Where’s the math in that?

Sorry. Trick Question.

One supposes the math part comes in when Bradley Johnson sits down to count out the settlement that god’s ambulance chasers of the Thomas More Law Center hope to procure for him with this frivolous lawsuit.

California Teacher Has No Right To Push Religion in the Classroom
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Public school officials did not violate a California teacher’s rights when they asked him to remove two religious banners from his classroom, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has told a federal appeals court.
Bradley Johnson, a math teacher at Westview High School in San Diego, filed a lawsuit against school officials in 2007, claiming his free speech rights were infringed when he was ordered to take down his religious signs.
A U.S. district court in March ruled in favor of Johnson and ordered school officials to pay nominal damages.
“The district court got it wrong,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United’s executive director. “A public school teacher has no constitutional right to push personal religious beliefs on students.

Thanks to Americans United for Separation of Church and State for their constant vigilance and for calling poo on this Christian phony.

A god of life (video: Pat Condell at YouTube)

The prolific YouTube legend, comedian, writer and atheist, Pat Condell, accentuates the positive.

Find all of Pat Condell’s videos at his YouTube channel, and get your hands on a copy of Condell’s bound transcripts in Pat Condell – Godless and Free, at the link.

— PZ Myers, biologist, educator and non-believer,
from Sunday Sacrilege: Unorthodoxy

— Bishop Philip Tartaglia, the attention-loving but reading-impaired
Roman Catholic Bishop of Paisley, from his letter
to the British Prime Minister, David Cameron

The Prime Minister’s statement, made during a gay pride reception in June, clearly gives homophobic religionists the right to opt out:

“I am pleased to announce that we are taking a further step, and I think a good step and a right step – and I say this as someone who believes in marriage, who believes in civil partnership, who believes in commitment – and that is to say that if religious organisations, if churches, if mosques, if temples want to have civil partnerships celebrated at religious places of worship, that should be able to happen and we should make that happen.”

(emphasis: mine)

Mike’s fave bit: “Father Paul, attended a party at which there were two male prostitutes then said Mass the following morning before driving them to the airport, Panorama reported. A photo on its website claimed to show the priest in his dog collar but without his trousers with a gay man who acted as decoy for the magazine.”

Altogether now … gasp.

Catholic church embarrassed by gay priests revelations
The Guardian
The Catholic church, already reeling from a string of clerical sex abuse scandals, is facing new embarrassment after an Italian magazine published an investigation into what it termed the double life of gay priests in Rome.
Using hidden cameras, the weekly Panorama, owned by Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, captured priests visiting gay clubs and bars and having sex. The Vatican does not condemn homosexuals, but it teaches that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered”. In one of his earliest moves, pope Benedict barred actively gay men from studying for the priesthood.

You have to wonder what Berlusconi is up to here, since he and Papa Ratzi seem perfectly sympatico in their antipathy toward the gays. Find the online and in Italian version of Berlusconi’s right-wing rag-mag at the link. Don’t expect much detail in the grainy, pixelated photos. Although, you could cover your monitor’s screen in vaseline, squint real hard and use your imagination.

In this fawning selection, religionist and author Stephen Prothero was asked “Why are you so hard on atheists?” His response:

“I think they’re intellectually dishonest, and I think it’s the hardest religious position to take up. With Christianity, you just have to affirm that Jesus is God and sent to the world to save the world. … I think many atheists are not actually atheists; they’re just people who’ve rejected the Jewish or Christian God, more specifically the god that their parents taught them.”

(emphasis: mine)

Proof, please.

Stephen Prothero Interview: The Many Forms of Faith
The Huffington Post
Talking with Stephen Prothero, author of God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World — And Why Their Differences Matter, is like watching those Miller Lite commercials where tempers flare over the “Great Taste!” vs. “Less Filling!” properties of the beer: What seems like an intense conflict is ultimately just a marketing gimmick.
The Boston University religion professor’s argument … is that these belief systems are fundamentally different, rather than merely divergent paths up the same mountain. In interviews, he calls interfaith families “inconsistent,” and dismisses atheists as “dishonest.” Yet each chapter notes an array of similarities among the profiled faiths — Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoruba, Judaism, Daoism — and describes major game-changing disagreements within their underlying denominations.

