Shut up because the views must be the same

A guest blogger at the Volokh Conspiracy is doing a series of posts about treaties and the United States’ Congress’ powers and the ability to enforce them.

Rather than offer my own views on that subject (which is way beyond my expertise, in part because IANAL), I’ll instead draw attention to a curious contradiction among many in the religious right wrong. In concerns the United States’ Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2), which reads as follows:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

The people in the religious right wrong use this section to argue that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, if ratified by the US Senate, will somehow threaten “parental rights” or homeschooling or other such stuff. (As every other country [except Somalia, which hasn’t signed] shows, such claims are nonsense, but showing why is beyond the scope of this post). In other words, they are required to believe that any international treaty overrules whatever laws are in force in the US, even if Congress legislating in that area would be ultra vires (beyond its powers).

The religious right wrong also believe that the US is founded as a Christian nation. This is in spite of the Treaty of Tripoli, which the US Senate unanimously ratified over two centuries ago. The relevant section is Article 12, which reads as follows (spelling and wording in original):

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

In other words, the religious right wrong believes that treaties overrule law when they provide rights to children, but not when they refute the Christian nation myth.

Those two positions are contradictory. One cannot rationally believe both. If they truly believe that the US was founded as a Christian nation and that the Treaty of Tripoli does not apply, then they can forever shut up about the UNCRC overruling any other law and threatening parental rights. If, by contrast, they believe that the UNCRC does overrule other laws, they then can shut the fuck up about the US being founded as a Christian nation.

Hmm….

Let’s juxtapose this (via) and this.

Link farm – seed planting edition

In no particular order:

• Why people believe conspiracy theories (via Rebekka K. Steg).
• If nothing turns around, British Columbia perverse “tradition” of putting women in charge of political parties in ruins will continue. It seems pretty obvious that what happened to Johnston, Campbell, MacPhail, and James is also happening to Clark.
  • It’s a bit of shame, as I still lean against supporting Dix.
• Since I’ve basically run out of X Random Stuff names, I’ve decided to rename these sorts of posts Link farm – X. I hope you don’t mind.
• Mission accomplished, haters. You just drove Jen McCreight away. All of you haters/bullies/misogynists: Fuck you.
• There is a complicated legal situation regarding inheritance of digital property (via). What I think should be done is that these should be treated as just as willable as any other sort of intangible asset (copyrights, patents, etc). However, I’m sure that big business will probably resist such a move, because they want to be able to keep selling you the same thing over and over again.
• A post from Libby Anne on the virtual merger(in the United States) of Evangelical Christianity and the Republican Party.
  • Recall Andrew Sullivan’s thesis that this is causing an increase in atheism in the United States.
• Debunking anti–choice junk science.
• Are you really being oppressed, or just mad you can’t oppress others? (via)
  • The religious right wrong would inevitably say that being unable to oppress others (especially women and gays) is oppressing them. Talk about theocratic Orwellianism.
• This is a cult, and a really creepy misogynistic one at that (via).

Reasons for unbelief

The New Statesman asked several prominent atheists why they don’t believe in God, and then compiled their responses. I really like this one from human rights activist Maryam Namazie:

I don’t remember exactly when I stopped believing in God. Having been raised in a fairly open-minded family in Iran, I had no encounter with Islam that mattered until the Islamic movement took power on the back of a defeated revolution in Iran. I was 12 at the time.

I suppose people can go through an entire lifetime without questioning God and a religion that they were born into (out of no choice of their own), especially if it doesn’t have much of a say in their lives. If you live in France or Britain, there may never be a need to renounce God actively or come out as an atheist.

But when the state sends a “Hezbollah” (the generic term for Islamist) to your school to ensure that you don’t mix with your friends who are boys, stops you from swimming, forces you to be veiled, deems males and females separate and unequal, prescribes different books for you and your girlfriends from those read by boys, denies certain fields of study to you because you are female, and starts killing in­discriminately, then you have no choice but to question, discredit and confront it – all of it. And that is what I did.

Fundies might deny it, but in reality fundamentalist Islam, Christianity, Judaism, et al. are more alike then you think. Patriarchal religion has slowed the progress of women’s rights throughout history, and getting rid of it would be a huge step forward.

The following is a message from God

Dear not-raptureds:

You may have seen lots of people being raptured today. However, they weren’t the ones you expected. For example, the Robertson, Dobson, Fischer, and Barber types are still here. There are numerous reasons for this.

One is the consistent false predictions. There are far too many doomsdays that didn’t.

One reason is that you accuse me of “creating a fake”. Evolution is a fact supported by overwhelming observable evidence. The cdesign proponentists and creationists dispute this, therefore committing the sin of blasphemy by accusing me of being deceptive. This is why members of the Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis et al are still here.

Another is the few–issuesism. You focus almost exclusively on abortion, school prayer (even though you are told not to show off your faith), and same–sex marriage. How could it possibly be reasonable for my “followers” to be few–issue voters, when I, the creator of the universe, are clearly not a few–issue diety? You give the whole faith a bad name, making all Christians look like judgmental, sex obsessed fundies who cannot mind their own businesses. This therefore excludes the Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, et al are still here.

One other reason is how you promote the heresy of “prosperity theology”. Rather than acting following the reality that a camel going through the eye of a needle has a better chance than the rich man has of getting into heaven, you claim that the rich are especially favoured by me. You even go so far as to falsely ignore one entire book of the Bible. Instead you lie and whine about “redistribution”, while at the same time having no problem running million dollar megachurches and living in mansions funded by the proceeds of your members. This is why pretty much everyone who is a member of a megachurch is still here.

Lastly, you promote hypocrisy and make a complete farce of the idea of being saved. You claim that once you are saved you are always saved and guaranteed to get to heaven, no matter what you do. This provides no incentive for being moral, hence you high divorce rate, rampant child abuse, and the oppression of women. This is why all fundamentalist and theocon types are still here.

For those reasons, this is why the Lunas of the world have been raptured, and why you wingnuts have not.

Have a nice tribulation.

From: God

Prepare to get a new keyboard, folks

From the Onion: NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find, Kill God.

It’s too funny.

Why the separation of church and state matters

It’s events like these two that show why the separation of church and state is important.

First, a Palestinian barber is facing imprisonment or execution for advocating atheism (via):

A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars — caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from this backwater West Bank town, is highlighting the limits of tolerance in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority — and illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence.

Residents of Qalqiliya say they had no idea that Walid Husayin — the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar — was leading a double life.

Known as a quiet man who prayed with his family each Friday and spent his evenings working in his father’s barbershop, Husayin was secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

Now, he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for “insulting the divine essence.” Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

The rest is after the jump.