have followed. In those cases, the embryos were implanted in the wombs of surrogate mothers.

The researchers say they have no intention of using the method to clone human babies. Still, the breakthrough did not sit well with some religious and pro-life groups, who object to the creation of embryos on the basis that they will eventually have to be destroyed.

“It involves the decision to utilize early human beings as repositories for obtaining desired cells,” Rev. Tad Pacholczyk, director of education for National Catholic Bioethics Center, told the Associated Press. “You’re creating them only to destroy them.”

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston told the New York Times that under no circumstances, even for medical reasons, should scientists clone human embryos, saying it “treats human being as products, manufactured to order to suit other people’s wishes.”

The study, published in the journalCell, says the purpose of the method is to create stem cells that genetically match a potential patient. Right now, stem cells are harvested in embryos from fertilization in fertility clinics. The Times notes that genetically matched cells could mean a higher success rate for tissue, and even organ, regeneration.

Catholic Church Finally Decides That Austerity is Bad

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:51:00 -0700

Hallelujah - sort of. Catholic leaders make timid noises to protest horrific policies that crush millions.

It’s been slow in coming, but religious leaders are starting to speak out against the mechanisms and high social cost of austerity. One dramatic but ineffective effort was when the Archbishop of Cyprus offered to contribute all the church land in Cyprus to a rescue package. He also urged Cyprus to exit the eurozone:

Archbishop Chrysostomos II of Cyprus said his country should withdraw from the European Union as the EU will fall apart and cease to exist in the future.
“The economies of Spain, Portugal and Italy are currently in danger. And if the economy of Italy is destroyed just like our economy, the EU will not withstand,” Archbishop Chrysostomos said in an interview with Russia’s Channel One television channel.
“People who rule the European Union, and particularly those making decisions in the so-called troika, do not understand many things and it leads to the collapse of the EU. This is why I believe we [Cyprus] should withdraw from the union before the collapse takes place,” he added.

On May Day, the new pope called for less austerity and more jobs. From the New York Times via Daily Kos:

I think of how many, and not just young people, are unemployed, many times due to a purely economic conception of society, which seeks selfish profit, beyond the parameters of social justice,” the pope said. “I wish to extend an invitation to solidarity to everyone, and I would like to encourage those in public office to make every effort to give new impetus to employment.

A much starker depiction of what is at stake came today in the Telegraph, when Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote up an interview with the Archbishop of Toledo. The prelate discussed not only the severity of individual suffering, but more important, the cracks in the social order. This is a much bigger danger, and one that the Troika seems to treat far too casually. Greece has been broken on the rack and is in the process of becoming a failed state. Ireland escaped a similar fate by having a disproportionately large export sector (over 100% of GDP) which meant deflating early was tantamount to a currency devaluation. Even so, large-scale emigration has also helped reduce the level of official unemployment.

Spain is going down the Greece path, and having such a large country unravel socially and politically is likely to have bigger, if not readily foreseen, consequences. Unemployment around Toledo is 31%, 4 points over the national average, and youth unemployment is a mind-numbing 64%. Distress is widespread:

Europe’s Catholic bishops know first-hand from their Cor Unum charitable network just how desperate it has become. “We can try to mitigate the effects by giving basic help to people left totally unprotected, but we can’t create jobs,” said the Archbishop.
“We are seeing families who used to middle class needing help. This is totally new. As a matter of honour, they won’t come to us until they have exhausted everything.”…
Marisa Martinez, the volunteer director of Caritas in Toledo, said the Catholic charity is now helping 40,000 people in a province of 700,000, often with bags of food. Each family receives 12 kilos a month, mostly beans, oil, milk, and pasta. “We pass on whatever we get in donations. It is all done quietly to protect the dignity of the families. They take the food away and cook it at home,” she said.

Spanish bourgeois pride works to the government’s advantage, since people have to be willing to admit to their desperation in order to figure out how to work together to alleviate it. Even so, some commentators seem to think there’s a riptide beneath the resigned surface:

El Mundo fears a slow-fermenting ‘crisis of the regime’, with almost every institution — including the monarchy — in disrepute. It likens the mood to “pre-revolutionary” France in the late 1780s.
The Archbishop, speaking in the austere episcopal palace of Spain’s ancient capital, said the current crisis is doing far more damage than the recession in the mid-1990s when unemployment briefly spiked above 24pc. On that occasion peseta devaluations let Spain regain competitiveness and recover gradually despite austerity cuts.
This time the country seems trapped in slump. The long-term jobless rate is much higher. Unemployment benefits taper off after six months, and stop after two years. There are almost two million households where no family member has a job.

Catholic leaders are pushing for change in an effort spearheaded by the “firebrand” cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich. Criticism from the church may be harder to brush off than that of politicians.

Nevertheless, so far, the objections are carefully worded and mild in comparison to the level of distress. In advanced economies, except for pet issues like abortion, the Catholic Church has steered clear of politics. It’s not clear that mere finger wagging would do, and this Church lacks the appetite to encourage protests. But its leaders do have media access. Given that there is now a rift among Eurozone leaders as to whether it is necessary to ease up on budget-trimming and focus more on growth, they might be able to provide more visceral images and stories of the long-term costs of putting budget targets over vulnerable social orders. But orthodox economic views are so deeply entrenched that having Catholic leaders speak out is likely to be too little, too late. And sadly, they seem to be the only prominent figures who can invoke the language of morality and justice against a cruel and destructive economic calculus.

