Stan Taylor

I’ve always maintained that Christians who believe gay sex is a sin shouldn’t be casting homosexuals out of their churches; on the contrary, they should be welcoming them in and praying that the transforming love of God will help them to see the error of their ways. (that’s not my view, but at least it would be scripturally consistent, in my opinion).
When Fred Phelps’ gang* showed up at an evangelical church in Oklahoma to protest because the church had a publicly acknowledged gay member (a young member of their congregation had been profiled in a Washington Post article about the struggles faced by homosexuals in the Bible belt), the congregation came together to defend one of their own–even though most members of the congregation felt that homosexuality is sinful. And in the process, it sounds like some of the congregation members even came to question that belief. It’s a powerful story about community.
* I’m not going to dignify the Phelps Klan with a link. If you don’t know who they are, suffice it to say they’re about the most hate-filled folks you’ll ever hear about.

I read this July 2004 inteview with author and evangelical Christian Tony Campolo a while back, but ran across it again today. Awesome viewpoint! An excerpt:

We ought to get out of the judging business. We should leave it up to God to determine who belongs in one arena or another when it comes to eternity. What we are obligated to do is to tell people about Jesus and that’s what I do. I try to do it every day of my life.
I don’t know of any other way of salvation, excerpt through Jesus Christ. Now, if you were going to ask me, “Are only Christians going to get to heaven?” I can’t answer that question, because I can only speak from the Christian perspective, from my own convictions and from my own experience. I do not claim to be able to read the mind of God and when evangelicals make these statements, I have some very serious concerns.
For instance, they say unless a person accepts Jesus as his personal savior or her personal savior, that person is doomed forever to live apart from God. Well, what about the many, many children every year who die in infancy or the many children who die almost in childbirth and what about people who are suffering from intellectual disabilities? Is there not some grace from God towards such people? Are evangelical brothers and sisters of mine really suggesting that these people will burn in hell forever?
And I would have to say what about all the people in the Old Testament days? They didn’t have a chance to accept Jesus.
I don’t know how far the grace of God does expand and I’m sure that what the 25th chapter of Matthew says is correct–that there will be a lot of surprises on Judgment Day as to who receives eternal life and who doesn’t. But in the book I try to make the case that we have to stop our exclusivistic, judgmental mentality. Let us preach Christ, let us be faithful to proclaiming the Gospel, but let’s leave judgment in the hands of God.

Matt Haughey summarizes Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? as follows:

Frank uncovers how the GOP became the voice of the everyman while pushing law and policy that generally benefit the upper class most of all. It’s a vexing problem but I’ve always attributed it to language and the GOP controlling the debate. Frank goes a bit deeper and reveals a 30 year plan of campaigns that stress values, but that deliver economic law instead. So the game is to get people riled up over issues, but the GOP never actually does anything about the issues, instead concentrating on pushing laws that deregulate industries. He also goes into how the GOP exploits victimhood, since they never “win the culture war” and come off as the underdog, even though they control all three houses of the government.

Essentially, if the Republicans ever win any of the big social battles (abortion, gay marriage), that’s one less issue to use to motivate the social conservative base.
The proposed federal amendment to ban gay marriage is the perfect weapon for the Republican party: it gets the social conservatives all riled up, but it has a slim chance of ever being passed (and even then, it would take many years). Therefore, it’s a weapon that they can use to motivate their social conservative base for a long time to come, and as long as it never gets passed, they can continue to claim victim status in the culture war.
Which brings up the other big culture war issue: abortion. Getting a Supreme Court to overturn or limit Roe v. Wade is the Holy Grail, so to speak, for the social conservatives. There’s a very good chance Bush will get to nominate one or more judges to the Supreme Court in his next term. And if past nomination battles are any indication, the nominee’s (or nominees’) views on abortion will be paramount. And with a strong Republican majority in the Senate, an anti-abortion nominee stands a good chance of getting the appointment.
That would put the Republicans in a tough spot, as they would actually make significant progress on one of their big issues that they use to motivate the social conservatives. I shudder to think what next big ‘moral’ issue Karl Rove has up his sleeve.

An article in the Village Voice challenges the common belief that people voting for ‘moral values’ are responsible for Bush’s re-election win. Here are some relevant parts of the article:

The idea that last week’s election results show that there is a great silent majority of Americans who vote first and foremost on their moral values, which means that they vote for the Republicans, has become gospel on our nation’s airwaves by now. It is nonsense on stilts. Bush didn’t win this election on “moral values.” It turns out he didn’t do any better among strong churchgoers, or rural voters, than he did in 2000. What was it that actually put him over the top? It’s the wealth, stupid.
Among heavy churchgoers, Bush’s performance last time was 25 percent (turnout, 42 percent; percentage of vote, 59 percent). This time out it was also 25 percent—no change…
Where did the lion’s share of the extra votes come from that gave George Bush his mighty, mighty mandate of 51 percent? “Two of those points,” Klinkner said when reached by phone, “came solely from people making over a 100 grand.” The people who won the election for him—his only significant improvement over his performance four years ago—were rich people, voting for more right-wing class warfare.
Their portion of the electorate went from 15 percent in 2000 to 18 percent this year. Support for Bush among them went from 54 percent to 58 percent. “It made me think about that scene in Fahrenheit 9/11,” says Klinkner, the one where Bush joked at a white-tie gala about the “haves” and the “have-mores”: “Some people call you the elite,” Bush said. “I call you my base.”
So they proved to be. The two issues he mentioned in his post-election press conference had nothing to do with succoring God-fearing folk; instead he mentioned only “reforming” the tax code, and “strengthening” Social Security—issues of particular concern for the haves and the have-mores.

