This is nice to read:
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has sent a letter to Gov. Mike Pence threatening to cancel its 2017 convention in Indianapolis if he signs controversial legislation that could allow business owners to refuse services to same-sex couples.
“Our perspective is that hate and bigotry wrapped in religious freedom is still hate and bigotry,” Todd Adams, the associate general minister and vice president of the Indianapolis-based denomination, told The Indianapolis Star.
Adams said the Disciples of Christ would instead seek a host city that is “hospitable and welcome to all of our attendees.”
The letter stated the church is inclusive of different races, ethnicities, ages, genders and sexual orientations.
“As a Christian church,” it read, “we are particularly sensitive to the values of the One we follow – one who sat at (the) table with people from all walks of life, and loved them all. Our church is diverse in point of view, but we share a value for an open Lord’s Table.”
The letter was signed by denomination’s General Minister and President Sharon E. Watkins, Division of Overseas Ministries Julia Brown Karimu and Disciples Home Missions President Ronald J. Degges.
The Disciples of Christ has held its annual convention in Indianapolis three times since 1989. Adams expected up to 8,000 people to attend in 2017. The estimated economic impact would be about $5.9 million, according to VisitIndy.
Pence is scheduled to sign it in a quiet private ceremony on Thursday, and most likely will. Open bigotry isn’t received very well, so he’ll have to hide while he does it.
About the Disciples of Christ- they were founded in part here in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Campbell_%28clergyman%29, and the old meeting house is about 200 yards from where I live and about 30 yards from the house I grew up in. Even though I am not a believer, any time the church has a fundraiser of pancake or spaghetti dinner, I always make and appearance and a donation, or just a donation if I am not going to be around. They’re good people who do good things across a wide front. Actual Christians, in other words.
Villago Delenda Est
Actual Christians.
Who get zero attention from the media, unlike Christianists like Mike Pence.
Elizabelle
I am liking these Disciples of Christ. Well done.
ETA: That’s cool about the meeting house.
Betty Cracker
My hubby and I were married by a Disciples of Christ minister, even though we’re both atheists. She was the friend of a friend (from West Virginny!) and seemed like a good person, so we preferred her to an unknown judge. Go DoC!
Elizabelle
From your Indy Star link:
Business owners uber alles.
Also says the Disciples threatened to move their convention out of Dallas in the 1960s when the city tried to dissuade them from inviting Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak at the meeting.
Howard Beale IV
St. Ronnie was baptized in the Disciples of Christ, but later converted to Presbyterian. Whether that happened around the same time he switched parties….
raven
OSKALOOSA, Iowa — Fearing that Republicans will ultimately nominate an establishment presidential candidate like Jeb Bush, leaders of the nation’s Christian right have mounted an ambitious effort to coalesce their support behind a single social-conservative contender months before the first primary votes are cast.
In secret straw polls and exclusive meetings from Iowa to California, the leaders are weighing the relative appeal and liabilities of potential standard-bearers like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and the former governors Rick Perry, of Texas, and Mike Huckabee, of Arkansas.
Mr. Longform
As a lefty Catholic (shut up! it is possible) I have always admired the DoCs – in most midwestern towns their churches are called “First Christian” about which I always used to say, hey I thought that was us. The times I have been to their services for weddings and funerals and such it has uniformly been a welcoming and (dare I say it) Christ-like approach to things.
And I would just like to remind everyone that Mike Pence at one time was the Dumbest Man in Congress, and that takes some doing.
Mike J
The mormon church actually helped write the anti-descrimination law in Utah. They did add in some nonsense about church’s not being forced to perform weddings. Completely unnecessary, but no harm it adding it either.
Belafon
@Elizabelle: If you don’t like the requirements to be a business, don’t ask to become a business. You don’t get the benefits without the requirements.
Belafon
@Mike J: And then they funded Prop 8 in California.
Poopyman
@raven: Tell me again why they’re tax-exempt organizations?
Seems time we gave them something real to whine about.
Violet
@raven: They can try their little hearts out. Isn’t going to get them anywhere. The fundigelicals are merely a tool to the Republicans. A way to bring out voters.
Arclite
I always thought if I were forced to pick a Christian denomination, I’d choose the Quakers. I can at least respect their outlook. These guys seem broadly in the same vein.
Lee Rudolph
Wow. My father’s mother, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew attended Franklin Circle Church in Cleveland, Ohio, which I have just confirmed was and is a Disciples of Christ congregation; and let me tell you, at least in the 1950s and 1960s I do not think that that congregation was conspicuously “inclusive of different races, ethnicities, ages, genders and sexual orientations.” (Franklin Circle’s present web-page, on the other hand, gives every indication that it is now; good for them.) I base my opinion on only a very few times I myself was dragged there, and on my memories of (specifically) my grandmother and her social beliefs and behaviors. (My father did NOT attend that or any church; when he was dying in a hospital in 1970, and his mother and sister sent the church pastor to give him one last chance at salvation, he roundly cursed the man and drove him out of the room.)
