Seventh Day Adventists and the Separation of Church and State

Now that noted Republican "house Negro" and Faux News darling Ben Carson has climbed into the Republican clown car, I think it is interesting that the official house organ of his church, the Seventh Day Adventists, has reiterated its stance on the separation of church and state.

They're for it. Which kind of puts them out of the mainstream when it comes to evangelical churches in this country:

The Adventist Church has a longstanding position of not supporting or opposing any candidate for elected office. This position is based both on our historical position of separation of church and state and the applicable federal law relating to the church’s tax-exempt status.
While individual church members are free to support or oppose any candidate for office as they see fit, it is crucial that the church as an institution remain neutral on all candidates for office. Care should be taken that the pulpit and all church property remain a neutral space when it comes to elections.Church employees must also exercise extreme care not to express views in their denominational capacity about any candidate for office, including Dr. Carson.
We also want to remind our church members, pastors, and administrators of the church’s official position on the separation of church and state. The church has worked diligently to protect the religious rights of all people of faith, no matter what their denominational affiliation.

Yes, that seems to me to be surprisingly reasonable and cogent, especially for a religion that holds that anybody who "breaks the Sabbath" -- works on a Saturday (the 7th day, get it?), for example -- is bound straight for hell. Well, not "hell" exactly, since they don't really believe in a literal hell. Just in the total annihilation of the spirit.

But naturally, as it so often happens, the real treats in this story are found in the comments section:

"This is almost uncalled for, this is common sense and to say it makes it sound like a majority of the church doesn't trust Ben Carson, which couldn't be further from the truth. He is a strong supporter of church/state separation." [oh really?]
"Did the church issue this warning when Mr. Obama was running for office? Didn't it apply then as well? Who is this statement for? Every SDA already knows this? Speculative and disappointing. They should have kept as silent on this as they did when Mr. Obama was running." [Obama was not a member of this church, so why should they have anything to say about his candidacy?]
"It's funny to me the churches stand on this. Isn't this being political in its self? Trying to sway the church members by intimidation. Although it's ok tho go against the bible and ordain women as pastors? I'm confused? Do we pick and choose which point we want to follow? As long as it is justified by the church?" [I think that's how religions work...]

And what about Ben Carson signing books on a Saturday? Is he going to hell annihilation for working on the Sabbath, or has God made a special dispensation for him so he can make money and become president?

The man's candidacy is a fucking joke. And, despite them coming out strongly for church-state separation, so is his culty church.

Mormons, Blood Atonement and the Separation of Church and State

In this country we are fortunate enough to have a miniature laboratory experiment in what can happen when the church and the state are commingled.

The state is Utah and the church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (popularly known as the Mormon church). No reasonable person can doubt the immense religious, social and political power that the Mormon Church wields over its members. Their actions in the 2008 Prop Hate debacle in California was enough to prove that ten times over.

Of course the "one true church" -- along with its poor benighted sock-puppets-of-god members -- is quick to disagree with that, preferring to give lip service to that whole "render unto Caesar..." thing in the New Testament, but an examination of their history and especially their "official" doctrine gives the lie to that position.

No less an authority than Mormon "apostle" (you don't get very much higher in the church hierarchy than being one of the Twelve Apostles) Bruce McConkie, in his monumental work Mormon Doctrine, says, in connection with a discussion on the Mormon doctrine of "blood atonement" (an antithetical-to-Christianity concept that there are some sins that the blood of Christ did not wash away and therefore the blood of the sinner must be shed -- which is why Utah remains the only state to administer its death penalty by firing squad), that the "...doctrine can only be practiced in its fullness in a day when the civil and ecclesiastical laws are administered in the same hands".

Got that? can only be practiced in its fullness in a day when the civil and ecclesiastical laws are administered in the same hands. No separation of church and state for those people, no sirree.
Utah's bizarrely arcane liquor laws were the laughingstock of the nation for years, but the Mormons were never big on banning booze outright. In fact, it was surprisingly the Utah legislature that cast the deciding vote to pass the 21st Amendment, thereby repealing Prohibition. The Mormons consider it a sin to drink alcohol, but that doesn't prohibit them from selling it to "gentiles" (i.e., any non-Mormon; even Jews are "gentiles" in the eyes of the Mormons).

It's an open secret in the state of Utah that the church is actually a "shadow government", and since upwards of 90% of the legislature consists of "worthy members of the church", how difficult is it really to pass -- or defeat -- legislation solely on the dictates of the inerrant "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" at the pinnacle of the church hierarchy?

And the Mormons see absolutely nothing wrong with that. They are the true believers who belong to the "one true church" (in Mormon doctrine, all other churches/religions -- even including all Christian churches -- are "apostate" and therefore without the blessings of god), and their church is of course set up in a facsimile Old Testament patriarchy, avoiding all that messy stuff that happens when people think for themselves. You know, like democracy and freedom and liberty...

In Utah we have a microcosm -- a living laboratory if you will -- of what can happen if we don't maintain that wall of separation. The only thing that's kept Utah from becoming an out-and-out theocracy is that pesky little Establishment Clause in the US Constitution and a Supreme Court that, for the most part, has ruled in support of it.

The Church of Latter Day H8te

Unsurprisingly, the Moron Mormon Church, aka "The Church of Latter Day Saints"(!), was in the Big Money behind the defeat of Prop 8 in California. As a result, today there was a demonstration totalling some 10,000 activists in front of the Mormon Church temple in ... New York City!!!???

Okay, I'm the first to admit total astonishment that the Morons Mormons even have one of their "temples" in the heart of Manhattan, but there it is.

Am I the only one who finds it just a little bit ironic that this cult church is coming out against so-called "gay" marriage, a cult church which, only a little over 100 years ago, had a "revelation" from god that their holy so-called "plural marriage" (i.e., polygamy), after being blessed by god and required for those who want to advance to the "Celestial Kingdom" was, all of a sudden, a big no-no?

