Archive for the 'Religious nuts' Category

Another 20-year-old who thinks he’s got it all figured out

Published at November 23, 2007 in Lousy hypocrites, Religious nuts, Pantysniffing, Woman-Hating and Dipshittery. 16 Comments

Time to create a “fuckwit college columnists” tag. Because, really, who deserves it more than Ryan Haecker, writing for the Daily Texan?

Ryan certainly starts with a bang:

Dresses epitomize womanhood in the Western world.

Grab the popcorn, kids! There’s gonna be a show!

Such has been the case since the western man adopted pants to replace the tunic in the sixth century (an aspect of the West’s Germanic barbarian heritage). Dresses allow us to differentiate between the silhouettes of men and women on restroom signs. Dresses are the indelible image of womanhood because of the symbolic nature of pants and dresses. If all fashions are symbolic, dresses in particular symbolize womanhood by more fully embodying the ideal of a true lady, the objective understanding of what men find attractive in the fairer sex: passivity, domesticity, childrearing, coital love, piety and fertility. These defining aspects of womanhood are immutable. We all tacitly reaffirm these attributes in our attempts to find a partner. Flirtation and courtship are reaffirmations of what it means to be masculine and feminine because it is only by fulfilling the obligation of our form that we can attract the opposite sex.

Wow. Just…wow.

Dresses are the epitome of womanhood because they allow us to differentiate between the silhouettes of men and women on restroom signs. That’s deep, man.

Really, you have to love a guy who switches from immutability to change back to immutability all within a couple of sentences. Dresses have been the epitome of womanhood, but only since the sixth century. Yet they’re an immutable sign of femininity, because pants — which have only been around since the sixth century — are an immutable sign of masculinity. Dresses symbolize fucking and piety all at the same time — maybe nun’s habits get this guy hot.

But that last sentence really amuses me. Let’s see it again:

Flirtation and courtship are reaffirmations of what it means to be masculine and feminine because it is only by fulfilling the obligation of our form that we can attract the opposite sex.

I dunno about you, but I can flirt just fine in pants. But this whole “obligations of our form” business makes me chuckle — because I can’t help thinking of that scene in The King and I where the children of the court keep trying to look up Anna’s dress because they think English women must be shaped like their dresses since they don’t wear pants like other women.

You might say these things were once true but times have changed. Not so. The nature of sexual attractiveness in women is objective, immutable and incontrovertible because it is directly related to the constant and unchanging physiology of men and women. What men find attractive in women is fixed because the physiology of humanity has been relatively unchanged. In this way, the ideal form of femininity is also unchangeable and without regard for cultural context or time period. What men find attractive in women - the form of a true lady - is objectively identifiable, just as it was in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. In short, femininity is sexy, and sexy is timeless and universal.

Um, Ryan? Women’s bodies may very well be the same as they’ve ever been, but it doesn’t follow that a) what men find attractive in women is immutable and unchanging; or b) that therefore dresses are the only thing that’s feminine and/or sexy. Because, as you’ve stated in paragraph 1, in the West, there’s only been a pants/dresses distinction since the sixth century, and even if you’re a Young Earth Creationist, that’s just a drop in the bucket, history-wise.
Like all opinion pieces, there must be someone whose opinion Ryan is implicitly if not outright refuting — the villain of the story, so to speak. And this is where he busts out the villain. Who could it be?

Wait for it…. wait for it….

What’s not sexy is feminism (not to be confused with femininity), which is directly responsible for the disappearance of our beloved dresses and the adoption of pants by the “new woman.”

That’s right! You can blame ANYTHING on feminism! Continue reading ‘Another 20-year-old who thinks he’s got it all figured out’

If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Except, well, when nobody can figure out whether you should do the time to begin with.