Cornel West Warns of Rising Authoritarianism: “You Can Get Killed Out Here Trying to Tell the Truth!”

Lynn Stuart Parramore, AlterNet — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:57:00 -0700

Outspoken economist Robert Johnson and firebrand academic Cornel West consider threats to human dignity and a just society.

As big banks and corporations grab more power and government heightens control and surveillance, confronting those at the top is getting to be a dangerous proposition. As Cornel West put it bluntly, “You can get killed out here trying to tell the truth!”

For the last year, a partnership between the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), a New York-based think tank, and Union Theological Seminary (UTS) has produced a series of rich conversations about economics, society, and the human spirit. Tuesday night, West and INET Executive Director Robert Johnson sat down together in a packed chapel at UTS in New York to talk about the pain caused by financial predators and the frightening trend of creeping authoritarianism. Union Theological Seminary president Dr. Serene Jones moderated a discussion which ranged from love to finance to the economics of Jesus.

Johnson, who had recently led a meeting of major financial executives in London, noted that the Big Boys are aware that they are no longer gods in the public view, but demons. “They are scared,” said Johnson. But that doesn’t seem to have curbed much of their predatory behavior, so the question of how to change their ways remains urgent. “Do you create institutions to constrain sinful, greedy, avaricious, and delusional individuals?” asked the economist. “Or do you, like the Buddhists suggest, seek to change that greedy, aggressive, delusion character…?” West and Jones quickly answered “both,” but Johnson said he’s leaning towards the Buddhists on this one. Multinational corporations, he warned, are so “large, sophisticated, and capable” that the regulators simply can’t keep up. You have to “get inside the hearts” of these leaders, he argued, and somehow create a sense of moral accountability – a process that Johnson believed would be both difficult and painful. He likened it to the shattering soul-searching of a blues musician. (Johnson, in addition to being an economist, has worked in the music industry).

West cited the need for a “democratic counterweight” against what he described as three dominant tendencies on the globe: “financializing, privatizing, and, militarizing.” He warned that as long as we’re stuck with an “empty” and “shallow” public sphere that has been “colonized” by the “oligarchs at the top”, we’re most certainly headed towards fascism. West remarked that the assassination of citizens without due process and other recent trends paint a grim picture of the effectiveness of our institutions. “It’s devoid of legitimacy,” agreed Johnson.

West sent a powerful message about governments harassing and exerting control over citizens. The Associated Press, he noted, is “as mainstream as red apples” and yet its reporters and editors have been under surveillance by the Department of Justice, as recent revelations have made clear. “Can you imagine what you and I are under?” he asked.

The evening was filled with lively back-and-forth on the threats to human dignity and a just society caused by perverted economic thinking. Treat yourself to the full discussion below (Note: due to a technical glitch, the sound comes on at 3.42 in Part 1):

10 Ridiculous Christian Right Prophesies

Amanda Marcotte, AlterNet — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:23:00 -0700

From Pat Robertson's election predictions to the entire Christian right freaking out about gay marriage, here are 10 prophesies that didn't come true.

There’s nothing right-wing Christians love better than making wild predictions or invoking outright prophecies that invariably turn out to be false. Here’s 10 of the best from recent years.

1) Mitt Romney would win in 2012 and go on to be a two-term president. One week before the 2012 election, Pat Robertson assured viewers that Romney would not only beat Barack Obama for the presidency, but go on to be a two-term president. “Because the Lord told me,” he confidently explained to his guest. So either the Lord is lying to Robertson or Obama is more powerful than God. Or, I suppose, it could be that Robertson himself is a liar, though it’s considered impolite to say so directly.

2) If Obama wins in 2008, the Bible will be classified as “hate speech” and banned from the airwaves. In 2008, Focus on the Family sent out a letter from a fictional Christian in 2012 describing the decrepit, destroyed America that would be sure to exist in four years if Obama won in 2008. Some predictions, such as gays in the military and universal healthcare legislation, came true, but somehow the predicted arrests of people reading the Bible on the airwaves have not come to pass.

3) Making emergency contraception available without a prescription will cause “sex-based cults." With the legal battles over Plan B emergency contraception continuing, it’s worth looking back at some of the dire predictions made about the drug’s availability in the past. Back in 2004, one of Bush’s Christian right hires to the FDA, Janet Woodcock, warned that making Plan B available without a prescription could cause the drug to take on “an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B.” Shortly thereafter, the FDA removed the prescription requirements, though the drug still has age restrictions on it, which are currently being fought out in court. However, the sex-based cults haven’t manifested, though a handful of unwanted pregnancies have probably been prevented.

4) Legal gay marriage will lead to legalized parent-child marriages. In 2008, Rick Santorum warned that if gay marriage was legalized, all bets are off. (At the time, only Massachusetts had same-sex marriage.) “I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?” he whined. Since then, 10 more states have legalized same-sex marriage and Minnesota is on the verge of becoming the 12th. So far, the predicted legalized incest has not come to pass in those states. Nor have any other dire religious right predictions about the “breakdown” of “traditional” marriage come to pass. Polygamy remains illegal and the divorce rate seems completely unaffected by same-sex marriage.

