Today, the 13^th of April, is the birthday of Madalyn Murray O’Hair. She was born in 1919 and was murdered September 29^th, 1995. During her 76 years she rose to become “the most hated woman in America” according to Life Magazine (1964). Madalyn continues to be a controversial figure. Her fiery presence, failed marriages, run ins with the law, and violent death cloud her history and are sometimes used to lessen her accomplishments in Atheist activism. It is easy to find things to hate about her. It is also easy to find things to admire. She served in the U.S. Army in World War II, put herself through college and earned her law degree. At a time when the government started putting religious slogans on our money and making the Pledge of Allegiance into a public prayer, she stood virtually alone in her effort to maintain the separation of church and state. While there were others working to remove prayer and Bible recitation from the public schools, she was on the front wave. Here is how she addressed the court:

 “Your petitioners are atheists and they define their beliefs as follows. An atheist loves his fellow man instead of god. An atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth for all men together to enjoy.

An atheist believes that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it, and enjoy it.

An atheist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.

He seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god. An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man.

He wants an ethical way of life. He believes that we cannot rely on a god or channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter.

He believes that we are our brother’s keepers and are keepers of our own lives; that we are responsible persons and the job is here and the time is now.”

Love her or hate her, today is her birthday and she should be remembered.

Here’s the latest from Jim Wilson:

“Ronald Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife. —

Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, 1982

Fearing the cult of Ronald Reagan

When watching the Republican debates for the last several presidential election cycles, I was struck by the religious-like reverence the candidates have for Ronald Reagan. This is scary! Reagan’s legacy is disgusting, and I shudder at the thought that any of these Reagan admirers would try to imitate him when in office. Keep in mind this is not just liberal scree of Reagan bashing (you’ll note I was mostly quite positive in my recent piece on Barry Goldwater). I find there are plenty of reasons why Conservatives, Libertarians and small government types, not to mention liberals, and progressives should want to demolish the cult of Reagan and should be highly distrusting of Reagan’s disciples. His legacy is one of massive government intervention, hypocrisy, the promotion of superstition, scandal, and mass murder.

Remember, Reagan ran on the promise of “getting government off our backs” and on the notion that government is the problem rather than the solution. However, he actually expanded the role of the government domestically and abroad. He started the deregulation of oil and gas industry, the airline industry, and the trucking industry. While he was credited with the abolishment of the Civil Aeronautics Board, that actually took place under Carter. As, far as free trade goes, Reagan’s administration, at the time was the most protectionist in history. His administration resided over increases in tariff’s and import quotas and encouraged the Japanese to impose export quotas on microchips and cars. In addition, he increased price supports (at a great cost to the American tax payer) and production quotas for agricultural products. It is apparent that his actions were inconsistent with reducing government whether you agree with any these policies or not. His actions were more consistent with turning the country into a welfare state for the already rich. Such policies strike me as highly hypocritical.

Let’s not forget his highly interventionist and extremely expensive war on drugs or his politicizing of the religious right. Reagan’s administration was happy to made sure that the big government would consistently remain on the backs of people wishing to smoke a joint, have an abortion, or marry a member of the same sex (these things should be basic human freedoms, immune to government intervention.)

Reagan called for reduced government spending and balanced budgets, and of course accomplished neither. His administration, in fact, became the least fiscally conservative US, presidential administration, that was ever seen at the time. His administration transformed the United States, from the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation. He tripled the national debt and turned a roughly 900 billion dollar deficit to a $2.85 trillion deficit. This irresponsible spending may have been done intentionally, as a means of fighting the expansion of the welfare and regulatory aspects of the government, as well as a means of tying any future Democratic president or congress’ hands. In 1980 Reagan stated, “John Anderson tells us that first we’ve got to reduce spending before we can reduce taxes. Well, if you’ve got a kid that’s extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker.” Indicating he believed that, defunding the liberal state by wasting money on redundant weapons, prisons spending, support for third world dictators, wars on drugs, and agricultural subsidies, was a good idea.

The most damaging part of the Reagan legacy was his contribution to the country’s huge national debt. It has greatly compromised the standing of this country around the world, probably our quality of life here as well. Furthermore it is highly immoral to intentionally waste money that actually could be used for positive purposes and this seems to be one of the biggest aspects of Reaganism that the current batch of Republican candidates will most-likely imitate. I expect that any of the current Republican candidates for president (except for Ron Paul) will greatly increase the deficit. The last Republican president, George W. Bush, engaged in this tactic and referred to his increased spending with combined with cutting taxes for the rich as “a fiscal strait-jacket for Congress”. Whether, you want a smaller or larger government or not, I do not approve of reckless wasteful spending as a means to getting it, as this is bad for the country and international stability as well.

