Bronies in the Mist pt II - Age & Gender Distribution of Bronies

The first thing I wanted to know as I began to beat a path through the Bronyverse was simple: Who are these guys?  Well, there’s no better way to get an answer than to ask a question, so I posted a (poorly designed) survey on the My LittlePony: Friendship is Magic Brony Forums.  In this post I’ll address the two most basic facets of Brony demography – gender and age.

             

The survey received 49 responses – not nearly the number that I’d hoped for.  At the time of this writing, the membership of the MLP Forum is reported to be 12,753, excluding myself. ¹  This means my sampling size was a paltry 0.38% of the community and is therefore hardly representative.  Nonetheless we shall plunge boldly forward, keeping always in mind that our conclusions must necessarily be tenuous in light of our small pool of responses.

Colts & Fillies – The Brony Gender Gap

In a testament to  my nigh infinite foresight, gender was not a question on the initial survey; it simply did not occur to me that there would be female members of a forum for Bronies.  (Here we see my own preconceptions at work already – hardly promising.)  It was only after the fact that I chose to gather this data, and to accomplish this I used the publically available user profiles of the forum users who responded to the survey.  From this, we see that in 49 respondents we have 41 males, 5 females, and 3 who declined to specify a gender. (See Fig. 1)

Fig 1. - Respondents by Sex.  (n=49)

As you can see from the graph, respondents were approx. 84% male.  Although the sampling size is small, the disproportionate representation of males here is nonetheless interesting.  While I was unable to find data on average gender breakdown of internet message boards, I was able to find a recent Pew study² of overall social media use which indicated that women  are actually somewhat more likely to make use of social media websites than men.  Granted, the Pew studied focused on specific websites such as Facebook and Pinterest and so is only of limited use to us as we compare it to the demographics of a single specialized fan forum, but it still drives homes the striking gender disparity among the Brony survey respondents.

When we add to all this the fact that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is specifically targeted at female viewers, it becomes rather more puzzling that the users of a forum dedicated to the show are preponderantly male.  Perhaps it’s the case that there aren’t more female users of this particular forum because it is specifically known as a Brony forum and females interested in discussing the show assume, as I did, that it is intended solely for male fans.³  I would be curious to know if there are more female users on other MLP forums elsewhere on the internet, but that’s a question for another day.  (At this point it may be worth noting that there does not appear to be an “official” MLP forum anywhere - I looked for one to see if perhaps the  more "traditional" fans of the show are congregated there. There is an official My Little Pony website however, which offers among other things a fetching printable iron-on image of the character Rainbow Dash for free download.)  Of course, it may also be the case that females are simply underrepresented in the sample because of the small pool of respondents.⁴

Looking a Gift Brony in the Mouth – Age Distribution of the Sample

All 49 respondents provided an answer to the survey question “How old are you?”  Of these, 47 responded with a numerical age, while two responded with ranges (for example, “early 20s”).  I attempted to privately contact (via the forum’s personal message feature) both of the respondents who gave age ranges to request clarification – one responded with an exact age; the other did not respond.  Many of the responses did, however, have qualifications or addenda such as stating that the respondent would be “turning 22 in a few weeks”.  In these cases, I used the current age of the respondent at the time of survey, not the projected age.

Fig. 2 - Respondents: Adults vs. Minors (n=49)

           

As can be seen in Fig. 2 above, approx. 59% of survey respondents were adults aged 18 or older.  The lone respondent with a non-specific age is included in this statistic, as they reported  being in their “late 20s”.  I was surprised to see that 41% of the respondents were minors, given the online reputation of Bronies as an older group that remains fairly distinct from younger fans.

Using only responses supplying a numerical age (n=48), we see a strikingly large range in reported ages of some 31 years; the youngest respondents being 13 and the eldest being 44.  The mean age of all respondents was 19.875 – still within the range of my expectations but assuredly at the lower end.  The mean age of female respondents (n=5) was 18, lower than the mean age of males(n=40), 19.8.⁵  However, as we’ll see below, the mean age doesn’t tell the whole story.

Fig 3- Age Distribution of Respondents (n=48)

(Click for larger image)

Looking at Fig. 4, it becomes apparent that the ages of survey respondents largely cluster around the mid-teens to early twenties.  85.42% of all respondents reporting a specific numerical (n=48) are under the age of 25 and 64.58% are under 21.  The mode of all reported numerical ages (n=48) was 14 years. 

Rather than consisting almost entirely of adult males, we see then that this sampling of Bronies is composed largely of teens and young adults.  It appears from the survey data that the mean age of the group is pushed upwards by a handful of significantly older respondents who may be outliers.  A much larger sample size would be highly desirable in order to search more definitively for  patterns of age distribution and to minimize the possible effects of sampling bias; e.g. younger forum users might be more likely than older ones to take a random survey on a message board.

             

To sum up this section, I have to say I was surprised by the demographics of the sample.  I had not expected females to be present at all, so their appearance as even a small percentage of the sample caught me off guard.  It was the age distribution, however, that surprised me the most, as Bronies are typically portrayed online as adult men, when in fact we see that a significant portion of them are in their mid to late teens.

So far I've had my preconceptions of Bronies challenged on both of the subjects I've attempted to measure. That's already pretty exciting and we're still just getting started.  Please join me next time as we discuss the portrayal of Bronies across the web and talk to Bronies themselves about the bad rap they get online.

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1.) This is according to a running counter of registered users on the front page of the site.  It was not possible for me to determine how many of these users are currently active in the forum on a regular basis.

2.) Duggan, Maeve and Brenner, Joanna; The Demographics of Social Media Users – 2012. http://pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2013/PIP_SocialMediaUsers.pdf

3.) I have since learned that adult female MLP fans who associate closely with Bronies are sometimes called “Pegasisters”.  Equine wordplay is in abundance in the My Little Pony community.

4.) I hasten to remind readers once again that these statistics are not meant represent the demographics of My Little Pony fans as whole, merely the demographics of this particular internet forum of self-described Bronies and Pegasisters.

5.) Savvy readers will note that the mean ages of males and females are lower than the total mean – This is because the three “gender unspecified” respondents were aged towards the higher end of the range.

Bronies in the Mist: An Outsider Studies the Internet's Most Misunderstood Subculture

Introduction

Long ago, from the primordial mists of the 1980s, there emerged a toy line and attendant animated series called My Little Pony.  I was a kid at the time, and I remember being aware that this cartoon existed.  I also knew that it was a “girl’s cartoon”, like Rainbow Brite or Jem and the Holograms; there was no doubt in my five year-old mind that I would burst into flames faster than a vampire in a church were I to watch it.¹  I have no firsthand memories of the particulars of the show, but a quick look around Youtube does not reveal it to be a thought-provoking piece of art.

Like almost all 1980s children’s franchises, My Little Pony existed for a while, vanished, and then languished in shadowy undeath for a couple of decades; a lingering specter in the consciousness of former 80s kids.  A collector’s market for the original merchandise existed and periodically a new animated property, such as the Disney Channel’s My Little Pony Tales would make a brief appearance, but the franchise’s best days seemed behind it.

Then something unexpected happened – My Little Pony’s owner Hasbro, which was still counting the money from Michael Bay’s Transformers film and the subsequent surge in that property’s merchandising prospects, decided to resurrect My Little Pony in the hopes of hitting another rebranding homerun.  Animator and director Lauren Faust, who had previously worked on such well-regarded Cartoon Network properties as The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends², was brought in to develop the new series with an eye towards steering the franchise away from its ooey-gooey, saccharine-soaked plots and clichéd depictions of female characters.  Thus, in 2010, premiered My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

So why in the hell am I telling you this?  My last post was a review of the freakin’ Giant Claw, so what in the world does My Little Pony have to do with anything?  Well..not much; BUT while I don’t have all that much reason to talk about My Little Pony itself, I think there may be an interesting discussion to be had about the show’s unintended fan base.  As anyone who’s been on the internet in the last three years or so is no doubt aware, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, while aimed squarely at young girls, has also attracted a very vocal contingent of adult male viewers.  They call themselves “Bronies”, and they are what I’m interested in discussing.