5) RFID microchips, the Mark of the Beast, will be implanted in all Americans on March 23, 2013. The Christian right has long worried about RFID chips, microchips that are easily scanned and can be used for a variety of tracking purposes, mostly commercial. A rumor rapidly spread in Christian right circles that the Affordable Care Act, which they call “Obamacare,” would require mandatory microchipping of all Americans on March 23, 2013. A sample page spreading this rumor was flagged at Daily Kos and had language like, “its a micro chip injected in your hand. it will contain all your personal data heath and bank accounts etc. its also a GPS device being monitored. they can deactivate it at any time if they find you suspicious or not loyal to their government or go against them or their system and you will lose everything you ever had.” For those keeping track, on March 23, Colorado legalized civil unions and Florida Gulf Coast beat Georgetown during March Madness, but only dogs and cats were forcibly microchipped that day.

6) If the Supreme Court upholds Obamacare, death panels will subject unproductive old people to execution. The claim that the ACA mandates “death panels” to rule on the right of old people to live is part of the larger religious right unease with healthcare generally, which tends to manifest most when it comes to reproductive health but also touches on end-of-life issues, as evidenced by the Terri Schiavo debacle. On the eve of the Supreme Court decision on the fate of the ACA (they upheld it), religious right icon Sarah Palin wrote on her Facebook page, “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.” The court upheld the legislation, which is currently being implemented, and death panels are nowhere in sight.

7) If Obama wins in 2012, conservative Christians will basically lose their right to vote and other freedoms. Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily predicted prior to the 2012 election that if Obama won, “any Republican, conservative, independent journalist, pro-life activist, returning veteran, gun-rights activist, constitutionalist, Bible believer or critic of Obama” would lose their human rights, and that Obama would specifically “shut down and destroy all independent media.” He also predicted, “There may not be another free and fair election in America.” On May 7, South Carolina’s first district put this prediction to the test, holding a special election to determine its new congressman. By all accounts, it was a free and fair election, and the Republican won.

8) Sharia law! One of the favorite pastimes of the religious right is predicting that on X date, democratic rule of law will be overturned and replaced with sharia law. Glenn Beck pegged the day that Obama would start imposing sharia law as March 3, 2011. Two years later, mandatory adherence to a fundamentalist imam’s view of Islam still hasn’t manifested. During the election, a Christian right group called Government Is Not God ran ads claiming an Obama re-election meant sharia law across the land. So far, no signs of the Islamic theocracy that we were all supposed to be living under already.

9) The military will courtmartial Christian soldiers who don’t hide their beliefs. A rumor rapidly spread through the Christian right, with the help of Fox News and Breitbart News, that the military would soon start prosecuting any soldier who was out about being a Christian. Various news sources and, of course, Rep. Michele Bachmann protested this supposed new policy banning the expression of faith in the military. It is, of course, nonsense. The only military policy in play is a very old one, disallowing religious people from badgering and harassing those who don’t share their faith. But the impending end of religious freedom for soldiers is, simply put, a lie.

10) Obama will rise up and take over the world for Satan, triggering Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ. One in five Republicans believe Obama is the Antichrist, who is, for those who haven’t read the Left Behind,series, supposed to be an emissary of Satan who takes over the world and triggers an all-out war between the forces of hell and of heaven, bringing the world to an end. A tall order for a man who only has three and a half years left in office and who seems to be making no movement in that direction, but then again, such an important being surely has magical powers to make it happen. This one hasn’t been conclusively disproved yet, but I’m including it on the list on the grounds that on the slim chance it does turn out to be true, probably no one will be reading this article looking to say they told me so anyway.

Why Do Christian Megapastors Keep Getting Caught in Sordid Sex Scandals?

April M. Short, AlterNet — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:49:00 -0700

Christian leaders accountable for their actions? Well, sort of. An Evangelical news outlet blames the Jezebel.

Pastor David Loveless is the third megachurch leader in the Fla. area to resign in the wake of a sexual affair in the last half of a year. Loveless, former lead pastor of Discovery Church in Orlando, follows Isaac Hunter—former lead pastor at Orlando’s Summit Church, and Sam Hinn—former pastor of the Gathering Place Worship Center in Stanford, Fla. in his resignition following an extramarital sexual encounter.

Loveless has been married 37 years according to Christian Post, and co-authored the book Church Wounds, which examines the mishaps and blemishes of the modern-day church and its sometimes negative effects on Christians. He and his wife Caron have three married sons and seven grandchildren, according to his blog.

In her article Why Megachurch Pastors Keep Falling Into Sexual Immorality, Jennifer LeClaire, editor of the right-leaning Christian news site Charisma, points out that pastors Loveless, Hunter and Hinn aren’t the only three to “rock their churches with sexual scandals” in recent times. LeClaire, author of a book titled Spiritual Warrior's Guide to Defeating Jezebel, takes the uncommon position of holding male Christian leaders accountable for their adulterous behaviors—well sort of. LeClaire attributes immorality and idolatry to the “spirit of seduction” of the biblical character Jezebel, who “woos people into sexual immorality and idolatry.”

She writes, “Sadly, the spirit of Jezebel is picking off pastors one by one as they succumb to the evil desires in their own hearts. Too few recognize the sinister workings of Jezebel's covert seduction. They’ve bought into what I call the ‘Jezebel deception’ and are either tolerating sexual immorality in the church or merely failing to recognize the true Jezebel in operation because they are on a witch hunt for controlling, manipulative women.”

Brent Bailey founded the Direction Church Orlando seven months ago, and has been in ministry for 20 years. He told The Christian Post(CP) that hearing about the moral failure of other pastors saddens him and causes him to reflect on his own vulnerabilities.

