| Subject: Writer |
| From: "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> |
| Date: 7/9/07, 16:02 |
| To: job-368019389@craigslist.org |
BARRETT BROWN___________________________________________
3506 Manchaca Rd. #221 Austin, TX 78704
512-560-2302 barriticus@aol.com
COPYWRITER/ FEATURE COLUMNIST/ CONTRIBUTING EDITOR/ BOOK AUTHOR
Published Work/ Freelance Media Experience
The Onion A/V Club
Current, ongoing copywriting for The Onion's features department.
Anglesey Interactive, Inc.
Current, ongoing copywriting of online marketing collateral (web text, press releases, etc.) in support of firm's "Riight.com" integrated search engine.
Organic Motion, Inc.
Current, ongoing copywriting of both print and online marketing collateral, general marketing consultation for noted New York tech start-up.
Sterling and Ross Publishers
Nonfiction book "Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny", political humor, authored in 2006, released in March 2007.
Avacata
Current, ongoing copywriting in 2007 for Dallas ad agency, researching and creating entertainment/dining/venue blurbs for clients' marketing collateral, including luxury resort real estate firm.
National Lampoon
Occasional contributor; past features included "Pick-Up Lines That Don't Seem to Work," "Craig's Conspiracy Corner," "A Guide to Dealing with Housecats," more.
Weekly columnist for political analysis site from October 2004 to November 2005
Features included - - "JohnKerry.com is Web-Tastic!" "Politicos Should Heed the Perry Incident," "Hot Senate Races," "Hot House Races," "109th Congress - What They Really Wanted for Christmas," "Political New Year's Resolutions," "State of the Union 2005: Dreams and Ironies" "The Long Kiss Goodnight," "The Strange Case of Jeff Gannon," "Libby Indicted, Dems Excited," "The Best Little Decoy in Texas," "Faith of Our Fathers: A Mildly Mean-Spirited Review," "McClellan is No Fleischer," "A Response to Our Catholic Readers," "The Known Unknown," "Dr. Frist Prescribes Himself a Dose of Moderation," "Meet John Roberts," "2008 Preview," Roberts Confirmation Hearings Largely Bloodless," more.
AOL CityGuide
Web content writer from Summer 2000 to December 2003 Researched/ created content coverage of event and entertainment venues. Served as regional correspondent for Dallas, Austin, New Orleans, Houston and Little Rock markets.
Additional magazine work
Ongoing, have contributed feature articles from serious political commentary to humor pieces to children's recreational activity coverage to fine dining overviews for outlets including business-to-business publication Pizza Today, D.C.-based public policy journal Toward Freedom, London-based public policy journal Free Life, humor magazine Jest, parenting publication Dallas Child, men's magazines Oui and Hustler, literary journal Swans, dozens more.
Additional writing projects
Have written shopping/entertainment guides for Dallas Market Center publication Destination Dallas, created marketing copy for Verizon via Dallas ad agency Sullivan-Perkins, produced website copy for design firm NPCreate.com, provided public relations pieces for Texas energy company EBS and Dallas real estate firm Dunhill Partners, more.
Education
1999 - 2003 University of Texas at Austin, College of Communications
Sex, Marriage, and Other Wastes of Time
In October of 2006, the wonderfully-named Family Research Council held a televised event entitled Liberty Sunday which, although vague in its billing, was supposed to have something to do with homosexuality, and which was consequently expected to draw some high level of attention. As FRC President Tony Perkins put it, with characteristic exactitude, "We've got thousands, literally millions of people with us tonight."
Those thousands, literally millions of people were first treated to a suitably campy video-and-voice-over presentation in which Mr. Perkins waxed nostalgic on the virtues of John Winthrop, the original governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and an apparently fond subject of the Christian dominionist imagination. Perkins quoted Winthrop as having warned his fellow Puritans that "the eyes of all the people are upon us so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world." Winthrop's prescience is truly stunning; the early Puritan colony of Salem did indeed become a "byword" for several things.
But an obvious gift for prophecy notwithstanding, Winthrop is perhaps not the most judicious choice of historical figure upon which to perform rhetorical fellatio at the front end of an event billed as a celebration of popular rule. "If we should change from a mixed aristocracy to mere democracy," Winthrop once wrote, "first we should have no warrant in scripture for it: for there was no such government in Israel." Right he was. He went on to add that "a democracy is, amongst civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government," which was certainly true at the time. Furthermore, to allow such a thing would be a "manifest breach" of the Fifth Commandment, which charges us to honor our fathers and mothers, all of whom are presumably monarchists.
Solid as these age-old talking points may have been from a Biblical standpoint and they seemed solid enough to Biblical literalists ranging from King David to King George to King Saud it wasn't the intention of Perkins to discuss his buddy Winthrop's anti-democratic sensibilities (of which Perkins is probably unaware anyway, not being a historian or even properly educated); rather, this was meant to establish a narrative of contrasts. On the other side of the Massachusetts time line from Winthrop and his gang of roving Puritan theocrats, as Perkins tells us in slightly different words, we have the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court of the early 21st century. This far more modern, considerably less blessed body had recently handed down a majority ruling to the effect that the state could not deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as to do so would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Massachusetts constitution. "These four judges discarded 5,000 years of human history when they imposed a new definition of marriage," Perkins said, "not only upon this state, but potentially upon the entire nation." Note that Perkins is here criticizing the judiciary for not giving due consideration to the laws and customs of the ancient Hebrews when interpreting United States law; this will be a useful thing to keep in mind on the dozen or so occasions recorded in this book when Perkins and James Dobson criticize the judiciary for giving due consideration to the laws and customs of other nations that exist right now. It's also worth mentioning that the Founding Fathers discarded those very same "5,000 years of human history" when they broke away from the British crown in order establish a constitutional republic, thus committing that "manifest breach" of the Fifth Commandment which so worried John Winthrop.
But the mangling of history had only just begun; still in voice-over mode, Perkins was now on about Paul Revere. When Revere made his "ride for liberty," the lanterns indicating the manner of British approach ("one if by land, two if by sea") were placed in the belfry of the Old North Church by what Perkins described as a "church employee." This, Perkins pronounced, was an early example of "the church [giving] direction at critical moments in the life of our nation." And here, in the present day, we have the homosexuals laying siege to American life with the public policy equivalent of muskets, ships-o-the-line, and archaic infantry formations. "Once again, people are looking to the church for direction." Because back in 1776, you see, people were literally looking at this particular church for guidance. That's where the signal lanterns were kept. The actual soldiers were kept in whorehouses.
The video clip ended. First up among the live speakers was Dr. Ray Pendleton, senior pastor of the Tremont Temple Baptist Church, Liberty Sunday's storied venue. The good doctor acknowledged that the evening's events had garnered some degree of controversy they were, after all, holding a hard-right, Evangelical-led gay bashing event in downtown Boston, of all places but, as Perkins noted, "This church is not foreign to controversy."
"No, indeed we're not," Pendleton agreed, very much in the manner of a Ronco pitchman who's just been prompted to confirm the utility of a juicer. "From the very beginning, we've been part of concerns for liberty and freedom. We were part of the Underground Railroad, the first integrated church in America." Wild applause. "I think the abolitionist's message is pretty clear." Actually, it was pretty clearly in opposition to the Bible. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, was aware of this, even if Dr. Pendleton is not, and once noted that the peculiar institution of slavery was not peculiar at all, and had in fact had been "established by decree of Almighty God" and furthermore "sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation." Davis was right, of course; and not only is slavery justified in the New Testament book of Ephesians as well as within several books of the Old Testament, but the proper methodology of slave beating is even spelled out in Exodus 21:20-21: "And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall surely be punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his property." Which is to say that one may beat his slave without punishment, assuming that the slave in question does not die from his wounds within the next couple of days. Tough but fair. Never mind all that, though; Pendleton's point was that this church had been opposed to slavery 150 years ago, that it was now opposed to gays with equal vigor, and that we should draw some sort of conclusion from this. My own conclusion was that they were right the first time purely by accident.