A little historical fact on the church's prohibition of plural marriage: This "revelation" came about because the Territory of Utah wanted to become a full-fledged State, and the only way it could do it was to swear off that whole polygamy thing, which was anathema to the rest of the right-thinking Christian world.

That revelation pertained only to the secular law, and for many years afterward a large number of church leaders went underground and practiced their plural marriage anyway. This is historical fact, no matter how much the church today wants to put lipstick on that pig.

In fact, Mormon doctrine still, to this day, holds that so-called "celestial marriage" was instituted by god, and the only thing holding them back is that pesky revelation that curtailed it. In fact, Moron men even today can get themselves "sealed" in a temple ceremony to any number of willing women, which will guarantee to all of them, after shuffling off this mortal coil, a place at the table in the Celestial Kingdom.

And this is why so many of the the offshoots of Mormonism, such as the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints, home of wacked-out child-molester Warren Jeffs, not only practice but celebrate polygamy. According to Jeffs and the others of his ilk, the "official" church has been in apostasy after that famous revelation. And they do apparently have a case for believing that.

Anyway, back to reality. This church poured millions of dollars -- mostly through coercing its members in California and elsewhere to dig deep -- into defeating Proposition 8 in California.

Why? Because ironically they are pushing, of all things, a legal definition -- a legal dictum -- that "marriage" is limited to one man and one woman.

Okay, it's obvious that they don't really believe this, not deep down, so what's up with this unprecedented -- and probably unconstitutional -- battle?

My take on it is that they want their boy, The Mittster, Mitt Romney, to be the Rethug standard bearer in 2012, and this is groundwork to show that, hey, despite all you say, we in the Moron Church have been fundamentalist Christians all along.

Never mind all that crap you read about us not believing in the Trinity, about us doing baptisms for the dead (including those who don't want it, such as all of the Jewish victims of The Holocaust), and especially about us not displaying the Christian cross on our churches. We're just like you.

Oh, and there's also another point of Moron "prophecy" at play here: One of their "prophet, seer and revelators" claimed that the church will, in the Last Days (which we have been in, according to them, since 1836 or so), somehow "save" the US Constitution, which will be "hanging by a thread".

I agree that this thread is already there and it's unraveling. But the Morons are NOT going to be the ones to save it. Instead they're there among the rabble and mob, slashing away at it with machetes and blasting it with flame throwers.

10 Myths About the Separation of Church and State

There are ten standard myths concerning the concept and practice of Separation of Church and State in the United States. They are demonstrably false, and everyone ought to know this already, but it's always a good thing to take a "refresher course" and be reminded of them.

Here, briefly, are the ten major myths about the Separation of Church and State, promoted by the Religious Right. For an extended analysis and solid rebuttal of each of these points, please go to the Americans United for Separation of Church and State website and read Myths Debunked.

1. Separation of church and state isn’t found in the U.S. Constitution. Rather, it is a modern invention of the Supreme Court, a communist idea, something Nazis concocted, etc.
2. The United States was founded to be a Christian nation.
3. Separation of church and state was originally intended to merely bar the creation of a national church.
4. Most of the Founders were evangelical Christians and supported government promulgation of that mode of faith.
5. Mottos like “In God We Trust” on currency and “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance are evidence that separation of church and state was never intended.
6. Thanks to separation of church and state, kids can’t pray in public schools.
7. Separation of church and state fosters secularism, which drains religion of its vitality.
8. Separation of church and state means that government must be hostile to religion.
9. Most religious leaders don’t support separation of church and state.
10. Separation of church and state stifles the public voice and presence of religion.

These are myths -- no they are lies -- that are deliberately spread by the Religious Right, and they are harmful to the people who believe them, harmful to the communities where those people live, and harmful to the nation as a whole.

Here is the truth. Fight back!

Traveling Atheist Billboard Attacks Mormons

Over at CNN there's a story entitled Atheist billboard attacks Romney's faith, but Mormons say it's misleading.

The billboard says, simply, "No blacks allowed (until 1978); No gays allowed (current); Shame on Mormonism".

Naturally The One True Church is all in a lather about it:

"People are surely free to disagree with us on the facts," Dale Jones, a church spokesman, wrote in an e-mail to CNN. "This group seems not to know that there have been black members of the Church since our earliest history, and there are many faithful gay members of the Church today."

But that really doesn't tell the whole story, either. Black people were certainly not denied membership in the church. They were "only" denied the priesthood. Doesn't sound like it's such a big deal, except for the fact that the entire church is built on the patriarchal structure of the priesthood. Without having it conferred on you -- which is standard for every male member of the church -- you can't hold a church office, you can't be become a scout leader (and the Mormons are into scouting big time), you can't officiate at any church-related function, you can't bless the sacrament, you can't even bless your own children. All of these things are extremely important to the Mormons, and withholding the priesthood from the "unworthy" is, in fact, a Very Big Deal in the church.

And you have to wonder about the self-hating African-Americans who were willing to put up with this nonsense prior to 1978. Yeah, there may have been black Mormons prior to that time, but I'll bet they were few and far between.

I saw a group of black Mormons on The Daily Show last week, and one of them said, in defense of the church, that many churches exhibited overt racism in their history. Yeah, true enough, but does that really excuse the racism in the Mormon church that existed officially up until 1978?

1978. Think about it. That's so recent that it's barely history.

Mormons, Blood Atonement and the Separation of Church and State

In this country we are fortunate enough to have a miniature laboratory experiment in what can happen when the church and the state are commingled.

The state is Utah and the church is Mormon. No one can doubt the immense religious, social and political power that the Mormon Church wields over its members. Their actions in the recent Prop Hate debacle in California was enough to prove that ten times over.

