Banning gay conversion therapy equals what?

Some people on the right are claiming that laws banning gay conversion therapy mean also banning the Bible.

The simple answer to that is that clearly stating that the Bible is not the law of these United States is not the same as banning the Bible or other religious books. Bibles will continue to be completely legal, as will books that argue that homosexuality can be cured. Such books will be roundly criticized for being untrue, but they will not be banned.

The banning of gay conversion therapy is based on two things: that homosexuality is not a choice, and that gay conversion therapy is cruel and humiliating.

Now, this is where conservative Christians will make the claim that their morality compels them to try to change the behaviors of their own family members, and that the government has no business interfering with their families. But if gay conversion therapy involves coercion and cruelty, child protection should overrule the parents' rights.

Once again, I ask you to consider what your motivation for disciplining your children is. Do you set rules in order to protect your children from hurting themselves, and to try thereby to maximize their chances for future happiness? Or do you set rules in order to maintain control over your children?

As I have realized recently, our knowledge of human beings has increased greatly over the centuries; as our understanding has grown, our knowledge has allowed us to improve our morality. Today's morality is an improvement over the morality of the Bible. We know that homosexuality is not a choice. We therefore know that conversion therapy cannot work, and that it can only bring misery. Better that we should love our children for who they are.

The most perilous age

I have not written any blog entries in more than two weeks, not because I have nothing to say, but because I am so overwhelmed with things to say that I don't know how to organize my thoughts.

I believe that the United States is entering its most perilous period since the Civil War. We may be well into that period, and I worry that there's no way to stop it. Sometimes political crises like the one we find ourselves in feel like powerful storms, natural disasters that must be ridden out. All people can do during the storm is to help pile sandbags to minimize the damage. Afterwards, the job is to clean up the mess and rebuild.

We may or may not be in that situation now. There are hopeful signs that our judiciary is still strong enough to stop the criminals in their tracks. And there is hope in the teachers' strikes that are breaking out around the nation. Education is the key here.

But the right-wing politicians are counting on their base believing that education and critical thinking are detrimental to the country. Education and critical thinking are, indeed, detrimental to bigotry, hatred, and willful ignorance, and the way of life bigots pursue. Education and critical thinking are detrimental to authoritarian government and to white supremacy.

Sarah Palin and her ilk have tried, successfully, to convince their followers that only real Americans are white people who don't live in cities. Ironically, the white evangelicals and others among these "real" Americans are so desperate to win their culture war, that they have chosen a crooked real estate mogul from New York City as their champion. These upholders of "family values" excuse their hero's three marriages, his many extramarital affairs, his erotic fixation on his daughter, his admitted sexual assaults, and his nonstop lying because they believe that he is anointed by God to make this a Christian nation.

Think of that for a minute. What kind of mindset is it that can be convinced that the most corrupt and sinful (if you will) person on the national stage will lead us to righteousness? It might be the same kind of mind that can believe, generation after generation for thousands of years, that Jesus will be returning soon, even though Jesus told his disciples that he would be back within their lifetimes.

Well, the purpose of this blog entry is not primarily to trash religion, but what is called faith is a factor here. The human mind seems to be able to convince itself that the things that are observable are false, and that the things for which there is no evidence are true. And what does religious training do? It reinforces that kind of thinking, beginning at a very young age for those of us who were raised in the church. As a result, even in liberal families, there is a tension between what is learned in school during the week, and what is learned in Sunday school on the weekend.

As a result, we have politicians who want to have unscientific material taught as science. "Teach the controversy," they say, when there is no controversy among scientists. And science is what is supposed to be being taught. They complain that not teaching the controversy is an attack on academic freedom. But, in truth, having government compel teachers to teach things that are not true is the very opposite of academic freedom.

I've wandered off topic here, and I repeat that America is in peril from an anti-democratic government. The Trump administration is attacking on multiple fronts. Environmental, financial, and civil rights laws and regulations are being attacked and destroyed. For those reading this who believe that regulation is evil, no. Regulation is what keeps people with power and money from running roughshod over that forgotten "little guy" the right wing is always claiming to care about.

