‘Every Parent’s Nightmare’ - The New York Times

",,,[T]he issue is not adult prostitution or sex among consenting adults: “That’s totally removed from what we’re focusing on here, which is children sold to be raped.”

__

We as a society derided the Roman Catholic Church as an accessory to child sexual abuse, and we lambasted Penn State for similar offenses.

Yet we as a society are complicit or passive in a similar way, by allowing a popular website called Backpage.com to be used to arrange child rape. Consider what happened to a girl I’ll call Natalie, who was trafficked into the sex industry in Seattle at age 15.

“It was every parent’s nightmare,” Natalie’s mother, Nacole, told me. “It can happen to any parent. Fifteen-year-olds don’t make the best choices. I dropped her off at school in the morning, I was expecting to pick her up after track practice in the afternoon, and then I didn’t see her for 108 days.” The girl ran off to a bus station, was found by a pimp, and within days was being sold for sex on Backpage.

Backpage has classified ads for everything from antiques to boats, but it makes its money on escort ads. It has about 80 percent of the U.S. market for online sex ads in America, mostly for consenting adults but many also for women who are forcibly trafficked or for underage girls. Children in at least 47 states have been sold on Backpage, by one aid group’s count.
,,,

The girl was eventually rescued by the police, but by then she had been beaten and threatened by her pimp and endured innumerable rapes. “She’s forever changed,” her mom said. “Her siblings are forever changed. Today she struggles with life.”

If there were a major American website openly selling heroin or anthrax, there would be an outcry. Yet we Americans tolerate a site like Backpage.com that is regularly used to peddle children. We avert our eyes, and the topic tends not to come up in polite society.

“I had no idea how much juvenile trafficking goes on until my family became a victim of it,” Nacole said.

Thousands of children are trafficked for sex each year in the United States, but there are no solid numbers. What is clear is only that it’s a big problem that gets minimal attention; it’s essentially never mentioned in the current political campaign.

‘Every Parent’s Nightmare’ - The New York Times

ADDENDUM::Sexual abuse is not just a Catholic problem | Catholic Globe

I have mentioned my issues with Tchivividjian before and find it odd that references is being made to his review as the RCC can "end this all" if one man spoke up. Now granted the author does have a point, not just Catholics, but to hide behind that premise is bogus.  Take a look at the 2000 year-old book that condones children as chattel and a doctrine that represses sexuality and expression first as the commonalities.  It is not just the silence that kills youthful spirit, but the dogma you hold dear.  "One may ask, finally, why the Catholic situation has not received fair treatment in the print and electronic media. The answer: the media themselves, which often seem rather less interested in exposing child abuse at all levels of society than in Catholic-bashing."

The movie “Spotlight” (which I saw last week, and thought remarkably fair – not at all expressive of the familiar media attacks on the Catholic Church) has again opened up discussion about the issue of child abuse in the Catholic Church. The movie portrays the disastrous handling of sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston over a number of decades.

“Boz” Tchivividjian (don’t ask me how to pronounce the name) offered an insightful commentary, titled “Spotlight: It’s Not Just a Catholic Problem,” in a Religion News Service blog last week. Tchivividjian, a former child abuse prosecutor, the founder and executive director of ABUSE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), and a professor of law at Liberty University (and I would guess a Baptist) argued that child sex abuse is just as prevalent in the Protestant churches as it is in the Catholic Church.

Regarding the movie “Spotlight,” Tchivividjian writes: “Some may be tempted to watch this film with disgust at the Catholic Church and a sigh of relief for Protestants.

Sexual abuse is not just a Catholic problem | Catholic Globe

Finish the Job: Ban Conversion Therapy for Minors | Advocate.com

When I founded Truth Wins Out in 2006, the myth that one could “pray away the gay” was a central part of the Religious Right’s strategy to demonize and legislate against LGBT people. In less than a decade, this elaborate hoax is in ruins — with only hard-core dead-enders peddling this manufactured lie.

In 2006 my organization was battling Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out program, which was a traveling road show that featured “ex-gay” activists. This program dissolved years ago after it stopped making money and attendance dwindled. We were also at war with Exodus International, which is now defunct after the group’s leader admitted that conversion therapy does not work and that 99.9 percent of clients were not changing their sexual orientation.

I am still in periodic contact with the “ex-gay” antagonists of yesteryear. Usually it is in the form of randomly stumbling upon their Facebook posts. One former “ex-gay” leader writes about how he is in love with the man he married. Another emotes on the joy he had when he came out to his son and found acceptance. Yet another posts on his journey coming out of the closet and his entrance into the world of dating.