Next up was yet another prerecorded video segment, this time featuring some fellow named Peter Marshall who was standing next to Plymouth Rock. "All of us were taught in America that the Pilgrims came here as religious refugees running away from persecution in Europe," Marshall tells us. "That really isn't true; they had no persecution in Holland where they'd spent 12 years before they came here." Marshall is correct; by the Pilgrims' own account, they left Holland not due to persecution directed towards themselves, but rather because they found the free-wheeling and numerous Dutchmen to be difficult targets upon which to direct their own brand of persecution. "The truth," Marshall continues, "is that they" - the Pilgrims, not the fortunate Dutch, who appear to have dodged a bullet - "had a much deeper and broader vision. The Lord Jesus had called them here, as their great chronicler and governor, William Bradford, put it, 'because they had a great hope and an inward zeal of advancing the cause of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the earth.'" And from this it is clear that the United States was indeed founded upon Christian dominionist rule, particularly if one sets the founding of the United States not in 1776 when the United States was actually founded, but rather in 1620, when a bunch of people suddenly showed up in the general area.
Of course, if the founding of a nation really occurs when people arrive on a parcel of land, as Marshall seems to be implying, and if the characteristics of a nation are really determined by what said arrivals happen to be doing at the time, as Marshall is certainly implying, then the United States was actually founded a few thousand years earlier when Asiatic wanderers crossed the Bering Strait in search of mammoth herds or whatever it is that induces Asiatic types to wander around. By this reckoning, the U.S. was meant to have been characterized by the "Indian" practices of anthropomorphism and the cultivation of maize, rather than the "Pilgrim" practices of Christianity and nearly starving to death because you're a stupid Pilgrim and you don't know how to farm properly.
But there does exist a more profound defense of the Pilgrims and their claim to American authorship, one which Marshall neglects to mention but which I will provide for you in his stead simply because the Pilgrims need all the help they can get. In the early stages of the relationship between saint and savage, God seems to have signaled his displeasure at the practices of the latter, while simultaneously signaling his approval of those of the former. At least, Tony Perkins' boyfriend John Winthrop seems to have thought so. "But for the natives in these parts," Winthrop wrote in regards to what was left of his heathen neighbors, "God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection." Of course, God didn't get around to doing all of this until a group of European colonists brought smallpox to Massachusetts in the first place. Timing is everything.
Back in the present day, our new friend Peter Marshall continued to elucidate on the motivations of our blessed Pilgrim overlords: "The vision was that if they could put the biblical principles of self-government into practice, they could create a Bible-based commonwealth where there would truly be liberty and justice for every soul." Except for the witches among them, who had no souls. "That was the vision that founded America. Morally and spiritually speaking, our nation was really founded here by the Pilgrims and the Puritans who came to Boston about 30 miles up the road."
Next up was a series of taped interviews with various American theocrats ranging from the notable to the obscure. C.J. Doyle of the Massachusetts Catholic Action League tells us that "when religious freedom is imperiled, it never begins with a direct frontal assault on the liberty of worship. It always begins with attempts to marginalize the church and to narrow the parameters of the church's educational and charitable activities." The Catholics would be the ones to ask; the "parameters of the church's educational and charitable activities" have indeed been narrowed quite a bit since the days when said parameters encompassed the globe and included the enslavement of the indigenous population of South America, the theocratic dictatorship of as much as Europe as could effectively be controlled, the burning of heretical texts and heretics along with them, several Crusades, scattered Inquisitions, whatever it was that the Jesuits were up to for all those years, and the wholesale persecution of those Protestant religious denominations whose modern-day adherents were now assembled at Liberty Sunday, nodding in sympathy at the plight of Mr. C.J. Doyle and his Church. Of course, Protestants can now afford to let bygones be bygones, as the temporal ambitions of Rome have since been relegated to the feeding, clothing, and molestation of children. Sic transit gloria mundi, indeed.
After a few more brief interview clips with other Catholic hierarchy types, the Popery finally gave way once again to Decent American Protestantism in the person of good ol' Gary Bauer, who related via video clip that "[t]here are two diametrically opposed world views in America. On one side, there are people who think that America is all about just doing whatever you want; different strokes for different folks; if it feels good, do it. On the other side, there are millions of Americans who believe that our country was built on ordered liberty under God." Bauer is basically correct in his contention that his side advocates Democracy with Puritan Characteristics, as Deng Xiaoping might have put it, whereas the opposing side advocates actual human liberty without reference to the degenerate totalitarian customs of the ancient Hebrews. The reader will also note how the "doing whatever you want" crowd is simply made up of "people," whereas Bauer's own Ordered Liberty faction consists of "millions of Americans." Millions, I say! And Americans to boot! This may seem like a cheap rhetorical trick to you or I, but, hey, "if it feels good, do it" has always been my motto, apparently.
This latest round of video clips now thankfully at an end, it was back to the Tremont Temple Baptist Church telecast for Liberty Sunday's unofficial keynote speaker, outgoing Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney would very much like to be president of our Greater Imperial Pilgrim Republic, and so has seen fit slum it with the Evangelicals. He was introduced by his lovely wife, Ann. Incidentally, Mitt Romney has only one wife. And so that we might understand why Romney has only one wife and not a dozen of them, a brief history lesson is probably in order.
***
In 1820, Joseph Smith met Jesus Christ in New York. Smith was a resident; Christ was presumably just passing through. Smith was duly impressed with Christ, and Smith's associates were duly impressed with Smith for having met Him.
Christ is a busy fellow, though, and so Smith's next few supernatural encounters were with His subordinate, the angel Moroni. Before graduating to the rank of angel, Moroni had been a general in the army of the Nephites, one of three Hebrew tribes that had wandered into North America after the Tower of Babylon was knocked over by Elohim (alias Yahweh, alias God, no known tattoos or other identifying marks). Quite a bit had happened before and since that hadn't been recorded by the Ur-Jews of the Middle East, nor by the Byzantines, nor by the Romans, nor even by the Methodists, who are usually up on all the latest gossip. In fact, it would seem that a good chunk of crucial Christian theology had simply not made it into the texts and traditions of Christendom for some reason or another, and so it fell upon Joseph Smith, New Yorker, to record it. To this end, Moroni provided Smith with a pair of golden plates inscribed with the language of the Nephites, and which Smith would be able to translate by use of a magical stone. Of course, no one else would be allowed to see the plates at first, and only a trustworthy select were allowed to see them later. Eventually, Moroni took them back, perhaps because he needed them for something.
Years later, after Smith had attracted a following, it was determined that the State of Missouri was actually Zion, that Jackson Country, Missouri in particular had been given to Smith by divine decree, and that it would be rather neat if everyone were to go there and await the Second Coming. The natives of Missouri disagreed, and, after a series of incidents, Smith changed his mind, apparently right around the time that he and his followers were thrown out of the state. Next it was on to Illinois, where Smith and friends established the town of Nauvoo, with Smith himself as mayor. This proved to be a convenient setup for a nascent religious movement, as Smith could now preach his revelatory vision of polygamy, baptism for the dead, and revisionist North American history without being hassled by The Man. After all, he had become The Man.
Things were going swimmingly until a group of disgruntled ex-followers set up a newspaper whose editorial stance was in opposition to Smith's teachings in general and to Smith's person in particular. After the first issue, Smith and his city council had the paper shut down and its printing press destroyed. This didn't go over well in the county seat (which is called Carthage, amusingly enough), where Smith was charged with wholesale tomfoolery and unconstitutional hanky-panky. Smith surrendered to the authorities and was held in the second floor of the county prison for his own protection. The precaution proved inadequate; a mob of angry Illinoisans stormed the prison and fired on him and his friends one of whom, John Taylor, later described what happened next: "Joseph leaped from the window, and was shot dead in the attempt, exclaiming: O Lord my God!"
In a purely romantic sense, Smith's martyrdom by gunfire and window-leaping ranks pretty low on the prophet-death totem poll, sitting below not only Jesus Christ (crucifixion) but also David Koresh (misunderstanding with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) and even Marshall Applewhite (applesauce with phenobarbital).
Unlike those of Koresh and Applewhite, though, Smith's vision lived on; Brigham Young, head of the Quorum of the Twelve, became the Mormon movement's second prophet, and prudently moved the flock westward to Mexican territory. Here, in the Salt Lake Valley, Young and his cohorts were free to live Mormon life to its fullest none more so than Young, who eventually took on a total of 52 wives. Even Joseph Smith himself had married no more than 33.
It wasn't long before the Mormon communities were absorbed into the United States by way of one of our nation's celebrated real estate grabs, and it wasn't long after that before the Mormons started to go all political. Young himself began to lobby Washington for the creation of the State of Deseret, as the Mormons had taken to calling their holdings; instead, a smaller state called Utah was formed with Young as its governor. It was a rough transition, and at one point, federal officials sent an expeditionary force to replace Young after a difference of opinion over the exact nature of American federalism; the Mormon army held the Yankees off for a while, but eventually Young decided it would be more prudent to just step down, and he did so, but was eventually pardoned.