President Regan removed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from the official list of terrorist states so he could supply weapons and money. This likely includes the weapons used in the Genocidal Al Anfal Campaign in which 50,000 to 182,000 Kurdish people were murdered. He also, continued the Carter administration’s support of Mujahideen fighters in the Afghan civil, which included Osama Bin Laden. These fighters were deeply Islamist and authoritarian and U.S support for their activities set the stage for the Taliban takeover of that country in the 1990s.

President Reagan supported the highly racist and authoritarian apartheid regime in South Africa as well as military dictatorships throughout the third world including Guatemala, Columbia, the Philippines, and Argentina as well as death squads in Angola, Nicaragua and El Salvador. These dictatorships and death squads killed huge numbers of people and committed gross human rights abuses. The Reagan’s administration continued support the death squads even after they raped and murdered four American nuns and a laywoman. In 1999 a U.N. Sponsored report found that, “the American training of the officer corps in counter-insurgency techniques”, under President Reagan were a key factor in genocide in which, “entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and their inhabitants slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerrillas protection.” These death squads burned over roughly 400 villages and murdered around 200,000 people.

Reaganist support of death squads in Nicaragua led to the Iran-Contra Scandal, where it came to light that the Reagan administration was secretly selling weapons to Iran—an enemy state—and funding the Contras who were known to favor “targeting health care clinics and health care workers for assassination; kidnapping civilians; torturing and executing civilians, including children, raping women; indiscriminately attacking civilians and civilian homes; seizing civilian property; and burning civilian houses in captured towns” according to human rights watch.

President Ronald Reagan led one of the most scandal ridden presidential administrations known with some 138 officials being investigated, indictment, and/or convicted. Perhaps he was not responsible for all that happened. He was, after all, simply a retired actor. He may have been the personable face and being led by business and military elites. He may have used his charisma and quick wit to distract us from his henchmen while they set up a very large and expansive government that worked in their favor. This sort of big government crony-corporatism and deficit militarism is the opposite of the direction this country should go, and it disgust and frightens me that the Republican establishment is so enamored with this man. Here’s another Libertarian’s video on the subject: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4M8e34CJfE

Here’s another interesting insight from Jim Wilson:

I have had members of my own family repeat the nonsense that this country was founded upon Christian principles. Often these are referred to as “Judeo-Christian principles”. Many politicians (more often than not Republicans) speak of bringing us back to these principles. This nonsense needs to be put to rest. There is nothing in the bible that comes anywhere close to prescribing anything like our system of government.

In fact, the American revolution was largely inspired by enlightenment ideas that came about after rejecting the religious dogmatism that governed Europe for the preceding centuries. Many of the founding fathers were actually Deists. All of the tyrannies our founding fathers were fighting against were justified through appeals to Christianity. Furthermore, the founding fathers took multiple opportunities to dismiss the notion of this being a country founded on Christianity. The first Amendment of the Constitution specifically protects against a government imposition of religion and Article six explicitly states “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson made it clear he wanted a “wall of separation” between church and state. To quote Christopher Hitchens “Build up that wall Mr. Jefferson.” Furthermore, the Treaty of Tripoli (signed by John Adams) shortly after the country’s founding explicitly states: “ the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Still, the Christian nation mythology is a stubborn one and its crown jewel is the Ten Commandments. The mythology is often embodied by politicians erecting Ten Commandments monuments. Let’s walk through the commandments and see how many parallels to the American legal system are actually there.

The first four commandments:

1. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.”
2. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments. ”
3. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. ”
4. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

These have nothing to do with our constitution and it would be wholly unconstitutional to force Americans to obey them. They are entirely about what a petty, jealous tyrant this God is.

Commandment 5:

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.”

Is also not anywhere to be found in the constitution and cannot be enforced. Furthermore it is a horrible commandment. Honor should not be unconditional. One should not honor parents, for example that physically abuse them.

Commandments 6:

“You shall not murder.”

Applied strictly to the other Jews in the bible, and God often commanded the killing of non-jews. But, at last we do have a commandment that is enforced by our laws in this country. The only problem is that all civilized societies have some sort of prohibition against murder, including ones that pre-date the old testament. Frankly there is no reason to claim this commandment is the source of the prohibitions against murder in this country.

Commandment 7:

“You shall not commit adultery.”