Maligned in many corners of the web as everything from pederasts to bestiality enthusiasts to just plain weirdoes, Bronies tend to do their, well, Brony-ing largely amongst themselves.  They have their own internet forums and their own conventions.  Some of them, when posting on Brony-friendly forums, even adopt terms from the TV series, such as using the phrase “anypony” instead of anybody”.  It’s hard for an outside observer to get a bead on these guys.  On the one hand, they’re fans of what’s probably the most inoffensive show currently on television and devote lots of effort and creativity towards generating fan content that is often fairly impressive in both scope and execution. On the other hand, a Google image search for My Little Pony will quickly yield results for such creepy items as fan-made erotic artwork bearing titles like My Little Pony: Lingerie is Magic.  Frankly, some of the creepy stuff is also strangely impressive in its scope and execution.

The bottom line is that I want to know who the Bronies are.  How old are they?  Why are they so interested in this particular property?  Are the ones pinning chapter after chapter of erotic fan fiction the norm, or just highly visible outliers who attract unwanted negative attention to the group?  I want to know all that and more.

To that end, I’ve enlisted the aid of a cadre of Bronies over at the My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Brony Forums.  They’ve generously agreed to answer my questions and talk to me about life on the inside of Brony culture.  From these surveys and interviews, I hope to paint a more accurate picture of this subculture than was heretofore available to outsiders.  This post is the beginning of  a multi-part essay during which we will try to get a firmer grasp on these often talked about, but rarely talked to web denizens, these Bronies in the Mist.

Hypotheses

To start off, I recognize that the term “hypothesis” may be inappropriate here, as this “study” of mine is almost staggeringly unscientific in nature.  That said, I’m going to cling to the delusion that I’m above using the word “assumption”.  In any event I hypothesize that my survey will show the mean age of self-identified Bronies to be between 19-23 and that the majority of them will have at least some college education.  Furthermore, it is my expectation that slightly less than half (perhaps 40%) will self-identify as members of “Furry” subculture.  I suspect that many of them will report feeling as though their group is thought of negatively and perhaps even unfairly treated by other groups present on the internet and that at least half of them will not be “out”, such as it is, to their non-Brony friends.

In more broad terms, I think we shall see that the perceived biases of others against Bronies will strengthen the in-group commitment of Bronies and that this in-group, out-group interplay will contribute to insularity with the community and may result in some distrust of outsiders.  Likewise, I think we may see that the creative aspect of the group is likely to be highly valued by members and may also contribute to in-group solidarity, i.e. “Look what we have generated.”³

Finally, I’m interested to see if the accepting, friendly message of the Friendship is Magic TV series is personally important to Bronies themselves.  Specifically, I’m curious to see if Bronies consciously see their interest in the show as something of a statement against the increasingly hyper-masculine image of males often portrayed in the media.^4<.sup>

Potential Problems

In advance, I would like to say that I foresee huge problems with any statistics I generate based on what I anticipate to be a vanishingly small sample size of survey respondents.  The forum on which I have posted my survey questionnaire appears to have approximately 1240 members, based on the site’s Member List, and I expect to receive usable responses from less than 5% of them.  This would obviously make it impossible to draw any scientifically meaningful conclusions about Bronies as a whole.

I also expect that there may be some reticence on the part of the Bronies who’ve agreed to speak with me with regard to talking about the less savory aspects of Brony culture.  By this I mean such things as the large amount of erotic fan-generated materials about the show’s characters or the group’s relationship to the Furry subculture.  This may be made all the worse by my decision to administer my initial “survey” as an open thread in a message forum; That is to say, my respondents are aware that their answers are visible to others.

It also goes without saying that I’m wholly ignorant of the principles of this sort of experimental design, so I think we can safely assume that gaping holes in my methodology will erupt throughout the process.   

Regardless of all this, I expect to have a good time exploring the world of the Bronies, I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

______________________

1.) The lone exception to this proscription against“girl shows” was arguably She-Ra.  Since she was He-Man’s sister it was okay to watch her show, although I seem to remember that those of us who did kind of kept it on the down-low.

2.) And also, weirdly, that old MTV show The Maxx.

3.) See Samuel F. Gaertner’s work on common in-group identity.

4.) For more on the portrayal of masculine imagery in the media, I highly recommend Jackson Katz’s short film Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity.

Indiana Embarrasses Itself

So it's a presidential election year. That means that most people could be forgiven for losing track of the particulars of local politics. It's even more true in Indiana, where the state legislature has only recently concluded an acrimonious standoff over a controversial piece of "right to work" legislation which has dominated the local political consciousness for nearly two years. Maybe that's why a number of us were caught flat-footed by the passage on Tuesday by the Indiana state senate of Senate Bill 89, a pro-creationism bill that, if passed by the state house and signed into law, would provide a opening for Indiana public schools to be flooded with intelligent design flummery.¹

Some rather optimistic observers have noted that the bill was recently amended from this:

The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.

to this (emphasis added):

The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.

This change was reportedly an attempt by Democratic state senator Vi Simpson to hamstring the bill by making it less attractive to the Republicans in control of the state legislature, but in my mind it's a dangerous gambit. Some hardcore Christians in Indiana may balk at at talk of Islam or Hinduism in the state, but make no mistake: Governor Mitch Daniels, while not as ostentatiously religious as some of his fellow Republicans, is likely gearing up for a 2016 presidential run, if not a play for VP in November. If SB 89 makes it to his desk, he'll sign it into law no matter what form it takes as a nod to his conservative base.

Frankly, if the bill does make through the house and onto the governor's desk, the language intended to sabotage it may actually make it more destructive. By throwing a bunch of religions into the mix, it just makes it easier for a teacher so-inclined to pass evolutionary theory off as an unimportant side note. It's not hard to envision what this new curriculum would sound like:

"Well, see, there's these folks called Scientologists who think an alien created life on earth, and then there's that Darwin fellow what with the monkeys and all, and the Hindus probably think there was an elephant guy or something. Now if you'll open your bibles we'll get to the true story of the origin of life as written, in English, by Jesus Christ Himself...."

Heck, even the language in the bill doesn't result in a half-assed glossing over of a bunch of creation stories with evolutionary theory tossed into the mix, the situation could still end up just as bad, if not worse. That is to say, even if every creation myth listed and evolutionary theory are all given equal time in the classroom, you still end up with a bunch of mythology and nonsense drowning out the actual science in science class!

There's still a chance that the Indiana House of Representatives may not take up the bill. House Speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican, has reportedly stated that what is taught in science classes should not decided on by the state legislature. Bosma also stated that the bill may represent "someplace we don't need to go" in light of the U.S. Supreme Court Ruling against intelligent design in famous Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling in 2006.

Regardless of whether SB 89 passes into law or not, Indiana has embarrassed itself on the national stage by flirting with the introduction of creationism into its public schools.

__________
1.) On second thought, is anyone that surprised that a Republican-controlled legislature would trot out a creationism-in-schools bill transparently pandering to its conservative base during an election year?

What's the Hubbub About Halloween?