Treason, theocracy, and militarized resistance against the federal government was one thing, but a more serious problem had also been in the making. It seemed that the folks back east didn't much care for polygamy, whereas the Mormons cared for it quite a bit and even considered it a sacred duty. In 1882, when a Mormon leader was consequently prevented from taking his seat in the House of Representatives, the issue was suddenly nationalized. A number of bills were passed in the wake of the controversy, including one which made it a crime not only to practice polygamy, but even to profess one's belief in it. This was clearly unconstitutional, though not so clearly unconstitutional that anyone seemed to notice or care (aside from the Mormons, of course). Then, in 1887, the Edwards-Tucker Act provided for federal seizure of all church property.
And so the Mormon belief in polygamy had been beaten in the political arena, and three years later, the then-leader of the Mormons was suddenly informed by God Himself that plural marriage had never been that big of a deal anyway and that the church should render unto Caesar what was Caesar's, so to speak. In 1890, the Mormons decided that the sacred and inviolable practice of plural marriage consisting of a single man and several women was not so sacred and inviolable after all.
***
Back at Liberty Sunday, former Mormon bishop Mitt Romney, a graduate of Brigham Young University, was introduced by his Mormon wife Ann, another graduate of Brigham Young University. Romney, of course, was here to speak about why traditional marriage is a sacred and inviolable practice consisting of a single man and a single woman.
After Ann Romney had announced to wild applause that she herself was a direct descendant of the splendid William Bradford, Mitt Romney took the podium to say his piece. The nation's values, he said, were under attack. "Today there are some people who are trying to establish one religion: the religion of secularism." Unfortunately, the religion of secularism's operations have yet to be declared tax exempt, which is why I can't write off all of my Gore Vidal novels, tweed jackets, and imported coffee.
A bit into his speech, Romney went off-message when he noted that "our fight for children, then, should focus on the needs of children, not the rights of adults," thus admitting that the point of all of this was to limit rights, rather than to protect them. But if our Mormon friend went on to elaborate regarding his advocacy of federalized social engineering, I wasn't able to catch it, and neither were the "thousands, literally millions" of others watching via the telecast; the transmission broke up in mid-sentence, and didn't resume until after Romney had finished speaking. Apparently, Yahweh does not approve of his True Church being rendered unclean by the presence of Mormons, who believe, among other things, that Jesus and Satan are actually brothers. A message from the Family Research Council came up asking me to "click stop on my media player. Then restart it," and to repeat this. Not a word about prayer. Later on, after the transmission had been fixed, Tony Perkins took the stage and said something about someone having pulled a power cord. Never fret, though: "We know where the real power comes from!" Then there was applause, presumably for the engineer who plugged the cord back in.
If it was indeed Yahweh who knocked Romney off the air in the first place, then He was simply anticipating the views of a large portion of Americans and an even larger portion of Evangelicals. According to a Rasmussen poll released a month after Liberty Sunday, 43 percent of those polled would refrain from voting for a Mormon presidential candidate. Among Evangelicals, that number was 53 percent. As a participant in religious bigotry, Romney is hit-or-miss, but as its victim, he's a real success.
James Dobson appeared via a recorded tape. He was in Tennessee on that particular evening. "Tennessee has an open senate seat," he explained. Fair enough. Dobson cited some scripture, as well he might. "'For this cause,'" he quoted, referring to the cause of matrimony, "'a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.'" It certainly sounds as if Yahweh has stated His opposition to letting the in-laws move in. Judeo-Christianity is not without its charms.
"More than 1,000 scientific studies conducted in secular universities and research centers have demonstrated conclusively that children do best when they're raised by a mother and father who are committed to each other," Dobson noted. In his 2004 book Marriage Under Fire: Why We Must Win This Battle, Dobson had written something similar: "More than ten thousand studies have concluded that kids do best when they are raised by loving and committed mothers and fathers." How that figure managed to shrink from ten thousand to one thousand in the space of two years would be an interesting question for a theoretical mathematician or quantum theorist. How do 9,000 things go from existing to not having ever existed at all? Actually, this is a trick question. The trick answer is that those 9,000 things never existed in the first place, and it's doubtful that even 1,000 did, either. The liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America once tried to figure out exactly how Dobson had arrived at his oft-stated "more than ten thousand" figure, which has since been cited by a couple of politicos on the lesser cable news programs. It seems that Dobson was referencing some books and articles to the effect that children are at a disadvantage when raised by a single mother, although none of the studies cited dealt with the question of whether or not "mothers and fathers" were necessarily preferable to two mothers, two fathers, or a mother and a grandmother (I myself was mostly raised in this last fashion, and I don't believe I'm the worse for it, but, then again, I'd never thought to ask James Dobson). But even aside from Dobson's slight misrepresentations regarding the nature of the studies that actually do exist, the 10,000 figure is ludicrous anyway; as Media Matters put it, such a number could only be possible "if a new study reaching that conclusion had been released every day for the past 27 years." This does not appear to be the case. Nonetheless, Dobson was back to citing the 10,000 figure just a few months later.
Eventually, Dobson was called out on this particular instance of nonsense by two researchers whose work he referenced in a December 2006 essay that was published in Time and cutely entitled "Two Mommies is Too Many." Until this point, neither of the researchers in question had been aware that Dobson was running around citing their work in support of his contention that gay marriage was the pits; they had, in fact, no reason to expect this, as their work supported no such contention. New York University educational psychologist Carol Gilligan requested that Dobson "cease and desist" from referencing her work, and Professor Kyle Pruett of the Yale School of Medicine wrote him the following letter which was reprinted on the gay advocacy website Truth Wins Out:
Dr.
Dobson,
I was startled and disappointed to see my work
referenced in the current Time Magazine piece in which you opined
that social science, such as mine, supports your convictions opposing
lesbian and gay parenthood. I write now to insist that you not quote
from my research in your media campaigns, personal or corporate,
without previously securing my permission.
You cherry-picked a
phrase to shore up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes. This
practice is condemned in real science, common though it may be in
pseudo-science circles. There is nothing in my longitudinal research
or any of my writings to support such conclusions. On page 134 of the
book you cite in your piece, I wrote, "What we do know is that
there is no reason for concern about the development or psychological
competence of children living with gay fathers. It is love that binds
relationships, not sex."
Kyle Pruett, M.D.
Yale School
of Medicine
To its credit, Time later published a response to Dobson's essay, entitled (almost as cutely) "Two Mommies or Two Daddies Will Do Just Fine, Thanks."
Back at Liberty Sunday, Dobson had more concrete matters about which to be livid. It seems that there's a book called King and King floating around the nation's public schools. The plot concerns "a prince who decides to marry another man," Dobson tells us, and then, visibly disgusted, adds, "It ends with a celebration and a kiss." Dobson thinks this to be very bad form, and, for once, I agree with him. I wouldn't want my children being taught that the institution of hereditary monarchy is some sort of acceptable "alternative lifestyle," either. If I caught my kid reading any of that smut by John Winthrop, for instance, I'd beat him with a sack of oranges until my arm got tired. I'm just kidding. I don't have any kids. Yet.
Dobson's list of grievances went on. A school in Lexington, Massachusetts, had sent students home with a "diversity bag" which included some materials to the effect that homosexuals exist and are people. In response to the inevitable parental complaint, the district superintendent had said, "We couldn't run a public school system if every parent who feels some topic is objectionable to them for moral or religious reasons decides their child should be removed." Dobson read the quote and then delivered the following pithy retort: "Well, maybe, sir, you have no business running a school system in the first place!"
Tony Perkins had gone into some more depth regarding the Lexington Diversity Bag Heresy in a recent e-mail newsletter. "You may remember us reporting last year on David Parker, the Lexington, Massachusetts father who was arrested because of insistence on being notified by school officials anytime homosexual topics were discussed in his son's classroom," Perkins wrote at the time. "He made this reasonable request after his six-year-old kindergartener came home from school with a 'diversity' book bag and a book discussing homosexual relationships." Obviously, Mr. Parker wasn't arrested because of his "insistence" on anything; he was arrested on a charge of trespassing after refusing to leave the school office, even after having been asked several times by the principal as well as by police. And Mr. Parker had indeed been "notified" about the bags, along with all of the other parents, twice. A sample had even been displayed at a PTA meeting at the beginning of the year, where it was made clear that children were not required to accept them. But, hey, whatever.