Now the church -- along with its poor benighted sock-puppets-of-god members -- is quick to disagree with that, preferring to give lip service to that whole "render unto Caesar..." thing in the New Testament, but an examination of their history and especially their "official" doctrine gives the lie to that position.

No less an authority than Mormon "apostle" (you don't get very much higher in the church hierarchy than being one of the Twelve Apostles) Bruce McConkie, in his monumental work Mormon Doctrine, says, in connection with a discussion on the Mormon doctrine of "blood atonement" (an antithetical-to-Christianity concept that there are some sins that the blood of Christ did not wash away and therefore the blood of the sinner must be shed -- which is why Utah remains the only state to administer its death penalty by firing squad), that the "...doctrine can only be practiced in its fullness in a day when the civil and ecclesiastical laws are administered in the same hands".

Got that? can only be practiced in its fullness in a day when the civil and ecclesiastical laws are administered in the same hands. No separation of church and state for those people, no sirree.

Utah's bizarrely arcane liquor laws were the laughingstock of the nation for years, but the Mormons were never big on banning booze outright. In fact, it was surprisingly the Utah legislature that cast the deciding vote to pass the 21st Amendment, thereby repealing Prohibition. The Mormons consider it a sin to drink alcohol, but that doesn't prohibit them from selling it to "gentiles" (i.e., any non-Mormon).

It's an open secret in the state of Utah that the church is actually a "shadow government", and since upwards of 90% of the legislature consists of "worthy members of the church", how difficult is it really to pass -- or defeat -- legislation solely on the dictates of the inerrant "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" at the pinnacle of the church hierarchy?

And the Mormons see absolutely nothing wrong with that. They are the true believers who belong to the "one true church" (in Mormon doctrine, all other churches/religions -- even including all Christian churches -- are "apostate" and therefore without the blessings of god), and their church is of course set up in a facsimile Old Testament patriarchy, avoiding all that messy stuff that happens when people think for themselves. You know, like democracy and freedom and liberty...

In Utah we have a microcosm -- a living laboratory if you will -- of what can happen if we don't maintain that wall of separation. The only thing that's kept Utah from becoming an out-and-out theocracy is that pesky little Establishment Clause in the US Constitution and a Supreme Court that, for the most part, has ruled in support of it.

Do Mormons Still Believe in Polygamy?

A casual scan of the public face of Mormonism, as shown on their websites and through their many apologists, would indicate that they do not still believe in polygamy. Any more, they are very careful to try to cover up and hide the history of their polygamous past. That's understandable. It was polygamy that prevented Utah from becoming a state in the late 1880s, and the Federal Government had worked hard to disband the church by taking its assets and arresting many polygamous church leaders.

The issue of polygamy, understandably, was a Very Big Deal to the other Christians in the country -- it was seen as immoral, base, evil, irreligious, and generally just a nasty business all around. They said this even as they exhibited a morbid fascination with it. Because, you know, human nature...

Finally it came down to this: The church was going to have to stop the practice or face extinction and have its leaders spend years in prison. Plus Utah was not going to become a state -- and therefore it would miss out on the many monetary opportunities that statehood would provide.

So in 1890,  the "Prophet, Seer and Revelator of the Church", Wilford Woodruff, issued a manifesto that advised church members not to enter into any marriage "prohibited by the law of the land". That essentially ended all polygamous marriages -- but only the ones that had been planned. Existing church polygamists could still keep their wives intact, and most of them did. Several families stole away in the night to settle in Alberta, Canada, and across the Mexican border where they set up many Mormon colonies, including something called "Colonia Juárez" in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, in the totally mistaken belief that neither Mexico nor Canada had laws against polygamy. Mitt Romney's grandparents were in the group that went to Juarez, where his father, George, was born. In 1968 the question came up as to whether he was a Constitutionally-required "natural-born" citizen of the United States when he was a candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

The Mormon Fundamentalist movement said that Woodruff got no such revelation and was therefore a "false prophet" -- anathema to Mormons -- and they split off from the One True Church, and eventually splintered into several offshoots, the most noteworthy of them being the one headed by the notorious Warren Jeffs.

Later on, though, the pre-manifesto marriages to multiple wives had to stop as well. The church members, who always choose to follow the "Prophet", had divested themselves of the supernumerary wives, mostly by attrition, by the end of the first decade of the 20th Century, and the church joined the rest of society on the "one woman one man" bandwagon. To the point that it became Holy Writ  by the time they were campaigning for the passage of Proposition 8 outlawing gay marriage in Califormia -- "It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!"

But, since the Prophet did not issue this as a "divine revelation" but rather as a "manifesto", the question remains as to whether The Lord commanded it, or did he just make it as a suggestion. None of the passages in the Doctrine and Covenants, LDS scripture authored by Joseph Smith himself, were altered to remove the whole "plural marriage" revelations by The Prophet in the 1830s. But True Believers naturally think that their Prophet is more infallible than the Pope, and many took the manifesto as though it were a new commandment.

But polygamy still exists in the church in a weird kind of way. In order to get into the top tier of Heaven (the "Celestial Kingdom") a person has to be married. And not just married -- they have to be "sealed" together in a Mormon Temple so that they will be husband and wife not only here on earth but also for "time and all eternity". Those who do not receive this "sealing" will not get to go. Sorry.

But there is a loophole. A man who is already on his way there (i.e., a good Mormon who obeys the commandments, upholds The Prophet and the General Authorities, exalts Joseph Smith, and has already been sealed to one wife) can, out of the goodness of his heart (or for a monetary consideration), take on many more women to be sealed to him. By the time he gets to the Celestial Kingdom, he can have a virtual harem of women who are his "wives". Of course those women also have to be good Mormons -- not just any Jane Doe/Street Ho will do. Usually these are women who didn't manage to snag a husband while they were trying to get their MRS degree at BYU, or women who married shiftless "Gentile" (i.e., not Mormon) louts outside the church, etc. Weirdly, woman can also get themselves "sealed" to a man who is already dead (well, the Mormons baptize for the dead anyway; why not get them married off as well? It's not like they are going to complain about it...).