This is not against the law in the country either, though it may be admitted as grounds for divorce.

Commandment 8:

“You shall not steal.”

My comments on 6 also apply here.

Commandment 9:

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

We have laws against this, but only in a highly limited context, and dishonesty in general is completely legal except in cases like libel, slander and fraud, where there is actual tangible damage.

Commandment 10:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

This a fundamentally dumb commandment, you really cannot control what you covet, and there is nothing wrong with coveting as long as this does not lead you to steal their possessions. Furthermore, coveting the wealth of those around you is part of what inspires us to work hard to get it ourselves. This is what many argue American capitalism is all about.

Also, keep in mind that in the bible the punishment for disobeying these and the rest of Old testament law was death by stoning. That is one area of Judeo-Christian tradition I am glad we abandoned. Also note that there is a whole different set of ten commandments given in Exodus 34:12-27, which includes instructions for sacrifices, and a commandment not to boil a kid in it’s mother’s milk. So, the question, “which ten commandments” needs to be asked? Anyway, very little of this and the rest of The Law have anything to do with our current system of law and as brutal as much of what is in the Torah, I think we should all be happy about this.

Several days ago, I received an email with the following:

Vote for Obama, and here’s the reason you should …

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

This debt discussion is a symptom of what I like to call an ideological proxy war. Krugman himself has done an about face on the debt issue as described here:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/01/krugman-v-krugman.html

My point isn’t to say that Krugman was wrong in 2003 or that he’s wrong today. My point is that both sides discuss things like the national debt primarily in service to larger agendas that are uncomfortable for them to talk about directly.

In 2003, Krugman wanted the government to do less of what it was doing at the time – invading the middle east and lowering tax rates - so he criticized the debt. Obama criticized the debt too, and voted against raising the debt ceiling as a Senator. Today, Krugman wants the government to do more of what it is doing – spending on social programs and infrastructure projects - so now he defends the debt, and Obama and the Democrats are the ones creating it.

Prominent Republicans did the exact same thing only in reverse: According to the Republican establishment during the Bush years the debt was no problem, a temporary necessity caused by the war on terror, and Democrats who warned about the deficit were portrayed as chicken littles. But now that there’s a Democrat in the white house you’d think all the Republicans went to college and got a PhD in sustainable financial practices. What a crock of bull. You’ll see how quickly all this fiscal discipline goes right out the window if the Republicans get back control of both the legislative and executive branches.

This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. This is a failure to face reality issue. The national debt is just a symptom of political choices made about how much to tax and how much to spend. Those are the things people should be thinking about.

The size of our national debt reflects that as a society we are habitually addicted to having government do more than we are willing to tax ourselves to pay for. This isn’t a temporary situation caused by a war or a recession. It doesn’t reflect “special needs” or compassionate priorities or sound management of the economy. Instead, this is a chronic condition that has applied every year for decades upon decades, regardless of which party nominally controlled Washington. The only exception was a couple of years in the late ’90s when new technology caused the economy to grow so much faster than anticipated that it took the politicians a little while to figure out how to screw up the budget again.

This is exacerbated by the fact that people are deliberately led to think they won’t have to pay a dollar (either now -or- later) for every dollar of services the government provides. Taxes are usually sold to the public as falling pimarily on someone else: Tax the rich! Tax the 1%! Tax the corporations! These are appealing to most people simply because most people are not rich, not in the top 1% of income, and are not large shareholders in corporations. Whereas government services are pitched as being primarily for our own benefit or the benefit of “the needy”: Fix our health care! Fix our schools! Fix our roads! Fix our retirements! Fix the environment!

Such broad-based appeals run smack into the political reality few talk about: politicians on both sides of the aisle get the vast majority of their campaign contributions and lobbyist input from the people they purport to tax, and very little from the people that they purport to benefit. Expecting your mark on a ballot to send someone to Washington who actually represents your interests rather than his or her own interests is the same kind of wishful thinking that we criticize religious fanatics for.  He who pays the piper calls the tune, which is how it’s always been. And no, marking a ballot does not constitute paying the piper. So who gets the best return on their money from government? Those who contribute the most to the political campaigns and lobbyists for those who run the show – the “1%ers”. Everyone else is just a pawn in the giant political chess game, and is lucky to get ten cents on the dollar.

Lest you think this is just promoting another ideology, it’s not. Whether you or I think that real wealth should be redistributed from the rich to the needy in our society is irrelevant to the fact that in the current political system the government is pretty much incapable of doing so. Whether financing of spending is done by debt or by taxation, the primary beneficiaries are always at the top: the rich, powerful, and well connected. The only thing a major party shift in Washington changes about that is which elites benefit and which lose out.