The “ex-gay” industry is a shambles — albeit one that has left a trail of blood, pain, tragedy, and tears. No serious person promotes this charade — and those who do are viewed as as backward and delusional. The future is bleak for practitioners of this psychological voodoo.

Finish the Job: Ban Conversion Therapy for Minors | Advocate.com

America’s Child-Marriage Problem - The New York Times

Nevertheless, the data show that 3,499 children were married in New Jersey between 1995 and 2012. Most were age 16 or 17 and married with parental consent, but 178 were between ages 10 and 15, meaning a judge approved their marriages.

__

IN the United States today, thousands of children under 18 have recently taken marital vows — mostly girls married to adult men, often with approval from local judges. In at least one case, a 10-year-old boy was legally married.

How is this possible? The minimum marriage age in most states is 18, but every state allows exceptions under which children under age 18 can wed.

The first common exception is for children marrying with “parental consent.” Most states allow children age 16 or 17 to marry if their parents sign the marriage license application.

Of course, one person’s “parental consent” can be another’s “parental coercion,” but state laws typically do not call for anyone to investigate whether a child is marrying willingly. Even in the case of a girl’s sobbing openly while her parents sign the application and force her into marriage, the clerk usually has no authority to intervene. In fact, in most states there are no laws that specifically forbid forced marriage.

The second common marriage-age exception is for children marrying with judicial approval. This exception lowers the marriage age below 16 in many states, and many states do not specify a minimum age. Judges in those states can allow the marriage even of an elementary school student.

But judges would never do that, right?

,,,

Forced and child marriages happen almost everywhere, yet only 10 states or jurisdictions have specific laws that can be used to prevent or punish forced marriage. The Tahirih survey focused on immigrants, and it identified child marriages or forced marriages, or both, in immigrant communities from 56 countries of origin in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, but it also identified such marriage in so-called American families.

The survey found child marriage or forced marriage, or both, in families of many faiths, including Muslim, Christian (particularly Catholic), Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh. I have seen child and forced marriage in the Orthodox Jewish community, and I know survivors from Mormon and Unification Church backgrounds.

Parents give many reasons for forcing their children into marriage, including controlling the children’s sexuality and behavior and protecting “family honor.” Often families use forced marriage to enhance their status or gain economic security.

America’s Child-Marriage Problem - The New York Times

The Plight of Children at Risk in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Communities and the Failure of Government and Pandering Politicians to Protect Them | Marci A. Hamilton | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia

Children in the United States are routinely sacrificed on the pyre of their parents’ faith by pandering politicians without a moral compass. Children don’t vote but insular religious communities often vote as a bloc mandated by the male officials at the top, and that fact is not lost on power-hungry politicians like those in Utah who let the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) patriarchs marry off girls and abandon boys so that the men will have a better place in heaven. The same relationship between elected officials and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities exists: there are known risks to children but these politicians look the other way as they are feted by the rabbis and a community that keeps children at risk.

It is the time of year when Jews observe a series of important religious holidays beginning with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I submit this column as a subject to be pondered in the midst of celebration and reflection.

As with the FLDS, the ultra-Orthodox communities have put children at risk due to inadequate medical treatment, educational neglect, and mostly undeterred child sex abuse. In an interesting twist, the gender most severely affected in this community is male. Boys are at risk of herpes infection from metzitzah b’peh, or MBP and boys are less educated than girls because their education is focused on the Torah rather than secular subjects. Both, however, are at risk of sexual abuse. As in every community, that risk is significantly higher for the girls than the boys. Therefore, boys and girls in this community need prompt attention from the authorities, and politicians pandering for bloc votes need a conscience check.

The Plight of Children at Risk in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Communities and the Failure of Government and Pandering Politicians to Protect Them | Marci A. Hamilton | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia

Are you sure you’re not the next target? | Dhaka Tribune

Niloy Neel, the last blogger to be killed, knew that his life was in danger. After his murder, it has been learnt that he went to the police seeking protection. But instead of giving him protection, the police advised him to go abroad. It has also been learned that Niloy told others about this matter on May 15.

When are we ever going to learn that, sometimes, making things public instead of keeping them secret can ensure protection? The friends of Niloy who knew were probably concerned about him, but what about the possibility that if they had made the matter public, could Niloy’s life could have been saved? After Ananta was killed, we came to know that he had been trying but had failed to go abroad. His friends knew this.

But there is no reason to feel upset that those friends failed to create a security cordon around him. The machete is filling up the gap created by our inability to form solidarity. The quicker you realise that, the better it will be.