It would seem that October is once again upon us, and with it comes horror movies (yay!), candy (whoo!), tasteful costumes (or not), and...weird religious people who are up in arms about Halloween. Similar, albeit rather less widespread, to the bellyaching about the secularization of Christmas, anti-Halloween sentiment rears its ugly head every fall, usually gets covered in one or two news stories, and then gets forgotten until October rolls around again the next year. I suspect this sort of thing is a little bigger around here in the South, where we've got no small number of homegrown churches with supernatural fixations who are convinced that Halloween is a soul-devouring trap straight from the freakin' Devil.¹

Charlie Brown is coming for your soul.

Honestly I don't have much of an argument to make if someone finds something distasteful. After all, personal choice is awesome. Don't like Halloween? Doesn't matter to me. Hate watching horror movies? Don't watch any. Think Satan's going to eat your kids if they dress up like Frankenstein and go 'round panhandling for Snickers bars? Don't let'em do it. It's no skin off my nose if you don't want to celebrate an awesome holiday, nor is it my place (or desire) to try and strong-arm you into it just because I think it's cool.

All the more candy for me, I say.

That said, I'm always tickled when I read the articles posted on religious websites that talk about Halloween as if it's some big occult conspiracy. Check out this quote from an article on DemonBuster.com²:

You can call a duck a horse, cow, cat, etc., but it is still a duck. You can call what you do a "fall festival", "alleluia party", etc., but you are still observing halloween, even if you dress up as bible characters. Halloween is the highest satanic holy day of the year.

Right, so the lesson here is that no matter what you do, no matter what you dress up as or how you choose to party, if you do anything on Halloween, you're worshiping the Devil. To be fair, I don't think the folks at DemonBuster are exactly mainline. What about the folks at CBN? They're a huge Christian organization, and while they're undeniably culturally conservative, they probably represent a much larger segment of the Christian crowd that the DemonBuster guys. Here's what CBN writer Elliott Watson has to say:

There is no question in my mind that to those who believe and follow the practices of witchcraft, Halloween represents an opportunity to embrace the evil, devilish, dark side of the spiritual world...
....There is no lasting benefit to ignore a holiday that exists around us, but it also does harm to celebrate Halloween as it has originated and grown over the centuries.

In all fairness, I should mention that Watson notes that only the true weirdos derive some kind of creepy evil meaning from Halloween. He also goes on to say that concerned Christians ought to think about creating "positive" alternatives to the objectionable bits of Halloween while still letting their kids have fun. Nowhere does he advocate publicly complaining about it. All in all, it's a pretty reasonable position.

The folks over at Christian Answers, another prominent religious website³, are less sanguine about the subject. Have a look:

...we need to teach our children that "the fight isn't against occultists , non-Christians, Christians who feel differently than we about Halloween, or institutions that promote Halloween, but" "against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places".

That's right, we're back to the demons again. It's a strange day when I'm pining for the nuance and rationality of the CBN.

To sum up, the main argument from the hardcore anti-Halloween crowd is that, because (they claim) the holiday has evil origins, any celebration that day that bears any resemblance whatsoever to Halloween is actually evil. The takeaway is that if you're planning to put on a rubber mask and go knocking on doors for popcorn balls, you may as well just skip the middleman and go out to the woods to sacrifice some goats to the Devil. It's an odd thing to think that when you're watching John Carpenter movies and passing out fun-size Twix on October 31st, you're actually delivering a fresh load of writhing, tender souls into the flame-blackened talons of Satan himself. It seems so innocent at the time...

But wait a minute...isn't all this just the opposite of the argument that gets made about Christmas every year? At Christmas time, the line of reasoning is that even if you think you're celebrating Christmas, you might actually not be celebrating Christmas if you're doing it wrong.⁴ How can that be? How does Halloween have some intrinsic, timeless, inescapable meaning that will inexorably turn you into a baby-eating cultist even if all you really wanted to do was go to a party dressed as Cobra Commander, but Christmas becomes completely debased and meaningless if an L.L. Bean ad calls December "the holiday season"? Am I the only one perplexed by this?

Both the anti-Halloween grumbling in October and the much louder "reason for the season" ranting in December are all about certain religious groups defining themselves by identifying (or creating) an enemy to fight. In October, they're fighting the forces of darkness by not trick-or-treating. In December, they're fighting the forces of darkness by...er...complaining about GAP ads...? Whatever the case, they're using a supposedly hostile out-group (the willing dupes of Satan at Halloween and the jack-booted foot soldiers of secularism at Christmas) to strengthen their own in-group ties. This isn't some unique foil of the religious; all social groups do this kind of thing, but I suppose I'm just struck by the seemingly contradictory assumptions of the anti-Halloween, pro-Christmas crowd.

Maybe...just maybe...holidays are socially constructed and have no meaning apart from that which we, the participants, assign them. I don't doubt for a second that there actually are kooks out there who worship the Devil (or Odin, or Cthulhu, or whoever...) on Halloween. Hell, I'm pretty sure I went to high school with some of them. That said, no one is somehow paying homage to the non-existent Devil by going trick-or-treating, so on October 31st throw on a costume and go get yourself some candy.

Or don't.

Like I said, all the more for me.

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1.) There are tons of Southern Baptist and Pentecostal churches here in Kentucky, as well as lots of local offshoots and do-it-yourself religious groups, some of which (to put it kindly) think of demons in very literal rather that metaphorical terms.

2.) With web design by the Joker, it seems.

3.) Christian Answers is also the source of all the hilarious Christian Spotlight on the Movies reviews that I occasionally comment on, such as one complaining about G.I. Joe for having too many black people in it.

4.) And yet these so-called traditionalists always ignore the Krampus.

Kind of Cross About the 9/11 Cross...

I'm a week or so late with this, but the continuing attention being devoted to the so-called Ground Zero Cross utterly baffles me. It's been in the news recently because American Atheists has filed suit regarding in its inclusion in the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and lots of religious folks are outraged that this "miracle" is under attack. There have been more than a couple of letters to the local paper around here by Christian folks practically pulling their hair out about the whole thing. That's not really surprising, considering that people tend to get a bit worked up about religion. Once you throw something like September 11th into the mix, emotions are bound to run high.

Somehow the memorial to the victims of the worst attack on U.S. soil
has devolved into a battle over the presentation of a piece of debris.

What the controversy, such as it is, boils down to is that American Atheists is concerned that the cross will be displayed at the memorial in a fashion indicating that it's a gen-u-ine miracle and want items from other faiths displayed alongside it. You know, because that somehow...counteracts...the stupid...? Meanwhile the religious folks, while arguing that, as an artifact of the terrorist attacks, it has good reason to be in the memorial, are apparently worried that it might not be presented as a holy relic shaped by the hands of Jesus Christ himself. Former mayor Rudy Giuliani himself made pretty much that exact argument, claiming that the cross definitely needs to be included because of its historical value...but also that it's a magic sign from Yahweh. Right...

For all its value as an historical artifact (and sometimes as a scandalously cynical marketing ploy), the Ground Zero Cross is a piece of debris created when World Trade Center One Collapsed into World Trade Center Six. It's made from the remnants of a column tree connection. Given that every single building at the WTC site was built using a similar internal structure of welded crossbeams, I'm honestly surprised that more "crosses" weren't recovered from the site. There's nothing especially "miraculous" about its formation - when a building made out of crossed girders collapses, there's probably going to be some cross-shaped remnants left over.

I'm not convinced of the value of adding more religious iconography to the 9/11 museum either, be it the non-specific memorial American Atheists has proposed, the Star of David (welded from WTC steel) that's already planned to be a part of the exhibit, or something else entirely. I really don't see the point. 2,977 people lost their lives during the September 11th attacks, and watching people squabble over how many gods are or aren't going to be represented at the 9/11 Memorial is frankly just stomach-churning. The memorial is, or should be, about the people who died that day - the victims and the heroic first responders who sacrificed themselves trying to save lives - not about which god does or doesn't control the universe.