Need a final example of willful ignorance surrounding this? Krugman says of the debt, “U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.” That’s true only if by ”ourselves” he refers mostly to the same rich 1% who primarily benefit from everything else the government does. Who collects the lion’s share of the interest on the debt? Not the poor and needy. Think about it.

From Jim Wilson:

I recently came accross this piece:

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/18/new-study-finds-fewer-abortions-worldwide-many-remain-unsafe/?hpt=hp_t2

This is just another example of how misguided anti-choicers tend to be.  In this study we see that in much of the world there has been an increase in unsafe  abortion practices, while the total number of abortions level off. In other words, prohibition is doing what it always does and that is creating a black market for the thing that is prohibited.  If anti-choicers really cared about this issue they would seek to educate people on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies and promote access to cheap if not free contraception for everyone.  That many of them oppose this, and instead favor more prohibition tells me that much is wrong with their movement. If you are pro-life, tell me if you’ll change your views based on the information I presented.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

All events are at Duval Auditorium, 1501 North Campbell Avenue.

Parking is free in the visitor parking structure.

8-9:15 am – Cafe Inquiry. Open Forum. The hot topics of the day will be discussed.

Moderator, Gil Shapiro

10-Noon:– Lecture: Beyond Kumbaya: Culturally Relevant Humanism

by Sikivu Hutchinson

Despite media fantasies of post-racialism and post-feminism, the U.S. remains a deeply segregated, separate and unequal nation. The election of President Barack Obama brought heady claims of equality, yet anti-secularist, xenophobic Tea Party-style white nationalism is on the rise. So while the mainstream New Atheist movement battles over science and the separation of church and state, atheists, freethinkers, and humanists of color bring an entirely different set of priorities to the table. Author Sikivu Hutchinson discusses these challenges, providing a social justice lens for Humanism that goes beyond Kumbaya.

About the Speaker – Sikivu Hutchinson is a senior intergroup specialist for the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission. She received a Ph.D. from New York University and has taught women’s studies, cultural studies, urban studies, and education at UCLA, the California Institute of the Arts, and Western Washington University. She is the author of Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles and Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars. She has published articles in Free Inquiry, American Atheist Magazine and Secular Nation. She is also the editor of blackfemlens.org, founder of the Black Skeptics and a senior fellow for the Institute for Humanist Studies.

Upcoming FreeThought AZ events:

February 19 – 9am Annual FreeThought Membership Meeting

10am “Conservative Evangelicals in American Politics: Reflections from the Field” by Karen Seat. She is Associate Professor of Religious Studies Program U of A

As an election year, 2012 is going to challenge our critical thinking skills in politics as well as everyday life. Let’s rise to the challenge. Resolved:

1. Do not forget our nation’s heritage of a strong separation between church and state. If you need a reminder of our history, here’s a good resource: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html. Politicians who promise or suggest that their religious beliefs will determine their decisions in office are not only spitting on the graves of our founding fathers, they’re extremely dangerous.
2. Do not be taken in by any hoaxes, scams, pseudo-science, or mysticism. Question everything. Criticize ruthlessly. Follow your own conclusions regardless of what “everyone else” seems to think. Also: the world isn’t likely to end, literally or figuratively, in 2012.
3. Create something unique, original, and valuable. Distribute it as widely as you can. You don’t have to make money from it, but if you do that’s even better.
4. Discuss controversial subjects like politics, religion, and economics with the smartest people you can find who disagree with you. Don’t waste your time with idiots, and if you agree with someone about everything or nearly everything then one of you is redundant to the discussion. Try to get information from as many diverse sources as you can.
5. Do not be fooled by public professions of piety and insinuations that a candidate’s political opponents are infidels. President Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim nor much as I might wish, an Atheist. All of Obama’s major Republican challengers are…Christians. All of the third party candidates you are likely to hear about are…Christians. Regardless of the wisdom of doing so, in the 2012 presidential election there will be little opportunity to vote based on a candidate’s major religious beliefs because they’re all Christians. This is true for most of the other races as well. Some semblance of Christian belief is practially and unfortunately a requirement to win election to high office in this country.
6. Learn and practice something that is both useful and new. Age is no excuse to stop growing your knowledge base.
7. Establish a set of core values and principles that you can live your own life by and also judge candidates by. As a start I suggest:
   * Critical thinking informed by logic and evidence rather than mystical and wishful thinking.
   * Integrity, responsibility, and accountability rather than endlessly kicking the can down the road.
   * Respect for all human rights, including: freedom of and from religion, privacy, due process, equal treatment,  speech, property, and self-defense.
8. Do not cast your vote based on a candidate’s promises or statements - such statements are usually composed of far more lies than truth. Instead, vote based on the candidate’s actual track record, the effect of their party affiliation on wider political outcomes, and who their campaign funding comes from — since that’s who they are most likely to listen to once in office. This requires a little more research than listening to whatever sound bites happen to be playing on Fox News or CNN. Either do the research, or stop calling yourself an informed voter.
9. It is possible that no candidate in a particular election race will measure up to earning your vote. If none do, then there is no shame in withholding your vote in that race. Voting is neither a legal nor a moral imperative and non-voters have just as much right to criticize government policy as voters do.
10. Treat your body and your mind with the respect they deserve. Accept neither the hedonism of short-term thinkers nor the asceticism of mystics. Lean on your own understanding, and run…don’t walk…from anyone who counsels you to have faith.

