Happy Birthday, Phyllis Schlafly: Round 1

It's been an interesting couple of weeks in the culture war over women's reproductive rights, to say the least.

There's a lot of research out there detailing exactly how the tides have shifted over the past thirty years, but recent polls and ever tightening restrictions on abortion at the state level have shown that for the first time since the good old days of coat hangers, the pro-life movement has the upper hand by a nice solid margin.

It certainly appears that the cumulative effect of a decade's worth of millions of dollars spent attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade one red state at a time (touched off by the Webster decision in 1989 that kicked Roe in the ovaries and hard) is paying off. Looking at the numbers, it's clear to see why U.S. Senate hopeful Todd Akin felt comfortable talking candidly about how he justifies his position, even in the event of rape or incest.

Of course, another way of looking at the data is that the number of voters who immediately recognized the pro-life movement's connection to the "woman's place is in the kitchen" crowd has been slowly replaced by a younger group of voters who don't really understand how powerful that movement is, or how comprehensively they have been marketed to. Speaking for myself, I'm a Gen Xer. Coke vs. Pepsi, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the first war in Iraq were the big issues of my day. The feminists who fought for the ERA before I was born had been re-branded as feminazis by the time I was in high school, and burning my bra in my twenties seemed like a waste of perfectly good lingerie. Hell, I didn't even know who Phyllis Schlafly was until I had been out of college for years, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in my demographic. She's worth getting to know a little better, particularly for those of us who weren't around when she was fighting the ERA.

This matron-saint of the movement to end all abortion, even in the case of rape and incest, gave a speech at the Republican National Convention yesterday in which she said:

“The pro-life plank of the platform...is really not controversial in the Republican Party anymore. It is just a blind statement and, I think, one of the things we have done to make the Republican Party pro-life. Almost all of our candidates in 2010 were pro-life, and they are again this year.”

She's certainly correct about that. But I think there are some important details Schlafly is leaving out. One woman's "pro-life" stance for herself looks very different from a "pro-life" stance that criminalizes abortion. The same set of data, when expanded to allow for a more nuanced approach to the issue, looks quite a bit different.

Looking at the second chart, it's clear to see why Akin maybe should have saved that speech for the country club, where most of the people in that 22% figure are already drinking the same Kool-Aid and calling it science. Don't get me wrong. It's time that we started having a serious national debate about these issues. When some mothers are already being put in jail for crimes against the unborn, it's arguably past time.

Finally, the issue of abortion is getting the deep analysis it deserves on the national stage, instead of a shallow treatment in which we're all free to hold our own opinions and now back to American Idol.

Paul Ryan's followup interview in response to the, shall we say, negative publicity probably didn't help. He rather nonchalantly referred to rape as a "method of conception" just as the headlines were starting to focus on his partnership with Akin in co-sponsoring "personhood" legislation. Did I mention Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed a law redefining the date of conception as taking place two weeks before intercourse back in April? That's getting some attention now, too. But wait, there's more. Just when you thought the crazy train couldn't possibly make any more spectacularly blunderstruck stops, we get another Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Tom Smith, hopping on board to say that carrying a rape baby is not all that different from having a child out of wedlock. (And yes, he actually used the term wedlock.  Quaint, no?)

The backlash is starting to (if you'll pardon the grim pun) bleed over into Romney/Ryan's once solidly red numbers in Missouri. Still, Phyllis Schlafly ended her remarks at her little birthday shindig by telling an enthusiastic crowd, "We're winning. We're on the winning side."

All I have to say is I hope she enjoys that layer cake. If my generation and the younger voters rise up to meet this tectonic shift toward the insane the way I think we will, it will turn to humble pie come November.

What's with the A+ Thing?

There's a new brand of atheist activism being kicked around the blogosphere these days, and some really great discussions have popped up as a result. I want to start by stating clearly here that I am drawing a line in the sand between atheism and the atheist community as a whole. Atheism in and of itself is just a simple statement that says you don't believe in a god(s)/ess(es). Some atheists watch football on Sundays, check none on the religious affiliation surveys, and that's about the limit of how deeply they connect with religion or debates about religion. Some live in countries where religious beliefs are the exception, not the rule, and the idea of seeking out an atheist community is somewhat bizarre to them.

When I talk about the atheist community, though, I'm specifically referring to the people who *do* want to connect with each other to raise awareness for social issues we care about. It's not okay when we're told we need to leave our distaste for the good old boy's club at the door. We want a way to say upfront that we demand to be treated with basic human dignity, and resent being told to be quiet when we speak up about that. Some of the responses I've seen are cautiously critical (see also: Emily Dietle's assessment), and raise concerns about creating an elitist club in response to white male privilege. Irony. It's a lovely thing.

If you want a social justice movement that focuses on embracing diversity without centering on a specific set of religious beliefs, it's called humanism. If that appeals to you, and you also don't believe in supernatural forces, then you have secular humanism. Humanism is a broad and well organized movement with a global presence that we can be a part of without having to come up with new labels.