And that still sounds a lot like polygamy to me. It just happens on a different plane.

I am not making this up. And I wonder if I am on that Mormon blacklist yet.

BTW, if you are a Mormon who is questioning your continued belief in the church, you don't have to suffer your spiritual crisis alone. There are people over at PostMormon.org who can help you.  Drop by and see what they have to offer.

Religion, Race and the Old Double Standard

Andrew Sullivan, although I think he can be a bit of a dick at times, usually has some interesting stuff to say about politics. And this week at The Daily Beast, he's hit one out of the park:

Imagine for a moment that Barack Obama had never attended Jeremiah Wright's church in Chicago and had decided to attend services, and proselytize for, a black separatist, nationalist church that refused to allow whites to participate in crucial religious services because white people had been condemned by God for their iniquity in the ancient past and had been for ever marked white so black Americans would know instantly to keep their distance. In fact, the definition of white in this black supremacist church was just one drop of white blood in a black person. It was Nazi-like in its racist precision and exclusion. Whites were denied the rites that made a person a full member of the church. Even blacks with a tiny strain of white DNA were kept from full participation.
Imagine further that backing this racist church was not a youthful folly on Obama's part, but a profound commitment - that he went on a mission abroad to convert Christians to a new religion based on black racial supremacy, and has often said that the most important thing in his entire life to this day is a church whose sacred scripture declares white people to be cursed by God for their past sins - and the sign of this curse is their white skin.
A simple question: Do you think this issue would not come up in a general election or a primary? If Obama was subjected to news cycle after news cycle of clips of Obama's actual former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, can you imagine the outrage if Obama had actually been a part of a black supremacist church - that denied whites equal access to the sacraments - for over a decade in his adult life?

Well, a little role reversal, a little whitewashing of images, and voilá, may I present Mitt Romney, lifetime member of the long-time white-supremacist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints -- Mormon, for short.

Go ahead and finish the whole story for a complete look at Bishop Romney and his church. We can't afford to have this guy as president.

Mormon Missionaries

A ring at my doorbell yesterday reminded me that I haven't railed against Mormons since shortly after the last presidential election.

That's no way for me to get myself onto that infamous Mormon Blacklist. I'll have to work harder.

Which brings us to today's topic: Mormon missionaries. For years the streets have been peppered with earnest young men with fresh-scrubbed faces, short-clipped hair and no facial hair (a HUGE no-no), riding bicycles in the white shirts and ties in all kinds of weather, knocking on your door to bring you The Word. Well, actually a lot of words, most of them gibberish once they got past their basic memorized spiel and you started asking them some tough questions.

Such as this: "You say that The Book of Mormon is a historical record of the tribes of Indians that originally came across the Pacific, from Israel(!), in closed boats a thousand years before Columbus, right? Well answer me this question -- the Book of Mormon is full of references to things like camels, horses, elephants, pigs, cows, etc. [and not just animals; there's actually quite a list of impossible anachronisms in the BOM, things of which there is no historical or archeological records of prior to 1492] so where did they all go -- there is absolutely zero evidence for them in any anthropological/geological/archeological studies anywhere? [Outside the confines of church educational institutions, anyway]"

They would usually mumble something about all things being possible with god and shamble away.

I kind of feel bad for doing this, but for a long time it kept them away from my door. I think they must use secret signs, like hobos used to use, to mark my house.

Then when they started coming around again a few years later, they were able to produce some mealy-mouth type of rationalization handed down from the Brethren (i.e., Church honchos), that the Israelites who landed here did not have words for the animals, etc., they saw and applied the name of the animals they knew already to the strangers who looked like them. Okay, that's not bad, and for the sake of discussion I am willing to stipulate that they were actually that stupid and unobservant and unimaginative.

So then I ask them: "You say that the American Indians are descended from the original settlers from Israel who came here around 600 BC, who were once a 'white and delightsome people' until they angered God and he smote them with a darker shade of skin? And when they finally proved they could follow all of god's commandments and precepts, they would turn back into a 'white and delightsome people' again. Then why is it that not a single trace of DNA from the Middle East shows up in the cells of any Native Americans?"

The way they explained that away is kind of creative, even if they had to go against what had been until very recently their entire core of beliefs and their church history to do it. "Nobody ever said that ALL of the Indians were descended from the immigrants [fact: just a few years ago they were claiming exactly that]. The Indians were already here when they landed." Not what it says in the BOM. Sorry. Still, that shook 'em up a bit more and they stayed away again.

And then after a while they came back. Okay, I said. "Now explain to me why your church was racist against black people until 1978."

Blank stare. And at that point I knew that these two hadn't even been born when the curse of black skin was lifted off of the sons of Cain and his grandson Ham, and had never heard of the Mormon doctrine concerning blacks and had never heard of the iron-clad pronouncements of Demigod Brigham Young and his successors to the post of Prophet, Seer and Revelator of the One True Church. All of those grand old -- and white -- prophets had said that black people could not have the full fellowship of the church and could not hold The Priesthood. Not in this life. That sounds like a minor thing, until you realize that every male member of the church, except the ones who were black, held the priesthood, and there was no way anyone could advance in the church without this priesthood. It even extended to the Boy Scouts (the Mormons were and still are big into Scouting) and aspiring Scouts had to show their progression through the three ranks of the "lower" priesthood even as they advanced from Tenderfoot to Second Class to First Class and onward...

"I don't think that's true," the taller one said, a bit hesitatingly I thought.

"Go study up on it and then come back and explain it to me then," I said.

Well, that kept them away for another long time, and just when I thought I'd gotten the permanent "stay away from this guy" hobo marking in front of the driveway or on the mailbox, two more showed up yesterday.