Are you sure you’re not the next target? | Dhaka Tribune

How a proposed Muslim cemetery became a battleground for America's soul (COMMENTARY) - Religion News Service

So is the protest really about Farmersville? Or is it about Islamophobia of the sort that has beset American towns for years? Are these the same angry people we see in towns across America, scared of cemeteries, scared of mosques, scared of Muslims?

The people in this rural part of Texas are not the first to fear the unfamiliar.

In his book “American Panic: A History of Who Scares Us and Why,” Mark Stein examines the history of American bigotry. He quotes a 19th-century politician charging that Catholicism will rob Americans of our rights, and writes about a New York-based business owner who viewed Chinese immigrants as “ready and anxious” to step over Americans “to possess the land.”

At the town hall meeting, a woman faced Abdur-Rashid.

“Everywhere you have been you’ve caused some kind of problem,” she said. “It’s not going to happen in Farmersville.”

“With all this opposition, why do you want to stay here?” asked another. It was a very serious question, a question that ignores the basic right of American Muslims to live their lives freely.

That’s what Islamophobia is really about: You don’t belong here. This is our land, our water, our beliefs, our country.

How a proposed Muslim cemetery became a battleground for America's soul (COMMENTARY) - Religion News Service

ADDENDUM::Zombies Against Medicare - The New York Times

Paul Krugman takes a look at Bush's "zombie idea" that Medicare is not working and that raising the age of eligibility is a good idea.

[W]hile raising the Medicare age has long been a favorite idea of Washington’s Very Serious People, a couple of years ago the Congressional Budget Office did a careful study and discovered that it would hardly save any money. That is, at this point raising the Medicare age is a zombie idea, which should have been killed by analysis and evidence, but is still out there eating some people’s brains.
,,,

The real reason conservatives want to do away with Medicare has always been political: It’s the very idea of the government providing a universal safety net that they hate, and they hate it even more when such programs are successful. But when they make their case to the public they usually shy away from making their real case, and have even, incredibly, sometimes posed as the program’s defenders against liberals and their death panels.

What Medicare’s would-be killers usually argue, instead, is that the program as we know it is unaffordable — that we must destroy the system in order to save it, that, as Mr. Bush put it, we must “move to a new system that allows [seniors] to have something — because they’re not going to have anything.” And the new system they usually advocate is, as I said, vouchers that can be applied to the purchase of private insurance.

The underlying premise here is that Medicare as we know it is incapable of controlling costs, that only the only way to keep health care affordable going forward is to rely on the magic of privatization.

Now, this was always a dubious claim. It’s true that for most of Medicare’s history its spending has grown faster than the economy as a whole — but this is true of health spending in general. In fact, Medicare costs per beneficiary have consistently grown more slowly than private insurance premiums, suggesting that Medicare is, if anything, better than private insurers at cost control. Furthermore, other wealthy countries with government-provided health insurance spend much less than we do, again suggesting that Medicare-type programs can indeed control costs.

Zombies Against Medicare - The New York Times

Duggar Family Outed For Child Endangerment And Maltreatment

 Did Michelle and Jim Bob know they were breaking the law? 

Evidence of Duggar family child endangerment, maltreatment, and abuse surfaces as a civil suit is planned by Josh Duggar’s molestation victim. On the heels of a possible lawsuit, the living conditions inside the Duggar family home may implicate parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, who could also be named in the suit.

When news broke last month by In Touch magazine that attorneys representing a non-family victim are preparing a lawsuit, evidence supports that the Duggar family fortune may be at stake. The young woman was a minor when she visited the Duggar family home, where she allegedly endured sexual contact by forcible compulsion at the hands of Josh Duggar.

The actions and inactions of the parents in the years 2002 and 2003 will be scrutinized and witnesses will be required to testify. Much can be made of the environment in which they raised their children at the time.
,,,
The Duggar family moved into the home in March, 1993. At that time there were five children sharing two bedrooms. When the Discovery Health Channel began to film reality TV documentaries about the family, there were 14 children in the Johnson Street home and their mother Michelle was pregnant. This coincides with the years 2002 and 2003, which is the time of the known sexual molestation, according to the police reports. The family remained in the Johnson Street home, with cameras still rolling, throughout 2004, the year the first hour-long TV special aired.

A series of three shows were filmed by the network which documented the family’s living conditions: 14 Children and Pregnant Again!, Raising 16 Children, and 16 Children and Moving In. The main stage for the three scripted reality shows was the Johnson Road house of horrors, where 16 to 18 people lived in a 2,400-square-foot home built for a family of four to six.

