The Stupid Brigade

Max Blumenthal's visit to the Value Voters Summit has to be seen to be believed:

Just when you think that the Rev. Lou Sheldon -- "Remember, homosexuality could strike you" -- is as whacky as it could get, Max introduces us to Star Parker. After stating that "abortion is the No. 1 killer of black women between 25 and 34" (i.e., the 76th through 103rd trimester), Parker says this:

"We want Sodomites quarantined."

Besides demonstrating that she doesn't know what Sodomite means,* Parker's weird non-sequitur call for internment camps illustrates how full-gonzo loony religion can become once it lies down with authoritarian politics.

Neither politics nor religion is intrinsically authoritarian. Neither is compatible with authoritarianism -- neither can survive it. The authoritarian impulse takes over, reducing religion and politics both to mere tools for achieving its ends. That is, after all, the nature of the thing -- to reduce everything to a means for its ends.

The Stupid Brigade usually takes this as their cue. Religion, I have just said, is not and ought not to be authoritarian. Aha! cry the irregulars of the Stupid Brigade, "Here you are claiming that religion is not authoritarian and yet at the same time you're telling others what they should and shouldn't do. Your telling others not to be authoritarian is, itself, authoritarian!"

It's not very nice to call them the Stupid Brigade, and it's probably not particularly constructive. But then again nothing can be constructive with these folks because, well, they're kind of stupid. They're not open to persuasion, nor are they interested in trying to persuade others. All they're really interested in is showing off what they consider to be their irrefutably clever wordplay and their semantic Gotcha! games:

Aha! You say you're for tolerance, but that just means you're intolerant of intolerance!

Aha! You say you're opposed to authoritarianism, but that just means you're trying to tell the authoritarians what they can and can't do!

Aha! You say you're for "love," but that just means you hate hatred!

You can try to respond to such people, if you have the patience, but there's nothing there to respond to. They offer nothing that can be engaged: No coherent argument; no apparent capacity for recognizing coherent argument; no sense of the ability to distinguish between sense and nonsense.

And anyway, they can't hear you. After firing off one of their tail-swallowing semantic pretzels, they're too preoccupied with their undeserved victory lap to listen to any attempt at a response.

So there's really only one appropriate response to the Stupid Brigade and their triumphalistic illogic: Take that hypothetical rock of theirs, the one that's so big that Almighty God can't lift it, and drop it on their heads.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* The story of Sodom and Gomorrah has to do with gang rape. And then there's this, from the prophet Ezekiel:

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."

Comments

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

After firing off one of their tail-swallowing semantic pretzels, they're too preoccupied with their undeserved victory lap to listen to any attempt at a response.

*rolling on the floor laughing my ass off and scaring the horses*

Also: yes.

[mmack]

We want Sodomites quarantined

I say damned straight! All those people who supported Sodom Hooosaaaaayn over in Eye-rack aughtta' be locked up! First sensible post you've put on slacktivist in weeks, Fred!

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah has to do with gang rape
In my best Emily Litella voice: "Oh, that's very different. . . Never mind"

:^)

[mmack]

We want Sodomites quarantined

Fred, what's their position on the Dolomites? Do they have to be quarantined too?

[cjmr]

*splorfle*

mmack wins the thread!

[hapax]

So there's really only one appropriate response to the Stupid Brigade and their triumphalistic illogic: Take that hypothetical rock of theirs, the one that's so big that Almighty God can't lift it, and drop it on their heads.

Fred, I kiss your head, your hands, and your feet.

Sodom Hooosaaaaayn

For some reason I read this as "Saddam Ho-yay" and got some very twisted Smallville fanslash imagery....

[hapax]

Daxamites, now, definitely should be quarantined. Preferably in the Phantom Zone.

[Spalanzani]

mmack: "Fred, what's their position on the Dolomites? Do they have to be quarantined too?"

Of course! After all, they're part of the Alps. We all know that mountain ranges are the tools of Satan.

