Today's vocabulary word: absurd

absurd, adj. having the characteristics of other people's belief systems, as opposed to my own

Quote of the week

"In a secular nation, 'ARCHBISHOP SLAMS GAY MARRIAGE' should matter about as much as 'IMAM SLIGHTLY MIFFED ABOUT PET LICENCES.' " — Hugo Rifkind, The Times of London

Quote of the week(ish)

"The basic problem is the collective ownership of rural land. The thing is that the collective doesn't exist. Actually it's just disguised government ownership, or ownership by officials." — Xiao Shu (emphasis added)

How consistent is your view of religion?

In case you want to find out, here is a 17-question quiz:

In this activity you’ll be asked a series of 17 questions about God and religion. In each case, apart from Question 1, you need to answer True or False. The aim of the activity is not to judge whether these answers are correct or not. Our battleground is that of rational consistency. This means to get across without taking any hits, you’ll need to answer in a way which is rationally consistent. What this means is you need to avoid choosing answers which contradict each other. If you answer in a way which is rationally consistent but which has strange or unpalatable implications, you’ll be forced to bite a bullet.

I managed to get through without taking any hits or biting any bullets.

If a church denies us communion ...

... we should deny it the sanction of the victim. By now, you've likely heard of this:

Deep in grief, Barbara Johnson stood first in the line for Communion at her mother’s funeral Saturday morning. But the priest in front of her immediately made it clear that she would not receive the sacramental bread and wine.

Johnson, an art-studio owner from the District, had come to St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg with her lesbian partner. The Rev. Marcel Guarnizo had learned of their relationship just before the service.

“He put his hand over the body of Christ and looked at me and said, ‘I can’t give you Communion because you live with a woman, and in the eyes of the church, that is a sin,’ ” she recalled Tuesday.

I won't get into whether Ms. Johnson, Fr. Guarnizo, or both acted inappropriately under Catholic canon law or whether the Archdiocese of Washington did the right thing by apologizing to her. I will say, however, that by caring whether a church will let us partake of its sacraments or ordinances, we give it a power over our lives that it neither necessarily has nor deserves to have. Instead, it makes more sense for all concerned if we shake off the very dust from our feet. While I don't lightly agree with a source like this, he has a point when he writes the following:

4. * * * If you don't like the Catholic church, don't become Catholic and don't come to our Mass and other events. Isn't that what you tell those who oppose abortion (Don't get one.)?

5. Please remember, no one forces you to be a Catholic or take Communion in our Churches. If you do, then you should respect our requirements. I have been to churches and synagoges for funerals, weddings and other occassions. I will stand, sit and even kneel when it is appropriate. I will not say their prayers or receive their "communion." I will not make a scene when they say or do something that I do not agree with. It is their faith, and that is fine with me. I am there as a guest.

An argument I think advocates of marriage equality should stress

I've commented here and here on arguments that I wish advocates of marriage equality would stop using, but there's one that I don't think they use often enough. Since opponents of marriage equality tend to use religion as a reason, or at least a pretext, we need to emphasize that at least here in America, as opposed to Iran, our Constitutional rights include freedom from establishment of religion, so that we should decide the scope of secular marriage under secular principles rather than any particular church's interpretation of Scripture. This argument must be a strong one, since whenever I bring it up, the 'phobes immediately change the subject.

In this regard, The Washington Post characterizes the view of anti-marriage-equality pastors thus:

But Thomas and the 77 other Baptist ministers in the association do not see same-sex marriage as a civil rights matter. Rather, they say, it is a question of Scripture, of whether a country based on Judeo-Christian principles will honor what’s written in Romans or decide to make secular decisions about what’s right.

Apart from the seriously question-begging reference to "a country based on Judeo-Christian principles," I agree completely with this framing of the issue, and under the First Amendment, the answer should be clear.

Enlightened self-interest should lead the pastors to the same conclusion. Do they seriously want the government to be the final arbiter of the correct interpretation of "what's written in Romans" or any other part of the Bible? What would they do if the government granted itself that authority and then took a position directly contradictory to theirs?

Say it isn't so, Ezra Klein.

Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, in a column on political flip-flopping, notes,

[Politicians are] trying to win elections, not points for intellectual consistency.

* * *

Flips and flops like these make the labels “left” and “right” meaningless as a descriptor of anything save partisanship over any extended period of time.

* * *

Parties — particularly when they’re in the minority — care more about power than policy.

* * *

But the voters who trust the parties don’t know that, and they tend to take on faith the idea that their representatives are fighting for some relatively consistent agenda. They’re wrong.

Gosh oh golly, who'd ha' thunk it? When I was a College Republican, I attended a CR conference at which Maryland's leading Republican politician flatly stated that Republican politicians didn't believe their own talking points about smaller government; that was just something to tell the unwashed masses. Team Blue was no better; Baltimore City Democrats and Montgomery County Democrats took just about opposite positions on economic development and job creation. Since then, politicians like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have often come across as satires of the opposite party's dream candidate.