,,,
"Absolutely, they did. Both were licensed real estate agents and Jim Bob was a fourth-generation real estate professional. Understanding occupancy laws is necessary to pass the examination to become an Arkansas real estate agent."
,,,
Another reason might be that if the authorities were involved, he and Michelle would lose the right to homeschool their children if Josh remained living in the household. Jim Bob should have known about that law; he was one of its sponsors and helped to get the bill passed in 2001 as an Arkansas State Representative.

Duggar Family Outed For Child Endangerment And Maltreatment

I Am an Adjunct Professor Who Teaches Five Classes -- and I Earn Less Than a Pet-Sitter | Alternet

Like most university teachers today, I am a low-paid contract worker. Now and then, a friend will ask: “Have you tried dog-walking on the side?” I have. Pet care, I can reveal, takes massive attention, energy and driving time. I’m friends with a full-time, professionally employed pet-sitter who’s done it for years, never topping $26,000 annually and never receiving health or other benefits.

The reason I field such questions is that, as an adjunct professor, whether teaching undergraduate or law-school courses, I make much less than a pet-sitter earns. This year I’m teaching five classes (15 credit hours, roughly comparable to the teaching loads of some tenure-track law or business school instructors). At $3,000 per course, I’ll pull in $15,000 for the year. I work year-round, 20 to 30 hours weekly – teaching, developing courses and drafting syllabi, offering academic advice, recommendation letters and course extensions for students who need them. As I write, in late June, my students are wrapping up their final week of the first summer term, and the second summer term will begin next week.

I receive no benefits, no office, no phone or stipend for the basic communication demands of teaching. I keep constant tabs on the media I use in my classes; if I exhaust my own 10GB monthly data plan early, I lose vital time for online discussions with my students. This, although the university requires my students to engage in discussions about legal issues and ethics six days a week, and I must guide as well as grade these discussions.

Three of my Philadelphia-area friends are adjuncts with doctorate degrees. One keeps moving to other states for temporary teaching posts. The others teach at multiple sites to keep afloat financially – one at no less than seven colleges and universities.

I Am an Adjunct Professor Who Teaches Five Classes -- and I Earn Less Than a Pet-Sitter | Alternet

Christian Evangelical: I'm Deeply Ashamed of the Right-Wing Demagogues Who Call Themselves Christians | Alternet

I am an evangelical Christian, which means that I openly share the “good news” of the saving grace of Jesus Christ, and I have personally accepted that saving grace for my sins.

As a trained Southern Baptist minister and a political scientist, I am bothered by many politicians and preachers who proclaim what God intends for me, or us, to do. Our world is populated by countless religions, denominations and self-proclaimed religious leaders that are always telling us what to do, and they make their pronouncements in the name of God.

There are many conflicting messages I hear from the mouths of some demagogues in the United States at the present time. In 1967, I wrote my Master’s thesis at the University of Texas in EI Paso. It was a 272-page study titled, “Slavery As A Political Instrument In The Name Of Christian Principle: The Growth Of A Political Theory Through Congressional Debate, 1789-1861.” My research and writing involved a detailed study of how the Bible was used during congressional debates by U.S. legislators from the American South.

Most of those were known as evangelicals, and most of them owned and used black slaves as their labor source. At the height of American slavery, another element was obvious in the United States, and many evangelicals subscribed to it. The element became known as Manifest Destiny.

[,,,]
Years have passed, but I remain very skeptical of religious demagogues in our time who use a mixture of religious and political rhetoric to justify their claims for financial or political advancement. When a politician or a preacher shouts that America is an “exceptional land blessed by God,” or shouts that we are a “light on a hill” or, “we are the greatest nation ever created under the hand of God,” I listen with a degree of skepticism.

Christian Evangelical: I'm Deeply Ashamed of the Right-Wing Demagogues Who Call Themselves Christians | Alternet

What is Marriage to Evangelical Millennials? | Abigail Rine | First Things

My students hated it, as I suspected they would. They also seemed unable to fully understand the argument. As I tried to explain the reasoning behind the conjugal view of marriage and its attitude toward sex, I received dubious stares in response. I realized, as I listened to the discussion, that the idea of “redefining” marriage was nonsensical to them, because they had never encountered the philosophy behind the conjugal view of marriage. To them, the Christian argument against same-sex marriage is an appeal to the authority of a few disparate Bible verses, and therefore compelling only to those with a literalist hermeneutic. What the article names as a “revisionist” idea of marriage—marriage as an emotional, romantic, sexual bond between two people—does not seem “new” to my students at all, because this is the view of marriage they were raised with, albeit with a scriptural, heterosexual gloss.