"It also makes us realize how vulnerable every human being is no matter how long they've been in ministry or how many lives they've touched," he told CP. "There really is an enemy out there that's trying to do his best to take every one of us out."

9 Questions That Atheists Might Find Insulting (And the Answers)

Greta Christina, AlterNet — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:18:00 -0700

Some questions make atheists feel second-class -- and make you look like a jerk for asking them.

Asked of Hispanic-Americans: "Are you in this country legally?" Asked of gays and lesbians and bisexuals: "How do you have sex?" Asked of transgender people: "Have you had the surgery?" Asked of African Americans: "Can I touch your hair?"

Every marginalized group has some question, or questions, that are routinely asked of them -- and that drive them up a tree; questions that have insult or bigotry or dehumanization woven into the very asking. Sometimes the questions are asked sincerely, with sincere ignorance of the offensive assumptions behind them. And sometimes they are asked in a hostile, passive-aggressive, "I'm just asking questions" manner. But it's still not okay to ask them. They're not questions that open up genuine inquiry and discourse, they're questions that close minds, much more than they open them. Even if that's not the intention. And most people who care about bigotry and marginalization and social justice -- or who just care about good manners -- don't ask them.

Here are nine questions you shouldn't ask atheists. I'm going to answer them, just this once, and then I'll explain why you shouldn't be asking them, and why so many atheists will get ticked off if you do.

1: "How can you be moral without believing in God?"

The answer: Atheists are moral for the same reasons believers are moral: because we have compassion, and a sense of justice. Humans are social animals, and like other social animals, we evolved with some core moral values wired into our brains: caring about fairness, caring about loyalty, caring when others are harmed.

If you're a religious believer, and you don't believe these are the same reasons that believers are moral, ask yourself this: If I could persuade you today, with 100% certainty, that there were no gods and no afterlife... would you suddenly start stealing and murdering and setting fire to buildings? And if not -- why not? If you wouldn't... whatever it is that would keep you from doing those things, that's the same thing keeping atheists from doing them. (And if you would -- remind me not to move in next door to you.)

And ask yourself this as well: If you accept some parts of your holy book and reject others -- on what basis are you doing that? Whatever part of you says that stoning adulterers is wrong but helping poor people is good; that planting different crops in the same field is a non-issue but bearing false witness actually is pretty messed-up; that slavery is terrible but it's a great idea to love your neighbor as yourself... that's the same thing telling atheists what's right and wrong. People are good -- even if we don't articulate it this way -- because we have an innate grasp of the fundamental underpinnings of morality: the understanding that other people matter to themselves as much as we matter to ourselves, and that there is no objective reason to act as if any of us matters more than any other. And that's true of atheists and believers alike.

Why you shouldn't ask it: This is an unbelievably insulting question. Being moral, caring about others and having compassion for them, is a fundamental part of being human. To question whether atheists can be moral, to express bafflement at how we could possibly manage to care about others without believing in a supernatural creator, is to question whether we're even fully human.

And you know what? This question is also hugely insulting to religious believers. It's basically saying that the only reason believers are moral is fear of punishment and desire for reward. It's saying that believers don't act out of compassion, or a sense of justice. It's saying that believers' morality is childish at best, self-serving at worst. I wouldn't say that about religious believers... and you shouldn't, either.

2: "How do you have any meaning in your life?" Sometimes asked as, "Don't you feel sad or hopeless?" Or even, "If you don't believe in God or heaven, why don't you just kill yourself?"

The answer: Atheists find meaning and joy in the same things everyone does. We find it in the big things: family, friendship, work, nature, art, learning, love. We find it in the small things: cookies, World of Warcraft, playing with kittens. The only difference is that (a) believers add "making my god or gods happy and getting a good deal in the afterlife" to those lists (often putting them at the top), and (b) believers think meaning is given to them by their god or gods, while atheists create our own meaning, and are willing and indeed happy to accept that responsibility.

In fact, for many atheists, the fact that life is finite invests it with more meaning -- not less. When we drop "pleasing a god we have no good reason to think exists" from our "meaning" list, we have that much more attention to give the rest of it. When we accept that life will really end, we become that much more motivated to make every moment of it matter.

Why you shouldn't ask it: What was it that we were just saying about "dehumanization"? Experiencing meaning and value in life is deeply ingrained in being human. When you treat atheists as if we were dead inside simply because we don't believe in a supernatural creator or our own immortality... you're treating us as if we weren't fully human. Please don't.

3: "Doesn't it take just as much/even more faith to be an atheist as it does to be a believer?"

The answer: No.

The somewhat longer answer: This question assumes that "atheism" means "100% certainty that God does not exist, with no willingness to question and no room for doubt." For the overwhelming majority of people who call ourselves atheists, this is not what "atheism" means. For most atheists, "atheism" means something along the lines of "being reasonably certain that there are no gods," or, "having reached the provisional conclusion, based on the evidence we've seen and the arguments we've considered, that there are no gods." No, we can't be 100% certain that there are no gods. We can't be 100% certain that there are no unicorns, either. But we're certain enough. Not believing in unicorns doesn't take "faith." And neither does not believing in God.

Why you shouldn't ask it: The assumption behind this question is that atheists haven't actually bothered to think about our atheism. And this assumption is both ignorant and insulting. Most atheists have considered the question of God's existence or non-existence very carefully. Most of us were brought up religious, and letting go of that religion took a great deal of searching of our hearts and our minds. Even those of us brought up as non-believers were (mostly) brought up in a society that's steeped in religion. It takes a fair amount of questioning and thought to reject an idea that almost everyone else around you believes.