Dobson had another one. "And did you hear two weeks ago that a 13-year-old girl at Prince George's County Middle School was silently reading her Bible at lunch time, when a vice principal told her she was violating school policy and would be suspended if she didn't stop?" This actually did happen; the vice principal apparently didn't understand school policy, which clearly states that students may read religious texts. They can also start religious clubs. The problem seemed to be that the vice principal in question mistakenly believed otherwise, perhaps because Evangelicals like James Dobson (and Catholics like William Bennett) are always running around claiming that it's illegal to pray in public schools.
Then, all of a sudden and apropos of nothing, Dobson warned us that "our country is in great danger from the radical Islamic fundamentalism, which is telling us now that they plan to destroy the United States and Israel, and I'm convinced they mean it." Really puts that diversity book bag thing into perspective, huh?
The video ended and it was back to the Liberty Sunday live feed. Perkins noted that the DVD version of the event could be ordered from the FRC website, and that it included bonus material.
A bit later, Massachusetts Family Institute president Kris Mineau came on. "The leadership of this state is beholden to the homosexual lobbyists," he said. "Homosexual money is flooding into this state to deny the citizens the right to vote, to deny our freedom of speech." The homosexual money in question was apparently too limp-wristed and faggy to actually accomplish any of this, though, seeing as how Mineau was exercising his freedom of speech at that very moment and the 2006 mid-terms had yet to be canceled by the Homosexual Agenda Electoral Commission.
Wellington Boone took the stage. This made me very happy. Boone is a black Charismatic preacher with a penchant for shooting his mouth off about "faggots" and "sissies," as he had done at the recent Values Voter summit, explaining at that event that he is "from the ghetto, so sometimes it does come out a little bit." The crackers in attendance had eaten this up with a spoon.
Like most Charismatic types, Boone comes from the Arbitrary Implementation of Vague Biblical Terminology school of ministerial presentation, whereby a preacher selects an apparently random verse or even just a phrase of the Old Testament and then ascribes to it some sort of special significance, mystical as well as practical. The most popular item of fodder for such a sermon is "the sowing of seeds," which invariably entails that the sermon-goer should give the preacher a hundred bucks, because God will totally pay back him or her (usually her) at a rate of return that makes a Reagan-era share of Apple look like a Roosevelt-era Victory Bond. In a way, "the sowing of seeds" was also the subject of tonight's presentation, insomuch as that everyone had gathered to advocate the supremacy of vaginal intercourse over its lesser, non-child-yielding counterparts.
Boone was right out of the gate, noting that "God does not play concerning righteousness" and that "the prophets of Baal" have to be stopped. Baal was a Carthaginian deity who reached the height of his popularity 3,000 years ago among people who believed in gods and whose past worship is now apparently to be laid at the feet of people who do not believe in any gods at all, as well at the more stylishly-clad feet of the nation's gays and the considerably less-stylishly clad feet of its lesbians. Baal was also associated with a myriad of fertility rituals, and is thus sort of an odd deity to bring up in the context of homosexuality, which had yet to be slandered as being too heavily concerned with fertility until Wellington Boone came along to do this.
"We know what a family is," continued Boone. "My wife said to me this morning, she said, 'Well, okay, then. It's sodomites because they're not gays; it's a misnomer. They're sodomites.'" That's a pretty clever thing to say, and thus it's understandable why Boone would be sure to relate this to everyone.
"There were sodomy laws in this country all over from [the] 1600s and it was [at] one time a capital offense," he went on. "How could we make it a capital offense? Because most lawyers studied from William Blackstone, who was the foundation of it was a foundation book that helped those lawyers get a clue as to how they should govern and how they should practice law. Where did he get it from? The Bible. The Bible was the book." It sure was. It was a foundation book.
Then came what I consider to be the best moment of the evening. "So if this is just a small matter, I'll tell you what let two women go on an island and a whole bunch of all women, if you're sodomites, go on an island, stay by yourself, all women, put all the men on another island this is my wife talking to me this morning let them stay. I'll tell you what: 'We'll come back and see you in a hundred years.'" There was total silence in the auditorium, as opposed to the approving laughter that Boone had no doubt come to expect from his wife's anecdotes. The problem, he seemed to have thought, was that the subtlety of the joke had gone over the audience's collective head, and so, like any good comedian, he explained the punchline: "Do you get it? Because a man and a man and a woman and a woman will not make a child."
Though a failure at comedy, Boone's real function for the evening was to provide cover for the event's anti-homosexual sentiment by showing everyone that he himself, as a member of a group that has been persecuted, was more than willing to lend his support to the persecution of yet another group, and that this modern-day persecution was, ipso facto, hardly akin to the earlier persecution of blacks to which he himself had obviously been opposed and to which most of the crackers assembled were pretending to be opposed as well. To this end, Boone noted the various ways in which blacks had been persecuted over the years. "Now, if you tell me your issue is the same as that issue," he said, addressing any gays who might have been watching the anti-gay event, "I'll say you better get a clue. Get out of here. You're not getting over here." There was wild applause. "And you're not getting on that. You're not getting any of that. No sir." Perhaps Boone has a point. If so, he refrained from making it. If I was making a speech about gays, and if I was planning to spend the fifth minute of said speech claiming that gays have no license to compare their struggles to that of the blacks, I would probably have refrained from spending the third minute pointing out that gays used to be executed on the basis of Biblical law and that I thought this was a swell thing, as Boone had done, nor would I have menacingly added, "If you're in the closet, come out of the closet and let God deal with you and let the nation deal with you and don't hide out," as Boone also did. If you're a homosexual, don't listen to Boone. It sounds like a trap. Stay in the closet with a shotgun.
Boone was also upset that Condoleeza Rice and Laura Bush had recently presided over the induction ceremony of the new, gay Global AIDS Initiative director Dr. Mark S. Dybul, was particularly peeved that Dybul was sworn in with his hand on a Bible held by his homosexual partner, and was quite unhappy indeed that Rice had referred to Dybul's partner's mother as Dybul's "mother-in-law" during the ceremony. Boone had "a real problem with that." As he explained a bit later, "That ain't no family!"
The incident had riled up a good portion of the Evangelical hornet's nest for a variety of reasons; a few days before Liberty Sunday, an FRC spokesman had told the media that "[w]e have to face the fact that putting a homosexual in charge of AIDS policy is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the hen house," because, I suppose, gay people like to eat AIDS, presumably for brunch.
This is not to say that each and every homosexual AIDS-eater is beyond salvation; quite the contrary. And to drive the point home, Liberty Sunday's final speaker was Alan Chambers, founder and president of the ex-gay reform organization Exodus International. Chambers is notable in that he's managed to put aside his past enthusiasm for homosexual activity in favor of his current enthusiasm for heterosexual activity. He got a big round of applause for this, which is more than I've ever gotten for getting up in front of a group of strangers and explaining that I like to fuck chicks.
Things could have been different for Mr. Chambers, though. "If it wasn't for the outstretched arms of a little church in Orlando, Florida called Discovery Church," Chambers told the crowd, "and people there who called sin, sin, and didn't look at my sin as worse than theirs, I wouldn't be here tonight." This was kind of an odd thing to say. Neither the Family Research Council nor Focus on the Family nor Mitt Romney nor Wellington Boone nor Gary Bauer nor the Massachusetts Catholic Action League had ever before taken part in a major event dedicated to stamping out the practice of neighbor-object-coveting or the violation of Sabbath labor restrictions (in fact, Perkins had arguably failed to keep the Sabbath holy when he got up on stage to pitch DVDs). The whole point of the evening's activities had seemed to be that the Biblical sin of homosexuality was really the only thing worth worrying about.
Is it possible that Alan Chambers was being sarcastic, or at least trying to make the night's only subtle point? Could he have realized that, whatever the virtues of the Florida church that had refrained from looking upon his sin "as worse than theirs," the assembled delegates at this particular church had instead spent the evening doing very much the opposite, and in some cases even advocating the age-old death penalty for the act of sodomy? Could Chambers have made this obvious connection?
If not, then the salvation of Alan Chambers so many years ago has been a complete success. Truly, he was now an Evangelical leader.
***
Alan Chambers claims to have been converted from homosexuality to heterosexuality by way of the same methods now implemented by his Exodus International group. If this is truly the case, he may be the only person in human history who has managed to do this. Exodus doesn't seem to keep records concerning its success rate, much less publish them, and even if it did, these would likely be about as kosher as James Dobson's Incredible Shrinking Ten Thousand Studies. And besides the fact that Exodus is basically a referral organization which delegates the actual work of gay-straightening to smaller, associate churches and would thus not be in much of a position to collect useful records anyway, the business of keeping tabs on the fags has always been an unreliable one; closeted gay men are notoriously reluctant to admit that they've been secretly hitting the warehouse district, particularly if they've been doing it behind the back of the new wife.
