Justin's Political Corner

On today’s “Faith and Freedom” broadcast, Matt Barber explained that the push for gay marriage is really an effort by Satan to get the United States to officially embrace sin.

Since man-woman marriage is a metaphor for Christ and the Church, Barber explained, “Satan hates the institution of natural marriage and wants to see it watered down.”

“What is central to so-called gay marriage?” Barber asked. “Homosexual sin. So therefore gay marriage is, in and of itself, sin.  And so if they can get the government to put its official stamp of approval on counterfeit same-sex marriage, then that is the government shaking its fist at God and saying ‘we know better than you do.’”

h/t: RWW

Next time Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent Erick Stakelbeck talks about religious liberty, just remember that he doesn’t seem to extend that freedom to Muslims. During a conference call with the group Tea Party Unity, Stakelbeck attacked the Obama administration for having “literally” intervened in cases to defend the construction of mosques.

Stakelbeck said he is outraged that the Obama administration is trying to stop residents from blocking the construction of mosques because how dare the Justice Department defend the First Amendment!

He was also livid that Muslims may want to build “a $5 million mega-mosque,” just as we are sure he is angry that a Southern Baptist congregation in Dallas constructed a $130 million megachurch.

Stakelbeck told another caller that “there is a concerted effort by Islamists to infiltrate the very heartland of American society,” particularly the Bible Belt.

Just to be clear, Muslims represent just 1% of the population of Tennessee and less than 0.5% in other Bible Belt states like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Arkansas.

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

The former British colony of Belize is now in the news, as Belizean LGBTQ activist Caleb Orozco is attempting to overturn the country’s ban on sodomy.

Zach Beauchamp at Think Progress LGBT:

Caleb Orozco is an openly gay man in a country that criminalizes his existence. Belizean law says that “every person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal shall be liable to imprisonment for 10 years;” the statute defines sex between between consenting same-sex adults as being one such unnatural act. Orozco and his organization (the United Belize Advocacy Movement) succeeding in pushing a legal case against the ban on same-sex activity to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday.

While neighboring Mexico has constitutionally mandated marriage equality, the LGBT communities in Belize’s other neighbors — Honduras and Guatemala — have been frequent targets of anti-gay discrimination and violence. But even those two countries don’t ban same-sex sexual activity.

The Guardian:

Caleb Orozco has been denounced as the antichrist, received death threats and had a beer bottle smashed into his face. Next Tuesday, the gay rights campaigner will face a very different kind of challenge, when he comes up against the attorney general of Belize and the leaders of the country’s churches.

Belize’s churches have been at the forefront of those condemning the legal challenge. The most outspoken opponent is Pastor Scott Stirm, a Texas evangelical missionary who runs Belize Action; he has praised the existing legislation as “a good law that protects human dignity” on the grounds that it is often used in sex abuse cases.

Section 53 declares that “every person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal shall be liable to imprisonment for 10 years”. Like so many laws around the world criminalising homosexuality, Section 53 is a legacy of imperial rule from London. Buggery with consent and bestiality were deemed merely to be “public nuisances” when the criminal code of Belize came into force in 1888. The offence was re-categorised as an “unnatural crime” during the second world war.

Hopefully, common sense should prevail in Belize… with its anti-sodomy laws going in the trashcan.

(cross-posted from Daily Kos)

But is it true? Let’s take a look at several issues and how both mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives respond. I will be adding links to the conservative side to forestall the usual “Straw man” complaint.

1. Abortion: Can a woman abort a fetus and if so, up to what stage of development?

Liberals – Currently, there is no way to know when a fetus/zygote becomes a  person with the same moral weight as a “post-uterine” individual. In the absence of anything more solid than, “That’s how I feel about it,” liberals are willing to let the choice belong to the woman up to the point of viability. No one is comfortable with a 30 week abortion except under dire circumstances.