Opponents of gay marriage tend to take the moral/religious high road. But Fred Clark (a thoughtful, liberal evangelical Christian and darn good blogger) makes a persuasive case that opposing gay (civil) marriage is actually sinful.
Civil marriage is a legal contract between individuals that bestows certain legal privileges (and responsibilities?). Gay civil marriage is a civil rights issue, and as Fred concludes, “‘Civil rights for me but not for thee,’ is not a morally defensible position. And much of the language directed against homosexuals this past year has simply been morally odious and despicable — i.e., sinful.”

Throughout the 2004 presidential election campaign, I was frustrated with the mainstream media’s reporting (including NPR, which is generally much better than any commercial media in my opinion). The daily reporting on the presidential campaign typically consisted of: Today President Bush was in [insert swing state here] and said this [play 10-second sound bite claim about his record or Senator Kerry]. Meanwhile, Kerry was campaigning in [insert swing state here] and said this [play 10-second sound bite claim about his plans or Bush’s record]. End.
As a resident of a non-swing state, I couldn’t have cared less about where each candidate was and what group he spoke to. What I wanted to know was the validity of the claims each candidate made. Many times (as a Kerry supporter, of course), I thought Bush’s statements were pretty outlandish–both about his own record and about Kerry. But the mainstream news media hardly ever analyzed the claims themselves, thus allowing the candidates to say pretty much anything and get it broadcast as news. In fact, I had the impression that the more sensational a claim, the greater likelihood that claim would be the one featured in the news.
I found it a very frustrating situation, and it’s not very conducive to producing an informed voting populace.
A recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Blinded By Science: How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality, shows that even when journalists do the hard-hitting analysis, sometimes bad data is presented in the interest of ‘balanced’ reporting.
I a concern for ‘balance’ contributed to why the mainstream media did so little analysis of the presidential candidates’ claims. The media felt the need to present each candidate’s statements evenly. Analysis of one candidate’s claims would have necessitated analysis of the other candidate’s stance on the same issue. And even such ‘fair’ analysis probably would have resulted in claims of bias. And in the sound bite environment, I think it is easier just to report what each candidate says and not analyze it.

In case you’re wondering, I am not that Stan Taylor:

Here’s an excellent short essay in the New York Times (registration required) about why our current obsession with anti-bacterial products is pointless.

Where there is an irrational fear, there is a product-development team to fan it and feed it and exploit it. . . The makers of antibacterial products are fond of the word “germs.” It is purposefully vague. Do they mean bacteria? Viruses? Both? Neither? Because the idea is simply to connote contamination. These products are as much about cooties as they are about viruses or bacteria.

Wired has an interesting article on the decline of the power of brands. The whole article can be summarized in this great sentence:

If once upon a time customers married brands – people who drove Fords drove Fords their whole lives – today they’re more like serial monogamists who move on as soon as something sexier comes along.

As I’ve noted before on this blog, I’m a big sucker for well supported challenges to conventional wisdom. This article from the Boston Globe certainly does not disappoint (copied here in its entirety in case it disappears):

PRESIDENT Bush and Vice President Cheney make reference to “Massachusetts liberals” as if they were referring to people with some kind of disease. I decided it was time to do some research on these people, and here is what I found.
The state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation is Massachusetts. At latest count it had a divorce rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population, while the rate for Texas was 4.1.
But don’t take the US government’s word for it. Take a look at the findings from the George Barna Research Group. George Barna, a born-again Christian whose company is in Ventura, Calif., found that Massachusetts does indeed have the lowest divorce rate among all 50 states. More disturbing was the finding that born-again Christians have among the highest divorce rates.
The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that “the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people.” The 10 Southern states with some of the highest divorce rates were Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. By comparison nine states in the Northeast were among those with the lowest divorce rates: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
How to explain these differences? The following factors provide a partial answer:

• More couples in the South enter their first marriage at a younger age.
• Average household incomes are lower in the South.
• Southern states have a lower percentage of Roman Catholics, “a denomination that does not recognize divorce.” Barna’s study showed that 21 percent of Catholics had been divorced, compared with 29 percent of Baptists.
• Education. Massachusetts has about the highest rate of education in the country, with 85 percent completing high school. For Texas the rate is 76 percent. One third of Massachusetts residents have completed college, compared with 23 percent of Texans, and the other Northeast states are right behind Massachusetts.

The liberals from Massachusetts have long prided themselves on their emphasis on education, and it has paid off: People who stay in school longer get married at a later age, when they are more mature, are more likely to secure a better job, and job income increases with each level of formal education. As a result, Massachusetts also leads in per capita and family income while births by teenagers, as a percent of total births, was 7.4 for Massachusetts and 16.1 for Texas.
The Northeast corridor, with Massachusetts as the hub, does have one of the highest levels of Catholics per state total. And it is also the case that these are among the states most strongly supportive of the Catholic Church’s teaching on social justice issues such as minimum and living wages and universal healthcare.
For all the Bible Belt talk about family values, it is the people from Kerry’s home state, along with their neighbors in the Northeast corridor, who live these values. Indeed, it is the “blue” states, led led by Massachusetts and Connecticut, that have been willing to invest more money over time to foster the reality of what it means to leave no children behind. And they have been among the nation’s leaders in promoting a living wage as their goal in public employment. The money they have invested in their future is known more popularly as taxes; these so-called liberal people see that money is their investment to help insure a compassionate, humane society. Family values are much more likely to be found in the states mistakenly called out-of-the-mainstream liberal. By their behavior you can know them as the true conservatives. They are showing how to conserve family life through the way they live their family values. William V. D’Antonio is professor emeritus at University of Connecticut and a visiting research professor at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.