Happy New Year!

This post comes to us from Gil Shapiro:

As widely reported in the media, Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, called presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith “a cult.” His fellow Republicans, trying to defuse this faith-based firestorm, stated that compared to the real problems facing our nation, candidates’ religious beliefs should not matter. I disagree.

A religion informs its adherents how to see the world. The more one is sold on its “Truth”, the more one is likely to unquestioningly follow its directives. Indeed, devout believers forbid secular thought to influence the critical analysis and possible revision of morals and values emanating from sacred texts.

I observe most Republican (Conservative) presidential candidates unequivocally supporting the Christian viewpoints that: Abortion and euthanasia are murder; homosexuality is vile; only abstinence should be taught in schools; sex is exclusively for the married; parents should have total control over their children’s education; and religious expression must be allowed in schools. I am not aware of any objective evidence supporting these positions

On the other hand, I observe most Democrats (Liberals) accepting morals and values that are primarily based on reason, science, and experience: Women can choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy; homosexuals and heterosexuals should have equal rights; reproductive information along with safe sex practices must be taught in public schools; sexual relations are private matters among responsible individuals; both parents and governments need to formulate educational policy; and schools are not appropriate venues for religious expression.

This issue strikes close to home. In Arizona, many elected officials are imposing, in our pluralistic and constitutionally secular state, legislation that is religiously based. The Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), considered in 2010 by the Arizona Capitol Times news outlet as our state’s most influential lobbying group, has persuaded elected officials to enact policies and laws consistent with fundamentalist Christian teachings.

Cathi Herrod, CAP’s president and chief lobbyist, boasts on the group’s website (www.azpolicy.org/center-supported-bills) that to date, 101 CAP-supported bills have been enacted into law!

My secular thinking guides me to consider that:

· Untold numbers of people would not be alive today had their mothers not opted for earlier abortions. Many men reject women who already have children. However, because these women had abortions, they were able to eventually marry and have children who in turn had children and so on. This is an often untold side of the abortion controversy.

· All citizens deserve the same rights. That includes the right to marry any other mutually consenting adult

· By denying that sexual impulses are universal, certain religionists impose unnecessary guilt (self-pleasuring), restrictions (celibacy) and caveats (no sex until marriage) on themselves and others. “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”

· A credible education for all children should be a compelling governmental interest. States like ours, which give parents complete control over their children’s education, are often allowing their young citizens to go into adulthood with insufficient and inaccurate knowledge of reality.

Critical thinking, not religious beliefs, should inform us how to see the world. A political candidate who uses scripture rather than science, reason and experience to formulate public policy and law should not hold elected office.

This post comes to us from Richard Johnson:

In the November 8 election, voters in Mississippi were faced with a referendum that said life begins at fertilization.  Isn’t it a wee bit presumptuous to put such a fundamental question of nature up for a vote?  Suppose the speed of light was yet undetermined.  Would we leave this up to voters, too? And what might we expect as a result: Fifty-nine percent of the ballot responders say that the speed of light is 1,256 miles per hour.  Would that put the question to rest for posterity?

“Webster’s New World College Dictionary” defines a person as a human being.  We are conscious or self-aware creatures.  A fertilized egg is not conscious. Self-awareness does not happen until after birth.  Consciousness requires a mind.  A second-old embryo has a DNA blueprint for a mind bet getting to that place requires the embryo grow and mature – first to a fetus and eventually to a born child.