[gdr]

103rd through 142nd trimester, surely?

[mmack]

Fred hasn't even put the best "WTF?" line in his post. Consider this from the linked site:

the badly underfunded former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee won over the audience with his insistence that banning abortion would put an end to America’s illegal immigration problem.

And in other news, Mike Huckabee insists that if more Americans took up cigarette smoking, there would be an end to America's obesity epidemic.

Man, I'd love to be a fly on the wall when Huck tried to explain the logic behind that statement, but I'm afraid that my head might explode trying to follow his train of thought.

cjmr,

Thanks for the vote, but I'm just getting warmed up.

[hapax]

Man, I'd love to be a fly on the wall when Huck tried to explain the logic behind that statement

I've heard it. The thinking is that illegal immigration is spurred by a lack of workers (not a lack of workers willing to work cheaply and without legal protections). All these aborted babies could take their place, mowing lawns, picking strawberries, plucking chickens, presumably for sub-minimum wages and without requiring education, housing, Social Security benefits...

The Huck's a genial fellow, and quick with a quip, but nobody ever accused him of being a Deep Thinker.

[Anna]

"Remember, homosexuality could strike you"

Teh Gay, it stalks you! Run from Teh Gay, run!

The thing that strikes me, watching these people talk about queer rights is how woefully misinformed they still are. ("There's gonna be a lot more proms that will be disrupted?" What in the world? My prom had two queens. Neither of them were queer, we just thought that if we were gonna pick two people to best represent our student body, there shouldn't be a requirement that one of them be male. So we voted, and picked two queens.) There's the perception that Teh Gay can 'infect' you where you stand ("This guy over here could turn gay"), that it's caused by chemical imbalances (WTF?), that somehow queer people don't belong to their own gender (the problem of restrooms only comes up if you think that somehow gay men aren't actually men. If they're men like every other man in America, there's no restroom problem, because they use the one assigned to their gender), that being queer is a 'groove' that all the cool cats fall into, etc.

Rev. Sheldon has sat down with Mitt Romney, so he knows that Mitt is 'good people'. He knows Larry Craig personally, so he knows that Craig is 'good people' and therefore can't be gay despite the fact that Craig has clearly had homosexual sex over a period of years. It's only the people that he doesn't know who are scary and therefore to be condemned. The denial goes so deep that Craig isn't just gay-but-a-nice-person, he's simply not gay. It's not so much the bigotry of these people that's sad, it's the complete denial of what it actually means to be queer.

[Angelika]

I guess the illegal immigrant problem would be solved much more easily, if we'd allow them in legally. That way they'd be able to fight for better work conditions and higher wages, which in the long run might actually reduce abortions, because poor women would be in better econmic situations and could actually afford having their babies.

[Spalanzani]

Anna: "There's the perception that Teh Gay can 'infect' you where you stand ("This guy over here could turn gay"), that it's caused by chemical imbalances (WTF?), that somehow queer people don't belong to their own gender (the problem of restrooms only comes up if you think that somehow gay men aren't actually men."

Maybe the real reason for all the concern over homosexuality is that they have gays mixed up with zombies. At the very least, zombies are a much closer fit for what they're describing than actual gay men.

[Edo]

"Remember, homosexuality could strike you!"

I've contracted a crippling case of LOLio. Could somebody get me a vaccine?

[ako]

My prom had two queens. Neither of them were queer, we just thought that if we were gonna pick two people to best represent our student body, there shouldn't be a requirement that one of them be male.

Man, if some of these people could have seen my prom, their heads would have exploded. Guys in dresses, girls in tuxes, girls dancing together, boys dancing together, huge mult-gendered clusters dancing together. Pretty much a nightmare. Especially how everyone was having a good time, and all the heterosexual couples wearing gender-appropriate clothing failed to have their evening ruined by people not being like them.

[Retrogrouch]

The sin of Sodom is inhospitality.