Here's what I say: put the girder cross in the memorial sidewise. Yeah, that's right, on its side. That way it'll be included in the memorial and whatever historical significance it may hold will be preserved. Then we can scrap all the other religious iconography that doesn't need to be there and everyone can quit bitching about the manufactured controversy. Maybe then the focus can shift to making a tasteful, solemn tribute to the innocent lives that were so brutally ended that terrible day.

Challenging Religious Privilege in Austria

I saw an interesting report on the BBC today that a man in Austria succeeded in having his driver's license photo taken while wearing a colander on his head as a way of protesting religious privilege in his country. Apparently Niko Alm was rather put out that no headgear is allowed in Austrian driver's license photos unless it's worn for religious purposes - think of yarmulke or a Sikh turban. Alm thought that this was a ridiculous rule and finally hit on a creative way of protesting it: He showed up for his driver's license photo wearing a pasta strainer on his head.

Alm says that he was able to wear the colander in the license photo by claiming that it was an important article of religious garb for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. According to Alm, his claims of being a "Pastafarian" qualified him for a religious exemption under the law and his license was issued, albeit after a years-long delay.

Haven't heard much from the old FSM lately, have we?

There's another side to this story, though. According to the Austrian authorities, headgear is actually allowed in driver's license photographs so long as the person's entire face is visible. They further claim that the license issuance wasn't delayed, but instead that Alm simply took three years to pick the thing up. Hmm.

Honestly, I don't know the exact facts of the case and maybe Alm is stretching the truth here. Who knows? However, what I do is like the implied train of thought behind Alm's course of action. In areas of the law in which the religious are privileged over the secular, it may well be a better model not to limit the freedom of the religious in an effort to achieve parity, but rather to expand the freedom of the secular towards that same goal. That is to say, rather than pushing for a ban on yarmulkes and turbans in license photos, it's more productive to work towards allowing non-obfuscatory headgear regardless of whether or not they serve a religious purpose.¹ After all, I think most of us would rather see freedom expand than contract.

Naturally this model doesn't apply to every situation. For example, some states here in the U.S. have laws on the books whereby parents can deny their children simple and life-saving treatment on religious grounds, and I'm hard-pressed to think of situation where expanding the "freedom" to merrily allow children to die from treatable diseases is a good thing.² Nevertheless perhaps a rhetorical stance that's less "hey, you can't that", and more "wait, why can't everybody do that" should be the default stance when it comes to most issues of religious privilege.

******
1.) As mentioned above, that may well be the law in Austria anyway. I'm just using it as an example.

2.) Remember the Neumann case in Wisconsin back in 2008? A diabetic 11 year-old was allowed to die because her hardcore religious parents decided to pray for her rather than seeking medical treatment for her. Her parents were ultimately convicted of negligent homicide, but received only probation. To be fair, Wisconsin's religious exemptions only apply to child abuse and neglect. You know, because beating your kid's okay if Jesus told you to...

More Christmas Nonsense From the AFA...

Well, it's that time of year again: The American Family Association has rolled out its bitch list Naughty or Nice List. It happens around this time every single year, and yet somehow I'm freshly amazed every time.

You see, the American Family Association is a conservative a Christian organization that combines hilarious oversensitivity with enormous amounts of free time in order to scour thousands of advertisements to root out companies that don't expressly use the word "Christmas" when trying to get you to buy their products.¹ Apparently they think Jesus gets angry if he isn't mentioned by name in the Victoria's Secret catalog with all the sexy Santa costumes in it.

Check out the AFA's criteria for judging whether or not a company is "against" Christmas:

If a company's ad has references to items associated with Christmas (trees, wreaths, lights, etc.), it was considered as an attempt to reach "Christmas" shoppers. If a company has items associated with Christmas, but did not use the word "Christmas," then the company is considered as censoring "Christmas.

Victoria's Secret really is on their "naughty list", but if the AFA's own site is to be believed, the company is "naughty" only because it doesn't use the term "Christmas" in advertising its "items associated with Christmas"and not because it trades exclusively in sexy under-things. Conversely, JCPenney is considered "nice" because (among other things) you can get to this by visiting their website and running a search on the term "Christmas thong". Makes sense to me...

I write about the Naughty or Nice list every year, and every year I find something else about it that boggles my mind. What sticks out to me at the moment is that it's only the wording of the advertisements that the AFA takes into account rather than the actual items a company sells. Does that mean that a store selling "holiday trees" is giving Christmas a giant middle finger, whereas PetSmart is being utterly reverent towards the Christian aspects of the holiday by using the word "Christmas" to advertise canine Santa costumes? If the AFA's own literature is true, then the answer is yes.

But hey, it seems like their bully tactics are working. Each year their "naughty" list seems to get a little bit shorter, so maybe there's something to this. Perhaps it's possible to steer to the meaning of a holiday by shrilly dictating the language used to discuss it. You know, there's a certain Christmas tradition that I'm attached to, one that's been shunned by most of my fellow Americans. Maybe, just maybe, this would work:

Skippy's "Keep the Krampus in Christmas" Naughty or Nice List!

That's it! I've had enough of my pal the Krampus being left out of America's Christmas zeitgeist. He's a longstanding tradition throughout large parts of Europe, but he's been utterly "censored" out of American culture in favor of Santa Claus just because he's a hairy black monster who catches naughty children on Christmas Eve and flays them silly with a bundle of birch twigs before carrying them off to his forest lair. Oh, the injustice! Henceforth, I unilaterally declare that any company whose ads don't mention the Krampus just as often as Santa is "naughty" and therefore utterly inimical to the holiday. Here's the list so far:

The Nice List:
The Naughty List: Pretty much every store in the entire country.

Hmm, looks like I'd better start an intense pressure campaign to force stores across the country to start plastering the Krampus all over their circulars and commercials. After all, if everyone else doesn't pay lip service to my red-faced demands, the moral fabric of the very country could totally unravel!

...No, wait...it turns out that the important thing about the holidays is being with friends and family and strengthening our interpersonal bonds through shared traditions instead of obsessing over the language in freakin' commercials.

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1.) I spent the vast majority of October sprawled out like a dragon atop a huge pile of horror movies and KitKats, so I guess I shouldn't really throw stones about how other folks spend their free time...

More Ridiculous Kentucky Politics

Kentucky politics tend to be pretty freakin' embarrassing, as my post earlier in the month illustrates. Well, believe it or not, things are getting even stupider ¹ around here as election day looms. Jack Conway, the state attorney general and senatorial candidate, is floundering in the polls against Tea Party whackaloon Rand Paul and is now trying to rally the religious vote to his cause. In addition to the nonsense we discussed a couple of weeks ago, he's now spewing out ads like this:



Don't get me wrong - I've no love of Rand Paul and there's plenty of reasons not to vote for him, but what the hell kind of political ad is that? The clear message is that anyone who isn't a jumping-up-and-down, bible-in-each-hand Christian isn't fit for office. It may as well just say "don't vote for this guy, he might not be Christian". Frankly, that's an unwritten rule here in Kentucky anyway, but to actually hear it spoken aloud on the TV ad endorsed by the candidate himself boggles the mind.

In any event, the Conway ad started run about a week or so ago. Rand Paul's campaign complained about it publicly, arguing that the claims in the ad were specious to begin with and substantially meaningless in any event. After all, why should a candidate's personal religious convictions be a factor in a political campaign? For about two days I wondered if Paul would actually manage to articulate some kind of message other than the "government action and oversight bad, unregulated markets good" quasi-libertarianism that he's been campaigning on for the last year. Maybe, just maybe, he's show himself to be something more than a conservative-in-libertarian's-clothing. Perhaps he'd have a modicum of nuance somewhere in his political style.

Nope.