Conservatives – Not only have they declared that a single celled zygote is the same as a 10 year old child but have tried to pass laws to allow civilians to kill abortion providers and arrest women suspected of trying to induce a miscarriage.

Who is more extreme?

2. Religion in school – Should religion be promoted in school through teacher-led prayer and religious iconography or should schools be “religion neutral?”

Liberals – They would prefer to keep religion out of schools so no one religion is promoted over others in a country with literally hundreds of different faiths and sects (or none at all). This way, no one is ostracized or pressured.

Conservatives – They want Christianity, only Christianity and a particular brand of Christianity (No Catholics or Mormons!) taught in schools. At the same time, they do not want objective and verifiable science taught because it runs counter their very specific brand of fundamentalist Christianity. No evolution and no six billion year old Earth.

Who is more extreme?

3. Banning religion – Should the United States pass laws against unpopular religions in direct contradiction of the First Amendment?

Liberals - Militant atheists, not all of whom are liberals, talk about banning religion but they are a minority and no lawmaker has tried to seriously do this.

Conservatives – Conservatives talk about banning Islam all the time and have passed several “anti-Sharia” laws.

Who is more extreme?

4. Guns – Does society have the right to limit certain kinds of firearms and accessories like semi-automatic assault rifles, extended clips and fully-automatic machine guns while requiring all purchases of guns to be subjected to a background check to weed out criminals, the mentally ill, potential terrorists, etc.?

Liberals - Militant gun control proponents would like to ban all guns like many other industrialized countries have done with no ill effect. They are a minority and no lawmaker has tried to seriously do this. Liberals, in general, believe that background checks will reduce gun crime and banning certain kinds of guns and accessories will reduce, but not eliminate, the ability of killers to commit mass murder.

Conservatives – They have suppressed gun control laws so much that anyone can buy almost any gun at anytime with no oversight whatsoever and want to continue to do so. Conservative lawmakers have pushed laws to allow guns in churches, pre-schools and bars that serve alcohol. Some towns have mandated that every household MUST have a gun. They even want people just released from mental health facilities to immediately be able to buy a gun as well as convicted violent felons. They believe more guns make them safer in direct contradiction to evidence that show states flooded with guns have a high level of gun violence.

Who is more extreme?

5. Marriage – Can the definition of marriage be expanded to include homosexuals? 

Liberals – Considering marriage used to be prohibited between blacks and whites and nothing bad happened when we changed it, liberals would like for people to be able to marry the person they love regardless of their sex.

Conservatives – They insist that marriage has remained unchanged for centuries despite all evidence to the contrary. They also insist that same sex marriage is no different than bestiality and pedophilia despite it being between two consenting adults.

Who is more extreme?

6. Voting – Should we require citizens to obtain special ID in order to vote?

“Big government” Liberals – Everybody should be able to vote with a minimal amount of interference.

“Small government” Conservatives – Everyone should be forced to have “Voter ID” that costs time and money to get in order to fight wide-spread (but strangely impossible to find) “voter fraud.” Curiously, if you ask these same people if guns should be subject to the same kinds of rules to combat the well established tens of thousands of gun deaths and hundreds of thousands of gun crimes a year, they get very upset at this “infringement” on their “freedom.”

Who is more extreme?

7. The President – Does the office of the President of the United States deserve unquestioning respect and obedience in a time of war?

“Totalitarian” Liberals – No. No president should have carte blanche to wage war in our names or be immune to criticism. The right to to petition the Government for a redress of grievances is in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights. Yet, anyone that criticized President Bush in any way, including about about non-war related policies, was labeled “traitors” by conservatives for “not supporting the president in a time of war” as if he were the God-Emperor of Arrakis.

Conservatives – During the very same war in which Bush was not allowed to be criticized, President Obama has been accused of being a secret Muslim from Kenya, a Nazi, a Communist, a Socialist, a homosexual, a gangsta, a traitor, a terrorist and racial slurs have been tossed around like confetti at a KKK gathering. The calls for impeachment haven’t stopped since almost his first day in office.