Mike in NC
@raven: A Cruz/Pence or Cruz/Brownback ticket would be a thing of beauty.
Davebo
@Mike J:
The thing you have to remember about Mormons is simple.
If you’re gullible enough to be lead into the Mormon Church, you are probably gullible enough to be convinced to have gay sex.
And that would be threatening the franchise in the worst way.
Baud
@raven:
If they can’t agree on one contender, they could choose three and call them a trinity. #EsotericTheologicalHumor
the Conster
Ten plus years of SSM in MA, and no one to my knowledge has had their religious fee fees hurt enough to recover damages. This is straight up tyranny of the majority. Fuck all of these fascist fucktards. May they all DIAF slowly and painfully, and may karma be a cold hard bitch.
Baud
@Davebo:
I imagine it goes something like this.
“Let’s have gay sex.”
“OK.”
feebog
@raven:
In other words, the four guys assigned to the rumble seat of the Clown Car.
fuckwit
Businesses now can have religious beliefs, and enforce them on anyone they want to.
There’s so much wrong with that I don’t know where to start. But I keep thinking about segregated lunch counters in Montgomery Alabama 50 years ago, and I suspect this issue should have been settled back then, and should not be coming up now.
fuckwit
@Arclite: I used to say back in the dark days of the Shrub years, that if this country turned into a theocracy and I were forced to take cover under the shelter of some monotheistic religion, I’d pick either the Quakers or the reform Jews.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: They’re aiming to avoid the last minute “Anyone but Romney” scramble they had going in the last cycle.
Baud
No one respects Pastafarians anymore. It’s a different world.
fuckwit
@Poopyman: Co-sign. Tax the churches. Tax the fuck out of the churches. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLVUHknb-Is
Villago Delenda Est
@fuckwit: Go after the parasite scum that are televangelists particularly hard.
WereBear
@raven: Oh please let it be so!
SatanicPanic
@Belafon: Mormons, of all people, should be careful about lecturing others about traditional marriage.
SatanicPanic
Am I the only person who reads about these bills and goes, “you know what, fuck small businesses, I hope Walmart bankrupts them”?
jl
Thanks for the good news, Cole. Congratulations to the Disciples for taking a stand. And brave enough to do it on their home turf, where popular opinion is probably not going their way.
jl
@WereBear: I think they tried to do this to counter Romney too. I like how that came out, which was a bunch of acrimony and effort that produced nothing, IIRC. But maybe would be better this time they are more successful, to create more trouble down the road. A Christian fundie candidate would be less threat in the general now.
Patrick
@Elizabelle:
So if a business owner believes that his religion prohibits him from serving African-Americans, then according to this logic the owner should be allowed to not serve them…Didn’t we already settle this decades ago?
I guess I will have to add Indiana to places to not visit.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
I don’t see why. They believe in the kind of marriage described in the Old Testament, between a man and a woman. A man isn’t limited to one marriage at a time, of course, but that’s very Old Testament, too.
MikeS
Does this also mean they aren’t going to serve adulterers, people who don’t honor their parents or observe the sabbath? Those “10” thingies aren’t suggestions.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
That’s not a sound idea. What happens if the big business that comes in and crushes the competition is run by a bunch of godbotherers who enforce hate on teh ghey at the corporate level? Just look at Hobby Lobby if you want to know what could happen.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: hey, there’s no need to convince me, cause I don’t care, it’s their fellow Christians who they need to convince. And so far, they’ve had no luck with that.
shell
Hey Gov. If this is legislation that you think is so important and that you’d be proud to sign, why the hush-hush ceremony?
Another Holocene Human
@Belafon: Your chronology is backwards.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: It wasn’t the singular power of Hobby Lobby that got the Supreme Court to rule how they did- it was the fact that 5 of 9 of our SCOTUS are assholes. I’m just saying that there’s a tendency to think of small business as good in and of itself, and I’m not sure I can get behind that idea anymore.
David Koch
No more Super Bowls in Indiana.
Remember, this happened last year in Arizona, and they caved when the NFL said they would move the Super Bowl.
Another Holocene Human
@efgoldman: Heh, I like the Stalinist granite King’s Chapel, the Anglican church the crown built in Boston.
The facade is a like a big old “fuck you”.
raven
@David Koch: Pushing my father into total wingnuthood for the rest of his life I’m sorry to say.
Bubblegum Tate
Or, as conservatives are about to spend the next few days calling them, “false Christians seduced by liberalism.”
Another Holocene Human
@Patrick: It’s called “Christian Identity”, aka Stormfront commenters
@MikeS: Not even funny, opposite sex cohabitation could get you fired even quite recently in Florida.
Baud
@raven:
Do you think something else would have of that hadn’t?