And these two were girls. Young, cute, wide-eyed fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds just exuding pious innocence out of their very pores. Working the mean streets of suburbia after dark. Jeez, when did the Mormons start sending out girl missionaries? They were bubbly and perky and delighted to spend a couple of years working in the mission field to seduce people into the bonds arms of The One True Church.

Turns out it was kind of smart move, since I actually felt sorry for them -- they could have been my granddaughters who are about that age -- and if I had started snarking out on them with some impossible questions to make them think and thereby ruining their week, it just would have felt mean. I just said I wasn't interested.

"Well, can we do anything for you?" the blonde said in a perky valley-girl voice.

"Like take your garbage out," the other one, a brunette, said. "We'd love to take your garbage out."

Take my garbage out? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

"No, that's all right," I said. "Thanks for stopping by, but I'm really and truly not interested."

We parted on friendly terms, and they haven't come back yet. But it's only been a day, after all. But when they do, I will be ready for them this time: "I'd love to be able invite you in to talk to you, but there's still a restraining order in effect from the last time I invited a teenage girl in, and besides that, I have been excommunicated from The Church for adultery, apostasy and sodomy."

That ought to do it.

Oh, and any Mormons who are reading this and who are questioning their faith, you don't have to suffer your spiritual crisis all by yourself. Drop by PostMormon.org and they will help you. You don't have to do it alone.

Is Mitt Romney an "Anchor Baby"?

I had forgotten until the other day that Romney's father, George, an erstwhile 1968 presidential candidate himself, was not actually born in the United States. Instead he was born in the Mormon Colonies in Northern Mexico where his father had fled from Utah, taking his several wives with him, rather than be subjected to the new law forbidding polygamy in Utah. Seemed Utah wanted to become a state so bad that it was willing to persecute members of its own church who had up to then sincerely been following the Word of God...

It turns out that the church elders and their multiple wives were still legally married in the eyes of the Mormon Church, but were lawbreakers in the United States after the church government kowtowed to the rest of the monogynous country and called off what had been held up to that time as an irreversible tenet -- a central "Doctrine" of their belief system.

Ask any Mormon today and he or she will tell you that the church outlawed polygamy oh so many years ago. Not true. The nation outlawed it and the church went along with that and advised all those in plural marriages had to stop it (wink wink). At that a number of Mormon extended families fled the United States and established a series of agricultural colonies in Mexico, all of them within two hundred miles of the US border, where a pliant Mexican government, glad to have all the industrious and hard working Mormons who came with a penchant for making deserts bloom with food and cash crops, allowed them to stay and to flourish while the government at the time basically looked the other way.

At least up until the Mexican Revolution of 1912, with its antireligious tones and tirades, made it too hot for them there and they had to, for the most part, escape back into the US.

So if Old George Romney was born in Mexico and then came to the United States, where the Mittster was born, doesn't that make him Mitt of those so-called "anchor babies" that the right wing keeps fuming about?

Is anyone going to bring that up? And have we ever seen Mitt's own birth certificate? And how do we know that he wasn't born in Mexico himself?

Hey, fair's fair. If Orly Taitz can work herself into a lacquered lather over Barack Obama's real birth certificate, why can't she give Romney the same treatment.

Oh, and that whole polygamy thing with Mormons in general? They still believe in it but are enjoined by the church from practicing it (this is why so many offshoots of the Mormon Church exist, chief among them the notorious Fundamentalst Latter Day Saints, late of serial child molester Warren Jeffs fame), they still believe that no one gets into the highest level of Heaven (there are three in total) without entering into plural marriages, and single women who can't find a husband here on earth can have herself "sealed" -- in a special temple rite, by proxy of course -- to old dead guys who were Mormon Royalty themselves when they were alive, thereby getting to skip the line and get immediately into the Good One. And only those who get into the Good One have the opportunity to get promoted as it were, and to become gods themselves where they can create and rule over their own planets...

I am not making this up. Check it out for yourself and see if I am right.

Governor, You're No Jack Kennedy

In a now-famous speech he gave in the 1960 presidential campaign, JFK said he believed in the absolute separation of church and state. Watch it.

Mittens Romney has tried mightily to cover himself with that JFK cloak, but it really hasn't worked. Vanity Fair has a terrific article entitled When Mormons Go to Washington, giving a history lesson on what happens when members of the Mormon church go to Washington. It isn't a pretty sight.

For not yielding to the wishes of the L.D.S. Church, in 1965, Mormon Congressman Kenneth W. Dyal said he received “abuse, threats, blackmail and vicious attacks on my integrity from corporations, church members and their leaders.” It was perhaps for this reason that resisting the Church was not common.
. . .
From 1851 to 1869, more than 99 percent of Mormon voters supported Church-approved candidates in all but one election. In that year, nearly 96 percent voted for the candidates selected by the L.D.S. president. From 1851 to 1877, there were only three non-unanimous votes in Utah’s House of Representatives, occurring once in 1851, once in 1855, and once in 1861. During the same 26 years, the Utah Legislature’s upper chamber voted unanimously on every motion and bill except for three dissenting votes on different days in 1852.
... the First Presidency consistently favored the Republican Party after 1890 and tried to restrain devout Mormons who were Democrats. The Mormon rank and file obediently fell in line, and today 70 percent of Mormons identify themselves as Republican or Republican-leaning, while only 19 percent say they are Democrats.

There's plenty more and it's all interesting reading. Can we really believe that the so-called General Authorities of the church will take a totally hands-off approach to a president who also a member of their church? I don't think so.

Elder Big Brother is Watching You

I haven't kicked around my favorite nutjob religion in quite a while, but here's something I ran across that I just couldn't keep to myself.

The Mormon church has something it calls the Strengthening Church Members Committee. Its sole function, as I understand it, is to monitor books, magazines, interviews, letters to the editor, etc., for evidence of church members who are bold enough to publicly question the One True Church and its leaders, specifically the "prophet, seer and relevator". Once Elder Big Brother identifies the guilty individual, he or she is handed over to local church authorities for remedial action, which can include anything up to "disfellowship" or out-and-out excommunication.