Who is more extreme?

8. Taxes – How should the broken tax code be fixed?

Liberals – We want tax loopholes closed for the rich and corporations and for them to pay what they actually owe. Hiding money in tax havens should be aggressively discouraged with confiscation and jail time (just like the rest if us face when we dodge our taxes). A modest tax hike on billionaires wouldn’t be so bad, either but not terribly necessary if the previous steps are taken.

Conservatives – They want to pay no taxes at all (but not a penny to be taken from their Social Security and Medicare) because they’ve been taxed enough already despite having lower taxes than at any point in the last 30 years..

Who is more extreme?

9. Rhetoric – Whose rhetoric displays a disconnect from reality and/or violence?

Liberals – We yell about the banks stealing our money with bailouts and being “Too big to fail,” getting money out of politics, the rich not paying their taxes, no more warmongering, no more rape, no more discrimination, respecting women’s rights, feeding the poor and hungry, stopping Climate Change and freedom of, and from, religion.

Conservatives – While they happen to agree with liberals about the banks, getting money out of politics and no more warmongering, they also say that liberals are violent thugs that are planning on putting conservatives into concentration camps, regularly talk about secession, revolution, Second Amendment remedies, shooting liberals and pray for Obama’s death.

Who is more extreme?

10. Rape – Is rape…rape?*

Liberals – Yes. It doesn’t matter if violence, drugs or coercion were used. If the sex was not consensual, it’s rape.

Conservatives – Well, it depends. Was it legitimate? A Gift from God? Did she get pregnant? Was it forcible? Was her vagina shredded by the rape? If not then it wasn’t “real rape.”

*I’m leaving out all of the slut shaming and “she was asking for it” because that is a product of rape culture and is almost entirely independent of political affiliation. While it is more prevalent among conservatives it’s not remotely confined to them. I’m not even sure they represent a majority in this regard.

Who is more extreme?

Now, conservatives will complain that I’m “misrepresenting them” or “using straw man arguments.” This is why I included all of the links to actual quotes from actual mainstream Republicans or conservatives. These are not fringe beliefs for the right. This is what their elected officials and media representatives say. When a conservative uses the most extreme of left wing positions (They want to ban all guns!), they have to find a blog no one has heard of or random Facebook comments to support their accusation. It certainly isn’t a part of mainstream liberal ideology.

h/t: Justin Rosario at AddictingInfo.org

Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Todd Starnes portrayed restraints on proselytization as proof of the Obama administration’s purported “war on religious liberty in the military,” despite the fact that military policy has long prohibited unwanted proselytization.

On the May 2 edition of his Fox News show, Hannity claimed that a Pentagon statement reiterating the military’s longtime policy against proselytizing was proof of Obama’s “war on religious liberty.” Starnes added that Christians were “under significant attack” by the Obama administration, under which “we have seen a Christian cleansing of the United States military.”

In fact, the U.S. military’s anti-proselytization policy has been consistent among all religions, and it targets only disruptive activities. A statement released May 2 by Defense Department spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen clarified the military’s policy that “members of the military are free to share their faith as long as they don’t harass others.”

From the 05.02.2013 edition of FNC’s Hannity:

h/t: MMFA

At least three church-state watchdog groups have asked the Defense Department to intervene in a prayer event Thursday at Fort Leonard Wood.

The groups asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to cancel a planned speech by David Barton, an evangelical Christian minister, discredited historian and conservative political operative.

Barton is scheduled to give a speech called, “Our American Heritage: Why History Matters,” to about 400 military members and their families on Thursday morning. Evangelical groups around the country will hold prayer events for the National Day of Prayer, which was originally established by Congress in 1952. In 1988, it set the day officially as the first Thursday in May.

Organizations like the Freedom From Religion Foundation have challenged the constitutionality of having a national prayer day in court.