Prothero claims he believes in invisible sky fairies, he encourages others to believe in sky fairies, and, yet, he calls atheists “intellectually dishonest?”

Really? Prove it.

(tip: Austin Cline, who refute Prothero’s nonsense)

Well, there you have it. Now you know why we’ve only seen Brian Brown performing at NOM’s Summer of 2010, Tour de Hate rallies. Frickin’ Maggie’s been crawling around the parking lots on her bloody, gravel-pitted knees, reading OUR bumper stickers.

The Week in Gay: Heterosexual Bloodbath
San Francisco Weekly: The Snitch: Queer
The National Organization for Marriage is on a month-long, 23-city tour in the U.S. to promote heterosexual supremacy. During the tour, NOM is depicting itself as the victim of a campaign similar to the one they are engaged in to marginalize and defame LGBT families. NOM bears false witness against its neighbors while displaying its holy street cred by speaking in tongues at rallies. Nice!

It is painfully obvious, that most of the anti-Catholicism that exists today comes from two major sources: ex-Catholics (and those with one foot out the door) and secular Jews. This doesn’t mean that all of those who fall into these two groups are bigots, but it is to say that the worst offenders tend to belong to one of those two segments of the population.

Gasp.

Catholic Watch: Donohue defends Mel Gibson and calls Leno a bigot
Philadelphia Atheism Examiner
This week in Catholic: Catholic League president Bill Donohue is offended again. This time, he takes the time out of his protests of the Empire State Building, Comedy Central, Lady Gaga, and comedian Louis C.K. to defend Mel Gibson and call late night talk show host Jay Leno a bigot. [ ... ]
Mel Gibson belongs of to splinter sect of the Catholic Church run by his father who denounces the changes made by the Second Vatican Council. Still, Gibson is a Catholic and this has prompted Bill Donohue to come to his defense. In a press release by the Catholic League, Donohue implies that Gibson is the victim of anti-Catholic bigotry. He goes on to blame “Secular Jews” for “fomenting anti-Catholicism” and trying to equate any and all criticism of the actions and beliefs of the Catholic Church with anti-Semitism and racism.

(links: from the original)

Here’s Bill Donohue’s media release in full:

FRANK RICH’S SELECTIVE INDIGNATION

July 19, 2010

In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist Frank Rich called Mel Gibson a “bigoted blowhard,” branding his movie “The Passion of the Christ” anti-Semitic; he also attacked several Catholic and Protestant leaders who befriended Gibson, including Catholic League president Bill Donohue. Donohue responds as follows:

If Frank Rich were as sensitive to anti-Catholicism as he is anti-Semitism, there would be no problem. But the fact is he has an ugly record of attacking those who object to anti-Catholicism, but not the bigotry itself. The following examples suffice: the 1995 movie “Priest”; the 1998 play “Corpus Christi”; the 1999 Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibition, “Sensation”; the 1999 movie “Dogma”; the vitriolic reaction to Catholicism that accompanied “The Passion of the Christ”; his own newspaper’s hypocritical and selective crusade against priestly wrongdoing; the ongoing “war on Christmas,” etc. In every instance, his ire was directed at the protesters, not the object of their protest.

Rich is particularly angry at anyone who dares to mention the role played by secular Jews in fomenting anti-Catholicism. I am one Catholic who will not run from this charge. It is painfully obvious, that most of the anti-Catholicism that exists today comes from two major sources: ex-Catholics (and those with one foot out the door) and secular Jews. This doesn’t mean that all of those who fall into these two groups are bigots, but it is to say that the worst offenders tend to belong to one of those two segments of the population. Indeed, the “raised Catholic” types and secular Jews have long replaced the Protestant community as the primary source of anti-Catholicism in the United States. In Europe, it tends to be ex-Christians and Muslims.