Wow. I have a feeling that before this race is over Paul and Conway will get into a fistfight over who gets to bow down and kiss Al Mohler's feet.²

The worst part is how seriously the local media seems to be taking all of this. It's been all over the TV news and the Courier-Journal for days. Paul's reaction to (and Conway's defense of) the Aqua Buddha ad even dominated most of the coverage of their recent debate. How did this become so important? What kind of bizarro world are we living in?

Let's step back and think about this. We're in the midst of a crucial midterm election cycle that may help to decide the role and scope of the federal government for years to come...and these two are having a slap fight over who's the most Christian. That's freakin' fantastic. What role should the government have in healthcare? How about in the regulation of the financial system? What, if any, regulation is the federal government likely to enact in order to deal with greenhouse gas emissions?

Apparently none of that matters, because all these two nimrods seem to want to talk about is how religious they are. I'll be at the polls to cast my ballot on election day, but I'm sure as hell not voting for either of these guys.

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1.) Wow, apparently "stupider" is actually a word.

2.) Al Mohler is the leader of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's a super hardcore fundagelical who recently made the national news for decrying yoga as "dangerous to Christians".

Pandering Season is Underway

In December of 2008, I made a post discussing a passage from a 2006 state law that listed the one of the duties of the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security as

...stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth...and prominently displaying a permanent plaque at the entrance to the state's Emergency Operations Center stating the text of KRS 39A.285(3).

For the record, KRS 29A.285(3), passed in 2002, states in part that "safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God", then contains a biblical quote. Taken together, these two laws seem to indicate that our Homeland Security force is meant to look a little something like this:

In Kentucky, Jesus doesn't just enforce the law;
He IS the law.

American Atheists sued to have this language removed in 2008, and in 2009 the Franklin Circuit Court rather sensibly ruled that the laws represented the establishment of a government religion. Because both the U.S. and Kentucky Constitutions specifically forbid the establishment of official government religions, the wording of the laws would have to go. Seems to me that it's a pretty cut and dry situation.

Alas, it's an election year. Our Democratic State Attorney General, Jack Conway, is in the midst of a nigh-unwinnable senatorial campaign against Tea Party darling Rand Paul. Call me cynical, but Conway's decision to appeal the 2009 ruling and take the case to the Kentucky Court of Appeals seems, I dunno, like maybe it's just one big of political theater. In fact, not only is this political theater, it's a bona fide legislative tragedy complete with a Greek chorus - 96 out of 100 Kentucky state representatives and 35 out of 38 state senators have filed a pair of briefs with the court in favor of keeping the religious language. This is the south after all, so a little genuflection at the feet of the religious folks is expected near election day.

Ultimately I suspect this matter will probably drag on for at least a couple more years and will probably move on to bigger and better arenas than just the Kentucky Court of Appeals. In the meantime, maybe Kentuckians should be just a little worried that only 7 people in our entire state legislature care one iota about not just the U.S. Constitution, but also about the laws of our own state.

Finding that happy median...

I've been informed that this is a pretty good representation of my interactions with others.

As usual, Dilbert contains a kernel of truth - It's very easy for a skeptic to come across as a know-it-all chode. I personally have a severely limited capacity for self-censorship, so I can only imagine that the effect is rather amplified for the poor folks that have to deal with me in person on a regular basis. The Girlfriend in particular suffers under the burden of this aspect of my personality. Immediately coming to mind is an incident from last summer in which I guilelessly gave voice to my disgust when one of her friends, coincidentally a new mother, explained to me that she'd recently had her newborn baby's neck popped by a chiropractor to cure him of his frequent burping and bowel movements.

I'm not always an especially tactful fellow, and I told this woman something to the effect of "babies are made for pooping and burping, and if you're going to let a chiropractor manhandle him then you may as well toss him into the gorilla pit at the zoo." I stand by what I said, but I'll admit that the main point of my message was likely canceled out by the inelegance of my delivery. Subjecting an infant to the quackish antics of a chiropractor is tantamount to child abuse...but I doubt I changed this mother's mind with my snarky comments.

The problem of stalwartly presenting a position while not driving people away with an off-putting tone is a difficult one. Skeptics shouldn't hem and haw when laying out arguments based on essentially settled matters of science (be it the age of the earth, in inefficacy of chiropractic, or the uselessness of horoscopes).¹ We should also strive not to present ourselves in such a way as to drive off the undecided masses. Everyone likes to play to their base, and I like a good roasting as much as anyone, but sneering and snark isn't always helpful in winning over new people to your side. On the other hand, winning people over is meaningless if you dilute your facts into oblivion in order to do so.

PZ Myers and Chris Mooney fired many broadside at each other a few months back over this very subject. It began when Mooney wrote in his book Unscientific America that overly abrasive skeptics may be driving the average American towards an anti-science stance with their vitriolic tone. Myers responded with a book review that basically accused Mooney of wanting to water down the facts in order to avoid offending people. This all resulted in a very public pissing match between the two, with skirmishes erupted across the blogosphere as their supporters rallied and railed. The only problem is that both of the were right.

Mooney is 100% correct that the ham-fisted approach can be counterproductive, but Myers is likewise spot-on in his claim that apologizing for the facts or acting like there's a controversy when there really isn't one (i.e. evolution vs. creationism) is misleading and ultimately harmful. ² A skeptic can fiercely condemn the pseudoscientific without giving the middle finger to everyone who isn't firmly in his camp from the start.

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that the future of skepticism rests largely on effective communication. The charlatans certainly have no problem getting their message to the masses, so skeptics must do the same. Skeptics have the more difficult task, however, because we face a problem the charlatans, hucksters, and fakirs don't: sometimes we must tell people what they don't want to hear. It's easy to get someone to listen to you if you're promising them easy wealth, eternal youth, or a posthumous paradise. Convincing people to give up those "comforting delusions" isn't nearly so simple.

I propose that the goal all skeptics must strive for is to lay out our positions strongly and with no undue equivocation, but to do so without breathing fire and driving away the people who might hear us out. This goal is certainly attainable - look at the writings of Carl Sagan or Martin Gardner - but it doesn't come easily. I've been writing this blog for years now and I still don't always hit the tone I want. Until then I just have to work on finding that happy median.


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1.) Neither should we feign certainty about matters that are not yet so clear-cut.
2.) Bluntness has its place as well. The "New Atheist" movement has used very direct, aggressive argumentation to send to pasture certain sacred cows that deference and circumspection would have been ill-equipped to handle. It's a matter of using the right tool for the right job.

Ken Ham's ham-handed response to James McGrath

I'll admit that I don't normally hang out at very many Christian blogs, but Exploring Our Matrix, written by Butler University religion professor James McGrath, is certainly worth having a look at. McGrath is a progressive Christian, and while he's a spiritual man, he's far more concerned about issues of social justice and the advancement of humanity than pretending that the Bible is literally true.¹ A couple of weeks ago he took Ken Ham, owner of the Creation Museum and Kentucky's most famous creatard, to task for aggressively peddling his wild pseudoscience rather than actually working to help people in need or otherwise live up to the supposed tenets of his faith. McGrath wrote:

[Young-earth creationism is] an attempt to distract from the fact that Christians aren't treating the Bible as the Word of God, taking it literally, or doing any of the other things Ken Ham and others like him claim to stand for - not when it comes to the Bible's teaching about economic and social justice, concern for the poor and oppressed, renunciation of wealth, and most other matters of practice.

Those are strong words, and they point to an obvious question that Dr. McGrath is too polite to ask directly: Why have Mr. Ham and his backers seen fit to spend so much money and time building a gaudy pseudo-museum designed to convince people of the scientific accuracy of The Flintstones when those resources could have been much better spent on a worthier cause? After all, Ham proclaims that he's doing the work of Jesus, and Jesus was all about healing the sick and clothing the naked²...but wasn't nearly as hung up on singing asinine songs about dinosaurs as Ham and his cronies.