On Monday, Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, wrote Hagel that Barton “is well known for his open, vocal, and constant use of contemptuous words against the President.”

On the website of his organization, Wallbuilders, Barton calls President Barack Obama “the most biblically hostile U. S. president.”

Weinstein wrote that Barton’s invitation “can be considered nothing less than the condoning and endorsement of statements that if made by the officer(s) who invited him to speak would be punishable by their court-martial.”

Barton is a former official in the Texas Republican party and has advised Republican presidential candidates, according to the New York Times, including Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Rep. Michele Bachmann.

In a statement, Barton told the Post-Dispatch he “regularly speaks to events at all branches of American military installations” and “presents accounts of the long historical record of the involvement of faith and prayer in the lives of the American military and military leaders over the past two centuries.”

He called Weinstein’s group “an intolerant atheist organization” that objects “to the clearly documented and indisputable role of religious faith in American history, particularly American military history.”

Barton has written several books promoting the view that the nation’s founders were Christian and intended the United States to be a Christian nation. But last year, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson stopped distributing Barton’s New York Times bestselling book, “The Jefferson Lies,” after evangelical historians and other scholars began pointing out errors.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, wrote Hagel that Barton’s speaking engagement at Fort Leonard Wood, is “highly inappropriate and will only end up causing embarrassment for the military.”

Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, wrote the defense secretary that “when government actors like military chaplains organize prayer events, it is imperative that they—and their guest speakers—be inclusive and non-sectarian. David Barton does not meet these criteria.”

An evangelical Christian group in Colorado, long affiliated with Focus on the Family – the National Day of Prayer Task Force – organizes the annual National Day of Prayer events throughout the country.

h/t: STLtoday.com

Eagle Forum wants its members to know that the Christian conservative groups backing comprehensive immigration reform are reading their Bibles wrong. In an email to members today, Phyllis Schlafly’s group states in bold print, “Scripture is clear on many things, but a sovereign nation’s immigration policy is not one of them. There is no biblical mandate for mass Amnesty for illegal aliens.”

Biblical prescriptions for “kindness and compassion to ‘strangers’ or ‘sojourners’” are meant only for people who are “in a foreign land temporarily,” the group clarifies. In addition, this is “not a command to the government.”

The email goes on to assure readers that “it is not racist, isolationist, nativist, or xenophobic” to oppose immigration reform.

h/t: Right Wing Watch

On August 5, 2012, just before 10:30 in the morning, Wade Michael Page pulled up outside the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc., took out his semi-automatic handgun and started killing worshipers. An Army veteran and an avid bass player in a neo-Nazi rock band, Page killed two Sikhs outside the house of worship and then made his way inside. There, he reloaded and killed four more, including the president of the temple who was shot while trying to tackle Page. Three more were critically wounded in the massacre.

When local police descended, Page opened fire and shot one officer nearly ten times. When the authorities returned fire and shot Page in the stomach, he took his 9mm pistol, pointed it at his own head, and pulled the trigger.

According to acquaintances, the 40-year-old killer hated blacks, Indians, Native Americans and Hispanics (he called non-whites “dirt people”), and was interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan. Immersed in the world of white power music, Page’s band rehearsed in front of a Nazi flag.

Note that back in August 2012, Fox News didn’t care very much about Wade Page and the wild gun shootout he unleashed in an act of domestic terror in the Milwaukee suburb, nor did Fox suggest the event was connected to a larger, more sinister terror trend. In fact, in the days that followed the gun massacre, there were just two passing references to Page during Fox’s primetime, one from Bill O’Reilly and one from Greta Van Susteren. No guests were asked to discuss the temple shooting, and after one day the story was completely forgotten.

