As you no doubt heard over the weekend, New York is set to be the sixth state to legalize gay marriage: the state Senate passed a bill, and the Governor has said he’ll sign it.

My sincere and very happy congratulations to all my gay readers! I think this is terrific news, especially since NY is such a big state, the largest to make gay marriage legal. I also want to specifically point out this bill would not have passed without four Republicans signing it into law as well. I especially wish to thank Republican Senator Roy McDonald, who gave this heartfelt speech:

You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, [bleep] it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing, and that’s where I’m going with this.

Also, Republican Senator Mark Grisanti, who said:

I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.

They are precisely correct. It is the right thing to do, and in America all Americans should have the same rights. It’s really just that simple.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this. (more…)

A minor firestorm has been lit by the NBC TV network: for their coverage of the the U.S. Open golf competition over the weekend, NBC aired a little patriotic intro of kids reciting the "Pledge of Allegiance" to the American flag intercut with shots of soldiers raising the flag. No big deal for a sports show, except for one small thing: they edited out the kids saying the words "under God" in the Pledge:

Hmmmm. I have several comments.

1) I don’t think this was intentional on the part of NBC. Obviously, they meant to edit the Pledge, but I don’t think they took out the words "under God" as some sort of anti-American God-hating plot to secularize the country and turn us into slavish devil-worshippers. Not that this would stop some folks from believing just that.

That seems far-fetched to start with, but mind you they also edited out the word "indivisible". If they had some sort of anti-religious agenda, why take that out? Just taking out "under God" would be a much stronger statement.

2) The original pledge didn’t have the words "under God" in it. They were added in 1954 as part of the McCarthy red scare. I’ve always found it the height of irony that they were added between the words "one nation" and "indivisible", as adding religion to a secular pledge is very divisive, and in fact that was the intent of adding it (McCarthyism is a great example of "Us versus Them" thinking).

[UPDATE: After posting this, I saw that Fark has a thread on this with the title, "NBC apologizes for airing Pledge of Allegiance as originally written".]

3) NBC issued an apology for this which will do nothing to calm people down:

We began our coverage of this final round just about three hours ago and when we did it was our intent to begin the coverage of this U.S. Open Championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being held in our nation’s capital for the third time. Regrettably, a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance that was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone and we’d like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it.

If they had said why they edited it — bad audio, or cut for time, or saying more than just "under God" was taken out, or whatever the heck the actual reason is — it would’ve gone a lot farther. Leaving it like that just will enflame people more.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Pledge, to be honest. I was made to recite it in school when I was a kid, memorizing it by rote, but never, not once, was I taught what it was supposed to mean. When done that way, it’s a litany. I do honestly think that a representative democracy is the best form of government we have, but I also think there are ways of improving it. Having kids memorize a pledge like this doesn’t encourage them to think about their government and country, it only encourages them to obey it.

And that, to me, is the opposite of what our country actually stands for.

On Friday, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) — incredibly, a Presidential front-runner for the Republicans — said this:

I support intelligent design [...] What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.^*

Terrific. But then, in a sense, I agree. That is, when Intelligent Design proponents actually have any science, they should speak up. And if there were any reasonable doubt that would be fine too. But they don’t, and there isn’t.

And ID isn’t science, it’s religion. It was even ruled to be religion by a judge — a conservative Republican judge — so teaching it would be in violation of the Constitution that Representative Bachmann is sworn to uphold.

Just sayin’.

^*Incidentally, this quote from her is in response to a question asking her to name Nobel Laureates who support Intelligent Design; she previously made the claim that many do. Note that in her answer quoted above she totally dodges the actual question; she never names a Nobel prize winner who supports ID. Actually, there are a couple who apparently do, but then no doubt some Nobel Prize winners are religious in one form or another… and many have believed in very dubious things. Having a Nobel is not inoculation against nonsense. Interestingly, having said that, I have seen no evidence that any Nobel Laureates in biology favor ID over evolution, however.

Anyway, I’m not a big proponent of "my expert is bigger than your expert"; that’s just a version of argument by authority. In the end, ID must be judged on its merits, and as has been shown countless times, it has none.

[Note: I expect to hear some disagreement over my statements in this post. If you are going to comment, PLEASE read the whole post first, and then read my post "When belief kills" before leaving your comment. That should minimize misunderstanding about where I stand on this. Thank you.]

In February, I wrote that in Oregon a bill was being proposed to the state legislature that would remove the defense of religious belief in the case of homicide. Specifically, if the bill passes, parents who use faith healing instead of real medicine for their children can face murder or manslaughter charges if the child dies due to lack of medical care.

In March, the Oregon State House unanimously approved the bill. On Monday, the Senate approved it 25 – 5. It will now go back to the House for any changes to reconcile the versions. After that, it will be sent to the governor where he will sign it, and it will become state law.