If it was about rape, then Lot offering his daughters to the crowd should have brought condemnation. The fact that it is implicitly OK to rape the women and not the men either should be taken as a gay issue, OR as a hospitality issue (with real consequences for the immigratio0n debate currently taking place in the USA).

[Anna]

Spalanzani: Maybe the real reason for all the concern over homosexuality is that they have gays mixed up with zombies. At the very least, zombies are a much closer fit for what they're describing than actual gay men.

This reminded me of one of the poster taglines for zombie classic Army of Darkness: They move. They breathe. They suck. (IMDB)

I think you're right. They DO have gay men confused with zombies!

[Turcano]

I've contracted a crippling case of LOLio. Could somebody get me a vaccine?

Fear not, Scott is bound to make a post sooner or later.

[Spalanzani]

"Remember, zombism could stike you!"
"We want zombies quarantined."
"Zombies will destroy the institution of marriage."
"The zombies pose a grave threat to our society."
"Thus we find ourselves -- back against the ropes -- in a fight we did not pick, struggling in a culture war we did not ask for...against zombies!"

See? Everything makes much more sense now!

[Spalanzani]

Anna: "This reminded me of one of the poster taglines for zombie classic Army of Darkness: They move. They breathe. They suck."

Ah yes, a true classic. I wanted to watch the whole Evil Dead series for Halloween, but somehow I never got around to it.

[bulbul]

We all know that mountain ranges are the tools of Satan.
I'm sorry, cjmr, Spalanzani wins.

[Cactus Wren]

There's the perception that Teh Gay can 'infect' you where you stand ("This guy over here could turn gay"), that it's caused by chemical imbalances ...

Which is ridiculous, of course. As everyone knows, ghey is caused by tent pegs.

[Clusive]

This looks like mythmaking in action. When the ancient greeks were faced with something uncontrollable and unexplainable, they made up a story to give them some sort of handle on it: say, performing the right sacrifices to Demeter makes the spring come back. And you keep sacrificing, and spring keeps returning, so you know it must be working.

To these guys, the unexplainable and uncontrollable fact that some children end up gay needs the same kind of story. It may not make sense (tent pegs? quarantine? huh?), but at least they feel like they have some leverage.

It's like science was never invented.

[Jeff]

that somehow queer people don't belong to their own gender (the problem of restrooms only comes up if you think that somehow gay men aren't actually men. If they're men like every other man in America, there's no restroom problem, because they use the one assigned to their gender)

The restroom "problem" is by-and-large trivial, but for transvestites and more so for pre-op trans-sexuals, there is a problem. If a person who, to all appearances, seems to be a woman enters a men's room, there's likely to be juvenile behavior but nothing serious. If the person uses a stall, again, no big deal. If the person uses a urinal, there's going to be the kind of "ick" factor that some get at any sign of The Gay.

For a F-to-M trans-sexual, the problem is worse, in that women are not going to let what seems to be a man use their restroom. The former is solved by saying that any freak-out the men have is their own problem, but would that also be true of the women?

[Clusive]

And of course, if your story ends up not quite working, you just need to sacrifice--er, legislate--harder.

[J]

Neither politics nor religion is intrinsically authoritarian.

Mmmhmm. Yeah, maybe politics. Religion, I think the jury is still out.

Neither is compatible with authoritarianism -- neither can survive it.

Sorry: Bullshit. You're a nice man, Fred but religion is TOTALLY compatible with authoritarianism. The Spanish Inquisition lasted FOUR HUNDRED YEARS. And the last person sentenced to death for heresy in Spain? 1821, motherfuckers.

The whole "God permits men to choose freely between good and evil" argument seems to me like a philosophical artifact of a time when churches and synagogues and mosques no longer have the power to compel people to go and give their money. It's only now, after the righteous, flawless Enlightenment (who gives a shit if some French aristocrats GOT THEIRS) that we can finally confront the whole "Religion is/of peace" sham and scam.

Religion-heart-authoritarianism.