The problem, of course, is that humanists in general are at best a bit embarrassed by the very vocal atheist contingent within its midst, and at worst outright hostile to us. (To be fair, this may be a reaction to being called delusional idiots because they aren't naturalists. More on that in a bit.) Also, humanism alone does little to address the problem laid out by Sam Harris:

"While moderation in religion may seem a reasonable position to stake out, in light of all that we have (and have not) learned about the universe, it offers no bulwark against religious extremism and religious violence." 

So, yes, the labels we use do matter. If we don't offer up that bulwark effectively by challenging directly the notion that any person can claim to know for certain that God exists, much less what he wants us to do in our bedrooms or what rewards await us after martyrdom, who will? Humanists? Possibly. But any population that includes believers in its midst is going to have to tread very lightly around these topics if they don't want their membership to turn elsewhere.

Which brings me directly to the other, much more glaring problem that I haven't seen addressed yet. The Atheist Movement struggles when it comes to following the "Don't Be a Dick" rule. (To be equally fair, this may be a direct result of being called immoral and dangerous to society by the same people who threaten our livelihoods and even our safety in certain parts of this country.) I'm not just referring to misogyny within the movement or racially insensitive billboards at this point, although these things are certainly the impetus for the new direction. I'm referring to the general tendency to focus so strongly on calling religion an irrational hangover from a past drenched in superstition that we aim far, far too wide. People who might otherwise be drawn to what we have to offer as a community or even as decent human beings who don't automatically assume that religious = not worth listening to are instantly struck by a sudden urge to wash their hair or watch Doctor Who instead.

Which leaves us exactly where when it comes to leading the fight against religious extremism and religious violence? Ah, yes, an echo chamber of maybe, at best 10% of the American population. Not all of whom vote. Lovely. That'll help. What good does it do to hold the intellectual high ground if we shut out the people who could be standing there with us on issues we care about? I remember seeing a lot of my religious friends reposting this sign back in April:

And you know what? It doesn't bother me in the slightest that they're religious. They get it. They've seen Fred Phelps and his gang, and they're pissed off, too. They understand that people can be good without god (progress!), and we should be working together to simply be kind, regardless of our religious beliefs or lack thereof. Atheism, plus the support of people who are fed up with messages of hatred and intolerance. Humanists, cafeteria Catholics, Buddhists, Pagans, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews. Hell, even the occasional Young Earth Creationist can agree on that message. It doesn't mean we have to agree on anything having to do with religious doctrines, or argue about which invisible robes fit best on an unseen creator, or count the angels dancing on a pinhead. Those are debates that they can have within their own communities.

But these causes that we have in common? We are stronger united than we are divided.

We hold these truths...

You don't really expect to learn anything useful your first day of a lecture hall at a large university.  You expect to find teenagers nursing hangovers from the back to school parties, struggling to stay awake.  You expect to find a professor going through the motions of teaching material you should have learned in high school, and sometimes going off on tangents that leave your notes a jumbled mess of question marks and doodles.  You expect to hear a run down of the syllabus, with dire warnings attached to all of the expectations.

But sixteen years ago, almost to the day, I was sitting in the back rows, straining to see the chalkboard, on which the professor had scrawled in all caps:

ALL HISTORIANS ARE LIARS

He then proceeded to explain the careful process of selection that even the most academic treatment of a topic must go through. You can try to tell the whole story, but you must select the facts you find most relevant.  The details you leave out (or possibly ignore for any number of reasons) may very well be used by someone else to tell a completely different story.

It left an impression. Our brains are giant propaganda machines that filter the things we read and the words we hear so they line up with our core beliefs. Sometimes we embrace things that we shouldn't, because they don't hold up to careful scrutiny. Sometimes we fail to recognize the importance of things that we should be considering, because doing so would force us to face the ridicule of people we admire and respect.

I think it's fairly common for people to experience the cognitive dissonance of loving someone whose religious or political beliefs are in polar opposition to our own. Marriages fail, mothers and fathers disown their adolescent and adult children, and sometimes entire communities go on modern day witch hunts. It's tragic that friends and family can and do stop loving each other over these differences, and start seeing each other through a lens of distrust or outright disgust.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about the solution to world peace here. I'm not suggesting that members of the NAACP should get together with Klan leaders around a campfire and join hands. Some things are worth taking an uncompromising stand on, and I'll probably be talking a lot about those sorts of topics, because they matter to me.

If you disagree with me, though, I'm open to your criticism. It's happened before, and I can think of several times in my life when someone shattered my illusions about some core convictions I held. They pointed out where I was simply wrong, and I'm a better person today because of it. I'm grateful to them, and if I have a chance to be one of those people simply because I have words tumbling inside of my head that need to be released, I'm grateful for that, too.

We hold our truths to be self evident, but sometimes they aren't. Obviously, or everyone would agree with us. So this is a blog about that. Hope you enjoy.