According to the Christian Website MinistryWatch.com, Ham's Answers in Genesis organization generated over $22 million in revenue in 2007.³ Do you have any idea how much good you can do in the world for $22 million? How many TB vaccinations would that buy? Conversely, how many animatronic cavemen riding dinosaurs would it buy? I have a feeling Ken Ham knows the answer to one of those questions.

McGrath contends, without quite saying so, that Ham is turning the spiritual passions of his followers towards useless ends. After all, a fervent Christian can "stand up for the faith" by spewing forth nonsense about a 6,000 year-old earth without having to think very hard or put forth all that much effort. Actually reaching out to the disadvantaged in a meaningful way or standing up for the rights of the truly oppressed requires a little more work. Meanwhile Ham is leading his followers on little more than a self-righteous snipe hunt. They get to seethe with indignation about all those evil scientists and atheists, but they don't really have to stick their necks out for anyone either. It's a stinging accusation, and I'd be curious to know what Ham's rebuttal is.

Unfortunately, while Ham has responded to McGrath's post, he hasn't worried himself with answering the claims McGrath has leveled against him. Instead, after tossing out a rather meaningless disclaimer that he doesn't consider the authority of the Bible to be "conditioned upon the age of the earth"⁴, he trots out the tired old "he's not a real Christian" routine and tries to wish McGrath away. Ham quotes extensively from one of McGrath's own entries in which he discusses faith, then huffs that

...I do not know what Dr. McGrath believes about the gospel. It certainly does not sound like orthodox Christianity to me. Sounds to me like some intellectual assent to some aspects of Christianity, but he gets to pick and choose the parts he likes. There is no hint in what he has written that he understands or believes what it means to be truly born-again...

Ham also goes to great pains to point out that Butler University also has an atheist professor on staff. He does so to drive home the point that McGrath is from a dangerous outgroup and therefore his position is invalid by fiat. After all, if he works with those evil atheists and doesn't adhere, with no exceptions, to fundagelical biblical literalism, then he can't possibly have a salient point. Sorry Ken, that's not how it works. You still haven't refuted his claim. Why is peddling young-earther nonsense more important to your Christian ministry than doing "Christian" work like helping the poor? We're still waiting for your answer.


Post Script - Early in this post I asked how many kids could be vaccinated against TB for $22 million. The low-end answer, based on figures from the World Health Organization, is that $22 million would provide vaccinations against TB, diphtheria, pertussis, polio, measles, hepatitis B, and Hib for 55o,000 children. But hey, all those robot dinosaurs are cool too.


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1.) McGrath kind of reminds of Ken Miller, the Catholic biologist who has worked so hard in recent years to combat the arguments of young-earth creationists.

2.) Well, Jesus was also pretty concerned with following the tenets of Judaism to the letter and preparing for a fast-approaching, cataclysmic divine intervention that never occurred, but those are topics for another day.

3.) Though it also had expenses in excess of $20 million.

4.) Yet Ham goes on to state in the next paragraph "If a person has to reinterpret the clear teaching of Scripture to fit in millions of years (e.g., reinterpreting the days of creation), this clearly undermines the authority of God’s Word." So which is it, Ken? Is the authority of the Bible "not conditioned upon the age of the earth", or does acceptance of an ancient earth "undermine the authority of God's Word"? Make up your mind, man.

The Patience of a Saint...

I've been reading Richard Dawkins' newest book The Greatest Show on Earth for the past few days and enjoying every page of it. Regardless of what The God Delusion may have done to advance the cause of atheism, Dawkins is at his best when he's writing about science. In much the same way that Sagan's works fill the reader with awe at the scope of the cosmos, Dawkin's writings about biology leave the reader dumbstruck by the sheer scope and majesty of life.¹

It's hard for me to envision any intellectually honest person who is doesn't want to explore the origins of the life (and indeed the cosmos itself), but experience has taught me that such people are lurking about everywhere. One such head-in-the-sander is Wendy Wright, one of the top brass of the conservative religious organization Concerned Women for America. On pages 198-202 of The Greatest Show, Richard Dawkins discusses a conversation that he had with Mrs. Wright while filming a documentary about Darwin. She is, to say the least, philosophically hostile to the idea of evolution and this distaste leads her to make rather vacuous claims about the supposed paucity of evidence showing evolution by natural selection.

Embedded below is first of seven videos which show the entire discussion between Dawkins and Wright. The full exchange lasts slightly more that an hour, during which time Mrs. Wright makes exactly two arguments: a.) Social Darwnism is bad (Which is true) and b.) "Nah-nah-nah, I can't hear you. If transitional fossils existed I'd accept evolution, but they don't."² She repeats variations of these two talking points for over an hour while Dawkins attempts to explain genetics, comparative anatomy, and the fossil record. He may as well be talking to a cat. Check it out.³



What superhuman patience on the part of Richard Dawkins! Seriously, that lady is irritating just to watch.⁴ How he stood there for an hour talking in circles with her without either having an aneurysm or turning into the Incredible Hulk is beyond me. Science is lucky to have such an eloquent spokesman as Dawkins. Meanwhile, Wright is precisely the caliber of spokeswoman that the anti-intellectual fundies deserve.


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1.) Indeed, I think all good science writing inspires such feelings of amazement and wonder.

2.) If I may be so bold as to say so, Mrs. Wright's got her internal reasoning reversed. She doesn't accept evolution, and ergo she refuses to accept that transitional fossils exist.

3.) I watched all 7 parts in a sitting. It was a test of endurance the likes of which I've not encountered in years.

4.) In addition to flatly denying the entire existence of human transitional fossils, Mrs. Wright utterly ignores Dawkins' mention of theistic evolutionists (Such as Francis Collins and Ken Miller) who believe in God while still accepting, and indeed celebrating, the complicated and wondrous processes through which modern species have come about.

Religious Pandering in the State Senate

Recently a handful of state Senators here in Kentucky have introduced a bill that would allow Bible studies to be added as an elective social science course in public schools. The bill's main sponsor is a Democrat by the name of David Boswell who's (coincidentally, no doubt) up for reelection soon. Theoretically Senate Bill 142 (the full text of which is available here) would only allow for the creation of religiously-neutral Bible study and would not allow for proselytizing, but anyone who thinks that this is anything more or less than a political ploy by an endangered incumbent is kidding themselves.

Perhaps more interesting than the creation of Bible study course is this little delightful addendum that read in part:

Any school council organized pursuant to KRS 160.345, or, if none exists, the principal, may the display of historic artifacts, monuments, symbols, and texts, including but not limited to the display of religious materials...

I think it's pretty safe to assume that this provision in the bill would result widespread placement of the Ten Commandments in classrooms for "educational" purposes. The Ten Commandments are a hot button issue here in Kentucky (perhaps even moreso than in the rest of the country thanks to Roy Moore), and the casual inclusion in SB 142 of a backdoor to place them in public classrooms is so shameless as to border on the ludicrous.

The most irritating part about this whole situation is that actual, honestly academic Biblical literacy courses, if done right, aren't really that bad of an idea. There's an old canard which goes "if more people read the Bible there'd be more atheists", and while I'm not certain that's the case, I suspect that if more people read the Bible from the textual critical viewpoint there would be a lot fewer foaming inerrantists roaming about. In any event, it's undeniably true that the Bible has had a profound effect on Western civilization, for good and ill. The exploration of the Bible's origins, the development of the NT canon, and the ongoing ramifications of the Jewish/Christian split are all interesting and intellectually rewarding areas of study.

The problem is that you and I both know that public school Bible courses in Kentucky would not involve discussions of the Documentary Hypothesis, higher criticism of the NT, or any talk at all about social construction - They'd consist of KJV readings of Genesis, John, and Revelation.¹ Senator Boswell isn't looking to establish the intellectually rigorous teaching of the Bible as an historical document, he's looking to score cheap votes in what's likely to be a close state senate race in November.

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1.) My sophomore year social studies class in high school (taught by the track coach) including a comparative religions unit which the teacher saw fit to preface with a statement of "We all know which one is true, but the state says we have to study this."

Who Would Jesus Shoot? Pt. II

Here's an update to a post from a couple of days ago: According to a report on MSNBC, defense contractor Trijicon, Inc. has agreed to provide the military with special kits to remove the Bible references hidden on its products, including the widely used AGOC scope. It also stated that it would not include the Bible verses on subsequent shipments of the equipment. Hopefully this development will forestall the use of these ill-considered inscriptions as recruiting tools by fundamentalist loons in the Middle East eager to paint the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as religious Crusade.

Who Would Jesus Shoot?

Here's something odd for you: apparently ACOG¹ gun sights manufactured for the U.S. military by a company called Trijicon have Bible verses incorporated into their serial numbers and/or otherwise printed on them. The company's other sighting systems also have the references. For example, Trijicon reflex scopes have "2COR4:6" stamped on them, a reference to a New Testament passage which reads:

For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (NRSV)

I suspect that no one would notice these references were they not looking for them, and according to Trijicon their products have also been emblazoned with Biblical references.² That being said, the United States has spent the last eight years trying to assure the Muslim world that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't just some fundie Christian religiouse crusade, and now we're going to have Al-Qaeda lunatics pointing to these ill-placed Bible verses to back up their claims that there's a holy war going on.

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1.) ACOG sights, or Advanced Combat Optical Guides, are commonly used as the sighting system for modern assault rifles. Most U.S. military guns use some form of Trijicon product, and the company is currently signed to a $660 million contract with the government.

2.) Trijicon was founded by a hardline Christian. The company website even states that the goodness of America is "based on biblical standards".

The AFA's Christmas Silliness...

Last year I posted a fairly long article about the American Family Association's "Naughty or Nice" list. Basically, the AFA is a conservative Christian organization that spends most of its time complaining about homosexuals and running political commentaries by such intellectual stalwarts a Chuck Norris. Throughout November and December of every year, however, the AFA changes its focus to poring over every advertisement they can get their hands on to see if they use the word "Christmas" or not. Any company that doesn't slather its ads with heaping dollops of "Merry Christmas" is labelled naughty and placed on a boycott list for AFA members.¹

Not much has really changed since last year, save that now the AFA finds it offensive not only to fail to mention Christmas by name, but also to mention it alongside other winter holidays. Seriously. Complaining about a Gap ad that mentions Christmas alongside Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the solstice, the AFA fumes that:

...Gap compares Christmas to the pagan holiday called "Solstice." Solstice is celebrated by Wiccans who practice witchcraft!

A "pagan holiday called Solstice"? Seriously? Does the AFA not know that the winter solstice is an astronomical event, not just something the "Wiccans" made up? Lots of cultures have holidays situated around the winter solstice.² Dare I even bring up the fact Christmas is celebrated on the 25th of December in order to make it correspond roughly with the winter solstice?

The American Family Association seems to have a problem seeing past the end of its own nose. Not everyone's a Christian, and not everyone celebrates the same (or any) holidays at the end of the year. It's ridiculous to have a hissy fit just because a company doesn't direct every single one of its advertisements at you. And really, is any well-balanced person going to let his holiday celebration be tarnished by the wording of a Gap ad?

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1) This is in addition, of course, to the AFA's permanent boycotts of Movie Gallery (for renting porno) and Pepsi (for not hating gays enough).
2.) Let's not overlook Festivus, either.

Bill Donohue Can Write...Sort Of...

Bill Donohue, our perpetually livid friend from the Catholic League, has somehow managed to write a book. (I suppose that since Ray Comfort can apparently write a book a every couple of weeks, I shouldn't be surprised that Billy managed it as well.) To the astonishment of absolutely no one who's seen Bill's spittle-flecked tirades on various cable news shows, his new book is 272 pages of invective against secularism. Secular Sabotage is bound in human flesh and inked with human blood published by Faithwords, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group¹, and retails for something along the lines of $20 more than it's worth. I advise readers to mosey on over to the Amazon page linked above and use the Look Inside feature to have a gander at the first ten pages or so.

In addition to seeing wonderful image of the cover, featuring a striking black and white image of Bill looking like he just smelled a fart, curious readers will be treated to such delightful excerpts as this:

What we are faced with today is nihlism... [Bill goes on to wax poetic about how the Communist Revolutions in Russia and China were superior to modern secularism because they "at least had a game plan."]

Driving the nihlists is a tortured vision of sexuality that is so unhinged from reality as to be maddening...To reach their state of perpetual ecstasy, they need to take down Christianity and Catholicism: it is restraint that the secular purists find so objectionable. Make no mistake about it, what they desire is nothing less than full-blown genital liberation. They want it all -with whomever they want- and they want it now. Indeed, to deny them is to kill them.

Well, there you have it: Sexual perversion. That's the point of secular activism. Ideas like freedom of conscience, rationalism, and the explanatory power of science? Shills, the whole lot of them. Secular activists? We're all a bunch of slavering, oiled-up weirdos in assless chaps. Seriously, we are. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Chris Hitchens, PZ Myers, the Louisville Area Skeptics, the American Humanist Association, Americans United For Separation of Church and State, even your old pal Skippy...all we're after is the opportunity to bang kangaroos. Boy kangaroos.

If only the damn Pope wasn't guarding the zoo...

No wait, that's stupid.

Honestly, if I were going to write a book lampooning the rantings of hardcore Catholics, I'd probably make sure that I accused all of my ideological enemies of being genitally-liberated perverts by no later than page ten. Bill does it on page six. (If you're unsure as to why that's ironic, Google "Catholic Sex Abuse" and look at any of the 2,970,000 hits.) Shortly thereafter (on page seven) he hits his other two favorite talking points: The "War on Christmas" and how atheists are "afraid of the Muslims".² Say what you will about the guy, at least he doesn't waste time.

Bill Donohue has a made a career out of playing the indignant victim while simultaneously demanding that others scrape and bow before his inane beliefs. If the preview of his book in any indication (and I suspect it is), then it's nothing more than his stock Fox News rant wrapped in a dust jacket. I'll be keeping an eye out for this one at the library, but I don't know if reading Bill's bile-spewing will be nearly as enjoyable as actually watching him turn bright red while he raves on TV.

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1.) Hachette also owns the romance imprint Forever, publisher of such apparently theological works as To Desire a Devil, To Taste Temptation, and Sins of the Flesh.

2.) Nevermind, I suppose, that Sam Harris' book The End of Faith is specifically a discussion of the evils of fundamentalist Islam, or that Richard Dawkins' TV series Root of All Evil opened with a lengthy examination of fundie Muslim backwardness, or that the creation of freakin' Blasphemy Day was inspired by the insane overreaction of fundamentalist Islamists to the publication of handful of cartoons. Hell, nevermind that just last month New Humanist published a lengthy article kicking the intellectual ass of Muslim creatard Harun Yahya.

I Thought These Days Were Behind Us...

The battle over "traditional marriage" is flaring up again, but in an unexpected way. See, I thought the current culture war was supposed to be about gay marriage, but Keith Bardwell, a Justice of the Peace in Louisiana, is going retro by refusing to grant interracial marriage licenses. Interracial marriage is, of course, legal in all fifty states and Bardwell is breaking the law by refusing to issue licenses to interracial couples, but he claims that he's actually helping society. How so, you ask? Bardwell says he doing the potential children of such couple a favor because society doesn't accept interracial folks. According to the AP article linked above, Bardwell went on to state that "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way."