In one rare occasion when the conversation did turn to Page’s motivations, Fox’s opinion hosts were quick to criticize the notion that he was a far-right extremist. (He clearly was.) On The Five, after co-host Bob Beckel referred to Page as “right-wing skinhead,” he was quickly shouted down by his colleagues. Co-host Andrea Tantaros stressed that the killing was an isolated event that didn’t have any larger implications. “How do you stop a lunatic?” she asked. “This is not a political issue.”

Fox’s guarded response to an extremist’s killing spree was striking, considering that in the wake of the Boston Marathon bomb attack Fox News has gone all in (again) with its war on Islam as the channel fights its latest bigoted chapter in the War on Terror. It’s striking as Fox tries to blame a larger community for the act of two madmen because it’s the same Fox News that often can’t find time to even comment, let alone report, on what’s become regular, and often deadly, right-wing extremist attacks in America.

From neo-Nazi killers like Page, to a string of abortion clinic bombings, as well as bloody assaults on law enforcement from anti-government insurrectionists, acts of right-wing extreme violence continue to terrorize victims in the U.S. (“Fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists.”) But Fox News is not concerned. And Fox News does not try to affix collective blame.

It’s clear that Fox is only interested in covering and hyping a single part of the War on Terror; the part that targets Muslims and lets Fox wallow in stereotypes. The part that lets Fox accuse Obama of being “soft” on Islamic terrorists and perhaps sharing a radical allegiance. The part that lets Fox advocate for bugging mosques and eliminating other Constitutional rights, and lets it unleash a collection of anti-Islam crusaders onto the cable airwaves.

Most importantly, Fox covers a War on Terror that lets it uniformly blame Muslims.

Keep in mind though, there’s been no reported evidence that anyone in the Cambridge, Mass., Muslim community knew about, condoned or helped plan the bombing perpetrated by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. In fact, it’s possible the bomber brothers told nobody of their plan because local Muslims would have reported them to the police, the way a local imam tipped off Canadian officials who made arrests this week and thwarted an alleged rail bombing plot. (And the way local Muslims in Virginia and New York have helped prevent terror plots.)

Fox’s ugly religious attacks represent a brazen display of bigotry and bullying. The hypocrisy is that Fox News routinely downplays acts of political, and religious, violence from far-right extremists, while making sure not to condemn those indirectly associated with them.

Such acts have been legion. During a robust period of political violence last decade, women’s health clinics were attacked in January, May, and September 2003, January and July 2004, January, May, and July 2005, as well as May and December 2007, according to the National Abortion Federation.

Then in 2009, five clinics in Florida were the target of acid attacks.

More recently, two antiabortion firebombings occurred in 2011. And last year a woman’s health clinic in Wisconsin was damaged when a homemade bomb was set off on the building’s windowsill.

Of course, in May 2009, antiabortion extremist Scott Roeder shot and killed Dr. George Tiller while he attended church in Wichita, Kan.

And then there are the right-wing hate extremists who have plotted attacks against the government and minorities. Below is a partial list of attacks, or planned attacks, unleashed by radicals in recent years. The descriptions are taken from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2012 report, “Terror From the Right: Plots, Conspiracies and Racist Rampages Since Oklahoma City.”

h/t: AlterNet

No sooner had the reality of the Boston Marathon bombing sunk in than Muslim activists in the U.S. began sending out a slew of news releases, tweets and Facebook messages urging prayers and aid for the victims — and condemning whoever was behind the horrific attack.

It’s a familiar race against time for Muslim groups. Almost as soon as the smoke cleared around Copley Square, they knew from long experience that some would immediately point the finger of blame in their direction.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations moved quickly to establish, in a statement on Monday, that “American Muslims, like Americans of all backgrounds, condemn in the strongest possible terms today’s cowardly bomb attack on participants and spectators of the Boston Marathon.”

“We also call for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators,” Awad added, echoing a statement from the Muslim Public Affairs Council that called on “all of us as Americans to work together to bring those responsible to justice.”