Published at July 31, 2007 in Hear me roar, Lousy hypocrites, Religious nuts, Political theater, Delusion and Dipshittery. 2 Comments

Jill’s on fire today, asking pro-lifers some very pointed questions. In fact, the same questions that were asked in this video [now located here, because YouTube took down the one I’d embedded], which inspired the Anna Quindlen column Jill’s responding to:

I know there are at least a few regular readers who self-identify as “pro-life.” So here’s a question for you: How much time should she do?
One goal of the anti-choice movement is to outlaw abortion. But, as Anna Quindlen points out, anti-choice activists are almost never able to identify what the legal consequences should be for women who terminate their pregnancies. So, pro-lifers, tell me: What should the penalty be? How much time in jail should a woman face for abortion? . . .

Continue reading ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Except, well, when nobody can figure out whether you should do the time to begin with.’

Terms I never want to hear again

Published at July 29, 2007 in Lousy hypocrites, Religious nuts, Political theater and Dipshittery. 7 Comments

“Flag desecration” and “sanctity of marriage.” I’d also like to see a ban on using “football field” as a unit of measure, but I’m kind of a dreamer.

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From Dahlia Lithwick’s piece:

Do you want to know what’s destroying the sanctity of marriage? Phone messages like the ones we’d get at my old divorce firm in Reno, Nev., left on Saturday mornings and picked up on Monday: “Beeep. Hi? My name is Misty and I think I maybe got married last night. Could someone call me back and tell me if I could get an annulment? I’m at Circus Circus? Room—honey what room is this—oh yeah. Room 407. Thank you. Beeep.”

It just doesn’t get much more sacred than that.

The idea that the government is involved in something “sacred,” and that it is this “sanctity” that justifies the denial of equal rights to marry, really rubs me the wrong way. After all, marriage, as far as the state is concerned, is a bundle of rights and responsibilities. Churches may see marriage as a sacred union of two souls — the Catholic Church treats it as a sacrament — but there’s a reason the priest invokes the power of the state when solemnizing the marriage — without it, the marriage has no legal effect. But you can hit a drive-through wedding chapel and have exactly the same effect.
Then there’s “flag desecration” — again, resting on the idea that the flag, in and of itself, is a sacred object. And the fun part is that the people who are most upset by “desecration” of the flag seem to have the least regard for the ideals which the flag is supposed to represent. Such as free speech: Continue reading ‘Terms I never want to hear again’

Revealing quote of the week

Published at July 27, 2007 in Religious nuts, Pantysniffing, Sex miseducation and Dipshittery. 8 Comments
Conservatism teaches that individuals are not inherently good and so must be carefully civilized.

Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter and conservative/religious shill. This is from a column in the WaPo entitled “The Kind of Village it Takes.” Takes to what? you may find yourself asking.

To be honest, I’ve read the article, and I can’t be entirely sure. Except that it has to do with teenagers having sex. Specifically, evangelical teenagers, and how Michael Gerson wants everyone to just stop saying that they have sex just like any other teenagers, and that being Right With Gawd doesn’t stop them from having sex any earlier than their “mainline Protestant” peers:

Recent books and studies seem to indicate disturbing sexual trends among evangelical Christians. And this time we’re not talking about their pastors or political leaders. The new attention is on evangelical teenagers, who reportedly start sex earlier than their mainline Protestant peers.

One gleeful headline on an Internet site recently read: “Evangelical Girls Are Easy.” That is not the way I remember it.

What is this? Rashomon?

I dunno, Michael, maybe it was just that you weren’t getting any. And that your peers who were maybe didn’t want to confide in you, because they suspected you might do something squirrelly like rat them out to their pastors. Just a guess.

After being confronted with that little factoid, Michael consults a social scientist, who assures him that it’s much more complicated than the “sniggering media” reporting showing evangelical kids have sex at the same age as their non-evangelical peers.

My, isn’t that interesting. A conservative embracing nuance when it serves his purpose.

Michael is quite relieved to find out that “intensely” religious kids put out a few months later on average than their less-intense evangelical peers and the irreligious mainline scum, meaning all that tithing has paid off:

When the statistics on teen sexuality are controlled for social and economic factors, conservative Protestant teens first have sex at about the same time as their peers — the average is midway through their 16th year. That is hardly comforting to conservative Protestant parents, who would expect more bang for the bucks they spend funding Sunday schools — well, actually, less bang.