The authoritarian impulse takes over, reducing religion and politics both to mere tools for achieving its ends.

Now that just makes no sense at all. What is authoritarianism if not an expression of politics? What is authoritarianism without politics? This is like that stupid argument I had on this thread a few months ago about emotions and the brain. "Emotions can affect the brain" spiritualists said. "Um, where do you think emotions happen if not IN the brain?" I answered.

[Victoria]

It's really pretty sad that someone as inarticulate and nonsensical as Star Parker is speaking about abortion and women of color. What could be a very important conversation about issues of racism, the legacy of slavery and forced sterilization when dealing with black women's control of their bodies, disproportionate lack of health care for people of color, etc etc. instead becomes a sad joke. Not to mention her misquoted statistic about deaths related to abortions seem to point to a *greater* need for safe and legal access to abortion, not a prohibition.

Re: Sodom and Gomorrah, God had already decided to destroy the cities *before* the incident with Lot and his heavenly guests, so it seems that the whole not being nice to the poor thing might have something to do with why God wasn't so happy with them.

[Jesurgislac]

12 reasons zombie marriage should be banned!

1. Being dead is not natural. Statistical analysis proves that most people walking around are alive.
2. Living marriages are valid because living married couples often have children. Couples where one or both are already dead cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously dead parents will raise dead children because living parents only raise living children.
4. Living marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears's 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful. Both of them were alive at the time, probably.
5. Marriage between living people has been around for a long time, and it hasn't changed at all: women are property, Blacks can't marry Whites, same-sex couples can't marry at all, and divorce is illegal.
6. Marriage for zombies should be decided by living people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of minorities.
7. Marriage of dead people is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That's why we only have one religion in America.
8. Zombie marriage will encourage people to be dead, in the same way that hanging around gay people makes you gay.
9. Legalizing zombie marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their dead pets because a dead dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.
10. Children can never succeed if either or both of their parents are dead. That's why widows and widowers are forbidden to raise children.
11. Zombie marriage will change the foundation of society. Marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms, because that involves brains. Braiiiiins.
12. Reinforced coffins are better than zombie marriage, because we actually want to lock lurching corpses back in their coffins and nail down the lids.

[Jeff]

And you keep sacrificing, and spring keeps returning, so you know it must be working.

"See any dragons?"
"No...."
"Must be working!"

[ako]

For a F-to-M trans-sexual, the problem is worse, in that women are not going to let what seems to be a man use their restroom. The former is solved by saying that any freak-out the men have is their own problem, but would that also be true of the women?

I always wondered about that. I've been in a woman's restroom and had someone apparently male walk in. It was surprising, but I didn't freak out. I mean stalls have doors. And in a woman's restroom, it's nothing but stalls.

Statistical analysis proves that most people walking around are alive.

Yes, but if you look at the total number of people, the vast majority are dead.

[Jon]

The "homosexuality could happen to you" thing immediately made me think that someone should crib the title of Stephen Colbert's book and write something entitled "I'm A Homosexual (And So Can You!)"
My next thought was the image of people being randomly struck by "Gay Beams" in much the same way that Adam Strange is hit by Zeta Beams, only instead of being transported to the Planet Rann they're transported to Planet Gay.
@ hapax: Massive props on the Daxamites reference!

[MikeJ]

I'm kinda with J on the whole religion and authoritarianism thing, but you don't need the Spanish Inquisition to prove it.

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."

Book of Dylan, Side two, track two

[pepperjackcandy]

abortion is the No. 1 killer of black women between 25 and 34

So then abortion=HIV?

How does that work, exactly?

[J]

Sodom and Gomorrah, God had already decided to destroy the cities *before* the incident with Lot and his heavenly guests...

Um, yeah. Interesting. But then God offers his daughters to the lynch mob instead. But Lot goes free (except for his wife, who gets saltified for no particular reason I can see) and Sodom gets destroyed SO THAT ABOUT FUCKING DOES IT FOR THE BIBLE AS AN INSPIRING MORAL STORY DOESN'T IT NOW???

