78% of Australians believe there should be a conscience vote on allowing same-sex couples to marry, according to a national opinion poll released today.The poll also found an increase in support for marriage equality with 62% of Australians supporting the reform, up from 60% last year.
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The Galaxy poll also showed that 80% of Australians aged between 18 and 24 support same-sex marriage and 72% of households with children aged under 18 were also in favour. 74% of Labor voters and 48% of Coalition voters support equality.
Support for a conscience vote is uniformly high with 80% of Labor voters and 75% of Coalition voters supporting it.
"As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God," Byrne wrote. "As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books. Those who attack me have distorted, twisted and misrepresented my comments and are spewing utter lies to the people of this state."And no-Christians in Alabama are supposed to believe if he becomes Governor he will represent their interests as well?
He went on: "I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that every single word of it is true ... My faith is at the center of my life and my belief in Jesus Christ as my personal savior and Lord guides my every action."
Dallin H. Oaks, member of theOaks said the free exercise of religion is threatened by those who believe it conflicts with "the newly alleged 'civil right' of same-gender couples to enjoy the privileges of marriage."Wow! Where to begin with refuting these statements when there is so much misinformation and ignorance displayed? Earlier I blogged about the white-hot homophobia and misogyny of the Catholic Church and now comes this insanity from a spokesperson a certifiably racist and misogynistic institution.
"Those who seek to change the foundation of marriage should not be allowed to pretend that those who defend the ancient order are trampling on civil rights," Oaks said. "The supporters of Proposition 8 were exercising their constitutional right to defend the institution of marriage ..."
Oaks said that while "aggressive intimidation" connected to Proposition 8 was primarily directed at religious people and symbols, "it was not anti-religious as such." He called the incidents "expressions of outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position and had prevailed in a public contest."
"As such, these incidents of 'violence and intimidation' are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic," he said. "In their effect they are like well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation."
"Blacks were lynched and beaten and denied the right to vote by their government," said Marc Solomon, marriage director for Equality California, which spearheaded the No on 8 campaign. "To compare that to criticism of Mormon leaders for encouraging people to give vast amounts of money to take away rights of a small minority group is illogical and deeply offensive."Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate:
Fred Karger, founder of the gay rights group Californians Against Hate, said Oaks' speech is part of a public relations offensive to "try to turn the tables on what has been a complete disaster for the Mormon church ... They are trying to be the victim here. They're not. They're the perpetrators."Pretty good responses, but both comments fail to address the key issue that Oaks speech reveals: he fundamentally does not believe in full equality for LGBT people and he either doesn't know or doesn't care to find out about the extent of the persecution of African-Americans in the civil rights era of the 1960s, but he still wishes to overlay his own bigotry with the mantle of civil rights. This from a lawyer who clerked at the United Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren!
One of the most troubling developments is the proposition that persons of the same sex can "marry." This proposal redefines the nature of marriage and the family, and, as a result, harms the intrinsic dignity of every person and the common good of society.The statements expressed above are so antithetical to my own beliefs and the beliefs of so many people that I do not even know where to begin to refute the claims within the text.
Marriage is a unique union, different from other relationships. It is the permanent bond between one man and one woman whose two-in-one-flesh communion of persons is an indispensable good at the heart of every family and every society. Same-sex unions are incapable of realizing this specific communion of persons. Therefore, redefining marriage to include such relationships empties the term of its meaning, for it excludes the essential complementarity between man and woman, treating sexual difference as it were irrelevant to what marriage is.
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The legal recognition of same-sex unions poses a multifaceted threat to the very fabric of society, striking at the source of from which society and culture come and which they are designed to serve. Such recognition affects all people, married and non-married: not only at the fundamental levels of the good of the spouses, the good of the children, the intrinsic dignity of every human person, and the common good, but also at the levels of education, cultural imagination and influence, and religious freedom.
Queerty and Joe.My.God are among several blogs that are reporting about a major Religious Identification study which reports that the number of Americans who respond "none" when asked their religion is up to 15%.Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.Of course, the impact that an increase in the percentage of people who do not believe in ancient homophobic religious dictates is good news for the LGBT rights movement, as a Queerty analysis shows. New England (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont) contains the states that are the most progressive on LGBT rights in the United States and just happens to be the least religious section of the country, with 34% if Vermonters saying that they have no religion while CT and MA both have marriage equality already and VT and NH have civil unions. In 2009, all 4 states in New England that do not have civil marriage for same-sex couples will be considering bills to legalize the practice--more than half are expected to pass their respective legislatures.
Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.
“No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state,” the study’s authors said.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.