While I listened to my students lambast the article, it struck me that, on one level, they were right: marriage isn’t in danger of being redefined; the redefinition began decades ago, in the wake of the sexual revolution. Once the link between sexuality and procreation was severed in our cultural imagination, marriage morphed into an exclusive romantic bond that has only an arbitrary relationship to reproduction. It is this redefinition, arguably, that has given rise to the same-sex marriage movement, rather than the other way around, and as the broader culture has shifted on this issue, so have many young evangelicals.

[,,,]
To my students, the authors of “What is Marriage?” are making a troubling move, reducing the purpose of marital sex to its reproductive function. What they seemed less able to recognize is that they have inherited the inverse: a view of sex with little meaningful connection to procreation. And once such a view of sexuality is embraced, there is not much foothold, aside from appeals to biblical authority, to support the conjugal understanding of marriage.

What is Marriage to Evangelical Millennials? | Abigail Rine | First Things

Playing the Princess | Commonweal Magazine

A different look at issues surrounding the mRFRA.  What I find enlightening, "[t]he U.S. Catholic bishops could have used,,,."  Referring to, as the author puts it, the "Catholic teaching on 'cooperation with evil'."  So to this non-Catholic, non-believer the Church appears to have an out but chose to remain involved for what?

As one comment points out,

,,,thank you for calling for clear distinctions in the claims of undue burdens on free exercise of religion. A gay couple who tries to force the baker to CELEBRATE their marriage would pose an undue burden on their free exercise of religion. Providing goods and services is not. Sadly our bishops contribute to this lack of clarity with their histrionics about civil intrusions into private life (Never once noticing of course the Church's own intrusions in these spheres). [Ed. for spelling] 

One point not addressed, and lacking in other discussions concerning mRFRAs, religious belief is a choice. Opening a business that serves the public is voluntary.  Don't want to follow the laws, don't open a business.

The current approach to “substantial” burdens is no longer workable. In our increasingly pluralistic and interconnected society, we need to develop a consensus about what counts as a substantial burden on religiously motivated moral beliefs. That consensus need not draw on any particular theological vision; it only has to reflect what is reasonable to expect of people, given the degree to which they have agreed to participate in a pluralistic society.

Most people would agree that it is a substantial burden to be forced to be personally involved in an action they believe to be immoral. So no one should be forced to perform an abortion, or to directly administer contraception. Most people also recognize that forcing people to be considerably involved in actions that they think cause serious harm to vulnerable third parties is substantially burdensome. So, for example, forcing someone to prepare prisoners for execution—or patients for euthanasia—is not acceptable, even if such people are not made to administer the lethal dose.

At the same time, Americans need to acknowledge that many attenuated forms of connection to the wrongful acts of others should not rise to the level of a substantial burden for purposes of RFRA analysis. The terms of our social experiment mean that most of us will find ourselves a tangential part of an action or way of life that we don’t endorse. This is the price we all must pay for being involved in the commerce of a pluralistic society. That insight would rule out the RFRA claims of a Catholic innkeeper who refuses to rent a room to an unmarried heterosexual couple, just as it would in the case of a Muslim cab driver who declines to transport a passenger carrying alcohol. The same would go for an Evangelical baker who won’t make a cake for a same-sex wedding—the example most cited by supporters of the Indiana bill. In all three cases, the burdens on free exercise are not objectively substantial enough to trigger the cumbersome legal machinery of RFRA.

Such claimants might respond that their actions put them in a position of appearing to endorse fornication, alcohol consumption, or same-sex marriage, respectively. But that doesn’t make sense, because no sensible person understands the transactions that merchants make in the public marketplace as signaling their endorsement of the activities of their customers. And one who makes rooms generally available for rent doesn’t in any way sanction the specific activity that guests engage in behind closed doors.

Playing the Princess | Commonweal Magazine

The Quest for Transgender Equality - NYTimes.com

A generation ago, transgender Americans were widely regarded as deviants, unfit for dignified workplaces, a disgrace for families. Those who confided in relatives were, by and large, pitied and shunned. For most, transitioning on the job was tantamount to career suicide. Medical procedures to align a person’s body with that person’s gender identity — an internal sense of being male, female or something else — were a fringe specialty, available only to a few who paid out of pocket.

Coming out meant going through life as a pariah.

Being transgender today remains unreasonably and unnecessarily hard. But it is far from hopeless. More Americans who have wrestled with gender identity are transitioning openly, propelling a civil rights movement that has struggled even as gays and lesbians have reached irreversible momentum in their fight for equality. Those coming out now are doing so with trepidation, realizing that while pockets of tolerance are expanding, discriminatory policies and hostile, uninformed attitudes remain widespread.

They deserve to come out in a nation where stories of compassion and support vastly outnumber those that end with a suicide note. The tide is shifting, but far too slowly, while lives, careers and dreams hang in the balance.