TooManyJens
Gen Con did the same (although they have a contract through 2020): Gen Con’s Statement on Diversity and SB101. That’s the Indianapolis Convention Center’s biggest convention.
Pogonip
@Patrick: If I were the business owner’s lawyer I’d argue that the black person has no choice about being black but that the gay person does have a choice about buying a cake or whatever. How far you’d get with the judge I don’t know. I suppose it would depend on the product. It’s one thing to refuse to sell someone a luxury item like a wedding cake and quite another to refuse to sell him, say, water. I was going to use cancer medicine as an example but then realized it’s perfectly legal in all states to refuse to sell the non-rich cancer medicine. So I guess legally it would come down to, are gay people a popular group, or are they an unpopular group like cancer patients who aren’t rich? This is a stupid way to work things if you ask me–what if your plaintiff’s a poor gay cancer patient?–but it’s how U.S.law seems to be reasoned.
What I want to know is, how can they afford to turn away business anyway? If I was running a business I would happily sell cakes to anyone. All money is green.
Poopyman
@Patrick:
If you ain’t seen Southern Indiana, you ain’t seen shit.
raven
@Baud: I don’t know, he was a DuPage County Republican all his life so it was a short leap. Living in Arizona didn’t help either. His big issue with MLK Day and the Superbowl was that he felt other states were just as guilty and not punished. There’s a lot about him that I will always admire but there was other stuff that made me nuts. Real life I guess.
grandpa john
@efgoldman: hmmm, Does God really love us that much??
MikeS
@Another Holocene Human: Yes it is a serious question, They just find gays icky, if they were serious about this religion thing, as their rules require they would be refusing to serve the majority of their customers, they are complete and utter hypocrites and it needs to be pointed out to their faces.
les
This sucks, but KS (through ALEC, of course) showed where they want to go–businesses and government employees could refuse service based on this religious belief shit. Hey, no ambulance trip for you, fag! Got mugged? Tough shit, atheist. And the legislature was pleased as punch, til the screaming started.
Davis X. Machina
Reagan’s denomination….
fuckwit
The older I get the more weary I become of all this bullshit. It’s just exhausting.
Why can’t people just stop being assholes?
This stuff really isn’t hard when you think about it. Jon Postel codified it very well in the early days of the Internet: “Be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you accept.” He meant it in terms of network protocols but it appls so well to human relations to. I can see that as the ultimate key to world peace, really, it’s that simple.
Just be very careful in what you say and do, trying not to offend, and be very open and accepting in everyone else, trying not to get offended by what they say and do (and who they are).
Baud
@raven: Yep.
Booger
@Belafon: Or, be consistent and don’t do business with any kind of “sinner.” That’s an anti-discrimination platform I could really get behind. See how long that business will last, Churchy!!
Bokonon
@Arclite:
Hah. I used to be a Quaker. No longer.
The Quakers have an extremely appealing theology and great history behind them, and they do have that great outlook that you mention … at least on paper. But they also have a bunch of very serious problems consuming them.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
The difference is that an asshole small businessman can’t back up his evil decisions with monopoly power. Small businesses are small, so even if one of them is an asshole, there’s still a good chance you can find a competitor who isn’t. If a Walmart or Hobby Lobby crushes all the small business competition, you may well be stuck dealing with them because there’s no choice.
Roger Moore
@fuckwit:
I think they’re born that way, and pretty soon they’re going to demand protection because being an asshole deserves the same legal protections as being an African American or gay.
raven
@Baud: This is how I choose to remember him.
Baud
@raven: I can see why. Hell of a photograph.
muddy
@fuckwit:
And this is exactly what Jesus teaches us. They’d better hope he doesn’t come back.
Another Holocene Human
@les: They should just rename it the Final Solution To The Transwomen Question Act and be done with it.
Because that’s who gets refused medical care/attention and police protection.
Another Holocene Human
@fuckwit: They’re miserable, and misery loves company.
The 10 Suggestions don’t say anything about not coveting your neighbor’s happiness. So they aim to destroy it at every turn.
Patrick
@Pogonip:
I doubt that would fly if the USSC is going to make gay marriage legal. But at least Indiana’s logic seems to be where our country was some 50 years ago.
WereBear
@jl: I was thinking they will split the Republican vote.
Bokonon
@fuckwit:
Even worse, why can’t they stop demanding official sanction and the color of law when they want to do this?
If they are true Christians, then they should be willing to pay a price for bearing witness to their beliefs. But no … they want to bear witness without any pain or discomfort. And they want the ability to use their faith as a sword.
raven
@Baud: I have an entire scrapbook of his from the 1955 North Chicago Warhawks. I was six and a cheeleader for the basketball team. The best shot is with the brand new 55 Chevy!
shortstop
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, it’s not going to work. Jeb Bush is their destiny and they’re just going to have to STFU and take it. I plan to laugh my ass off at their fruitless struggle between now and then, though.