BTW, did you get that Orwellian name? Strengthening Church Members? Call me crazy, but I don't consider having someone look over my shoulder and examine my writing for impure thoughts or treason against the church (i.e., criticizing the authhorities) as strengthening. I call it weird and creepy.

But it's been kind of an open secret for years amongst the Mormons themselves -- the most obsessive record-keepers of all religions -- that there is a secret vault hidden in the deep granite recesses of the Wasatch Range wherein is kept a record of every single slander, libel, complaint, criticism, etc., ever leveled against the church.

And come Judgment Day, people like me will have all of our writings, blog posts, letters to the editor, etc., waved in our faces. Right before we get on that cosmic train bound for the Outer Darkness (It's my understanding that Mormons don't really believe in "hell". The damned are just sent off for an eternal journey in darkness; bad enough, but it sure beats roasting on a spit over a bed of hot coals while demons probe you with pitchforks...)

Church of Reality Challenges other Religions on Morality

Church of Reality Press Release 3-10-06:

The Church of Reality today issues a challenge to other religions on the issue of ethics and morality. We live in a world where the hatred among religions grows daily between Christianity and Islam and the time has come to put a stop to it. Both sides claiming the superior moral position and to represent the word of God while taking up arms and going to war with no concern for the costs to civilization and the future of the human race. Both religions claim divine inspiration from the same source but as an outside observer we do not see it. We believe that what you do represents what you believe and if you are dishonest and you are violent then that is what you are and that is what you believe.

Both religions claim to be a religion of peace yet neither side has not the will nor the divine inspiration to make peace happen. If your religions truly have divine inspiration and guidance then one can only conclude that your gods are failures. On the other hand if your gods actually do represent love and peace then your religions do disservice to your creator.

It is logical therefore t assume that the superior religion would be the one who wins based upon the nature of the gods that you believe in. Therefore our challenge is, show us your God through you and show you are the true voice of the master by winning through peace and not by war. According to your own holy books when you turn to war over peace and when you put hate before love you are violating the very core principles that you claim that God stands for. Therefore you can not win a religious war by doing the opposite of what you claim God wants you to do.

We in the Church of Reality are Atheists. We look at your behavior and we conclude that if a God does exist that you are not in touch with it. We are committed to believing in whatever is real. We would believe in God if God were real. Your religions claim that you have a personal relationship with God and that you communicate with God directly and that God transforms you into something that reflects its nature. So we say, show us the fruits of that transformation. We ask you if your God is powerful enough to erase the hatred from your heart and to bring peace through each of you and to stop the violence. If your God is so weak that his followers can't stop killing, then you aren't going to convert and Realists to your religions.

We in the Church of Reality also believe, "By their fruits you shall know them." So if you are filled with the spirit of the Lord then lets see if you can shine the light of God's peace and love and end the wars.

Marc Perkel
First One
Church of Reality
marc@perkel.com
866-666-3211

I, your humble bloghost Farnsworth, am proud to be a proselyte of the Church of Reality. If you are also a member of the reality-based community, please consider joining us.

Westboro Church's 'Surreal' Day in Court

Over at The Atlantic, Garrett Epps writes about his take on the SCOTUS appearance the other day of the attorneys arguing the Westboro Baptist "Church" and its pending lawsuit by the father of one of the soldiers whose funeral was disrupted by the "God Hates Fags" rantings of some devout Christian "church" members:

More often than one would expect, oral argument in front of the Supreme Court resembles a Celebrity Deathmatch between Lionel Hutz of The Simpsons and Ned Racine of Body Heat. Lawyers with no Supreme Court experience sometimes insist on going to the Show. The result can be a halting hour of argument that sometimes resembles the 1945 World Series, between two teams so war-depleted that sportswriter Warren Brown said, "I don't think either one of them can win it."
In Wednesday's high-profile argument in Snyder v. Phelps, two inexperienced pilots sailed into a legal Bermuda Triangle, where the compasses no longer pointed to magnetic North. It's possible that, once it recovers its wits, the Court will put this case in order; but in the courtroom at least, what seemed at 10 a.m. like a sure thing had become by 11 a.m. a head-scratcher.
. . .
The most logical course for the Court would have been to leave this stinker alone. There's no groundswell of tort actions like this; instead, the reaction in most states has centered on new statutes barring disruption of a funeral. Most of those laws would allow demonstrators considerably nearer the funeral than the WBC pickets ever got. Time enough to test them when a proper case arose. Just last term, the Court had reaffirmed a broad reading of the First Amendment in a much less sympathetic case, United States v. Stevens, which held that videos of animals being killed were, in some cases, protected speech.
But the Court granted cert., and it heard an hour of argument from Sean Summers, a York, PA., lawyer who has represented Mr. Snyder pro bono, and from the soon-to-be-legendary Margie Phelps, a Kansas lawyer who is the daughter of the Church's pastor, Fred Phelps. By the end, the Justices' comments gave the eerie impression that Margie Phelps might have singlehandedly managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of a seemingly all-but-sure victory.
. . .
Then it was Margie Phelps's turn. She looks a lot like someone who would come to your door selling tracts during the baseball playoffs, and her grim, whispery monotone is what I imagine Norman Bates's mother sounded like.
None of that should have mattered; a competent second-year law student could have handled it. One would simply concede that Mr. Snyder is a private person. The issue is the kind of speech. The WBC's speech, disagreeable though it might be to the majority, was aimed at issues of American social and military policy. This kind of speech is fully protected by the First Amendment. Nothing in WBC's signs was directed at Matthew or Albert Snyder personally. Church members never approached the funeral or tried to disrupt it with noise; they did not interact with Mr. Snyder, who never even saw the signs until he read news reports; the "epic" was not sent to Mr. Snyder, simply published on the Internet. Under these circumstances, letting a jury assess a multimillion-dollar verdict is plainly permitting punishment for a distasteful message on a question of public importance. The Snyders' pain is the kind of pain free speech requires us to bear.
Thank you. Sit down.
But Margie Phelps spent most of her time arguing that Mr. Snyder is a public figure because he and his family had spoken to the news media about their grief for their dead son and their horror at the war in which he died. All he had to do was keep absolutely quiet. By making any public comment after Matthew's death, they became fair game for WBC. Over and over the Justices suggested, asked, begged her to assume that Mr. Snyder was not a public figure. Please, they seemed to be saying, we're not buying it, give us some other reason to vote for you. Over and over she refused."They step[ped] into a public discussion," she said.
They had it coming.