Like any movement that can't seem to get methodology on its side, Exodus has been forced to rely on anecdotal evidence, such as the fact that Alan Chambers has managed to impregnate his wife several times and has yet to be caught hanging out by the docks or even eating sushi. Unfortunately, the anecdotal evidence has never been good to Exodus, either. Within three years of the organization's founding by five men in 1976, one of these founders had already run off with a volunteer; the two of them eventually underwent a commitment ceremony and were still together years later.
Then there was John Paulk, a gay man who had worked as a drag queen named "Candi" (note the "i" at the end), a male escort, a restaurant manager and a chef. After his conversion process (half of which, I'd imagine, was spent convincing him to stop replacing y's with i's), Paulk became a literal poster boy of Exodus in particular and the ex-gay movement in general, serving as head of Focus on the Family's "Love Won Out" conference, acting as chairman of the board for Exodus International North America, and appearing on the cover of Newsweek as well as on a series of full-page newspaper ads. Paul had gone from the stereotypical gay career to the stereotypical ex-gay career. The only thing left was to go the way of the stereotypical ex-ex-gay, which he promptly did.
In 2000, Paulk was seen at a Washington D.C. gay bar, where he used a false name and introduced himself to other patrons as a gay man. When these reports made it back to his various new Christian friends, Paulk denied them. Then photos surfaced; it seemed that at least one patron had recognized him and then called up the Human Rights Campaign, which sent some staffers over to get some photos. When the photos surfaced, Paulk admitted that he had indeed gone to the gay bar, but only to use the bathroom (depending on the nature of the gay bar, this might not have been much of a defense). Then it was shown that Paulk had actually been at the bar for at least 40 minutes (again, this doesn't necessarily mean he was lying about having been in the bathroom the whole time). Today, Paulk is back to being a chef.
Other, lower-profile cases abound. The head of Homosexuals Anonymous was forced out after it was discovered that he'd been sleeping with clients, and an ex-gay ministry called Desert Stream opted to settle out of court with a minor who reported that one of the staffers had empathized with his temptations a little too thoroughly. Beyond the world of the ex-gay ministry, of course, you've got Paul Crouch, Sr., head honcho of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, who the Los Angeles Times says paid a former employee almost half a million dollars to keep him mouth shut about a gay affair, among other things. And then there's the Catholic Church. Tee hee.
This is an incomplete list, and includes only those prominent individuals who have managed to get caught. Unlike Paulk, for instance, most ex-gay ministry honchos don't have their faces plastered all over the country to the extent that they might be recognized. And, also unlike Paulk, most would probably have the good sense to avoid gay bars in Washington D.C., of all places, where one is exceedingly likely to run into a hostile gay activist, a hostile gay activist's significant other, a hostile gay activist's overweight heterosexual female friend, or one of many other such stereotypical homosexual hangers-on. So it's hard to say how many among even the movement's leadership, to say nothing of its clientele, are truly "cured" of homosexuality.
Let's pretend for a moment that homosexuality really is an affliction of the Devil (or "the adversary," as the Exodus website charmingly calls him on occasion). What would be the cure? Exodus recommends prayer. Prayer is sort of like the penicillin of Christendom, except that penicillin always works, whereas prayer seems to be hit-or-miss, much like sitting still for a minute and not doing anything. Perhaps prayer is more like the placebo of Christendom. See the chapter on prayer for other moderately witty observations along these lines.
Let's go back to penicillin. Prayer is a cure-all. And so if a bit of prayer is effective, one might logically assume that a lot of prayer would be even more effective (and the Evangelicals do indeed assume this). One might also assume, just as logically, that actually leading the weekly prayers of some 14,000 people would be even more effective still, as this would presumably put one at the apex of prayer power, where one might thus absorb a sizable portion of the peripheral prayer-energy runoff or what have you (I'm a bit foggy on the details). And one might also assume that making regular trips to the Holy Land, writing a dozen or so books on the subject of Evangelical Christianity, and leading the largest Evangelical organization in the world might also help stave off the adversary's subversive urges.
One would apparently be wrong. On November 1st of 2006, when a male prostitute by the name of Mike Jones went public with claims that National Association of Evangelicals president Ted Haggard had been a client of his for several years and had also used him to obtain meth, Haggard told a local news affiliate that he'd never met him.
"What'd you say his name was?" asked Haggard.
"Mike," replied the interviewer.
"Mike," repeated Haggard.
A bit later:
"Have you ever done drugs?" asked the interviewer.
"Never, I have never done drugs," replied Haggard, who later added that he "is not a drug man."
Meanwhile, James Dobson was furious that anyone would ask Haggard questions about things. "It is unconscionable that the legitimate news media would report a rumor like this based on nothing but one man's accusation," he said in a statement released the next day. "Ted Haggard is a friend of mine and it appears someone is trying to damage his reputation as a way of influencing the outcome of Tuesday's election - especially the vote on Colorado's marriage-protection amendment - which Ted strongly supports."
By the time Dobson had released the statement, Jones had already acknowledged the existence of voice mails and a letter which would confirm his story. One of the voice mails, quickly validated by voice analysts as being from Haggard, went as follows: "Hi Mike, this is Art. Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply. And I could pick it up really anytime. I could get it tomorrow or we could wait till next week sometime and so I also wanted to get your address. I could send you some money for inventory but that's probably not working, so if you have it then go ahead and get what you can and I may buzz up there later today, but I doubt your schedule would allow that unless you have some in the house. Okay, I'll check in with you later. Thanks a lot, bye."
The release of the voice mail had a wholesome effect on Haggard. By the end of the day, he had admitted to senior officials at his New Life Church that some of the charges were indeed true, promptly resigning his leadership of the NEA and putting himself on "administrative leave" from the church. He wasn't quite done lying, yet. During an impromptu interview on the 3rd, Haggard admitted to buying the meth but claimed that he had immediately thrown it away because "it was wrong," that he had indeed known Jones but had only gone to him for massages, that he had found Jones through a Denver hotel, and that he had only met with Jones at the hotel and never at Jones' apartment. All of this turned out to be moderately untrue.
By the 4th, Haggard had finally admitted to "sexually immoral conduct." A crack team of three Evangelical leaders, including James Dobson, was assembled to "perform a thorough analysis of Haggard's mental, spiritual, emotional and physical life." The chairman of the overseer board at New Life noted that a polygraph would be used, which is pretty funny.
A few days after the announcement, Dobson dropped out of the rehabilitation project, explaining that he was busy.
***
What should we make of the fact that a national Evangelical leader regularly solicited a gay prostitute, bought and used meth, and then lied about it? Were there any negative implications for the Evangelical movement and its leadership? According to the leadership of the Evangelical movement, the answer is no. Ted Haggard, after all, was merely the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, and could thus hardly be said to have been a national Evangelical leader.
On the 700 Club, Pat Robertson led the anti-NAE charge. "We can't get their financial data. I think it's because they have very little money and very little influence," he said, adding that it "just isn't true" that the NAE really represents 30 million Evangelicals, as the organization claims. Which is to say, Robertson was essentially accusing the NAE leadership of being composed of liars. Elsewhere, Jerry Falwell appeared on CNN to assert that Haggard "doesn't really lead the movement. He's president of an association that's very loose-knit... and no one has looked to them for leadership," which is a pretty mean thing to say.
It's also inaccurate. Though indeed "loose-knit," the NAE is hardly a mom-and-pop operation of "very little influence" to which "no one" has looked to for leadership. The NAE has been around since 1942, when it was formed by a group of 147 Americans who apparently couldn't think of anything more pressing to do in 1942 than to found associations of things. By 1945, its member churches comprised 500,000 people. And aside from providing a degree of unity to an otherwise disparate array of minor denominations, the NAE went on to set up a number of spin-off organizations like the National Religious Broadcasters, which scored an early success when it managed to pressure CBS and NBC to resume the practice of selling air time to religious organizations. By the 21st century, the NAE had acquired such a degree of significance that then-president Haggard was a regular participant in Bush's weekly Evangelical conference calls, had met with Bush in person a number of times, and was deemed important enough to receive a call from him upon the nomination of John Roberts for chief justice of the Supreme Court (during the Haggard scandal, White House spokesman Tony Fratto downplayed Haggard's importance, telling reporters that "he has been on a couple of calls. He's been to the White House one or two times." I seem to recall that the White House had a similar line about Ahmad Chalabi). He'd also met with Tony Blair for reasons that aren't immediately obvious, and with Ariel Sharon for reasons that are.