Another Holocene Human
@efgoldman: The photo looks familiar but I couldn’t locate the damn thing on Google streetview.
If they don’t have weekly Bach concerts I probably never went in there.
Arlington St church and St John’s (Episcopal) did a lot of stuff for the gay community, hosted weekly meetings and community events. St John’s also had a weekly soup kitchen.
Patrick
@MikeS:
You are exactly right. They seem to have chosen the gay thing since that’s at least a “sin” (in their minds) that none of them have committed. Yet they conveniently ignore all other sins from the bible that most likely they all have committed. Heck, just looking at another woman in lust is a sin.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: sure, but on the other hand a big corporation has to deal with public pressure in ways that a small business doesn’t. A homophobic store owner in some small Indiana town may not have any competition and may have community support to exclude gay customers. And that owner doesn’t have to own that image in communities that won’t welcome it.
And Hobby Lobby strikes me as an outlier. Privately held and openly homophobic companies of that size are rare. Privately held and willing to be openly homophobic small businesses? I’d bet they make up a bigger share of their industry.
All I’m saying is that the constant praise of small business from politicians has started to seem misplaced to me.
Baud
@raven: Sweet ride. I have very few pictures of my father, and even fewer worth looking at.
shortstop
@Roger Moore: You laugh, but I have heard bona fide Mormons self-righteously make this argument in the midst of gay-bashing. Similarly, many evangelical peeps argue that Loving is not a parallel to the current case before SCOTUS since Mildred Loving, despite her lack of forethought in not being born white, did have a vagina while her husband had a pee-pee.
Another Holocene Human
@Pogonip: You could say Black people could choose not to dine at Fancy Pants Restaurant so how can they be bringing a CRA law suit?
The whole premise of Plessy vs Ferguson is that the color of money was NOT absolute …
That way lies perdition.
raven
@Baud: I have a bunch, him as a young basketball player, an enlisted sailor in the Pacific and then a post-war officer. I guess I’m lucky. Check out this good lookin cheerleader!
trollhattan
@Patrick: It may be my immediate surroundings but I’m a little surprised they have any not-the-ghey florists and bakeries to complain in the first place. Where are you hiding these people, Indiana?!?
shortstop
@SatanicPanic: Settle down there, friend. Lots of small businesses are run by flaming libruls such as myself. And we DO spend a lot of time banging the You Don’t Represent Me with This Shit drum.
chopper
@Elizabelle:
to be fair, gays are 3/5 of a business owner. it’s science.
Another Holocene Human
@shortstop: lol, Book of Mormon states that skin color is a sign of your salvation, or not, and doesn’t really dwell on gender in that way (not saying it’s not sexist because it is).
But the Profits edited BoM a couple of times in response to public pressure so it’s all good.
Another Holocene Human
@Patrick: Charging interest is a sin.
trollhattan
@raven:
“New Driver Please be Careful”
Hilarious, and not such a bad idea, either..
Baud
@raven: Wait, that’s you? What happened? :-)
Bokonon
@shortstop:
If Jeb Bush is elected, he will dance with the people that brought him to the ball. He will give the religious right whatever they push through Congress, and he will be their man. Jeb certainly did that when he was governor of Florida. But he would just do it with the trappings of being a moderate, without the fury and fire and passion of a true nut. And so long as you avoid controversy, that usually proves to be enough for the media and the business establishment.
That’s exactly the straddle that Mike Pence is trying to pull off here.
raven
@Baud: Well, it was 59 years ago.
SatanicPanic
@shortstop: hehehe, I’m just saying the small business brand has taken a hit with me in recent years. I know it’s not totally rational, but brands identification isn’t really a rational choice.
raven
@trollhattan: I think it had a brake on the passenger side.
danielx
I hate to say it, but as a card carrying Indiana resident I must tell you that the religious/right wing yahoos in the Indiana legislature do not give a shit about GenCon, or any other convention that might not come here. Your average legislators from East Jesus or East Bumfuck or North Vernon could give a shit, and in point of fact will probably think that in the case of GenCon that Indianapolis will be better off without those unGodly clowns and freaks; it’s not like their constituents are into cosplay. Although it may have escaped their attention that the city and state can probably also kiss goodbye any future Super Bowls, or NCAA championship games, or corporate headquarters relocations….but hey, Jesus loves them because they stuck it to Teh Ghey, so it’s all good.
Note: local media are going ape shit over the damage to the state’s and city’s image, and the Indianapolis mayor (a Republican, be it noted) held a press conference to say the legislation is a crock and the legislature is a disgrace, more or less. The only upside I’ve noticed to any of this is that any remote hopes Pence had of running for president have gone a-glimmering, since putting his signature to this obscene law is what he’s going to be remembered for. It’s going to follow him for the rest of his career, like the odor that follows you around when you’ve stepped in a pile of major dogshit.