But these numbers shift when controlled for religious intensity. For those who attend church often, sexual activity is delayed until nearly 17, while nominal evangelicals begin at 16.2 years, earlier than the national average.

So, really, the “nominal” (and what a nice way to distance yourself from these results) evangelicals put out earlier than the non-evangelicals, and the “intense” evangelicals put out later. Which, I’m sure, when averaged together, gets you right back to the beginning: evangelism is no cure for teenage sexuality. But still, speaking in tongues and snake-handling and believing in literal demons only buys you about 9 months over the rest of the WWJD crowd.

But that’s inconvenient! So Gerson pulls out a bunch of statistics about cohabitation and children out of wedlock that really have nothing to do with teenagers having sex, but everything to do with making the uncomfortable fact that evangelical kids fuck, too, a little less uncomfortable. Oh, and have we directly bashed liberals yet? We have not! So, back to Michael:

These messages of responsibility are often reinforced by tightknit religious communities, but they are not owned by them. Wilcox notes that American liberal elites often “talk left and walk right, living disciplined lives and expecting their children to do the same, even when they hold liberal social views.” Divorce rates among college-educated Americans, [Sociologist Peter Berger] points out, have fallen since the 1980s, as it became more evident that casual divorce did not serve the long-term interests of their children.*

Because they can’t really be liberals if they do moral things! They can’t really be liberals if they lead disciplined lives and give their children the tools to do the same things!

Kind of a problem he has with the “live and let live” concept, isn’t it? But then, this is the guy who also has trouble with the idea that atheists can have a moral framework when they don’t have an angry invisible friend threatening them with eternal torment if they fart the wrong way.

Now, he does recognize that support networks are crucial for influencing behaviors, and he does recognize that kids who have goals and ambitions are less likely to get sidetracked by early pregnancy. And he even recognizes that abstinence-only sex miseducation doesn’t automatically confer any sort of protection against having sex. But his solution — to the extent he offers one — just seems to be more of the same; more intense and tight “moral” networks, more rigidity. Heaven forfend he might concede that those socially-liberal parents who give their kids accurate information and the tools to make good choices might have something there.

H/T: Thers.

_____

* Actually, my understanding of the reason for falling divorce rates among college-educated Americans has to do with the fact that they tend to marry later than non-college-educated Americans, and not just because they want to have sex.  Though the real statistic he should be looking at is the divorce rate among evangelicals as opposed to other groups.  But I’m guessing that wouldn’t have worked out well for him.

Harry Potter and the Religious Whiners

Published at July 24, 2007 in Religious nuts, Books and Dipshittery. 28 Comments

Oy. This is actually a piece written prior to the release of Book 7, but I found it while looking for something else on the Time site, and it irritates me, so what the hell.

Title? Who Dies in Harry Potter? God.

Yeah. Seriously.

I was reading the book this weekend, and it struck me how often characters said, “Thank God,” or churches were discussed, or there was Christmas and Easter mentioned. Hell, too. So God’s not entirely absent from the picture. He’s just not central to it, which seems to be getting up the author’s nose.

It starts off with a discussion of how many houses J.K. Rowling has, and how she has more money than the Queen but no middle name (the “K” was an add-on). Which sort of puzzled me, because what does that have to do with anything, let alone God? Continue reading ‘Harry Potter and the Religious Whiners’

Honor killing, apparently a scream

Published at July 24, 2007 in Religious nuts, Crime, Anxious masculinity and Woman-Hating. 0 Comments

So details have started coming out about the “honor” killing in London of a Kurdish woman, Banaz Mahmod, by her father and uncle and three other men. Her crime? Daring to reject the man she was forced to marry, who raped and beat her, in favor of one she chose.

But apparently, murder is a real gas:

Hama, who prosecutors said had been a ringleader in the murder, was caught by listening devices talking to a friend in prison about the murder.

In the recordings, transcripts of which were relayed to the court, Hama and his friend are hearing laughing as he described how she was killed with Banaz’s uncle “supervising”.

“I was kicking and stamping on her neck to get the soul out. I saw her stark naked, only wearing pants or underwear,” Hama is recorded as saying.