Education is being attacked by a Secretary of Education whose avowed goal is to "advance the kingdom of God."

The lovers of authoritarianism seek to bring women back under the control of their husbands and to take the control of women's bodies away from women.

Since Donald Trump was elected by minus three hundred thousand votes, I have hoped for other powerful figures to do something to correct the mistake. I certainly never believed in the "Trump pivot towards the presidential," but I did hope that other officials' love of country and Constitution would overcome their defense of political party. So far, they have disappointed me. It seems that they don't love the Constitution as much as they claimed to. In fact, there is a move, led by the Koch brothers, to call a Constitutional convention. I think that the main thrust of the change they want would be to tear down the wall between church and state. Congressional Republicans make weak criticisms of the president, but continue to support him. My hope that Republican officials with consciences would move to head off the erosion of our constitutional protections has given way to the fear that too many of the Republicans are actually in favor of that erosion. I fear that, even with the special prosecutor's unearthing of Trump's rampant criminality, the Republicans in the House and Senate will never vote for impeachment.

The people who voted for Trump believed that they were fighting tyranny (a tyranny only they could see); they elected a true tyrant, and most of them still don't even know it.

I will resist this tyrant in any way I can, and hope that Mueller and state attorneys general can bring him down. I was born in a free country, and I hope to die in one. Even if we are able to avoid total disaster, the cleanup effort will be massive.

Notes on a Washington Post article on evangelical sex scandals

A friend of mine posted a Washington Post article on Facebook, concerning the possibility of a new round of sex scandals involving evangelical leaders. My friend, who is liberal and religious, put the scandal down to the religious right's desire to control the lives of women. I do agree that they do that, but sexual misbehavior among clergy is, of course, not limited to conservatives. (The fact that conservatives claim to be the guardians of morality and of the family makes their transgressions more galling, though.)

The article ran in the Post's Acts of Faith religious section on March 30, and was written by Sarah Pulliam Bailey. I would link directly to it, but the reader might run into a pay wall. There are a few things in it that I have problems with.

First, and most important, is a quote from Peter Wehner, described as "a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center."

[Trump's supporters] seem enthralled to his approach to life. They seem completely untroubled by the ... women who accused Trump of harassment or assault. For some large number of white evangelical men, there seems to be an attitude toward women that's disturbing and not biblical.

What I have a problem with in that last sentence is not biblical. Women are treated miserably throughout the Bible. After all, we are talking about a morality that is thousands of years old, and often seems barely removed from sheer animal behavior. In the Old Testament, God instructs his people, when they battle their enemies, to kill all the men, and to capture any marriageable women and girls as part of the spoils of war. And in the New Testament, the social status of women has improved little. Saint Paul makes that abundantly clear.

And women are not the only vulnerable population. Anyone who lacks power is fair game. Bailey notes:

In another case late last year, Paul Pressler, who helped lead a conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was accused of sexually abusing a young man for several decades, starting when the alleged victim was 14.

Mention of the abuse of children inevitably brings to mind the Roman Catholic priesthood. Bailey's article highlights a distinction between the Catholic church and evangelical denominations, in that the Catholic church has a hierarchy that one would think would punish their clergy for abusing children. Heath Carter, a professor of history at Valparaiso University notes that:

In the evangelical world, the independence of evangelical leaders and ... lack of authority structure mean [abuses] can go on for a while and then explode when they come to light.

But, really, Bailey has already pointed out earlier in her article that the Catholic hierarchy was no protector of children.

In any case, even though I'm an atheist, I can't say that this is a strictly religious problem. It is, as my friend said, a power abuse problem. And that abuse happens to women in the working world, as well as to children in schools. It even happens among scientists and religious skeptics.

But we really need to stop looking to religion as a source of morality, and we really shouldn't throw around such descriptions of attitudes as "not biblical," when these attitudes are sometimes totally in line with the Bible. Morality is something that needs to be constantly reevaluated as our knowledge increases, and constantly going back to the Bible keeps us from addressing moral problems in any meaningful way.