Patrick
@Another Holocene Human:
Deuteronomy 23:19-20
“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
shortstop
@Pogonip:
Well, but there’re a couple things really wrong with that, and that’s why it’s not been a winning argument, either in court or in public opinion. Protected classes aren’t always based on immutable characteristics–the most obvious example is religion, but depending on the jurisdiction, there can also be marital status, military status and so on.
From a social (non-legal) point of view, the argument that black people can’t help being black presupposes that being black is bad and that people who are would or should want to change it if they could — is that really a road we want to go down? Citizens don’t deserve equal rights because they meet the default setting on demographics. They have rights because they are citizens.
trollhattan
@Bokonon:
That job will fall to VP Ernst.
Pogonip
@Patrick: OK, but you’ll miss the Blueberry Festival.
Another Holocene Human
The florist/baker shit is aimed at people who are shitty at reasoning.
For the rubes, it tries to imply that “your church/your minister is next!!” Bullshit, unless you rent out your church to all comers and some churches do. Nobody makes the Catholic church marry divorced people or the Orthodox rabbi marry non-converts, but people who can’t think critically are easily led.
For gays and liberals it’s an attempt to break our solidarity. Nobody really needs flowers and cakes. Why are you being so mean? Why so unreasonable? Just back off and make nice.
But if THAT is legal what happens to:
being able to rent an apartment?
being able to buy a house jointly? especially in a neighborhood with covenants?
keeping your job?
keeping your job if you don’t agree with the owner about being a jerk to lgbt people?
renting a motel room?
a car?
going out in public together?
what if you were refused service at a McDonald’s at the highway rest stop?
or a Denny’s at 2am?
what if you’re a plumber and the local direct dealer told you your money was not good there because the owner doesn’t approve of your “lifestyle”?
this escalates to basic needs REALLY fast, y’all
Another Holocene Human
@trollhattan: oh, well spotted, Ernst does give a bit of the vibe of the VP from Scandal
Pogonip
@Bokonon: What are their problems?
shortstop
@trollhattan: Now you’ve done it. You’ve said it out loud. I knew someone would, but I just wasn’t ready yet.
Another Holocene Human
@Patrick: ah, the “not my co-religionist” loophole
Jesus said, “Who is my neighbor?” and the Republicans said, “Not that guy!”
Patrick
@Pogonip:
It is odd. When you set up a business, you first should have an objective such as maximizing profits. I have never heard of the objective of a business being maximizing profits while making sure that no gays are allowed as customers. Beyond odd…
Another Holocene Human
What I don’t get is that Indiana is truly not a total shithole, yet they’ve decided that the third world Deep South ambience is so wunderschoen that they’re bound and determined to recreate it in the North.
Consequences of never leaving a 100mi radius from your birthplace. And too many RW Mennonites who vote, in lockstep, against “those people”.
Patrick
@Pogonip:
Maybe I’ll see it when they stop discriminating (just like the church in the article above).
Pogonip
@Another Holocene Human: I am with you. I like the current system, where, theoretically at least, they have to serve you no matter how unpopular you are. And as my group continues to slide down the popularity scales, I bet I’ll like the current system even more. So I hope this thing in Indiana doesn’t go through. The business owners who want this probably feel they’re safe, their group will always be popular. I’m not willing to gamble like that.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: That’s the best way to remember him, in my view. Great photo and thanks for showing us.
Another Holocene Human
I got moderated!
For D**p S**th?
Sh*th*l*?
amb|3n(3?
Menn*n*t*s?
Th*se p**ple?
shortstop
@Another Holocene Human: And even when it doesn’t escalate to basic needs, no. Just no. It’s not the responsibility of LBGT customers to walk up and down the street, or drive back and forth between towns and even counties (in the case of our least enlightened regions), looking for businesses who deign to FOLLOW THE FUCKING LAW.
I don’t care what people are selling. When they make a decision to open businesses that are public accommodations, they agree to observe relevant laws and statutes concerning discrimination. If they can’t handle that, they can make a further decision to close the hell up, crying all the way a la Catholic Charities in MA about how they were “forced out of business” by the “gay mafia.”
Another Holocene Human
Maybe it was das German. w u n d e r s c h o e n
Bokonon
@danielx:
They said that about Jeb Bush and his horrendous law-bending brute-power-of-the-state intervention in the Terri Schiavo fiasco. Remember?
What the Schiavo intevention really did is make Jeb a made man with the religious right. And most everyone else seems to have moved on, downplayed, forgotten, or brushed it away. The analysts on TV call it both a clever positioning move and dismiss it as old news … not an abuse of power.
We have a great way of forgetting in this country.
Patrick
@Another Holocene Human:
But do we know what it really said initially? It has been translated and re-translated so many times over so many years.
Eric U.