Haggard himself had been ranked among Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" and had recently been the subject of a lengthy article in Harper's, of all things. The Oral Roberts Alumni Foundation, which used to count Haggard among its most successful graduates, still notes on its website that "[Wallbuilders founder David] Barton and Haggard are both becoming more visible and are in positions of influence, especially in the political realm." Fellow OSU grad Derek Vreeland, who had ironically once had a discussion with Haggard regarding "sexual sin," wrote during the scandal that "Ted was not as well known as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swagart [sic], but he is probably more influential than these two guys were in their hay day. Ted has political power and influence in both the Evangelical world and in the Pentecostal/charismatic world." Haggard also appeared in the notorious documentary Jesus Camp, in which he bashed homosexuality during a scene that several Evangelical groups claimed was taken out of context (and looking back, it seems that they were right). He also showed up in Richard Dawkins' 2005 documentary on religion, Root of All Evil?, in which Haggard follows Dawkins into the parking lot after a debate over evolution and threatens to have him arrested. All in all, Haggard was "a powerful influence in the Christian community," as James Dobson put it a few weeks after the scandal.
Haggard is also the author of a dozen or so books, including Descending Like a Dove: The Truth About the Holy Spirit, in which he no doubt addresses the question of what it sounds like when doves cry. In The Jerusalem Diet: The One Day Approach to Reach Your Ideal Weight And Stay There, Haggard spends 208 pages holding forth on the virtues of fruits and nuts. And then there's From This Day Forward: Making Your Vows Last a Lifetime, co-written with his wife, Gayle. Okay, I'm done.
***
When not criticizing homosexuals, the nation's Evangelical leadership is making excuses for them. It could use a little more practice in this. The Evangelical reaction to the Mark Foley scandal, for instance, was so bad as to make its haphazard reaction to the Haggard scandal look like something written by Wittgenstein. When James Dobson, the National Association of Evangelicals and Oral Roberts University are being disputed on a yes-or-no issue by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as was the case during the Haggard scandal, it may at least be said that one group is correct, which is pretty good for a bunch of Evangelicals. On the other hand, the Foley affair appeared to have been composed by Wittgenstein if Wittgenstein had been a schizophrenic, which Wittgenstein may well have been for all I know (I guess I don't know very much about Wittgenstein).
The Evangelical response to the Foley scandal was so bad that it was still being bad long after the Foley scandal was over. A few weeks after Foley had escaped into rehab, when the Haggard scandal arrived to help break up the monotony, Tony Perkins apparently decided that it would be of sudden and marginal convenience to attack Foley. "The media is attempting to politicize the incident by comparing Ted with Mark Foley," he wrote. "On MSNBC yesterday I said that there is no comparison. After Foley was caught sexually pursuing minors, he publicly declared his homosexuality as if it were a potential defense. Ted did not try to change the rules of conduct to match his behavior and submitted to the decision of the overseers to remove him from the church he started," at least after he'd been caught lying five or six times.
But just a few weeks before, Perkins' good buddy Dobson had decided that Foley had instead handled everything well and that everyone should have thus shut up about it. "A representative who has been a closet homosexual for years, apparently, was finally caught doing something terribly wrong and when the news broke, he packed up his things and went home," he wrote. Having been merely a gay political sex scandal occurring on the cusp of an election, Dobson was saying, the story certainly had no legs of its own and thus shouldn't have been reported. Nonetheless, "the media and the Democrats saw an opportunity to make much, much more out of it, impugning the morals and character, not only of this disgraced congressman, but of the entire Republican Congress."
Whereas the media and Democrats wanted to make much, much more out of it and impugn the morals and characters, not only of this disgraced congressman, but of the entire Republican Congress, Tony Perkins wanted to make much, much more out of it and impugn the morals and characters, not only of this disgraced congressman, but of the entire Republican Congress in a fun, paranoid way that might have helped to raise funds. It seems that Perkins had unraveled a high-level homosexual conspiracy in which the GOP was complicit. "The ricochets of the Foley scandal continued to whistle overhead this weekend," Perkins wrote in one of the delightful e-mail newsletters to which I subscribe. "As a guest on Fox News Sunday I again raised last week's report by CBS's Gloria Borger about anger on Capitol Hill that 'a network of gay staffers and gay members protect[ed] each other and did the Speaker a disservice' in the Foley scandal. On Friday, an internet site quoted a 'gay politico' observing that '[m]aybe now the social conservatives will realize one reason why their agenda is stalled on Capitol Hill.' Sunday's New York Times revealed that a homosexual former Clerk of the House of Representatives, Jeff Trandahl, was 'among the first to learn of Mr. Foley's' messages to pages. The Clerk's job is described as a 'powerful post with oversight of hundreds of staffers and the page program.' This raises yet another plausible question for values voters: has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and or staffers? When we look over events of this Congress, we have to wonder. This was the first House to pass a pro-homosexual hate crimes bill. The marriage protection amendment was considered very late in the term with no progress toward passage. Despite overwhelming popular approval, the party seldom campaigns as the defender of marriage. The GOP will have to decide whether it wants to be the party that defends the traditional moral and family values that our nation was built upon and directed by for two centuries. Put another way, does the party want to represent values voters or Mark Foley and friends?"
That's an interesting question, but Dobson had already decided that no such questions should be asked. And he was still asking why everyone was still asking about things. "What Mark Foley did was unconscionable. It was terrible," he noted. "Thankfully he's gone. But tell me now that he's gone, why is it still with us? Why are they still talking about it? Why are they trying to blame somebody for it? It is because they are using that to suppress values voters."
Actually, it was because then-Speaker Dennis Hastert himself had ordered a House ethics committee investigation into the matter. And Tony Perkins wouldn't shut up about it, either. "I would like to see all the facts," he said on CNN. "I hope they're forthright and forthcoming in the next 48 hours and present this information to the American public." Why Perkins was apparently trying to "suppress values voters" is a mystery. But when he wasn't apparently trying to "suppress values voters," Perkins was also agreeing with Dobson that the media was trying to "suppress values voters," too. "Story after story on the elections seem to repeat the same spin that conservatives are too turned off to turn out the vote," he wrote. And when Perkins wasn't agreeing with Dobson that the media was trying to "suppress values voters" by claiming that conservatives would be "too turned off to turn out the vote," Perkins was elsewhere claiming that conservatives would be too turned off to turn out the vote. As he told the country, again on CNN, "I think this is a real problem for Republicans... This is going to be, I think, very harmful for Republican turnout across the country because it's inconsistent with the values that the Republicans say that they represent."
If there was such a lack of coordination between Dobson and Perkins that neither could make a statement on the issue without contradicting the other (and if Perkins couldn't even make a statement on the issue without contradicting himself), it should hardly be surprising to find a lack of coordination between Dobson and Perkins and the larger social conservative pundit battalion. "Those truly interested in protecting children from online predators," Dobson stated, "should spend less time calling for Speaker Hastert to step down, and more time demanding that the Justice Department enforce existing laws that would limit the proliferation of the kind of filth that leads grown men to think it's perfectly OK to send lurid e-mails to 16-year-old boys." At this point, those calling for Hastert to step down as Speaker included the ultraconservative, Evangelical-friendly Washington Times, the ultra-conservative, Evangelical-friendly Bay Buchanan, and the ultra-conservative, Evangelical-friendly Paul Weyrich (who eventually changed his mind after a phone conversation with Hastert, who explained to Weyrich that he didn't feel like stepping down), among others. And it's not entirely clear what sort of "filth" Dobson was talking about, unless he was referring to the Catechisms or something; when Foley, who is Catholic, released a statement to the effect that he had been molested by a priest as a young man, Catholic League president and occasional Dobson ally William Donohue wondered aloud, "As for the alleged abuse, it's time to ask some tough questions. First, there is a huge difference between being groped and being raped, so which was it, Mr. Foley? Second, why didn't you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys won't allow themselves to be molested." Whether or not Donohue knows this from experience is left unspecified. Nonetheless, these are all good questions, and I certainly agree with Donohue that any young boy who expects to find himself alone with a priest should be prepared to fight when the priest inevitably tries to molest him. But, again, Dobson had already decided that to continue to talk about Foley was tantamount to trying to "suppress values voters."