[J]

Argh. That'd be "Lot" not "God" offers his daughters.

[Fred]

J -

Keep reading, you don't want to skip the drunken incest in a cave. That bit, I think, provides further evidence to support your theory that the Bible is often closer to the Brothers Grimm than to "Touched by an Angel." (Though you're not sharing all of the steps in your internal syllogism, so it's hard for the rest of us to know what, exactly, this point is supposed to prove. Er, sorry, PROVE!!!)

[Tonio]

"abortion is the No. 1 killer of black women between 25 and 34" (i.e., the 76th through 103rd trimester)

Sounded like Star Parker was claiming that pregnant black women are dying from having abortions. But I don't rule out the possibility that Parker believes that most aborted babies are black females. Either way, Parker needs to present statistical evidence.

"We want Sodomites quarantined."

I first heard about AIDS when the religious right was gaining enough power to dominate elections. I feared that if someone like Falwell or Robertson took control of America, he would establish American Auschwitzes for gays and anyone suspected of being gay. Everything I've read about the religious right in the past quarter-century has confirmed my fear. I foresee the landscape in Bible-thumping states being littered with discarded uniforms with pink triangles on the shirt pockets.

Daxamites, now, definitely should be quarantined. Preferably in the Phantom Zone.

High fives for Hapax for the Superman reference.

[Seminarian]

Since when are books of tribal history supposed to be inspiring moral stories? Don't we have bathroom religious tracts for that?

[J]

Since when are books of tribal history supposed to be inspiring moral stories?

You tell me, "Seminarian."

[Jake]

The sin of Sodom is inhospitality.

If it was about rape, then Lot offering his daughters to the crowd should have brought condemnation.

Now, I ain't studied it deeply or nothin, but my reading of the story of Sodom (which reading was confirmed by an Anglican almost-a-minister friend of mine) was that there were two morals to the story:
1) You shouldn't rape people.
2) Women aren't people.

[Pseudowolf]

Re: Huckabee's statement about the "potential" of the aborted.

The thing that always gets me about this "argument" against abortion is that the proponents always say "They could've been doctors who discovered the cure for cancer" or something like that. I say, "Yeah, they also could've been the next mass-murderer and/or serial rapist. Like you said, we just don't know."

It's just the assumption that Oh if only they hadn't had an abortion the child would surely have grown up to do wonderful things, despite the fact that it's parents didn't want it and/or don't make enough to support it and/or aren't ready to care for something like a child.

[J]

Keep reading, you don't want to skip the drunken incest in a cave. That bit, I think, provides further evidence to support your theory that the Bible is often closer to the Brothers Grimm than to "Touched by an Angel."

Yeah, thanks Fred, but like most atheists and unlike most Christians, I've read the whole Bible. This includes the part about the talking donkey, part about about how God can't defeat iron chariots, the part about the virgins of Jabesh-Gilead, and the part about exactly exactly how much of a shit Paul seems to give about slavery.

You've made it clear that you don't find the Bible's A.) ridiculousness or B.) moral repugnance any obstacle to your faith. But I do. So there, there's my syllogism. Good enough?

[Anna]

@Cactus Wren: I've never seen the tent peg theory of ghey before. That's... ah, hmmm, interesting. People come up with the strangest things. I'm with Clusive on the theory that it's sort of like folk tales, except that somehow these folk tales manage to hang on in the face of a lot of solid science.

@Jeff: The restroom "problem" is by-and-large trivial, but for transvestites and more so for pre-op trans-sexuals, there is a problem.

You're right, of course. I should have considered more carefully! I know an M-to-F pre-op for whom it wasn't so big of an issue; she used women's restrooms and women seemed to accept her if she was wearing generally female-ish clothes. I haven't known any F-to-M pre-ops, but wouldn't they use the men's restrooms (and perhaps use the stalls to avoid the other men)? It's genuinely a question if anyone out there knows, I've never been apprised of the proper etiquette for that situation.