I don’t think punishing large groups of people because you think they are icky is really a good long-term political strategy. I think the motivations for these laws are pretty transparent to anyone that isn’t totally outraged and propagandized by the RWNM
Another Holocene Human
@Patrick: I’ve seen a lot of florists and bakeries go bust. They may be opened more often than not by highly delusional people, not people with good business sense, which includes a degree of circumspection towards the people paying the bills.
WaterGirl
@raven: I could not stop laughing. That’s one of the cutest photos I’ve ever seen!
jl
@Villago Delenda Est:
” They’re aiming to avoid the last minute “Anyone but Romney” scramble they had going in the last cycle. ”
I stand slightly corrected, since as you say, it was a scramble since they started later.
But they could not agree on anyone who would not flame out in an instant and ended up scrambling anyway.
I think same thing will happen this time, since the Christian and political reactionaries are very humble people, and like to follow an ‘Every Man a King’ organizational style. Until someone with more power orders them to do otherwise. Of course, their voters can always stay home. Don’t remember what the evidence was that their voters did that last time.
shortstop
@Bokonon:
That’s what I thought at the time, too. But that would seem to be contradicted by this. Poor Jeb couldn’t have predicted that the religious right would become so much religi-er and so much right-ier. All that drama (“Storm the nursing home!”) wasted.
Eric U.
@raven: when I got here in the mid ’90s, Penn State still didn’t recognize MLK day. I was a little shocked by that. Of course, they have almost no holidays, so it was normal in a way. But I thought the Arizona fiasco should have opened everyone’s eyes to what it meant. Anyway, they finally started closing on MLK and there are a lot of events associated with it, so now they have joined civilized society.
Another Holocene Human
Remember, the religious right always lies about their true intentions. It’s like when they wept all those crocodile tears about the “baybees” when their actual agenda was to ban contraception and criminalize poor women’s pregnancies.
Some of these “principled” florists and bakers were put up to it by the reich wing.
Pogonip
@Patrick: This is one of my pet peeves. The entire U. S. economic system is based on what several religions, including mine, view as a serious sin. I literally cannot live a virtuous life. Thanks a lot, Congress.
trollhattan
@Another Holocene Human: @shortstop:
Sorry, so sorry to record the thought but ever since JEB! started showing up on my teevee machine with his new zaftig, Beau Bridges look I can’t help think that the “perfect” counterpoint is a ball-cutting, military-serving farmer gal just like our new Senator Joni.
Sometimes I scare myself.
Elizabelle
OMG. NYTimes news alert: one of the Germanwings pilots locked the other one out of the cockpit.
ETA: checked if story was on cable; MSNBC doing Ted Cruz stories; CNN had a lonnnnng commercial break and then Erin Burnett reading the item.
Another Holocene Human
@Patrick: No, but does it matter? All I’m saying is there’s a dialogue in a book that a lot of gentiles of recent European ancestry are passingly familiar with where this guy they claim to follow in religious matters gives a discourse that starts with “love your neighbor” is the 2nd most important commandment and continues with “but who is your neighbor” and not so subtly suggests your neighbor must include all those outgroups the “good people” of the village like to piss on
Just pointing out that SoCon Republicans are hypocrites.
Since Jesus/Joshua is a nom de guerre, and the synoptic gospels are palpable pastiche, it would be absurd to suggest there is one singular source
Pogonip
@shortstop: I agree. And since that was the best pro-Indiana argument I could think of, I hope they lose. On the anti-Indiana side, I would try to argue that the ability to conduct business transactions is a basic right and as such ought not to be contingent on winning a popularity contest. Especially since my group’s losing. Hell, in another 50 years we may be back in the catacombs. When my descendants emerge from the catacombs in need of restocking supplies, I want them to be able to buy aspirin and toilet paper.
Also, I have some experience with small business owners, and I dare say most of them are not qualified to be moral arbiters.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Holy Sh*t!
ETA nothing on the Beeb either, but they do have the CVR and have been extracting its contents.
Bokonon
@trollhattan:
No … as scary as it is, you are not alone in seeing the same damn exact thing.
The same party that nominated Sarah Palin would completely go for Joni Ernst as a vice presidential candidate. And the GOP would completely do it if they thought it would get votes for it. All the barriers are down.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@raven:
It’s Arizona. My dad was a lifelong Republican, but he didn’t go fucking nuts until he moved to Arizona and started watching goddamn Fox News.
Pogonip
@Another Holocene Human: No cake for you!
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: I should walk my comment back a little — NYTimes does not say one locked the other out; just that the second pilot could not get back in.
So maybe it’s health related; maybe the pilot was incapicitated …
But wow.
Cervantes
@jl:
Then tell them your opinion, directly.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): all that dry hate got to him
I think AZ anglos are big haters because they’re housebound
Roger Moore
@shortstop:
I’m not laughing at all when I say that. I’ve actually read the Bible cover to cover, and I didn’t see anything in the Old or New Testament that restricted men to just one wife. Meanwhile, there was obviously plenty of stuff in the Old Testament about men with several wives, so there’s no clear theological grounds for only marrying once.