But they realize there are already waves of rumors to combat. They’ve seen it before. Many widely believed Muslims were behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, until American militiaman Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the crime.

And the Boston bombing was no exception to the pattern. Regular Fox News guest commentator Erik Rush quickly sent out tweets blaming Muslims, adding in one, “Let’s kill them,” a post he subsequently deleted. “Jihad in America,” wrote anti-Muslim blogger Pam Geller.

Speaking about the bombings on his ‘700 Club program, Pat Robertson was also furious: “Don’t talk to me about religion of peace” — the way Muslims describe their faith — “No way.”

On his show, conservative host Glenn Beck opined that “no American citizen blows up random people; that’s a Middle Eastern scene, that’s not an American scene. When our crazies go off, they target the government, not streets that are crowded with people.”

On Monday afternoon, the New York Post had to pull a story that reported that police had a Saudi suspect in custody. Later reports that a Saudi national’s apartment near Boston had been searched also raised anxieties among Muslims; the man, who was wounded in the bombing, was subsequently cleared.

“Discrimination against Muslims has been a real dynamic in the United States,” said Christina Warner, campaign director of Shoulder-to-Shoulder, a national interfaith alliance of Muslims, Jews and Christians who combat anti-Muslim prejudice. “We’ve already seen some reports falsely identifying the perpetrator as a Saudi individual when he was just a witness.”

h/t: USA Today

What is making the right-wing mouthpieces angry today? It is the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)’s website was blocked on some military bases.

The Tennesseean:

The website for the Southern Baptist Convention has been blocked from some US Army computers.

That’s caused some conservative activists to accuse the Pentagon of being hostile to religion.

Ties between conservative evangelicals and the military have been strong in the past. But the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and other recent incidents have strained those ties.

A Southern Baptist spokesman said that he spoke to Army officials who confirmed that some computers have blocked access to SBC.Net

Those officials say the problem is a glitch, said Roger “Sing” Oldham, convention spokesman.

Even SBC spokesman Sing Oldham admits the the site’s blocking as accidental, but according to the conservative minsinformation chamber, the incident was viewed as “sinister,” “anti-Christian,” and even “pandering to Islamists.”

Right-Wing Reactions:
Todd Starnes, Fixed Noise Radio:

The U.S. Military has blocked access to the Southern Baptist Convention’s website on an unknown number of military bases because it contains “hostile content” — just weeks after an Army briefing labeled Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics as examples of religious extremism, Fox News has learned.

The censorship was made public after an Army officer tried to log onto the denomination’s website and instead — received a warning message.
“The site you have requested has been blocked by Team CONUS (C-TNOSC/RCERT-CONUS) due to hostile content,” the message read.
Team CONUS protects the computer network of the Dept. of Defense. The SBC’s website was not blocked at the Pentagon.
It’s unclear what the “hostile content” might have been. The SBC is pro-life and opposed to same-sex marriage.

Bryan Fischer, host of AFA Radio’s Focal Point:

Bryan Fischer has produced the latest anti-Christian conspiracy theory and of course rather than do any research, rather than do anything as simple as picking up the phone or sending an email, he’s decided to go on the air to tell his million or so listeners about this latest “attack” on their religious rights by their government.

In this video, below, Fischer explains that he has “breaking news,” that the U.S. government is blocking access from military or government personnel to the Southern Baptist Convention’s homepage. The SBC is the nation’s second-largest Christian group, after Roman Catholics, and they boast about 16 million members, or about five percent of the nation’s population.

By the end of the video clip, Fischer has convinced himself that this seems like a vast government conspiracy to label the Southern Baptist Convention a “hate group,” making the giant leap from “hostile content” to “hate group.”

“Basically, the U.S. military has classified the Southern Baptist Convention as a hate group — the entire denomination,” Fischer repeatedly cries, adding, “it’s like porn.”