And when you ask this question, you're also revealing the narrowness of your own mind. You're showing that you can't conceive of the possibility that someone might come to a conclusion about religion based on evidence, reason, and which ideas seem most likely to be true, instead of on "faith."

4: "Isn't atheism just a religion?"

The answer: No.

The somewhat longer answer: Unless you're defining "religion" as "any conclusion people come to about the world," or as "any community organized around a shared idea," then no. If your definition of "religion" includes atheism, it also has to include: Amnesty International, the Audubon Society, heliocentrism, the acceptance of the theory of evolution, the Justin Bieber Fan Club, and the Democratic Party. By any useful definition of the word "religion," atheism is not a religion.

Why you shouldn't ask it: Pretty much the same reason as the one for #3. Calling atheism a religion assumes that it's an axiom accepted on faith, not a conclusion based on thinking and evidence. And it shows that you're not willing or able to consider the possibility that someone not only has a different opinion about religion than you do, but has come to that opinion in a different way.

5: "What's the point of atheist groups? How can you have a community and a movement for something you don't believe in?"

The answer: Atheists have groups and communities and movements for the same reasons anyone does. Remember what I said about atheists being human? Humans are social animals. We like to spend time with other people who share our interests and values. We like to work with other people on goals we have in common. What's more, when atheists come out about our atheism, many of us lose our friends and families and communities, or have strained and painful relationships with them. Atheists create communities so we can be honest about who we are and what we think, and still not be alone.

Why you shouldn't ask it: This is a total "damned if we do, damned if we don't" conundrum. Atheists get told all the time that people need religion for the community it provides: that persuading people out of religion is cruel or futile or both, since so much social support happens in religious institutions. Then, when atheists do create communities to replace the ones people so often lose when they leave religion, we get told how ridiculous this is. (Or else we're told, "See? Atheism is just another religion!" See #4 above.)

6: "Why do you hate God?" Or, "Aren't you just angry at God?"

The answer: Atheists aren't angry at God. We don't think God exists. We aren't angry at God, any more than we're angry at Santa Claus.

Why you shouldn't ask it: This question doesn't just deny our humanity. It denies our very existence. It assumes that atheists don't really exist: that our non-belief isn't sincere, that it's some sort of emotional trauma or immature teenage rebellion, that it's not even really non-belief.

And honestly? This question reveals how narrow your own mind is. It shows that you can't even consider the possibility that you might be mistaken: that you can't even conceive of somebody seeing the world differently from the way you do. This question doesn't just make atheists mad. It makes you look like a dolt.

7: "But have you [read the Bible or some other holy book; heard about some supposed miracle; heard my story about my personal religious experience]?"

The answer: Probably. Or else we've read/heard about something pretty darned similar. Atheists are actually better-informed about religion than most religious believers. In fact, we're better-informed about the tenets of most specific religions than the believers in those religions. For many atheists, sitting down and reading the Bible (or the holy text of whatever religion they were brought up in) is exactly what set them on the path to atheism -- or what put the final nail in the coffin.

Why you shouldn't ask it: As my friend and colleague Heina put it: "'Have you heard of Jesus?' No, actually, I was born under a fucking rock."

Are you really not aware of how dominating a force religion is in society? In most of the world, and certainly in the United States, religion is impossible to ignore. It permeates the social life, the economic life, the cultural life, the political life. We're soaking in it. The idea that atheists might somehow have come to adulthood without being aware of the Bible, of stories about supposed miracles, of stories about personal religious experiences... it's laughable. Or it would be laughable if it weren't so annoying. Religious privilege is all over this question like a cheap suit.

8: "What if you're wrong?" Sometimes asked as, "Doesn't it make logical sense to believe in God? If you believe and you're wrong, nothing terrible happens, but if you don't believe and you're wrong, you could go to Hell!"

The answer: What if you're wrong about Allah? Or Vishnu? Or Zeus? What if you're wrong about whether God is the wrathful jerk who hates gay people, or the loving god who hates homophobes? What if you're wrong about whether God wants you to celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday or Sunday? What if you're wrong about whether God really does care about whether you eat bacon? As Homer Simpson put it, "What if we picked the wrong religion? Every week we're just making God madder and madder!"

Why you shouldn't ask it: There are so very many things wrong with this question. It even has a name -- Pascal's Wager -- and I've actually written an entire piece on the many things that are wrong with it. But I'll stick with two for today, the ones that aren't just logically absurd but that insult the intelligence and integrity of both atheists and believers:

a) Are you really that ignorant of the existence of religions other than your own? Has it really never occurred to you that when you "bet" on the existence of your god, there are thousands upon thousands of other gods whose existence you're "betting" against? Are you really that steeped, not only in the generic privilege of all religion, but in the particular privilege of your own?

b) Do you really think atheists have so little integrity? Do you really think we're going to fake belief in God... not just to our families or communities in order to not be ostracized, but in our own hearts and minds? Do you really think we're going to deliberately con ourselves into believing -- or pretending to believe -- something that we don't actually think is true? Not just something trivial, but something this important? Do you really think we would pick what to think is true and not true about the world, based solely on which idea would be most convenient? How does that even constitute "belief"? (And anyway, do you really think that God would be taken in by this con game? Do you really think that what God wants from his followers is an insincere, self-serving, "wink wink, I'm covering my bases" version of "belief"?)

9: "Why are you atheists so angry?"