As far as this case goes, I think Epps is right in his/her judgment that this was a bad case from the get-go and the Supremes should never have taken it on. As the old saying goes, "bad cases make for bad laws" when it comes to SCOTUS.

That said, I am pretty much an absolutist when it comes to free speech (remember the Skokie case, where the American Nazi Party sued to be allowed to march in Skokie IL, and the ACLU took on the case as a free speech issue? It cost the ACLU a lot of members who resigned in outrage, but I was not one of them.

The actions of the "Christianists" in the military funerals they picket is reprehensible, but it is still protected speech.

But rights are always in conflict -- at least that's the way it should be in a democratic society -- and it's a balancing act to uphold free speech rights for someone while at the same time upholding privacy rights for someone else.

I think that, despite the obvious grandstanding by the Phelps girl, the decision will come down on the rights of free speech. Which is kind of too bad, since the "church" thrives on publicity, and little Margie will be catapulted into her 15 minutes of fame.

All in all, it is a stinker, as the author says, and we would have been better served if they refused cert and let it alone. Attacking state laws on disrupting funerals would have made better case law.

----

[HT to my buddy Jae over at Jae's Sea for emailing me this story.]

Is Romney the "White Horse" of Mormon Prophecy?

This one has a long pedigree. Way back in 1843 Joseph Smith, the original "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" of the Mormon Church, may have given a prophecy that someday the Mormons "will go to the Rocky Mountains and will be a great and mighty people established there, which I will call the White Horse of peace and safety." Adding that "I shall never go there" and predicting continued persecution by enemies of the church, Smith reportedly said that "You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber.... I love the Constitution; it was made by the inspiration of God; and it will be preserved and saved by the efforts of the White Horse, and by the Red Horse who will combine in its defense." BTW, the identity of that Red Horse is not stated in the prophecy, but it's a small stretch to see it as a reference to the "Lamanites" -- Native Americans who are left over remnants of a great Jewish(!) civilization in North America whose skin was cursed to darkness at some point.

I say "may have given" because the person to whom he spoke it, John Roberts of Utah, didn't bother to write it down until 1902. For those of you who were home schooled, that is a full 59 years after the fact. That's kind of a long time to keep the words of the Prophet to yourself.

Nevertheless, the prophecy itself has clung on stubbornly in Mormon thought, even though various authority figures in the church have never really adopted it as doctrine, never as being fully the word of the Prophet. Whenever a Mormon politician comes onto the national stage, though, the faithful among the Saints -- most of whom still believe in it despite the lack of support by the church -- try to adapt the prophecy to the politician. The George Romney of 1968 had been the White Horse candidate until he crashed and burned, and now  his son Willard Mitt is the one who carries the burden of the White Horse. Now that it's Mitt's, he's shrugging it off as "not church doctrine". But since he and the Mormons want nothing more than to establish a Mormon theocracy in this country, it has to be on his mind. What better way to do it than over some sham "constitutional crisis" wherein the constitution is "hanging by a thread"? After all, Glenn Beck (Mormon) says that it is already.

Well, let's keep Romney and Beck and their co-religionists guessing whether he's the White Horse or not for another four years. Defeat Romney, re-elect Obama, and let the prophecy swim snugly in the stew of Mormonism a little while longer.

(See White Horse Prophecy on Wikipedia for more details.)

Think a Conjoined Church and State is a Good Idea?

Really? Well, this is one of those "be careful what you ask for because you just might get it" questions. Let's take a look at the last time this happened in the traditions of "Western Civilization".

Although a bunch of wingnut Koolaid drinkers have gone to some length to try to deny it, you don't have to look any farther than Nazi Germany for proof that the melding of church and state is never a good idea.

Take a look at the photographs on this page for a stark visual reminder of what can happen when the church and the state get into bed together.

Not convinced by a bunch of photographs? How about taking a look at the scholarly study, Theologians Under Hitler by Robert P. Ericksen PhD, or, for those with a short attention span, check out the DVD of the same title. The premise of the book and the film is that even the most reputable and "normal" theologians can readily accommodate themselves to the banality of evil and see the attractiveness of a church-state combination.

The right wing can try to weasel out of this all they want, but facts are facts and their denials are Just. Fucking. Wrong!

Okay, I hear you saying, but that was Germany, and they are among the "others". So you want an example in an English-speaking context? How about Oliver Cromwell and his attempts to establish a Protestant theocracy in England after his Roundheads overthrew -- and chopped the head off of -- the English king, Charles I. His genocidal activities against the Irish Catholics are still highly resented in the Irish Republic and among Irish descendants world wide.

Our best and last hope to prevent this in the US lies in organizations such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. I am proud to be a member of AU. Please consider joining us, so you can help us make our collective voices heard.

Remember: The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

[Originally published on Sunday, January 27, 2008]

Hey, I'm the Victim Here!

This is from our "Are You Fucking Kidding Me?" file. I mean really, my fucking jaw dropped when I read this shit.