A recent article in “The New Yorker” magazine chronicles the struggle of Planned Parenthood from its beginnings in Brooklyn, New York two years before women’s suffrage in 1918.  In “Birthright,” Jill Lepore tells us that the early issue was about obscenity (the Comstock law forbade public discussion about venereal matters).  Birth control was not really a political issue until Roe vs. Wade in 1973.  Even at that time, some “sixty-eight percent of Republicans and fifty-nine percent of Democrats agreed that ‘the decision to have an abortion should be made solely by the woman and her physician.’”  But as the 80s approached, Republicans placed abortion front and center with the strategy of dividing the Democratic Party.

Women’s rights have gotten caught in a political crossfire between Republicans and Democrats.  Lepore observes “If a fertilized egg has constitutional rights, women cannot have equal rights with men.”  A group called Personhood USA based in Colorado pushed Mississippi to place the ballot measure. The group plans to place similar measures on the ballot in Florida, Montana, Ohio, and Oregon in 2012.

While the defeat of the personhood initiative in Mississippi was a relief and a surprise, perhaps it would have been better had it won but narrowly.  Challenging Roe vs. Wade is a stated objective of the pro-life camp and a personhood victory would certainly have provoked such a challenge.  Perhaps we should let it happen.  Much of the country has moved on.  It might be surprising how much support Roe vs. Wade actually has.

A challenge to the personhood “theory” would be a way to dispel influence of the religious right who get a bang out of “just throwing things out there” like life begins at conception.  A federal court decision along the lines of Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District might be significant in putting the religious right’s troublemaking genie back in the bottle.  There’s no way “life begins at conception” would be able to withstand scientific scrutiny.  Maybe putting God back in the bottle would be next.

This post comes to us from Gil Shapiro:

Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the U.S. has seen an alarming increase in the number of elected officials who cite Christian dogma as their justification for public policy decisions.

They insist that matters related to abortion, end of life, stem-cell research, gay rights, science, education and the environment must first pass a test of “Is it biblical?” rather than a secular test of “Is it logical, reasoned and rational?”

As the potential election of more fundamentalist candidates approaches, I fear that secular principles, which are embodied in our state and federal constitutions, will continue to come under attack.

Indeed, evangelical leaders have exhorted their congregants to seek public office to promote Christianity in America.

While I do not begrudge these candidates their faith, I do criticize their intentions to impose it on our society.

They never announce these goals in their campaigns in order to have a better chance to capture the votes of the unsuspecting mainstream.

But to their constituency, they have developed a not-so-difficult-to-decipher code.

Catch phrases such as, “I am principled” or “I believe in core values” signals: “Like you, I want Christian Scripture to be the underpinning of all legislation.”

This deceptive approach reflects poorly on their ethics and on the ethics of the political party that has endorsed them.

The public must therefore ask of every candidate, “If elected, to what extent will your religious beliefs influence your politics?”

Candidates with evangelical agendas need two reality checks to convince them their religion should remain personal, not public:

● Every religion claims it is the “true way.” But one citizen’s religion is another’s mythology.

When Christians understand why they reject all other religions, they will gain much needed insight into why many people reject theirs.

Clearly, belief and reliance on the supernatural should never guide public policy. Candidates for public office who advance such concepts are guilty of “political malpractice.”

Some argue that because our state and nation are predominantly Christian, that Scripture is entitled to be the basis of our laws (i.e., the majority rules).

Using this same twisted logic, the United States is then entitled to be governed only by white people!

Such concepts are divisive and unconstitutional.

● Conclusions from the 2005 United Nation’s Human Development Report show religion is repressive to a country’s societal health.

This report confirms that open, democratic and secular countries (i.e. Scandinavia, Australia, Western Europe) usually are among the most advanced (life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, gender/social equality, peaceful, stable, wealthy and free) while the 50 most religious ones (Africa, Central and South America and the Middle East) are the most backward (violent, unstable, poor and oppressive).

And of interest for the U.S., a suggestive cultural parallel is in these opposite dimensions of societal health between the “red” (Christian) and “blue” (secular) states.

Ironically, many of our visionary Founding Fathers who were Christian somehow understood the important principle that today’s evangelicals fail to grasp.

Government rooted in religious dogma is a blueprint for disaster. That is why there was intentionally no mention of God in our constitution.

The secular guidelines of logic, reason and rational thought must be the bedrock of any government. This is the model that will work best for all Americans.

Dr. Gilbert D. Shapiro is a podiatrist and foot surgeon in Tucson.