This law would apply to anyone who does not seek medical care for their child, but the situation has become urgent of late because a fringe group called Followers of Christ advocates faith healing instead of real medicine, and several children have died or been seriously injured because of it.

I stated my opinion on this in my earlier post:

Stories like this always leave me conflicted. As a parent myself I always want the best possible medical treatment for my child, and I don’t want other groups interfering with that decision. However, the State has a right to protect the best interests of that child in case the parent cannot. Decades worth of evidence has shown that faith healing does not work, and in many cases the children in the Followers of Christ church had easily treatable illnesses and needn’t have died.

In the end, the right thing to do is save that sick child. If the parent cannot, then the greater society has the responsibility to do that.

I still think this is true. One of the very reasons we have a society in the first place is to be able to help people who cannot help themselves. Children fall squarely into that category. And we know faith healing is not a legitimate medical practice. For a serious illness, it is essentially a death sentence.

I support the Oregon legislature on this difficult decision. In these times of such stiff religious influence on government, this is a welcome sign of resistance.

Tip o’ the gavel to The Secular Coalition of America, via Liz Gaston and Ashley Miller on Facebook.

So last week, I said:

Well, I don’t want to brag, but: I called it.

Here’s what Camping had to say after it was clear his prophecy was dead wrong:

So he claimed his date was off and it was, in effect, a test of faith. If I were so inclined, I’d give myself a twofer on this one. [UPDATE: I didn't mean to say here that Camping changed the date to October, but it seems to me that he is now stressing that this is when things really happen, and not May. So it's still moving the goalposts in the form of the date that we will see events transpire. Some folks in the comments below and on Twitter were asking about that, so I hope that clears it up.]

Not that this is any big surprise; as I said in my first post, rationalizations were just as inevitable as the Rapture wasn’t. This is not the first time such predictions were wrong, and it wasn’t even the first time Camping himself was wrong.

One thing is pretty sure: the people who believed in Camping and donated more than 18 million dollars to his radio stations last year won’t be getting their money back. Nor will many of them have their faith in him shaken, even when shown point-blank he was wrong.

Maybe they — and Camping — should read the Bible more carefully.

Of course, now he says October 21 is The Day. And what will happen when that date, too, comes and goes?

We know quite well what will happen. And it’s not a matter of faith; the evidence is very, very clear.

I’ve been getting some email and other notes asking about the claims that on Saturday May 21 the Rapture will occur.

Well, what can I say? Harold Camping, the guy making these claims is, to be charitable, a kook. He claimed the Rapture would be in 1994, for one thing, then changed his mind. His claims are based on numerology. Other evangelicals are coming out against him. And so on and so forth.

We’ve seen such claims come and we’ve seen them go. The problem is, they never really leave, do they? A new one always comes along soon enough to take the place of the last one. And so many others are simply recycled (Velikovsky begat Sitchin begat Planet X, which has been subsumed by the Mayan 2012 folks).

Moreover, the most fervent believers in such doomsday prophecies, after the time comes and goes with nothing happening, usually wind up believing in it even more strongly. I saw it happen myself in 2003 when Planet X failed to show up and wipe us all out as predicted. A lot of people were disenchanted and left that particular cult, but a core group is still going on, still claiming aliens are out there trying to warn us of planetary doom (another site has a history of all that). And heck, the Millerites, a 19th century end-times movement, eventually evolved into the religion of Seventh-day Adventism after failed prophecies of the Second Coming of Christ.

Which makes me wonder: what will happen May 22? I have no doubt whatsoever that when the Rapture fails to materialize, the group surrounding Camping will find some way to rationalize it. Perhaps they’ll claim the date was off. Perhaps they’ll claim it was a test of their faith (a common excuse, actually). Maybe, if they’re lucky, some will leave the movement. But no matter what, excuses will be made.

But that’s in the immediate term. I can’t help but be curious to see if this will continue on, as the Millerites did, and even grow? After 150 years, Seventh-day Adventism is now one of the largest Christian denominations on the planet, after all.

Who will be Camping in the 22^nd century?

Image credit: Mark Nozell on Flickr, used under Creative Commons licensing.

Some (kinda) good news: a bill designed to promote the teaching of creationism in Tennessee public schools has been put on hold until at least next year.

Earlier in April, the Tennessee House passed this bill, which basically says teachers can help students find weaknesses in scientific theories — and while that sounds legit on its surface, it’s actually very thinly veiled creationist rhetoric for attacking evolution (read the link above for more on this).

To be made into state law, the Tennessee Senate would have to pass the bill as well, but they decided to put it on hold. The thing is, it was tabled basically due to scheduling and not because the bill is antiscience, antireality, and potentially unconstitutional. I imagine when the Senate reconvenes at the next session it’ll pop right back up, as these creationist whack-a-mole bills do. After all, this is the same legislature that grossly mischaracterized a quote by Einstein to support creationism.

So science education in the Volunteer State is safe… for now. Therefore: