Easter Sarku

Crucifiction honored

with sweet, delicious chocolate

Such a mixed message

The Mote and the Beam

Two days ago this sign was finally taken down.  But why was it every put up?  The crusades were five centuries of religiously motivated war against the people of the Middle East.  The only reason to remember them should be to realize that the trite phrase currently circulating in the wake of the Paris attacks ("not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims") is an order of magnitude wrong.

The solution to the "birth control insurance mandate" is socialized medicine.

An endless court battle is occurring in America as to whether religious employers must ensure that their employees to have health insurance that cover birth control.  As USA Today phrases it: "it pits reproductive rights against religious liberty".

Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com / Foter.com / CC BY

Well, technically it pits reproductive rights against the right to impose your religious beliefs on people you employ.  Because anyone who depends on another person for income clearly cannot be allowed to have control of her own uterus.

But whatever, I will try and play devil's advocate with myself. Some people genuinely think God will be mad with them for providing no-strings-attached secular health insurance to their employees.  And the solution to this is obvious.

A person's health care options and choice should not have anything to do with their employer.  That way neither the employer, nor God (presumably), will get confused about who is responsible for choosing to use birth control, as 99% of sexually active women do.

The church, Hobby Lobby and the entire sector of Busy-Bodies Incorporated should stop trying to get exemptions from Obamacare and start pushing for universally available socialized medicine not linked in anyway to employment.

Then every citizen can get on with doing whatever they feel is right and accepting the consequences.  After all, isn't that the American way?

God Hates Rainbows

Mississauga Catholic school thought they solved the problem of their students wanting pro-gay student organizations by allowing anti-bullying organizations instead.

They then showed how much they disapprove of bullying by banning display of the rainbow, banning or censoring pro-diversity material, and forcing the kids to give money raised for Youth Line to a Catholic charity instead.

The Plight of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

Today the Iran government magnanimously said they won't stone a woman to death.

They haven't said they won't execute this 43-year old woman. They haven't said they regrect having her flogged, 99 lashes while her then teenaged son watched. They see no problem with convicting her to death in 2007 for a consensual sex act, namely adultery. They just said that it wasn't true that they planned to bury her up to her neck in the ground and stone her to death this weekend.

Don't get me wrong, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani  is not a saint.  The reports that repeatedly refer to her as a widow remind me somewhat of the old joke about thea man who killed his parents and then turned to the judge and said: "take pity on a poor orphan".

She was in a marriage that was, by all accounts, abusive. A man she knew killed her husband and she was deemed to be an accomplice, and they are both serving ten years. But that is not where the death sentence came in.  But she was sentenced to death because three of the five judges deemed that she had committed adultery.

A woman does not need to be perfect to deserve being saved from the horrible fate of being killed by stones carefully measured to ensure they will not kill her too quickly--not because of her involvement in a murder, but because of who she allegedly (in the absence of any real evidence) chose to have sex with.

For each person who comments on this post I will donate $1 to Amnesty Internation, up to a maximum of $50.

Amount raised so far: $5

AM Crenshaw is matching my donations dollar for dollar!

Please also visit:

• Save Sakineh [A Writer's House]
• Nausea. [Sharon Maas]

What you can do:
Send an email
Donate to Amnesty International

See also:
Document - Iran: Fears for prisoners on death row in Iran
Iran stonings are a legal nightmare

Deference

There are categories of behavior considered feminine and masculine. The degree to which they actually relate to biological sex aside, we seem to value the masculine pattern more than the feminine.

A key example is a range of behaviors that might be called helping, serving, deference, following or assisting. Kids are told over and over that they need to develop good leaderships skills, but it is a simple statistical fact that most of us will follow more than we lead.

Nor is this a bad thing. When I get on a Boeing I don't demand the right to fly the plane. I lack the skills and qualifications and would get everyone on board killed. Knowing when to defer to others is at least as import, as admirable, and as intelligent as knowing when and how to lead them.

In ancient Roman times the Goddess Venus was referred to as Venus Obsequens. We seem to have lost the idea that an entity even as powerful as a good my deign to fulfil the wishes of others out of gracious goodwill and a desire to favor the worthy.

Meanwhile in modern animal behavior scientists are belatedly determined that pecking orders and rutting fights are only half of the explanation of animal society. Equally crucial is how groups give allegiance and who females choose to mate with. In normal society, leadership is not seized and love is not won, both are typically given as a free choice, to those who are worthy.

With the old and new wings of feminism continue their cat fights about who get to be on top, neither seems to want to proceed from liberating the female, to liberating the feminine. If ever there was a time where we needed to value the proper and informed gift of deference, it must be now.

As Karen Overall writes, in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior: "Deference is not analogous to submission or subordination. Deference is about relative status that is freely given, not imposed ... The animals to which most others defer is the animals that behaves most appropriately given the context, not the animals that must always be at the door first, or must eat first. In fact a need to control regardless of context can be neither adaptive, nor normal."

Leading, following, and horizontal teamwork are all equally admirable when they best use the abilities of the individual and further the goals of society. Which probably why Venus not only prominently worshipped by wives, but also politicians who placed her temple on the original "Capitoline" hill an--in the case of Julius Caesar--proudly claimed descent directly from the "Obsequious" Goddess.

The Devil You Say! A Book Review of “The Prince of Darkness: the Devil in History, Religion and the Human Psyche” by Joan O’Grady.

The devil always seemed to me to be a made up bogeyman, whose rubber mask started to slip as soon as you looked too closely. I never gave much though to Satanism except when some redneck yelled at me for being a Satanist because I carrying a Darth Maul backpack. (No lie, I was dressed conservatively that day when I got bailed up by some weirdo for having a ‘demon’ on my bag – that’s Illinois for you).

I was dimly aware of the various modern Satanist denominations – the Order of Perdition etc… The commonest themes of these are that pleasure is not sinful if it does not harm to others (borrowed from paganism?) and that there is no God or afterlife, only ourselves (unabashed atheism). These groups are a mix of hedonism, religious libertarianism and wry satire – in allowing themselves to be consistently misunderstood. Others worship more literal devils in various black, white and grey shades.

It was with this in mind that I picked up ‘The Prince of Darkness’ to try and take a longer, straighter view of the devil without as much embedded doctrine as is to be found in tomes like the Satanic Bible. What I found made me realise how enduring the image of the Dark Prince is, across cultures and times – and how informed and sophisticated some modern Satanists are in drawing on these enduring beliefs for their own purposes.

O’Grady deals with ancient Satanic beliefs briefly but clearly before taking a fascinating journey from the advent of the New Testament to modern literature and psychology. Each chapter is seeded with insights. For example in Chapter Four, which takes us from the Desert Fathers to the Scholastics, we see that the Devil has a complex role even within the Christian Church. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote “Evil is the price to be paid for a non-static cosmos.” That is just as the ‘death’ tarot card has the real meaning of change and transformation, the ‘devil’ (struggle) is necessary for us to experience change and growth.

The main difference between the message of O’Grady’s book and the message of the modern Satanists is one of perspective. O’Grady describes how Christianity tends to assert that all evil flows from humans (and angels) misusing their free will and valuing themselves (sin and egotism). O’Grady quotes a story told by the ancient Persian poet Farid-Ud-Din Attar, where the devil says to Moses “Remember this one lesson… Never say ‘I’; otherwise you will find yourself in the same condition I am.”

Satanism claims that “I am mine own God” – and that the Devil was “the first individual - the first being to acquire consciousness and perceive itself as something not separate, but unique in the cosmos.” For them hedonism and individuality is the path to growth, not the primrose path to hell. In this age of self-esteem and rugged individualism, it is strange and enlightening to considered that Satanism may indeed by the more ‘modern’ of the two religions…

Black Witchery and Whack Bitchery

So, back to the point of this blog: gender, sexuality and books. And Today's book (points upwards) is "Witchcraft of America Today"--or more specifically, in 1970.

The first thing to notice is that this is a moral panic book. (Oh noes, I can haz damnation?) In a wake of the sixties every good Judeo-Christian man knew that witchcraft was a serious, serious problem! (Oh those terrible rabble-rousing Wiccans, LOL).

"One may wade in the occult water, dabble for a hobby or a recreation ... But in doing so it should always be remembered that witchcraft has strong, unknown undercurrents not to be trifled with at the risk of being pulled beneath the surface."

What, you might ask, are those dreadful undercurrents. Well, here is a clue.

"Relaxation of American sexual mores in the 1960s has encouraged the resurgence of interest and practice of witchcraft ... covens basically serve as an outlet for sexual release of sexual inhibitions and determination to achieve equality with the male."

If you are ever in need of a good laugh, pick up this book. Why did women in the 60s rise up for equal rights and take part in free love? Well, obviously, the devil made them do it.