That said, I wonder if the people making that argument actually read those passages with a critical eye. Sure, there are plenty of important Biblical characters who had more than one wife (or a wife and a concubine) and it came to grief a huge amount of the time. Abraham wound up having to cast out Hagar and Ishmael because Sarah was so jealous. There was a huge rivalry between Leah and Rachel that cased family strife and contributed to problems between Jacob’s sons, winding up with Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt. David got into a ton of trouble over Bathsheba, and Solomon was lead astray by his many wives and concubines. I can’t think offhand of a single polygamous family in the Old Testament that was happy and stable, which doesn’t seem like much to recommend the practice.
Bokonon
@Another Holocene Human:
Remember, the religious right always lies about their true intentions. It’s like when they wept all those crocodile tears about the “baybees” when their actual agenda was to ban contraception and criminalize poor women’s pregnancies.
danielx
I may be missing something….but if a business establishment can refuse to provide goods or services to gays, because Jesus doesn’t love teh ghey, doesn’t it follow that (for examples) that establishment can also refuse to provide goods or services to Jews, or Roman Catholics, or black people, or people with blue eyes? (Because Satan has blue eyes, it’s a well known fact.) Or musicians, because they play that devil’s music also known as rock and roll? Or scientists, because they insist that the world is older than six thousand years? Or…..wow, it’s fantastic, this law; this law is clearly God’s (and the Indiana legislature’s) gift to religious shitheads of every description. Why, we’ll never miss all those conventions, and jobs, and national championship games what with all the godly folk that will move here because of our Jeebus-illuminated legislators.
Fuck me running, I’d be planning to relocate here myself if I was a evangelical mouthbreather from Alabama.
shortstop
@Roger Moore:
Yes, that’s the argument some evangelical Prots make: “Look at all this trouble these people got into. That proves that God allowed it, but he never condoned it.” Except when he did: 2 Samuel 12:8.
MomSense
@Another Holocene Human:
I’m more of an Arlington Street gal but I did climb to the top of the pulpit at King’s and it was pretty cool especially for my four year old self.
Pogonip
I request a pupdate. Since my group’s unpopular, I hope that Cole, as a good liberal, will set the example and fulfill my request. I am not in Indiana.
Elizabelle
Hell of a way to find out those cockpit doors are well reinforced. If the story holds ….
Yikes.
Baud
@Pogonip: What is your group?
JDM
Good on them!
WaterGirl
@Baud: I assumed from context that dognap is one one of the gays. :-)
Pogonip, please forgive the “dognap” in sentence one – that was autocorrect, but it was so cute I couldn’t bring myself to change it.
Edit: if I ever have to pick a new nym, I think I might choose dognap.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: So you get up to go to the bathroom and then you can’t get back into the cockpit? And you’re there helplessly trying to bang the door down as the plane crashes? Sounds like the definition of hell to me.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Yes, what a mess. CNN says protocol was for a second person to enter the cockpit if one of the pilots left, to prevent such an occurrence.
And it puts a new spin on last minutes of flight: rather than gently descending and BOOM, passengers knowing nothing, those in the front of the plane were aware the second pilot was trying to bang the door down. And you would definitely notice if you were 1,000 feet above the Alps.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: What you said in paragraph 1… if that’s the case, somebody doesn’t follow protocol one time, and 150 are dead. Yikes.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure the passengers didn’t miss the banging on the door, it’s too horrible to think about.
raven
@WaterGirl: And it’s just awful that tv news would report this.
Bubblegum Tate
@Another Holocene Human:
On rube I read has been expounding upon this recently:
When pressed for any evidence whatsoever for any of this, all he can say is that he “knows” the “liberal fascists.” Derp is derp.
Patrick
@Another Holocene Human:
You are right, it doesn’t really matter. We pretty much agree on the whole issue.
WaterGirl
@raven: not sure i get your drift.
Elizabelle
Neither WaPost, LATimes, or Guardian have NYTimes scoop on their front page. They’re still checking it out, I guess.
raven
@Elizabelle: @Elizabelle: And no one had to lock the door, they lock automatically. May have had a heart attack.
raven
@WaterGirl: It was snark. People have just been going ape shit about “ghoul” this and “white people” on the plane that and that the “media” is awful for covering it the way they do.
Elizabelle
@raven: Or an aneurysm. Main thing is, there was either not another person in the cockpit with the pilot.
Or, more chillingly, there was.
the Conster
@Elizabelle:
Yeah, my first thought was Egypt Air. It was deliberate. FUCK.
raven
@the Conster: Yep.
WaterGirl
@raven: ah. i dont watch the news so i hadn’t seen any of the coverage.
it’s just way too easy for me to put myself in someone else’s shoes and imagine what it would be like. it would have been better if everyone had just blacked out.