[,,,]

 Three years before a police raid of the Stonewall Inn in New York in June 1969 galvanized the gay rights movement in America, transgender women rioted after being expelled from Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco. The restaurant had become one of the few safe gathering spots for the city’s community of transgender people, who at the time were not welcome at gay bars. That same year, physician Harry Benjamin published “The Transsexual Phenomenon,” a groundbreaking book that outlined how transgender people could transition medically. The two developments helped give rise to an arduous fight for societal acceptance.

[,,,]

 President Obama has advanced transgender rights more than any American president. But there is a glaring form of discrimination that he has the power to end. The Pentagon continues to ban openly transgender people from joining the military, even though many of America’s closest allies have integrated them seamlessly in recent years.

The Quest for Transgender Equality - NYTimes.com

Faith vs. Facts - NYTimes.com

MOST of us find it mind-boggling that some people seem willing to ignore the facts — on climate change, on vaccines, on health care — if the facts conflict with their sense of what someone like them believes. “But those are the facts,” you want to say. “It seems weird to deny them.”

And yet a broad group of scholars is beginning to demonstrate that religious belief and factual belief are indeed different kinds of mental creatures. People process evidence differently when they think with a factual mind-set rather than with a religious mind-set. Even what they count as evidence is different. And they are motivated differently, based on what they conclude. On what grounds do scholars make such claims?

[,,,]
Second, these scholars have remarked that when people consider the truth of a religious belief, what the belief does for their lives matters more than, well, the facts. We evaluate factual beliefs often with perceptual evidence. If I believe that the dog is in the study but I find her in the kitchen, I change my belief. We evaluate religious beliefs more with our sense of destiny, purpose and the way we think the world should be. One study found that over 70 percent of people who left a religious cult did so because of a conflict of values. They did not complain that the leader’s views were mistaken. They believed that he was a bad person.

[,,,]

Moreover, people’s reliance on supernatural explanations increases as they age. It may be tempting to think that children are more likely than adults to reach out to magic to explain something, and that they increasingly put that mind-set to the side as they grow up, but the reverse is true. It’s the young kids who seem skeptical when researchers ask them about gods and ancestors, and the adults who seem clear and firm. It seems that supernatural ideas do things for adults they do not yet do for children.

Faith vs. Facts - NYTimes.com

The Religious Right’s 10-Point Playbook For Hijacking Nations

Wayne Besen's (of Truth Wins Out) response to Mary Zeiss Stange Op-ed - Beware the Christian extremists:

I’ve come up with 10-Point Playbook that these homegrown Christian extremists use when they attempt to accomplish their frightening goals. As I go through this list, you will recognize some of the insidious techniques that have, sadly, been woven into our political process: [Brackets mine, all stuff I have posted about]

1) Find inflammatory wedge issues and scapegoats to divide people and force them to choose sides  [Marriage equality]

2) Persuade people to join your righteous “team” in its effort to purify society. Demand absolute loyalty and obedience to that team’s leaders (even above allegiance to the state) [American Family Association, Family Research Council]

3) Identify and cultivate key major donors to fund mission. To reward their support, back conservative economic policies [Koch Brothers, Greens (Hobby Lobby), Waltons (Walmart), John Schnatter (Papa Johns)]

4) Create parallel infrastructure and institutions (i.e. private education, conferences, think tanks, and charities)  [John Birch Society, Heritage Foundation, The Gathering]

5) Build an insular media cocoon to disseminate propaganda. This vast echo chamber is contemptuous of contradictory facts, suspicious of reason, and impervious to mainstream media scrutiny  [Fox News,BarbWire, Glenn Beck,WorldNetDaily]

6) Infiltrate society’s major institutions in a clandestine effort to undermine, influence, and ultimately control (See 7 Mountains Movement: government, education, family, religion, entertainment, business, and media)  [Texas State Board of Education]

7) Facilitate the decline of secular government by deliberately and persistently creating crises in confidence and eroding trust in venerable institutions  {GOP/TP, Gov't shutdown over Debt Ceiling, IRS and Benghazi]

8) Oppose all gun control laws and tacitly encourage local militias, so in the event of insurrection fundamentalists are the most well armed sector of society  [NRA, Gun Owners of America]

9) Constantly agitate and manufacture havoc, because theocracy can only be attained amid chaos. Without a functioning central government, the shadow infrastructure created by fundamentalists makes them the best situated to fill a vacuum, restore order at the price of liberty, and install their regime  [Racism,, see #7]

10) Export model abroad: Send influential emissaries and dedicated missionaries; deploy basic services to create dependence; and dispense money to acquire strategic local alliances; while organizing key international gatherings and fostering opposition at The United Nations…we’ve seen the manifestation of these efforts most notably in Uganda and Russia – with both nation’s veering far to the right, restricting freedom, and passing draconian anti-gay laws  [Uganda, Russie]

The Religious Right’s 10-Point Playbook For Hijacking Nations

The Governing Party - NYTimes.com

As I was reading though this Op, two things stood out in the authors "praise" for the success of the GOP/T:

Republicans didn’t establish this dominant position because they are unrepresentative outsiders. They did it because they have deep roots in four of the dominant institutions of American society: the business community, the military, the church and civic organizations.