[Angelika]

Retrogrouch: If it was about rape, then Lot offering his daughters to the crowd should have brought condemnation. The fact that it is implicitly OK to rape the women and not the men either should be taken as a gay issue, OR as a hospitality issue (with real consequences for the immigratio0n debate currently taking place in the USA).

Probably, considering that in ancient cultures children were often seen as property of the parents, whatever would have happened to the daughter might not have been considered rape, since it would have happened with paternal permission. After all parents could legally sell their children into slavery and the owner could make a slave-girl his concubine and that wasn't be considered rape, either. However, another part in the Torah states, that raping a girl is like killing her, so forced intercourse with a girl without paternal consent was clearly seen as a crime.

Interestingly, in the story of Lot and his daughters, the inhabitants of Sodom do not take Lot's offer, but walk off without engaging in sexual activity. (Lot might have suspected that, after all he knew the guys.)

[hapax]

Marriage of dead people is not supported by religion.

Sorry to break the news to you, but in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, it's not only supported, it's a religious obligation.

[Angelika]

Just to add to my previous comment: Many ancient cultures, and a lot of technologically less advanced cultures around the globe show suprisingly little concern for the emotional suffering of individuals as least not, if they conflict with the physical needs of the group. I don't think there was much of a concept of a person owning his/her body, what mattered much more was whether or not the role prescribed by society was fulfilled. In the same way women could be given into marriage and were considered happy, as long as they had many children, men were responsible to engender children for their dead brothers, no matter whether they liked the widow or not - refusing to do so, was seen as a great sin. - The culture described in the Old Testament is not all that different from other cultures of their age and state of development.

[J]

After all parents could legally sell their children into slavery...

Okay, but if you want to do the whole you-have-to-understand- the-Bible-in-its-context route, then you're going to have to explain to me why I, born in the 20th century, should consider it some font of wisdom beyond all human ken.

[hapax]

J You've made it clear that you don't find the Bible's A.) ridiculousness or B.) moral repugnance any obstacle to your faith. But I do. So there, there's my syllogism. Good enough?

I find it very odd that some atheists hold exactly the same view of the Bible that the fundamentalist literalists do, that it is a single static document dictated at one discrete moment, without internal contradiction or self-criticism, meant to be understood literally without reflection or reason.

I've always thought that it was a hodgepodge of historical records, myths, laws, poetry, prayers, allegories, and moral/spiritual rants, cobbled together over centuries, and imperfectly edited into a semi-coherent record of one community's evolving relationship with God, and what that reveals about both God and the human condition. I don't see much of the "inspiring moral story" there. Except the Books of Jonah and Ruth. I've always kinda liked those.

But I am one of those "hopeless dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads" that Richard Dawkins likes to sneer at, so what do I know?

[hapax]

you're going to have to explain to me why I, born in the 20th century, should consider it some font of wisdom beyond all human ken.

Well, if it were "beyond all human ken", that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?

I always thought that was the whole point of revelation. To try and put that which is ultimately incomprehensible in terms that humans could try and grasp. And one of the most effective ways humans have always had of teaching ANYTHING is the story of how other people in the past have completely f*cked things up.

If you have read the complete Bible, as you say you have, surely you have noticed that the bulk of the Hebrew Scriptures consists of God saying, over and over, with varying degrees of patience, "Look, what part of treat each other nicely and act with integrity didn't you understand?"

[J]

...surely you have noticed that the bulk of the Hebrew Scriptures consists of God saying, over and over, with varying degrees of patience, "Look, what part of treat each other nicely and act with integrity didn't you understand?"

Surely I have not. The "bulk" of the Hebrew Scriptures? No, the "bulk" seems evenly divided between the various, pointless Holy Land Wars and God saying, repeatedly, "Obey, OBEY, OBEY!!!"