Lucianne Goldberg, founder of Lucianne.com:

Was access to Islamic radical websites also blocked? I would sure be more concerned about that! The DOD is working diligently to investigate what might be causing access issues. Uh huh.

AFA Action Alert:

This is just another example of the Christian faith coming under attack in the military. Earlier this month, an Army email listed prominent Christian ministries like the Family Research Council and American Family Association as “domestic hate groups.”

FreeRepublic:
Here are some of the more out there comments on that site:

Actually, it seems that some U.S. Army officers are hostile to the Southern Baptist Convention. - righttackle44

Muslims good, Christians bad. -  E. Pluribus Unum

Military chaplains and bibles in the foxhole have a long history. Now because sodomites are celebrated by a corrupt culture, sin has been redefined by the government. That is still prohibited by the First Amendment. - a fool in paradise

but not a negative word about Islam.

Time for Christians and conservatives to not join the military and to advise their relatives not to. - GeronL

They’re getting this information from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). A very far Left Wing outfit that labels any and everything conservative a hate group. The SPLC is now a traning contractor for the US government.

Originally hired by “Big Sis” Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, who claimed military veterans were potential terrorists deemed watching by DHS, the SPLC is now training the entire FedGov.

Write your Congressman! The SPLC contract HAS TO GO! - Alas Babylon!

The comments on that page are what you would expect— blaming it on Muslims, gays, liberals, Obama, et al.

Ken Kluklowski at Breitbart.com’s Big Government:

Lt. Col. Damien Pickart insists the Pentagon is not intentionally blocking access for Southern Baptists but has not provided any official explanation for the multiple reports of the military blocking access to Southern Baptist material. On its face, this looks like a brazen show of hostility by the Obama administration against devout Christians in the U.S. military.
Breitbart News legal columnist Ken Klukowski is senior fellow for religious liberty at the Family Research Council.

Today on AFR’s Focal Point, Bryan Fischer hosted Todd Starnes on this topic. As expected, it’s full of complaining that “Muslims have more rights than [Conservative] Christians in this country” crap.

The right will continue to declare this an “intentional sabotage of our Christian freedoms,” but the fact is this: the Southern Baptist Convention’s website getting blocked is more likely to be a glitch. Flip the story for a second: If it was Planned Parenthood, Media Matters, Alternet, pro-LGBTQ sites, or this very site getting blocked on the bases, the right would cheer it.

(cross-posted from Daily Kos) 

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican said Monday that Pope Francis supports the Holy See’s crackdown on the largest umbrella group of U.S. nuns, dimming hopes that a Jesuit pope whose emphasis on the poor mirrored the nuns’ own social outreach would take a different approach than his predecessor.

The Vatican last year imposed an overhaul of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious after determining the sisters took positions that undermined Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” Investigators praised the nuns’ humanitarian work, but accused them of ignoring critical issues, including fighting abortion.

On Monday, the heads of the conference met with the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, who is in charge of the crackdown. It was their first meeting since Mueller was appointed in July.

In a statement, Mueller’s office said he told the sisters that he had discussed the matter recently with Francis and that the pope had “reaffirmed the findings of the assessment and the program of reform.”

The conference, for its part, said the talks were “open and frank,” and noted that Mueller had informed them of Francis’ decision.

“We pray that these conversations may bear fruit for the good of the Church,” the conference said on its website.

Following Francis’ election, several sisters had expressed hope that a Jesuit pope devoted to the poor and stressing a message of mercy rather than condemnation would take a gentler approach than his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Francis has called for a more “tender” church and one that serves society’s poorest — precisely a message American sisters have stressed in their ministry in hospitals, hospices, soup kitchens and schools that serve some of the most marginalized in the U.S.

As part of the reform, the Vatican appointed Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain and two other bishops to oversee a rewriting of the conference’s statutes, to review its plans and programs, approve speakers and ensure the group properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual. The conference represents about 57,000 sisters, or 80 percent of U.S. nuns.

H/T: TPM