The answer: I've actually written an entire book answering this question (Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless). The short answer: Not all atheists are angry about religion -- and those of us who are angry aren't in a constant state of rage. But yes, many atheists are angry about religion -- and we're angry because we see terrible harm being done by religion. We're angry about harm being done to atheists... and we're angry about harm done to other believers. We don't just think religion is mistaken -- we think it does significantly more harm than good. And it pisses us off.

Why you shouldn't ask it: This question assumes that atheists are angry because there's something wrong with us. It assumes that atheists are angry because we're bitter, selfish, whiny, unhappy, because we lack joy and meaning in our lives, because we have a God-shaped hole in our hearts. The people asking it seem to have never even considered the possibility that atheists are angry because we have legitimate things to be angry about.

This reflexive dismissal of our anger's legitimacy does two things. It treats atheists as flawed, broken, incomplete. And it defangs the power of our anger. (Or it tries to, anyway.) Anger is a hugely powerful motivating force -- it has been a major motivating force for every social change movement in history -- and when people try to dismiss or trivialize atheists' anger, they are, essentially, trying to take that power away.

And finally: The people asking this question never seem to notice just how much atheist anger is directed, not at harm done to atheists, but at harm done to believers. A huge amount of our anger about religion is aimed at the oppression and brutality and misery created by religion, not in the lives of atheists, but in the lives of believers. Our anger about religion comes from compassion, from a sense of justice, from a vivid awareness of terrible damage being done in the world and a driving motivation to do something about it. Atheists aren't angry because there's something wrong with us. Atheists are angry because there's something right with us. And it is messed-up beyond recognition to treat one of our greatest strengths, one of our most powerful motivating forces and one of the clearest signs of our decency, as a sign that we're flawed or broken.

*****

The list of questions you shouldn't ask atheists doesn't end here. It goes on, at length. "How can you believe in nothing?" "Doesn't atheism take the mystery out of life?" "Even though you don't believe, shouldn't you bring up your children with religion?" "Can you prove there isn't a god?" "Did something terrible happen to you to turn you away from religion?" "Are you just doing this to rebel?" "Are you just doing this so you don't have to obey God's rules?" "If you're atheist, why do you celebrate Christmas/ say 'Bless you' when people sneeze/ spend money with 'In God We Trust' on it/ etc.?" "Have you sincerely tried to believe?" "Can't you see God everywhere around you?" "Do you worship Satan?" "Isn't atheism awfully arrogant?" "Can you really not conceive of anything bigger than yourself?" "Why do you care what other people believe?"

But for now, I'll leave these questions as an exercise for the reader. If you understand why all the questions I answered today are offensive and dehumanizing, I hope you'll understand why these are as well.

If you want to understand more about atheists and atheism -- that is awesome. Many of us are more than happy to talk about our atheism with you: that's how we change people's minds about us, and overcome the widespread myths and misinformation about us. But maybe you could do a little Googling before you start asking us questions that we've not only fielded a hundred times before, but that have bigotry and dehumanization and religious privilege embedded in the very asking. And if you do want to know more about atheism, please stop and think about the questions you're asking -- and the assumptions behind them -- before you do. Thanks.

Does God Hate Climate Change?

Steven Hsieh, AlterNet — Fri, 10 May 2013 09:09:00 -0700

Democrat lawmaker is trying to sell environmental legislation as "God's work" -- but is he pandering to religion to push progressive legislation?

During a 17-minute long speech on the senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R-HI) cited an interesting source to urge his colleagues to get serious about climate change: the Bible.

“I was recently at a Senate meeting where I heard a member of our Senate community say, ‘God won’t allow us to ruin our planet,’” Whitehouse said.

Sen. Whitehouse, an Episcopalian, chastised other lawmakers for using religion to abdicate responsibility when it comes to protecting our planet. The Hawaii senator dismissed the notion that “God … won’t allow us to ruin our planet” as completely removed from reality.

“The statement that refers to God is couched in religious terms, but is it really an expression of religious inquiry? I think not. It is less an expression of religious thinking than it is of magical thinking,” Whitehouse explained. “The statement that God won’t allow us to ruin our planet sweeps aside ethics, responsibilities, consequences, duties, even awareness.”

The senator also referred to Biblical passages to challenge his colleagues’ religious rhetoric. For example, he pointed to Galatians 6:7, which reads, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” To put this in plain English, Whitehouse remarked, “We are here to do God's work. He's not here to do ours.”

Whitehouse continued, reminding lawmakers that science and religion are not mutually exclusive, explaining, "If we believe in an all-powerful God, then we must then believe that God gave us this earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics.” Of course, this should go without saying. But as the Huffington Post’s Michael McAuliff points out, too many members of Congress still use religious hysteria to advance their agenda, at the cost of science and logic:

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) recently called evolution a lie from the pit of hell, and … the Science Committee is weighing ways to exert political control on the National Science Foundation. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) has quoted scripture to deny that climate change will destroy the earth.

With so much ignorance in Congress hiding behind the mask of religion, a stronghold in American politics, it’s understandable why Whitehouse would feel the need to argue on the divine playing field—especially with our planet at stake. But at least one atheist writer disagreed with the senator’s strategy. In particular, Staks Rosch, an atheist advocate questioned the idea that, “We are here to do God's work. He's not here to do ours.” Rosch responded, “No Senator, you are not here to do God’s work; you are there to do the work of your constituents as outlined in the very secular United State Constitution.”

Rosch’s criticism invokes one of the biggest concerns of the American atheist movement—that religion continues finding ways to creep into our government. Rosch argues that Whitehouse’s speech “crosses the line between church and state,” even if for the right reasons.

So does appealing to religion to advance progressive ideas do more harm or good? Watch Senator Whitehouse’s speech and decide for yourself:

4 Things Kinky Sex and Christianity Have in Common

Valerie Tarico, AlterNet — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:43:00 -0700

While the Abrahamic religions have tried to control sexuality, these traditions make use of the very urges they seek to suppress.

Want a special someone who will bring you to your knees? One who will be totally in charge? One who will tell you that you are really, really bad and threaten you with punishments? Maybe you have a little day dream about being a captive virgin. Or maybe you prefer to fantasize about a man who is helpless, who, say, has his arms secured to a crossbeam. Christianity has something for everyone.

I’m not the first person to observe that religious and sexual ecstasy have a lot in common—or that the love songs Christians croon to Jesus sound remarkably like other love songs. Nor am I the first to point out that Christian ministers, musicians, and recruiters play with this blurry boundary deliberately. Tim Tebow posing as sexy Jesus-on-the-cross for GQ kind of says it all. As if there weren’t enough Christian girls and boys struggling with Jesus fantasies already. (here, here, here)

Early pagan religions incorporated sexuality explicitly into religious practice, for example, in the form of temple prostitutes or fertility rites or sacred sexuality. Some Dharmic traditions, like tantric Buddhism, continue to do so today. Given the power of religion to arouse and exploit sexual energy, it should come as no surprise that sacred sexuality takes a wide variety of forms—or that, despite an overt attempt by the Abrahamic traditions to constrain and control sexuality, these traditions also make use of the very same urges they seek to suppress.

One offshoot of the religion-sensuality-sexuality nexus that doesn’t get talked about much is the relationship between Christianity and kink. On the surface, the two couldn’t appear more different. Christianity has often advocated abstinence or sex exclusively for procreation, as a means to propagate the religion itself, while kink is about consensual pleasuring limited only by an agreement between the individuals involved. Christianity can be thought of as seeking to sublimate, or redirect, sexual passion, while kink tries to enhance it. Christianity claims to be about the end game, while kink often is about the moment. Christianity is deadly serious, while kink commonly is framed as playful. Christianity is a multi-billion dollar, multi-billion member, multi-national enterprise, while kink is a small counter culture without revenue and membership goals.

But just beneath the surface both communities may be leveraging a similar set of human instincts and emotions. I am not suggesting that Christianity is all about sexual arousal, even sublimated or redirected sexual arousal, though that most certainly is a part of the picture. I amsuggesting that kink and Christianity appear to tap an overlapping array of social and psychological impulses that include sexual arousal, moral emotions like shame and disgust, our tendency to seek hierarchy, our desire to escape rationality, our heightened sensory acuity in the presence of emotional arousal, and our tendency to take every pleasure to its extreme. In all of these, the themes of dominance and submission, inflicting pain, and receiving pain, have parts to play.

1. Pleasure and Pain: In the past five hundred years, few Christian writers have described the relationship between pain and pleasure as graphically as St. Teresa of Avila, whose sixteenth century vision of mystical union with God drips with sexuality:

In his hands I saw a long golden spear and at the end of the iron tip I seemed to see a point of fire. With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them out with it and he left me completely afire with a great love for God. The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans; and so excessive was the sweetness caused me by the intense pain that one can never wish to lose it, nor will one's soul be content with anything less than God.

Still today, in some Christian traditions, pain and religious passion go hand in hand. Mother Theresa is quoted as saying that love isn’t real unless it hurts. In one anecdote, she tells a suffering woman that her pain is the kiss of Jesus. The nuns of Mother Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity, have practiced self-mortification techniques including striking their legs with rope and wearing a spiked chain called a cilice. Dan Brown’s thriller, The DaVinci Code was a wild fantasy, but the mortification practices of the order Opus Dei are real.

With or without the erotic overtones, pain appears to heighten some spiritual experiences through several mechanisms. Self-inflicted pain or voluntary submission to pain can be proof of commitment, as in gang initiations. It may offer relief from guilt or anxiety or self-loathing, like self-cutting does for many depressed girls. It may produce an endorphin release as when runners and rowers push past a pain threshold. It may intensify focus on the present moment by causing distractions to recede into the background, like pinching oneself can do. It may offer a mesmerizing rhythm of sensation, as in head banging. The point isn’t that Christian penance and self-mortification are always or even usually erotic—they aren’t—but that both Christianity and kink can use pain as sensory enhancers.

2. Bondage and slavery: The Bible has its share of stories about master-slave relations and other funky sex—starting with Adam who sleeps with his female clone; and Abraham who has sex with his half-sister/ wife Sarah as well as her slave; and Lot’s daughters, who after being offered to a rabbling mob get their father drunk so they can conceive by him. Then there’s the temptress, Delilah, who ties Samson up and finally saps his strength by cutting of his hair after their time together; and we can’t forget Solomon with his 700 wives and 300 concubines or sex slaves. (It wasn’t violence alone that got the Bible reviewed by Hong Kong’s media regulators.) Some people were shocked by all of the humping in Robert Crumb’s illustrated version of Genesis, but the Bible’s naughty bits have been staples for generations of teens stuck in church.

Of course a key difference between these stories and modern sexuality is that dominance and submission in kink is dictated by preference rather than gender. Also, both ethics and law dictate that BDSM actions require the enthusiastic consent of both parties, which definitely is not the case in the Bible stories. Fortunately most scholars think of the Bible stories as either mythologized history or historicized mythology rather than a factual record of events. Also fortunately, (as Greta Christina pointed out in the introduction to her kink novella, Bending) most people who enjoy fictional violence or coercion—murder mysteries, spy novels, rape fantasies, or sexual slavery—would not seek or enjoy the same experiences in real life.

When it comes to bondage, perhaps the most common stimulus in the Christian tradition is the crucifixion itself, with its glorified, beatific images of Jesus hanging and swooning, eyes half lidded. The crucified Jesus is almost never depicted as a short, ordinary looking Semite. Instead, whether Caucasian, Middle Eastern, or Black, he is usually lanky and well-muscled with perfect skin and a face that fits some artist’s version ofmale beauty. Small wonder Tim Tebow slipped so easily into the pose.

3. Discipline: Articles and forums devoted to “Christian domestic discipline” couch the practice in spiritual or religious terms: Wife spanking, likechild spanking, is a means of maintaining the hierarchy that God established, with a man on top and wife as his “helpmeet.” Proponents are careful to distinguish their approach from secular kink, which they disparage. They establish a proper biblical context with texts like this one from the book of Hebrews: “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” Domestic discipline is described as a means to fend off, “this unholy culture, with its radically selfish feminism, and wholesale bias against true manhood, [which] launches relentless attacks against traditional Christian family values,” and it is recommended for serious offenses such as “the four D’s” (Disobedience, Disrespect, Dishonesty or Dangerous behavior).

Pious protestations aside, Christian wife spanking is clearly erotic. If it were not, why is it practiced in the bedroom, on a woman’s bare bottom? Why not have the preacher do the spanking? In fact, why not have the preacher spank men when they are bad? Of course, penance or punishment need not be routinely sexual. Punishing or being punished may have its own satisfactions, for example, as a way of wiping the slate clean or asserting hierarchy. Punishment also can be simply a form of abuse or self-abuse. As we know, moral emotions like shame, guilt and righteous indignation can be channeled in many directions toward many ends.

4. Dominance and Submission: One BDSM website for Christians suggests that, “A BDSM relationship between a dominant husband and submissive wife is actually the ideal of marriage set out in Ephesians 5:22-26 taken to its logical conclusion.” The author of Ephesians had this to say:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

While few Christian couples own gags or restraints, a great many believe that God ordained a hierarchical relationship between women and men, and that this extends to the marriage bed. Women, in this view, were made from Adam’s rib and caused sin to enter the world, and so should not be allowed positions of authority in the church or home. In the words of the New Testament, “It is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Wives should regard their husbands as they regard the Lord. Women are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate” (I Corinthians 14:33-35). This theology of “male headship” teaches that a woman’s greatest glory lies in bearing children and serving her husband. Protestant reformer Martin Luther put it bluntly: “If a woman dies from childbearing, it matters not; she is there to do it.”

Obviously this kind of relationship hierarchy and female servility can exist independent of male sexual dominance and female submission. Similarly, sexual hierarchy can exist in a more egalitarian relationship. Consequently, in any given Christian relationship, “Wives submit to your husbands” may or may not be given a sexual interpretation.

Either way, because humans are hierarchical social animals, dominance and submission may produce their own feelings of gratification. We’ve all heard that Islam means submission, literally. But submission is a pervasive theme in the Christian Bible as well. Children submit to their parents; women submit to men; slaves submit to their masters; and men submit to God, who, in many passages, is modeled on a Near-Eastern warlord. For modern born-again believers, conversion is often experienced as sweet surrender to the irresistible Divine will. In each of these asymmetric relationships, the person on the bottom gets excused from certain responsibilities, while person on the top gets power and authority. As observation of non-human primates suggests, there are privileges and obligations of each role in a hierarchy, whether dominant or subordinate.

Biblically and historically, within human society these privileges and obligations extend to the sexual domain—with men giving daughters in marriage, housing concubines, and claiming war captives. Females are, essentially, male property. (In no place does the Bible state or imply that a woman’s consent is needed before sex, and in fact nonconsensual asymmetric sex is routinely sanctioned or blessed.) In other words, within a modern context of mutual adult consent and role playing, BDSM experiments with aspects of sexuality that were non-consensual, non-playful parts of the Iron Age cultural fabric from which Christianity emerged. Whether either Christianity or BDSM is good for society or good for the people involved, I leave for you to decide. (A biblical rule of thumb might suggest that the consequences are what matters: “by their fruits you shall know them.”)

Bible believers often claim that they are a moral beacon to the world, a “light shining on a hill.” In particular many look with disgust on the curious, open sexuality of modern society. A closer look might suggest that their claims of superiority are unwarranted, that—just like the rest of us—they are complicated creatures whose spiritual and sexual practices are driven by an array of motives and instincts. Homo Sapiens neurobiology underpins the array of experiences that humans find appealing and inclines us toward certain kinds of social behaviors and pleasures.

Just like spices that get mixed in different proportions to create different flavors of food, so a finite number of instincts get mixed and remixed to produce sensual and religious experiences including kink and Christianity. Do Christian teachings and practice simply draw on the same aspects of human psychology and physiology as kink or do they actually lay groundwork for BDSM sexuality? I know of no research that attempts to tease this apart. But given the overlap, maybe someone should find out.

AlterNet.org: Belief

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