Yeah. Real funny, the neck-stomping.

A queasy hat tip to Julia.

We’ll let anyone move here, but we’ll make sure you know we’re not happy about it

Published at July 23, 2007 in Religious nuts and Dipshittery. 27 Comments

Ah, religious nuttery.

Our example today is Ave Maria, Florida and the efforts of the people behind it to let everyone know that — really! — not just Catholics can live there. Even though they’re going to make it really, really obvious that non-Catholics aren’t welcome:

NAPLES, Fla. - No, of course not, Ave Maria is not a Roman Catholic town, its builders say. Why would you think such a thing?

Yes, the streets have names like Annunciation Circle and John Paul II Boulevard. The town is laid out to catch the sunrise at a certain angle each March 25, the day Catholics celebrate the Feast of Annunciation. And the Catholic university whose towering 10-story church dominates the landscape bans condoms and warns that premarital sex can be grounds for expulsion.

But Ave Maria is open to everyone, said Blake Gable, project manager for the Barron Collier Cos., which is building the new town in partnership with Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan, an ardent Catholic.

Yeah, that Tom Monaghan. Funder of Operation Rescue and maker of crappy pizza.

Monaghan’s had to pull back a bit from his original vision for the town:

The builders of Ave Maria, whose name is Latin for Hail Mary, have been struggling to get the message out that anyone can live here ever since Monaghan’s headline-grabbing comments in 2005, when the site was still just a sod farm. Monaghan told a Catholic group at the time that the town would be governed by Roman Catholic principles. He said stores wouldn’t carry contraceptives or pornography, and cable TV would have no adult channels.

In response, a Wall Street Journal opinion column quoted a critic of Ave Maria as calling it a “Catholic Jonestown.” The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida threatened to sue. Critics called it un-American. And Monaghan backed off.

Guy has a law school at his disposal — he opened up Ave Maria Law School in Ann Arbor in 2000 (though the city wouldn’t give him a zoning variance to build the university) — and nobody can tell him that housing discrimination is kind of, um, illegal?

Monaghan now says that Ave Maria University, the school he is also bankrolling, will follow strict Catholic guidelines, but the town will be largely allowed to grow uninhibited — except for no adult novelty stores or topless clubs. The developers say they will merely suggest that merchants not sell contraceptives or porn, and cable TV offerings will not be restricted.

Even with that, Monaghan seems disappointed. If he had his way, Ave Maria would be God’s town.

Something tells me God wouldn’t enjoy having this ugly-ass church in the middle of his town:

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And this quote by Monaghan is priceless:

“I thought we owned the real estate, so we can lease to whoever we want and put things in the contract, but there are laws and there were lawsuits out there,” Monaghan said.

Just because you own the land doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want with it, pumpkin. And it certainly doesn’t mean you can use restrictive covenants to control the lives of the people who buy or lease property from you. Were you planning on requiring church attendance? And how, exactly, were you going to enforce the no-naughty-TV thing? Start your own cable monopoly? Jam everyone’s satellite signals?

It never ceases to amaze me that fundamentalist religious sorts feel that the way to greater faith is simply outlawing or forbidding things that are problematic for them. Instead of, oh, teaching people how to deal with the things they’re likely to encounter in the world. Or coming up with a better reason not to do something other than, “You’ll go to hell.” But that’s me.

Business doesn’t seem to be exactly brisk, with only 250 homes out of a projected 11,000 sold. People who think that more rules and restrictions are just the ticket for restoring and enforcing morality and saving American civilization often don’t want to subject themselves to those rules and restrictions — after all, they’re *already* moral! Kinda like how covenant marriages aren’t exactly catching fire despite all the howling and moaning about the gays destroying marriage and slutty women destroying marriage and wives need to submit and all that.

So it looks like to me that the Ave Maria people are reluctantly publicizing their willingness to allow non-Catholics (even gays!) into town in order to boost sales. Though you really have to wonder how many units they’re going to sell with a pitch like this:

As for whether Jews or others might be uncomfortable living in a town called Ave Maria, he said: “Do people who live in San Francisco feel offended? San Antonio?”