If Rich would like to debate me on this issue, I’m sure some media outlet would be glad to arrange it.

Maybe Brown is concerned about our work documenting the rally because, yet again, the turnout today for the NOM rally in Annapolis was extremely low (about 25 people, including staff, but I’ll get a hand-count out later), even lower than previous events on NOM’s “Summer for Marriage: One Man, One Woman” tour.

(emphasis: mine)

BREAKING: NOM Tour Tracker videographer threatened with arrest by Brian Brown, Maryland police
Courage Campaign’s NOM Tour Tracker
Just a few minutes ago (shortly before 1 p.m. ET), Brian Brown had police officers remove the Courage Campaign’s NOM Tour Tracker videographer from the Maryland NOM rally — or risk arrest.
We were told that all counter-protesters must remain across the street. When I explained to the officers –- who became enraged as I started videotaping his explanation -– that we were not counter-protesters, that we had no signs, were leading no chants and were merely documenting the rally, they said that it didn’t matter.
Maybe Brown is concerned about our work documenting the rally because, yet again, the turnout today for the NOM rally in Annapolis was extremely low (about 25 people, including staff, but I’ll get a hand-count out later), even lower than previous events on NOM’s “Summer for Marriage: One Man, One Woman” tour.

Of course, NOM doesn’t need any coverage. They’re perfectly capable of creating their own fake newscasts, and so they are:

NOM: ‘Pro-Marriage Supporters Bullied and Intimidated by Gay-Marriage Protesters’ (video: NOM at YouTube)

Although this alleged “bullying” took place several days ago at one of NOM’s rallies to prevent and eliminate gay equality, the group’s president, Brian Brown, just minutes ago sent out a breathless email plea for financial support to rescue the poor oppressed NOMmies that featured this headline: ALERT! Breaking News Video: Protestors storming the podium. Threatening young children. Police standing by doing nothing.

Like I said, that was last weekend. Hardly “breaking” by any standard that doesn’t involve bearing false witness. And, I suppose somebody’s gotta foot the the bill for those big NOM salaries and that gas-guzzling bus they’re using to peddle their attacks on equality for gay Americans.

Still from Chuck Colson’s Civil Disobedience and Christians, a YouTube video

Radical cleric Chuck Colson, the convicted Watergate felon and advocate of domestic terrorism who proposed firebombing the Brookings Institute and dropping acid in anti-Nixon (Colson’s boss) commentator Jack Anderson’s coffee, is threatening civil disobedience if he and NOM founder, Robert George, can’t turn the United States of America into a theocracy.

Manhattan Declaration: Is Civil Disobedience Next?
The American Family Association
Three weeks ago we sent you an email encouraging you to view a brief video by Chuck Colson about the latest threat to our religious liberty – the effort to limit “freedom of religion” to “freedom of worship.”
Over 180,000 of you viewed that video – and many of you have continued to come back to ManhattanDeclaration.org to look for updates. That’s why we’d like to share another brief video with you, this one by Dr. Timothy George, who discusses the implications-and increasing likelihood-of civil disobedience. . . You can click on this link to watch the video.

The truth, according to an email from Colson, is this: It’s fund-raising time over at the Manhattan Declaration so fingers must be pointed and tongues clucked to arouse the sleeping fundie masses.

Please take the few minutes to watch this video, forward this email or the link on to your friends, consider what it means to you, and be in prayer for our nation as we wrestle with these key issues.

In addition to staying informed, you can also help defend the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty by financially supporting the efforts of the Manhattan Declaration. To date the Manhattan Declaration has operated on a shoestring budget and donations of time and money from a handful of friends – some ministries and organizations and some of you from around the country.

Here’s the Family Research Council’s paranoid take on the freedom of religion versus freedom of worship tempest in a thimble.

(tip: The American Family Association)