[,,,]
Let’s pause over some of the institutions mentioned in these mini-bios: IBM, Reebok, the Red Cross, McKinsey and the Army. These are not fringe organizations. These are the pillars of American society.

Republicans won this election in part because they re-established their party’s traditional personality. The beau ideal of American Republicanism is the prudent business leader who is active in the community, active at church and fervently devoted to national defense.

Let's put a bit of context to this statement shall we,,,

Dominionism exist, there is no denying it regardless  of what some in the Reich may say.  Its "modern" roots can be traced primarily to Francis Schaefer, Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ fame and Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With a Mission; the time frame was the mid 70s.  Each were give a message:

That message was that if we are to impact any nation for Jesus Christ, then we would have to affect the seven spheres, or mountains of society that are the pillars of any society.

These seven mountains are business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family and religion. There are many subgroups under these main categories,,, In essence, God was telling these three change agents where the battlefield was. It was here where culture would be won or lost. Their assignment was to raise up change agents to scale the mountains and to help a new generation of change agents understand the larger story.

Now consider this,,,

1]  Government:: numerous politicians are injecting religious beliefs into their policy making and believe that this nation was founded on “Christian” principles.

2]  Family::Religious ideology is behind what constitutes a marriage.

3]  Religion::A government controlled by people who believe this nation is a “Christian” nation.

4]  Education::The rise of the "voucher program" to fund private schooling and the increased push in the home school movement; both precipitated by funding cuts for public education.  "Teach the controversy" as well as Steve Green's initiative for a 4-year Bible-based curriculum also fall into this category.

5]  Media::Fox news is the only news.  And as bizarre as this may appear,

It turns out that control over the media isn't just to broadcast purely Christian entertainment and news.  In August 2010, [Patricia] King [a NAR “apostle” and “prophet” associated with XPmedia],  sat down with apostolic preacher Randy Demain who explained that demonic giants from Noah’s day have taken over the media mountain, which is why Christians need to “retake” the mountain.

6]  Business::Heavy backing by radical right-wing billionaires, many of whom advocate for open discrimination in the workplace based on religious beliefs - Steve Green; Jon Cargill, CFO of Hobby Lobby; the Koch brothers and   John Schnatter of Papa John fame, to name a few.

7]  Arts & Entertainment::Think of the recent spat of "Christian" themed movies of late, as well as the dreck that is playing on the History Channel and H2.  No accident there.

Make no mistake, this is not an unbiased opinion,  David Brooks was a keynote speaker at the recent conference entitled  "The Gathering" held in  Orlando, Florida this past September.

The Gathering is a conference of hard-right Christian organizations and, perhaps more important, funders. Most of them are not household names, at least if your household isn’t evangelical. But that’s the point: The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest. They’re probably behind that, too.

Featured speakers have included many of the usual suspects: Alliance Defending Freedom President and CEO Alan Sears (2013), Focus on the Family President Jim Daly (2011), and Family Research Council head Tony Perkins (2006). This year, however, they are joined by David Brooks of The New York Times and Michael Gerson of The Washington Post. What’s going on? Has The Gathering gone mainstream?

So yes, Brooks should know that this was no "accident."

Catholic Capitulation on Marriage | R. R. Reno | First Things

A demonstration of how entrenched right wing ideology is within the minds of some within the Catholic Church. R.R. Reno compares Pope Francis’ appeal to the church to treat gay people more like actual human beings, to the church’s treaty with Adolf Hitler.

These are unforced capitulations. They don’t involve legal coercion. In Creighton’s case, the action was taken over the objection George Lucas, archbishop of Omaha. Which is why I read them as the beginning of what will be a fairly widespreadcapitulation on gay marriage and homosexuality by leaders of Catholic universities and institutions.

[,,,]
I’m sure Pius XII would have denied that signing a Concordat with Hitler’s Germany meant he approved of Nazism. But it conferred legitimacy and dramatically undercut any basis within the Church for resistance. The same goes for the concordat many Catholic institutions are signing with gay marriage. It confers legitimacy on the sexual revolution and undercuts resistance.