Astounding. Utterly astounding. Bardwell's apparently a Republican, which is hardly surprising. It's constantly amusing to me that for all their complaints about "nanny government" meddling in people's business, conservatives are all too happy to inflict their 19th century values on the rest of us under the guise of "protecting traditional values". Jeeze.

Kentucky vs. the Amish: A Study in Religious Accommodation

Peter Smith, a religion blogger affiliated with the local Courier Journal newspaper, recently published a blog post dealing with a minor controversy brewing here in Kentucky. At issue is whether or not the Swartzentruber Amish sect should be required to adorn their horse-drawn buggies with orange safety reflectors as per Kentucky law.¹ Specifically, a group of Amish is claiming in a case before the Kentucky Court of Appeals that, among other things, the free exercise of their religion and their freedom of association are being impinged upon by the law. This is based on the Amish preference for modesty and their contention that the wearing of brightly covered clothes (and apparently plastic reflectors) is too worldly and immodest.² They further reject the use of the reflectors on the grounds that displaying such a "symbol" would undermine their implicit trust that God will keep them safe from harm. Similarly, the freedom of association claim is based on their contention that other Amish folks would shun them if they agreed to use the reflectors.

The Amish are making two other claims as well: That the reflector law is being unevenly and inequitably applied and that their right to free speech is being violated by the law. The final claim is based on their contention that the vehicle one chooses to drive constitutes a form of expression because it makes a statement about the driver. Therefore, they claim, compelling the driver to display a safety reflector represents an infringement of their right to free speech.

Over the years, Amish sects all around the country have had success in suing their way out of laws they don't care for. In one such case, Yoder v Wisconsin (1972), the U.S. Supreme Court found that Amish children are not necessarily bound by laws requiring compulsory school attendance if such school attendance is counter to the "sincerely held religious beliefs" of their parents, thereby helping to lay the groundwork for the modern homeschooling movement and numerous other free exercise rulings.³ In other cases, they've claimed religious exemptions from various other legal necessities, such as building codes requiring the installation of smoke detectors.⁴ The ACLU often tends to side with the Amish in these cases, as it has in the current case going on here in Kentucky.

The issue of unfair and uneven application of the reflector law would, in my opinion, be the most pressing matter in the case. After all, given that the law applies not only to Amish buggies but also to vehicle incapable of traveling over 25 mph, if the plaintiffs were able to show a disproportionately high number of buggies being ticketed (as opposed to tractors, etc.) then they could plausibly claim to be the victims of discrimination. As for the claims of undue burdens on religious exercise and free speech, I think precedent may not work entirely in the favor of the Amish. Previous rulings have found that in some cases both free speech and religious expression may be subordinate to broader concerns of public safety.⁵ Even under the now-defunct Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sorely narrowed the the ability of the government to burden free exercise, Congress held that laws existing for "furtherance of a compelling government interest" could curtail free exercise so long as such laws work towards this interest in the least restrictive way possible.⁶

Surely the enactment and enforcement of traffic laws in order to provide for the safety of motorists represents a "compelling government interest". After all, there were 39,800 traffic-related fatalities in the U.S. in 2008, and although Amish buggies no doubt accounted for an infinitesimally small percentage of these deaths, the principle behind the use slow moving vehicle reflectors is easy to understand.⁷ The question, in my mind, is not whether laws mandating the use of SMV placards serve a compelling government interest, but rather whether these laws are unduly burdensome to the Amish.

Freedom of conscience and the freedom to practice one's religion are rightly held in high esteem in the United States. The ascetic lifestyle of the Amish represents a normally harmless personal choice that does not, in general, disrupt society at large. It is clearly not the aim of the government of Kentucky in general or the SMV placard law in particular to attack the Amish way of life. Rather, the SMV placard law is meant to protect the lives of the Amish and other Kentucky motorists. Doing away with the SMV placards entirely seems like an untenable proposition, given that they serve a specific, necessary purpose that extends beyond their use on Amish buggies. Creating an exception in state law whereby all slow moving vehicles except those operated by the Amish would likewise create problems. After all, if we have two identical horse-drawn carts, but one is driven by a Amish man and the other is not, mightn't the non-Amish driver feel unduly burdened to have to purchase and mount an SMV while his fellow driver does not? Clearly mandating the use of some sort of warning device for slow moving vehicles is prudent. Perhaps if we look specifically at the objections of the Swartzenruber Amish to the SMV reflectors, a solution will become more readily apparent.

According to the legal brief filed on the behalf of the Swartzentruber Amish, their primary objection to the SMV placards is that they are "garish" in appearance & coloration and that they represent secular symbols to which the Amish are opposed.⁸ Kentucky's government is at least nominally secular, and therefore I can't fathom any reasonable jurisprudence that would suggest that "trust in God", no matter how sincere, is an adequate argument for failing to display the SMV placard, any more so than trust in God would constitute plausible grounds for disabling a motor vehicle's running lights. That being said, it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to suggest that a compromise be reached in which Amish buggies could be adorned with somewhat less "garish", but nonetheless effective, reflective materials.

This was in fact the outcome of a virtually identical case in Ebensburgh, PA just a few years ago that involved the same Amish sect and made essentially the same hybrid free expression/free speech claim.⁹ In this case, an appellate court in Pennsylvania found that there are equally effective pieces of safety equipment (e.g. gray/white retroflective tape)that do not run counter to Amish customs that can serve an alternative to the orange SMV placard. Why such a compromise has not immediately been suggested by the Commonwealth's Attorney in the Kentucky case is beyond me.

It was just such middle ground - the balance between freedom of conscience and the rule of law - that underpinned the governmental philosophy of the Founders. In the current national climate of vitriol and polemic, we should strive more than ever towards these noble ideals.

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1. See KRS 189.810-830. (Kentucky Criminal Law Manual, pp. 340-341). The reflector law does not apply solely to Amish buggies, but rather to any vehicle other than bicycles which is incapable of exceeding 25 miles per hour.

2. The full legal brief can be found online here. To quote the brief, the Amish claim that the use of the orange reflectors is "completely antithetical and antagonistic to their religious values."

3. The Yoder case dealt specifically with laws requiring school attendance beyond the eighth grade. A brief summary of the case can be found online here. A longer discussion of Yoder can be found in the excellent book God vs. the Gavel - Religion and the Rule of Law by Marci Hamilton, especially pp 216-225

4. This is the subject of the ongoing Yoder v. Morristown suit in New York State.

5. For example, male members of the Sikh religion are required by their faith to wear a sacred dagger, called a kirpan, at all times. Courts in some states, such as New York and California, have found that while the kirpan cannot be banned outright, restrictions on their wearing can nonetheless be imposed. In New York, for example, Sikh boys can wear a kirpan at school only if it has been bolted into its sheath such that it cannot be drawn, and no Sikh in the U.S. can wear a kirpan inside a federal building. See pp 114-117 of Hamilton's God vs. the Gavel for a further discussion of this issue.

6. City of Boerne v. Flores (1997) partially overturned the RFRA on the grounds that, by enacting the RFRA, Congress overstepped its power to enforce as defined in the Fourteenth Amendment. The logic behind this decision is that the RFRA altered the Freedom of Exercise clause when Congress had no right to do so. To quote Justice Anthony Kennedy, "Congress does not enforce a constitutional right by changing what the right is."

7. Figures are from a National Safety Council press release. It should be noted, however, that traffic fatalities in the U.S. are trending downward.

8. Refer to the complaint brief, esp. pp 9-12.

9. The ruling in the Ebensburgh case can be found here.