In a way, the Evangelical punditry is admirable in its decentralized nature; if everything that every Evangelical leader says contradicts everything else that every other Evangelical leader says, one can hardly accuse the Evangelicals of toeing a single party line. Instead, they decentralize their disingenuousness so that each particular disingenuous assertion can compete in the marketplace of disingenuous ideas until one eventually proves viable and may then be generally agreed upon. This is sort of like how capitalism works, except that capitalism works, whereas the decentralized nature of the Evangelical punditry simply reveals a rhetorical opportunism that is too incompetent to properly disguise itself as collective moral clarity. Or, as Focus on the Family Vice President of Public Policy Tom Minnery put it to James Dobson during an October radio broadcast, "I fear that we're in a society in which you will be held to the standards which you claim." Perish the thought.
***
If neither Evangelicalism nor Republicanism can put a stop to homosexuality, perhaps the Pink Hordes may at least be staved off in the political sphere. This has been the traditional approach, as Wellington Boone reminded us on Liberty Sunday. And though homosexuals may no longer be executed or even imprisoned in the United States for the crime of being homosexual, they may at least be forbidden to enter into private contracts with each other, which is not quite as fun as killing them or putting them in prison but still counts for something.
For the most part, this has worked. Social conservatives have managed to score constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in 19 of the 20 states in which such amendments were put to the ballot, Arizona being the sole exception for some reason or another. These amendments are not just an excuse for social conservatives to be assholes but are in fact practical necessities in many states; some state constitutions make declarations of equality under the law for all citizens, and if American history teaches us anything, it's that such declarations are occasionally taken seriously.
One of these occasions occurred in New Jersey at the tail end of 2006. Having been asked to decide whether or not existing state marriage laws were unconstitutional in barring same-sex couples from obtaining marriages or civil unions, the Supreme Court of New Jersey decided that they were, and gave the legislature 180 days to rewrite the law.
This made a lot of people unhappy, particularly at the offices of the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial board didn't seem to have any real arguments spelling out why the Supreme Court of New Jersey had decided the case wrongly but apparently did have access to old Weathermen Underground manifestos and hard liquor. Calling the move "a judicial diktat," the WSJ gang criticized the court for having used the term "we have decided" in the text of their, uh, decision, before going on to describe the court as being made up of "judicial overlords" who seek to "impose" New Jersey's recognition of same-sex couples on other states by way of the full faith and credit clause, an important article of the constitution which the WSJ denounced here as an agent of "cross-state social imperialism." I'm not making this up. This is actually how the folks at the Wall Street Journal editorial board write when they're upset about something.
The court had also noted in its decision that with the unconstitutional status of the marriage laws having now been determined, it fell upon the legislature to in turn decide what nature of revisions needed to be made, as was the legislature's proper role. The state's constitution, after all, is "not simply an empty receptacle into which judges may pour their own conceptions of evolving social mores," as was noted in the text of the court's decision. But this, the WSJ decided - or perhaps we should avoid the term "decided," since the WSJ has already decided that the word "decided" should not be used - the WSJ humbly suggested that the court had added this "perhaps out of a troubled conscience about judicial overreach." In its magnanimosity, the WSJ editorial board is willing to allow for the possibility that the justices of the New Jersey Supreme Court have the human capacity to feel shame for their knowingly evil deeds.
Though a bit more elegant, the mainstream Wall Street Journal's language was no less colorful than that of the core Evangelicals. The court had "made the legislature their henchmen," wrote Tony Perkins, who also argued that "the legislature should ignore the court's ruling and follow the lead of 20 other states that have already passed amendments to protect this sacred institution."
Aside from constituting treason, Perkins' advice also constitutes silliness in that no such amendment would pass in New Jersey; polls consistently show that residents are in favor of same-sex marriage legalization by a small margin and in favor of civil-union legalization by a huge one. Which is to say, if the people of New Jersey were given the chance to vote down the court's decision, they wouldn't do it. And the legislature, voted in by the people of New Jersey, had in 1991 adopted language to the effect that sexual orientation could not be used as a basis for discrimination in matters of public accommodation. New Jersey is no more bothered by homosexuals than homosexuals are bothered by New Jersey.
But James Dobson is bothered by homosexuals, and he's even more bothered by the prospect of homosexual marriage, which has already wreaked such social havoc on northern Europe. "[I]n the Netherlands and places where they have tried to define marriage [to include gay couples], what happens is that people just don't get married," Dobson told a typically credulous Larry King in November of 2006. "It's not that the homosexuals are marrying in greater numbers," he continued, although obviously homosexuals are indeed marrying in greater numbers since that number used to be zero and is now something higher than zero, "it's that when you confuse what marriage is, young people just don't get married."
If what James Dobson says is true, New Jersey is going to be in huge trouble, and Massachusetts, which legalized gay marriage in 2004, must already be. Of course, James Dobson is wrong. But whereas James Dobson generally contents himself with simply being wrong in his priorities, sensibilities, instincts, historical perspective, theology, and manners which is to say, wrong in a mystical, cloudy sort of way he has here managed to be wrong in such a blatant sense that his wrongness can be demonstrated with mathematical exactitude. In fact, we should go ahead and do that. It'll be like an adventure - a math adventure.
First, let's prepare our variables. X is any country "where they have tried to define marriage [to include gay couples]," as Dobson manages to term these nations with just a little clarification from us. Y is the all-important marriage rate among heterosexuals before country X has "tried to define marriage [to include gay couples]," and Z is the all-important and allegedly damning heterosexual marriage rate that exists after ten years of gay civil unions. Now, the Dobson Theorem, as we shall call it, plainly states that "if X, then Y must be greater than Z." Or, to re-translate it into English, "if a nation allows for civil unions, the marriage rate among heterosexuals at the time that this occurs will be higher than it is ten years later," because the marriage rate among heterosexuals will of course decline for some reason.
Let us now test this Grand Unified Dobson Theorem, as I re-named it just a second ago when you weren't looking. Now, like most things with variables, the Grand Unified Christological Dobson Super-Theorem of Niftiness (which needed more pizazz) requires that X be substituted for various things that meet the parameters of X in this case, northern European countries. Luckily, Dr. Dobson himself has provided us with some. During the Larry King interview, Dobson mentioned Norway and "other Scandinavian countries" as fitting the description. We'll also need values to punch in for Y and Z. These may be obtained from all of the countries in question, which have famously nosy, busy-body governments.
Conveniently enough, these numbers may also be obtained from the October 26th edition of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, in a column that appeared just a few inches away from the editorial board's calm and measured denunciation of the Supreme Court of New Jersey's imperialistic diktat-making described above. It seems that William N. Eskridge, Jr., the John A. Garver professor of jurisprudence at Yale University, and Darren Spedale, a New York investment banker, had recently written a book called Gay Marriage: For Better or For Worse? What We've Learned From the Evidence, and had chosen to present the thrust of their findings in op-ed form.
Denmark, the authors noted, began allowing for gay civil unions in 1989. Ten years later, the heterosexual marriage rate had increased by 10.7 percent. Norway did the same in 1993. Ten years later, the heterosexual marriage rate had increased by 12.7 percent. Sweden followed suite in 1995. Ten years later, the heterosexual marriage rate had increased by 28.7 percent. And these marriages were actually lasting. During the same time frame, the divorce rate dropped 13.9 percent in Denmark, 6 percent in Norway, and 13.7 percent in Sweden.
As the Reader will no doubt have determined at this point, the Dobson Theorem or whatever it is that we've decided to call it is obviously bunk, since it stated that countries which allow gay civil unions will see a decline in the marriage rate among homosexuals, when in fact the opposite is true. But since we've already gone to the trouble of expressing Dobson's goofy utterances in the form of a theorem (or rather, since I've gone to the trouble you were no help at all), we might as well punch in these figures just to make absolutely sure:
if X, then Y will be greater than Z
We punch in Denmark for X, Denmark's marriage rate in 1989 (n) for Y, and Denmark's marriage rate in 1999 (n + n(10.7)) for Z:
If Denmark, then n will be greater than n + n(10.7)
Holy shit! That's obviously wrong, since n is not a greater number than n plus any other positive number. It is, in fact, a smaller number. If Denmark's policies reduce marriage, the residents of Denmark have yet to realize this and act accordingly.
Where is Dobson getting his information from this time? The culprit in this case may be Weekly Standard and National Review gadfly Stanley Kurtz, who took issue with Garver and Eskridge's preliminary findings back in 2004, before they were published (in fact, Kurtz weirdly dismisses them as "unpublished" not once but twice in the course of his article; now that they have appeared more formally, Kurtz will no doubt praise them as "published"). Confronted with statistics indicating that marriage in Scandinavia is in fine shape, Kurtz instead proclaimed that "Scandinavian marriage is now so weak that statistics on marriage and divorce no longer mean what they used to."
