The Daily Profaner: Putting Snark First, Myths Last!

Last Saturday, Chris Altarkation and I attended the First Annual Los Angeles Anarchist Bookfair. While the books and zines were excellent, the anarchists left something to be desired.

The trouble began when we attended a workshop called “Queer & Trans Communities of Color”. The conversation had a very free-flow structure to it, with the workshop leaders mostly allowing the discussion to grow organically - until, of course, it veered in a direction that displeased them. When the workshop leaders asked what we (the participants), were doing to improve and empower the Queer community of Color, I responded by saying that I was working to bring Atheism to it.

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It’s the 60th birthday of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights!  The document is a profound, positive declaration of human rights - 1948’s UN gets an A for effort.  However, the document is far from complete, and is not serving to adequately address the human rights issues of the 21st century.

For example, article 16:3 sates: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”  Right now - under a banner that sounds eerily like the Declaration’s language - the Vatican is opposing a UN resolution that calls for a global decriminalization of homosexuality.  

The Declaration represents the Human Rights concerns of the western world in the post war/early cold war era.  It was a time when the untidy people were forced into the shadows, a time when women were trapped in the home,  and a time when LGBTQ people were shuttered in the closet.  It was a time when racism was accepted, a time when segregation weighed on the American South, and a time when the rampant oppression of women in the Muslim world never crossed the minds of the powerful straight European men who wrote the Declaration.  These men were concerned with the repressiveness of a one party state, the horrors of genocide, and in general sense protecting the democratic, capitalistic system of the West.  

It is a tremendous landmark in the struggle for human rights, but it is not enough.

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Christian fundamentalist groups across the nation continue to campaign for prayer in schools, anti-abortion laws, and a return to traditional Christian values, which in some cases apparently means infanticide or at the very least criminal negligence leading to the death of your own children.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “C.J., how can you doubt the power of faith-healing?  It helped cure my brother of chronic headaches, and my mother prays daily and never gets sick.”  I know, I know…  With strong evidence like that, it’s hard to do anything but believe in the power of The Lord and bow contritely before his might.  Well, either that or point out the billions of people who pray for help from their suffering everyday but are given none, or the numerous people with terminal illnesses such as ALS and AIDS who have so far received no help.  Let’s not forget the millions of people throughout history who have prayed for replacement limbs with the result being a whopping 0% of them magically regenerating their beloved appendages.

One day these maladies will hopefully be cured, and people will say to me on that day, “Ha!  You see?  God’s power was at work!”  To which I will have to reply that it wasn’t God as much as numerous teams of scientists working for years-on-end looking for treatments who used the knowledge gained from earlier scientists who also spent their lives in such noble pursuits.

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I’ve been seeing this terrible book mentioned all over the right wing news media/blogosphre.  Conservatives are cum drunk about former Nazi soldier Hilmar von Campe’s dire warnings:

“There is nothing theoretical about my description of what happens when a nation throws God out of government and society, and Christians become religious bystanders. I don’t want to see a repetition. The role of God in human society is the decisive issue for this generation. My writing is part of my life of restitution for the crimes of a godless government, of the evil of which I was a part.”

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Secret Atheist Muslim Communist President-Elect Barack Obama continues to stand strong in defense of reproductive rights, and continues to take a lot of flak for it - even from his own liberal media allies. Obama loves reproductive rights, this is nothing new guys:

• Back in 2007 Obama said, “The first thing I would do as President is sign The Freedom of Choice Act“.
• NARAL has given him a score of 100% in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.
• Ditto for Planned Parenthood in 2008.

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