And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
Chris Hedges’ I Don’t Believe In Atheists is a book that is intended to be a direct retort to the best-selling books by the so-called “Unholy Trinity” of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens who are also known as the "new atheists." Hedges is the New York Times-bestselling author of American Fascists and a former foreign correspondent for multiple media outlets as well as a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. He sat down and wrote the book after becoming enraged following multiple debates with Harris and Hitchens in 2007. I was asked to review Hedges’ book and host FDL’s online book salon by Lisa Derrick of La Figa fame whom I met at the National LGBT Bloggers summit convened by Mike Rogers (of BlogActive and PageOneQ) in Washington, D.C. in December 2008. I approach the text as an academically minded, scientifically trained highly non-religious LGBT activist and blogger (at MadProfessah.com) who doesn’t really identify as an atheist but doesn’t shy away from the label. I have read (and enjoyed) Dawkins’ The God Delusion but had not read anything by Hitchens or Harris before being assigned I Don’t Believe In Atheists.An atheist who accepts an irredeemable and flawed human nature, as well as a morally neutral universe, who does not think the world can be perfected by human beings, who is not steeped in cultural arrogance and feelings of superiority, who rejects the violent imperial projects under way in the Middle East, is intellectually honest. These atheists may not like the word sin, but they have accepted its reality.
They hold an honored place in a pluralistic and diverse human community.Atheists, including those who brought us the Enlightenment, have often been a beneficial force in the history of human thought and religion. They have forced societies to examine empty religious platitudes and hollow religious concepts. They have courageously challenged the moral hypocrisy of religious institutions. (pp. 24-25.)
I think very many atheists (or atheist-leaning agnostics like myself) would be annoyed by the notion that Hedges thinks that we have accepted the reality of “sin.” Umm, no, we haven’t! The notion of sin requires a religious imprimatur which as non-believers we reject (both the religion and the authority to declare certain acts sinful).
But I am digressing from addressing Hedges' main argument directly. First of all, I think it is simply incorrect to equate the views of the new atheists or what he calls "secular fundamentalists" with the views of religious fundamentalists. A religious fundamentalist is someone who believes in the inerrancy of their chosen religious text (Bible, Koran, etc). Hedges extrapolates from the new atheists' stated position that they reject religion and the supernatural (or divine) to say that they believe in the perfectibility of man. In Hedges' view religious fundamentalists believe that man will reach heaven after death while secular fundamentalists believe that they can form a "heaven on earth" through inevitable scientific and technological progress. Hedges' rightly (and lengthily) identifies the dangers of the belief in the ability to create a utopian society, which are primarily violence and totalitarianism. However, to me he is unpersuasive in connecting the views of the new atheists to this Utopian dream.
There are other reviewers, such as Barney Zwartz of Australia's The Age newspaper who are more persuaded by Hedges. In his December 27 rave review of the book, Zwartz says:
Hedges marshals an array of evidence and arguments against the "new atheists" from history, literature, philosophy and the atheistic double-deity of science and reason. This, combined with despair at religious fundamentalism, points him towards a profound pessimism about the "dying culture" of an increasingly militarised and corporatised America indeed, about humanity.[...]
Hedges believes we are becoming an entertainment-dominated, image-based society less able to grapple with abstract thought. "Image-based societies do not grasp or cope with ambiguity, nuance, doubt and the many layers of irrational motives and urges, some of them frightening, that make human actions complex and finally unfathomable."
Interestingly, he thinks the new atheists are the product of this morally
stunted world of entertainment, appealing not to reason but to our deepest and
most irrational subliminal desires. "The simple slogans these atheists repeat about religion do not communicate ideas. They amuse us. They bolster our
self-satisfaction, anti-intellectualism and provincialism."Basically, Hedges says a plague on both their houses. He wants us to reject
simplistic Utopian visions and accept the ineluctable limitations of being
human. This book "is a call to face reality, a reality which in the coming
decades is going to be bleak and difficult."
In my view, one of Hedges’ goals in writing the book is to try to replicate the success that the Unholy Trinity has had in energizing the approximately one-seventh of the United States population that describes themselves as “without religion” to actively embrace agnosticism or atheism. Hedges, however, would apparently like to energize the larger group of people who do describe themselves as religious (and are alarmed by the popularity of the new atheists)
in order to have them buy his book and embrace his opposition to the views he ascribes to the new atheists and, in so doing, diminish their influence upon the culture.
All in all, I do think that Hedges has skillfully written a useful text in that he does a good job of pointing out the ridiculous nature of religious fundamentalism and the concomitant dangers it poses to society. However, where he goes astray is arguing for a false equivalence between
religious fundamentalists and what he calls secular fundamentalists. These new
atheists, who as individuals may be vulnerable to some of his critiques, are not a monolithic group and Hedges is mistaken when he tries to repeatedly use Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins as the representatives of all non-believers. Some of us just don’t believe in (your) God and that’s all there is to it.
Tomorrow MadProfessah will be hosting a online chat from 5-7 pm EST (2-4pm PST) at Firedoglake.com on the book I Don't Believe In Atheists written by Chris Hedges.
Has anyone in the Bush administration confided in you about being an atheist? Well, I don’t talk that much to them—maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”Although this fact has apparently not been previously widely publicized, it has not been common knowledge.