Elizabelle
I wonder if we’ve gotten too clever about keeping that cockpit door impermeable. Understand why; designers were thinking “what if there’s a hijacker outside the door.”
But I’m surprised there is not a secret, secret electronic device, hidden somewhere in the cabin, that would allow crewmembers to regain entry to the cockpit, in event it was breached.
Years ago, you could jimmy a cockpit door with the pin on your airline badge.
wasabi gasp
Yay, good crazy people are lecturing bad crazy people.
Arclite
@Bokonon:
Interesting. Most religions do tend to be full of hypocrisy, control, manipulation, etc. which is why I have no religion. I did spend many years practicing Zen Buddhism, which I should get back into doing on my own, but even there you’d have priests sleeping with disciples, etc.
Pogonip
@Baud: Christian. We had a long run of popularity, but in the WEIRD countries (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, small-d Democratic) it’s coming to an end. We’ll be back up in the polls, but it’ll take a while. Several decades at least. I won’t be around to see it.
Pogonip
@Baud: P.S. I blame Obama.
Baud
@Pogonip:
It’s a cross you have to bear.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Nice!
Debbie(aussie)
@fuckwit: Nicely put, a better, kinder world. Thanks
Debbie(aussie)
@raven: A handsome man. I’m guessing a bit older than my Dad (1936).
Pogonip
@Baud: Hee Hee Hee Hee Hee Hee.
JaneE
The church I attended as a child was Disciples of Christ. Back in the mid-50’s there were some pretty forceful sermons in favor of integrating the schools. We did lose about 25% of our congregation during that period, from people who just couldn’t adapt to equality. But there was no question as to what side our church took on integration and equal rights.
RaflW
@Elizabelle: So in the US (well, on Delta for sure, i fly them 20 or 30 times a year), if a pilot need to use the lav, a flight attendant goes into the cockpit and locks the door as the pilot steps out.
The pilot uses the lav and then knocks, and the FA reopens the door and swaps back with the pilot. It’s carefully orchestrated and usually another FA parks a cart across the opening to the galley from first class. When they first started allowing pilots to even leave the cockpit, they used to turn on the fasten seatbelt sign and make very stern announcements about staying seated. That seems to have abated, but the FA/pilot door dance appears routine.
No idea what protocol is in Europe.
I’ve assumed the FA is the purser and hopefully has had at least basic training on using the radio, etc, just in case they are needed in a sudden emergency. But that is pure speculation.
Elizabelle
I see pilots wearing Depends in our future.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: The anti-terrorism door thing seems to have backfired.
Ooops!
Villago Delenda Est
@JaneE: IIRC, Lyndon Johnson was a member of DoC.
JoyfulA
I’m delighted with this article.
A few years back, DoC and the UCC were in merger talks. We communicate and share a lot on the congregational level, so it had logic. But some of their DoC people were concerned that we were too pushy on being “open and affirming” re gay people and backed off.
So I’m hoping merger talks are back in the realm of possibility. They’re good pople!
Death Panel Truck
My father-in-law is a retired DOC pastor, and my late mother-in-law was one of the best people I have ever known. He knows we don’t go to church, but he doesn’t hassle us about it. I am an atheist (he doesn’t know that because it’s never come up) and my wife is indifferent to religion. She says she only went to church as a kid for the singing and the fellowship. I used to be a Missouri Synod Lutheran, but I’m all right now.
NCSteve
@Lee Rudolph: I haven’t been to church except for funerals and weddings since 1985 and I’ve been a self-described agnostic since the early 90s, but I was raised a Disciple by parents whose families had been Disciples since before they called themselves Disciples. And I can tell you that in the small towns of the midwest and border states where most of the denomination’s churches used to be, it would have been difficult to find more conservative congregations presided over by a more liberal clergy anywhere. And the denomination’s nearly dogmatic commitment to non-dogmatism made it possible for those members to sit in church and listen respectfully to liberal preachers trying, ever so gently, to open their minds and broaden their horizons without actually becoming more open-minded.
And, besides, the denomination’s commitment to having an itinerant clergy meant that if you didn’t like the current minister, all you had to do was wait a few years, which added to their willingness to tough it out.
As a practical matter, all the liberal clergy managed to do was create a congregation that, in any given town, was merely less awful than the local Baptists and more or less tied with the Methodists.
Starting in the 60s, however, the church’s clergy slowly began to dial up the extent to which they challenged their congregants to take a less a’ la carte approach to the denomination’s liberal teachings and the conservatives began finding that each new minister was more aggressively liberal than the last one was. The result was a slow transfer of the conservative-minded to more conservative denominations that turned into a rapid exodus when the church started openly welcoming, and then marrying, gays and a gradual remaking of the composition of the church’s membership to one that is both younger and more likely to be first generation members.
Jebediah, RBG
for too many asterisks