Brushing aside numbers showing that Danish marriage was up ten percent from 1990 to 1996, Kurtz countered that "just-released marriage rates for 2001 show declines in Sweden and Denmark." He failed to note that they were down in 2001 for quite a few places, including the United States, which of course had no civil unions anywhere in 2001. And having not yet had access to the figures, he couldn't have known that both American and Scandinavian rates went back up in 2002. As for Norway, he says, the higher marriage rate "has more to do with the institution's decline than with any renaissance. Much of the increase in Norway's marriage rate is driven by older couples 'catching up.'" It's unclear exactly how old these "older couples" may be, but at any rate, Kurtz thinks their marriages simply don't count, and in fact constitute a sign of "the institution's decline." So Kurtz's position is that Norwegian marriage is in decline because not only are younger people getting married at a higher rate, but older people are as well. I don't know what Kurtz's salary is, but I'm sure it would piss me off to find out.
Kurtz also wanted us to take divorce. "Take divorce," Kurtz wrote. "It's true that in Denmark, as elsewhere in Scandinavia, divorce numbers looked better in the nineties. But that's because the pool of married people has been shrinking for some time. You can't divorce without first getting married." This is true. It's also true that Denmark has a much lower divorce rate than the United States as a percentage of married couples, a method of calculation that makes the size of the married people pool irrelevant. Denmark's percentage is 44.5, while the United States is at 54.8. Incidentally, those numbers come from the Heritage Foundation, which also sponsors reports on the danger that gay marriage poses to the heterosexual marriage rate.
Still, Kurtz is upset that many Scandinavian children are born out of wedlock. "About 60 percent of first-born children in Denmark now have unmarried parents," he says. He doesn't give us the percentage of second-born children who have unmarried parents, because that percentage is lower and would thus indicate that Scandinavian parents often marry after having their first child, as Kurtz himself later notes in the course of predicting that this will no longer be the case as gay civil unions continue to take their non-existent toll on Scandinavian marriage.
Since the rate by which Scandinavian couples have children before getting married has been rising for decades, it's hard to see what this has to do with gay marriage unless, of course, you happen to be Stanley Kurtz. "Scandinavia's out-of-wedlock birthrates may have risen more rapidly in the seventies, when marriage began its slide. But the push of that rate past the 50 percent mark during the nineties was in many ways more disturbing." Of course it was more disturbing to Kurtz. By the mid-'90s, the Scandinavians had all instituted civil unions, and thus even the clear, long-established trajectory of such a trend as premature baby-bearing can be laid at the feet of the homos simply by establishing some arbitrary numerical benchmark that was obviously going to be reached anyway, calling this milestone "in many ways more disturbing," and hinting that all of this is somehow the fault of the gays. By the same token, I can prove that the establishment of the Weekly Standard in 1995 has contributed to rampant world population growth. Sure, that population growth has been increasing steadily for decades, but the push of that number past the 6 billion mark in 2000 was "in many ways more disturbing" to me for some weird reason that I can't quite pin down. Of course, this is faulty reasoning by virtue of its unparalleled support for the invasion of Iraq, the Weekly Standard has actually done its part to keep world population down.
Why is Kurtz so disturbed about out-of-wedlock rates? Personally, I think it would be preferable for a couple to have a child and then get married, as is more often the case in Scandinavia, rather than for a couple to have a child and then get divorced, as is more often the case in the United States. Kurtz doesn't seem to feel this way, though, as it isn't convenient to feel this way at this particular time. Here are all of these couples, he tells us, having babies without first filling out the proper baby-making paperwork with the proper federal agencies. What will become of the babies? Perhaps they'll all die. Or perhaps they'll continue to outperform their American counterparts in math and science, as they've been doing for quite a while.
***
I have spent several hours pouring over Scandinavian marriage statistics. So have a number of other people. This tells me that Scandinavian marriage statistics are very important things over which to pour. These other people seem to agree. The pro-gay marriage folks say that because the institution of Scandinavian marriage doesn't seem to have collapsed in the wake of gay civil unions, the United States shouldn't fret about gay civil unions, either. The anti-gay marriage folks say that because the institution of Scandinavian marriage doesn't seem to have collapsed in the wake gay civil unions, we just aren't looking hard enough or interpreting the results with adequate degrees of intellectual dishonesty, and that anyway we shouldn't allow gay civil unions because our gods do not care for them. The general consensus, though, is that the manner in which adult American citizens choose to conduct their personal lives is the government's business, and that such things as divorce rates are so important that they must be kept down even by excluding some groups from participating in the institution of marriage.
Well, so be it. If there is some sort of War on Marriage to be fought, let us fight it. But because you and I lack an army or even political power (I'm assuming you don't chair any significant Senate committees, seeing as how you're reading a book), we will instead have to settle for what is called a "war game." A war game is a make-believe exercise of the sort that is often conducted by the Navy and the editors of The Atlantic for the purpose of testing various scenarios, most of which seem to involve the invasion of Iran. Since I've never been invited to one of these, I'm not entirely sure how they work, so we'll just have to improvise a bit.
***
It is the year 2012, and I have seized control of the United States, declaring myself God Emperor. All engines of the State are at my command. Wherever power flows, it flows first from my personage. I have cybernetic arms.
"Pardon me, God Emperor Brown..."
"What is it, High Priest Dobson? Can't you see that I'm oiling my cybernetic arms?"
"My apologies," Dobson mutters, his eyes downcast lest the sun shine off of my shiny cybernetic arms and blind him. "It's just that the people, sir. They are discontented."
"Well, that's understandable. They've all been put into forced labor camps."
"No, my liege. They're worried about the state of American marriage."
"Why would they be? I married two hundred slave girls just last week."
"Oh, snap!" interjects Court Jester Wellington Boone. "That reminds me of something funny my wife said to me this morning..."
"Too many people are getting divorced," Dobson interrupts. "The American people would like to see lower divorce rates."
"Hmm," I say to myself, stroking my chin with my long, cybernetic fingers. "High Priest, bring me the following records from the days of the Old Republic..."
A bit later, Dobson and I are looking over U.S. Census Bureau statistics from 2003.
"The key here is to identify the root of America's high divorce rates," I explain to Dobson, who is sitting next to me, and to Boone, who is sitting next to me and beating a gay man to death with a hammer. "This is actually quite simple, as the numbers indicate marked regional variances. For instance, notice how the Northeastern states have exceptionally low divorce rates. Also observe that Massachusetts, the most gay-friendly state in the Union and the first to allow for gay marriage, has the lowest divorce rate of all."
"But it is impossible!" cries out Dobson. "There are ten thousand... er, forty million studies that indicate otherwise!"
"And just as you'll find the lowest divorce rates in the relatively secular Northeast, you shall find the highest divorce rates in the relatively religious Bible Belt. Notice how Texas, for instance, has one of the highest in the country. Now, what does the Bible Belt have more of than does the Northeast, aside from illiteracy and exorcisms? Bibles! And possibly belts."
"But the Bible strengthens marriage," says Dobson. "It says so in the Bible."
"Apparently not. Here's a major study done in 2000 that shows the rate of divorce among born-again Christians to be 27 percent second only to Baptists, with 29 percent. The lowest divorce rate is found among atheists and agnostics, with 21 percent. This is in accordance with other studies."
At that moment, Stanley Kurtz arrives. He had been off in Sweden again, trying to rescue the Swedes from the Swedes.
"Perhaps these divorces are occurring partly among older people," says Kurtz. "Then they wouldn't count for some reason known only to me, Stanley Kurtz."
"But in any case," says Dobson, "these married couples were probably getting divorced before they accepted Christ."
"Actually," I point out in my wisdom, "it says here that the vast majority are getting divorced afterwards. And thus we have only one option. In order that we might have a lower the divorce rate, the State will no longer grant marriage licenses to Baptists and Evangelicals. So it is written; so it shall be done. Dobson!"
"Yes, my liege?"
"Bring me Slave Girl #146. I shall receive her in my... private quarters."
"Y-yes, God Emperor. It shall be as you say."
And with that, I crush my solid gold goblet and raise my cybernetic fist into the sky.
"All hail to Baal, fertility deity of the Carthaginians!" I shout. "All hail to Baal! Bwa, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"Be sure to check me out at National Review Online," says Stanley Kurtz.
***
Sorry about that. Anyway, those are the numbers. Evangelicals are simply bad at marriage.