Turns out that I, along with the whole Farnsworth clan, are victims of the slavery system. Yes, that's right. Because my great-great-great-etc. grandfather, Rufus Leeking Farnsworth, owned slaves (jeez, after all, we came out of the "shallow south", i.e., Tennessee and Arkansas), then according to Glenn The Beckster's guru, one W. Cleon Skousen, it was the slave owners who suffered the most from slavery, and NOT the slaves!

Well, in words of Jane Ace, you coulda knocked me over with a fender!

Oh, and BTW, I do need to add that, in addition to his membership in the John Birch Society and other extremist rightwing organizations, that Skousen was also a Mormon. The same church that our Beckster, evidently coming down from a hangover of monumental proportions, joined and now crows about with the stereotypical zeal of the convert.

Over at Media Matters, you can read an in-depth analysis of the weirdness that is Skousen -- and of course, by extension, Glenn Beck himself.

I used to think that the Beckster, along with his moronic cohorts like Limpdick and Slanthead and mAnn Coulter, couldn't possibly believe the crap that they were spewing out on the peoples' airwaves. That the gurus recognized that they were nothing more than entertainers who gave their audience what they wanted...

But that was before I learned that Beck was a Mormon convert. And anyone that can even entertain the remote possibility that Joseph Smith was a "prophet, seer and revelator", chosen by god himself, is someone that will believe pretty much anything: Up is down, black is white, left is right, day is night ... the list is endless, but if the current "prophet, seer and revelator" of the church dictates it, then the true believer (in other words, the theologically retarded challenged) will have to parrot the new party line, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

I am not making this shit up. It's true. I have had the occasion to know personally a number of Mormons over the years, and when The One True Church finally, if belatedly, recognized in the mid-1970s that they were being racist and changed the rules on African-American membership in The One True Church, many of them were privately disgruntled (racist as they were and pretty much still remain) but publicly extolled the virtues of the "prophet, seer and revelator" by having a new "revelation from god" that absolutely contradicted every other "revelation" about the "Negro Problem" that any previous "prophet, seer and revelator" at the head of the church had dictated. Which included the whole "curse of Cain" crap from a theology that went out of favor -- and credibility -- about the time of the First Crusade.

So back to my ancestor the slaveholder. I'll bet that Grampa Farnsworth is resting easy in his grave these days. Despite the fact that he actually enlisted and fought for the confederacy, lost a leg in the process, and ended up in the so-called "Indian Nation" (aka Oklahoma) where he found a bride among the Cherokees and spawned a progeny that includes me, the most liberal of the Farnsworth dynasty, he should be happy that we are all, to this very day, among the uncounted white victims of slavery...

Think a Conjoined Church and State is a Good Idea?

Really? Well, this is one of those "be careful what you ask for because you just might get it" questions. Let's take a look at the last time this happened in the traditions of "Western Civilization".

Although a bunch of wingnut Koolaid drinkers have gone to some length to try to deny it, you don't have to look any farther than Nazi Germany for proof that the melding of church and state is never a good idea.

Take a look at the photographs on this page for a stark visual reminder of what can happen when the church and the state get into bed together.

Not convinced by a bunch of photographs? How about taking a look at the scholarly study, Theologians Under Hitler by Robert P. Ericksen PhD, or, for those with a short attention span, check out the DVD of the same title. The premise of the book and the film is that even the most reputable and "normal" theologians can readily accommodate themselves to the banality of evil and see the attractiveness of a church-state combination.

The right wing can try to weasel out of this all they want, but facts are facts and their denials are Just. Fucking. Wrong!

Okay, I hear you saying, but that was Germany, and they are among the "others". So you want an example in an English-speaking context? How about Oliver Cromwell and his attempts to establish a Protestant theocracy in England after his Roundheads overthrew -- and chopped the head off of -- the English king, Charles I. His genocidal activities against the Irish Catholics are still highly resented in the Irish Republic and among Irish descendants world wide.

Our best and last hope to prevent this in the US lies in organizations such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. I am proud to be a member of AU. Please consider joining us, so you can help us make our collective voices heard.

Remember: The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Romney and Theocracy

Just so you  know, here's a commentary from a former "saint":

Growing up in a devout Latter-Day Saint (Mormon) family in a suburb of Salt Lake City, I knew my religion as well as my name. My mom played the organ in a Mormon temple, I was a Boy Scout, and there was rarely a Sunday when we would miss church. Praying at least three times daily and studying the Book of Mormon were as essential as brushing our teeth or making dinner.
For the first time in American history a Mormon is the presidential nominee for a major political party. And while the Romney campaign has swiftly dismissed questions about his religion as inappropriate and irrelevant, it may seem that much of the media have tiptoed around this topic and have discussed the LDS church in glossy, broad terms. But here's why Mr. Romney's religion is relevant: For Mormons, there really is no such thing as separation of church and state.

The money shot:  "For Mormons, there really is no such thing as separation of church and state".

And there you have it. Everything you need to know when it comes to casting your vote. Read the whole story to get a "testimony" from an insider about what the Morons Mormons are all about.

No separation of church and state for these folks. No sireee!

The Most Important Anniversary You Never Heard Of

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the US Supreme Court's Everson v. Board of Education decision, wherein something unique and, viewed from today's vantage, rather strange happened.

The entire court, while splitting 5-4 on the merits of Everson, came together to enunciate -- unanimously -- the following position on the Establishment Clause of the US Constitition:

The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation' between Church and State.

And there you have it, in stark black and white: The entire US Supreme Court, liberal and conservative alike, in complete agreement that there is, in fact, a "wall of separation" between church and state.

Remember that the next time one of your fundo Xian buddies starts yapping about putting "god" back in government and misrepresenting the "intent of the framers" about whether this is a nation founded on religion.

It's startling -- and alarming -- to realize how far we have drifted away from what used to be settled case law, and how fragile that wall of separation has become with the recent rash of Scalia-clone Supreme Court justices.