I can understand why Pius XII sought the Concordat with Hitler. He hoped to secure a stable basis for the Church’s ministry in Germany. I can also understand why many Catholics (including, perhaps, Pope Francis) want to make their peace with the sexual revolution, putting “divisive” culture-war issues behind them so that they can go on with the work of the Gospel and so forth. Moreover, Hitler in 1933 didn’t look so bad—and respectable gay couples don’t seem a threat to marriage or anything else.

But Pius misjudged, as the horrors that followed made painfully evident. Our age is different. But I fear that when the full implications of the sexual revolution are manifest—calls for marriage equality will lead directly to calls for reproductive equality and a fundamental redefinition of the family—we’ll rue our concordat.

Totally out of step with reality and at odds with the views of the people sitting in the pews.

Catholic Capitulation on Marriage | R. R. Reno | First Things

A Retired Navy Officer Rips Tea Party Terrorist Behind ‘Reward for Capture of Obama’ Facebook Page | Americans Against the Tea Party

Why, here in America, we can actually point guns at our own government and threaten to shoot down our neighbors, and we can do it free of any consequence … and others will inevitably rally to our cause in the name of liberty.

Here in America we can publicly declare war on our own nation, engage in open sedition and treason writ large, offer a reward for the capture and execution of our own democratically elected president, publicly promote the overthrow of the very Constitution which guarantees our freedoms, and loudly declare our intention for violent installation of a religious theocracy made of up of extremists who would execute and imprison any American who does not subscribe to this murderous lunacy.

We Americans put up with a lot of nonsense in the supposed name of liberty.

We put up with raging hate, blatant bigotry, threats of violence, obvious insanity, and foamy spittle-flecked ignorant stupidity – all because we’re afraid that if we restrict those things in even the slightest way, if we hold the perpetrators to account to even the smallest degree, well then we won’t know where to draw the line and then we’ll end up under the jackboot of tyranny.

[,,,]
In the name of freedom, we allow the racist haters of the KKK and the Neo-Nazis to march down the middle of our streets and terrorize our citizens.

In the name of liberty, we allow the insane fanatics of Westboro Baptist Church to scream their twisted hatred at the funerals of our loved ones and our fallen soldiers.

In the name of democracy we allow the ideologues and the political fanatics in Congress to deadlock our government, repeatedly bring our nation to a standstill, refuse to do their jobs, and threaten the entire world economy, all in the name of soundly debunked conspiracy theories and rabid unhinged yellow-eyed hate.

In the name of the Constitution, we allow the traitorous dishonorable scumbags of the Oath Keepers to march on the White House flying that goddamned Confederate Battle Flag, the very symbol of racism and the ensign of those who vigorously tried to destroy the United States, and we listen while they demand the president be dragged from the Oval Office and hung before a kangaroo court.

A Retired Navy Officer Rips Tea Party Terrorist Behind ‘Reward for Capture of Obama’ Facebook Page | Americans Against the Tea Party

9 Truly Evil Things Right-Wing Christians Do | Alternet

Christians may be a super majority in the U.S. They may control the U.S. Congress and, as we all were reminded recently, the Supreme Court. But that hasn’t stopped Bible believers from preparing their children for martyrdom. Web resources abound for church youth leaders who want to make sure their young charges are ready when the lions come for them. Titles include, “Expect to be Persecuted” “Persecution Equals Reward” and “Adventure Game—Persecution of Christians and Paul of Tarsus.”

Stuff Fundies Like is a blog by and for people coming out of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist tradition. Recently one former Baptist told how his high school youth group had been divided into two groups, assigned to play the roles of persecutors and martyrs. In 2012 a youth pastor in Pennsylvania made international news by staging the kidnapping of his young charges to help prepare them for the horrors to come.

The Christian persecution complex is absurd. Modern American Christians are not persecuted or under attack. But for Christians who are truly concerned about hostility toward their faith, I have a bit of advice: Don’t be evil. And don’t let your co-religionists get away with being evil either.

No, really.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus gives his disciples a lot of contradictory advice. Modern day followers pick and choose, but one piece that often gets ignored is this: Be harmless as doves. This advice is not only profoundly moral; it is profoundly self-protective. Far fewer people would be entertaining themselves with fantasies about lions if more Christians took this little nugget seriously. A huge part of the antagonism that even moderate Christians face from outsiders is due to the fact that too many devout believers claim a righteous mandate to say and do things that are truly horrible.

Let me spell it out,,,

9 Truly Evil Things Right-Wing Christians Do | Alternet