Detained Over Beads?

When I talk about problems faced by minority religions in our society, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about. Abu-Bakr Abdur Rahman, an Arkansas practitioner of the Voodoo religion, was detained for several hours by Judge Talmage Baggett for refusing to conceal or remove his beaded necklaces, even though he explained that displaying them were part of his religious observance.

Now I do understand that there are issues related to maintaining proper decorum in court, and in the photo above Rahman appears to be wearing quite the collection of necklaces. Nonetheless, it seems to me that this is a legitimate, sincere religious belief, and needs to be respected.

"(Defendant) appeared in court late after docket call w/ a huge wooden necklace w/ beads around his neck," Baggett wrote. "I saw him come in & advised him that he would have to tuck the long necklace in his shirt, that he did not have to take it off, but simply tuck it inside his shirt. "He very reluctantly did so."

Rahman said that after Baggett first told him to cover his necklaces, he called his priest to ask if that is acceptable. "He said, 'No. You put your beads in, you disown your religion.'" Rahman said. "So I took my beads back out."

A little later, Baggett saw that the necklaces were out. He again told Rahman to take them off or put them under his shirt. Rahman recorded that conversation.

"Sir, get outside, and either put it in or leave. That is your choice. Or come to the prisoners box. Now which would you rather do?" Baggett said in the recording.

"You're discriminating against my religion," Rahman said.

"I don't know of any religion that requires you to wear this kind of stuff around your neck," Baggett said. "I'm not familiar with your religion. I respect anybody's religion, but get it off."

And that right there is the problem. Whether or not the judge was familiar with Rahman's religion should be completely irrelevant to the situation.

Destroyed Iraqi Statues Were Replicas

Here's some good news out of Iraq, for a change. Back in February, Islamic State militants released footage of themselves destroying "priceless ancient statues" at a museum in the city of Mosul. However, it has now been confirmed that most of those artifacts were replicas of the originals, which are safely housed at a museum in Baghdad.

At the time the video was released, some experts noted that the statues in the video crumbled more like plaster than stone, and some appeared to be reinforced with modern metal poles. Also, it makes sense for museum officials to guess Islamic State might try something like this and replace the real statues. Still, now we know for sure.

The terrorist organisation released shocking footage at the end of February purportedly showing jihadis destroying 3,000-year-old artworks with sledgehammers in their northern Iraqi stronghold.

But now Baghdad museum director Fawzye al-Mahdi has ridiculed ISIS' propaganda exercise, claiming the genuine priceless Assyrian and Akkadian statues and sculptures are still safely in his possession in the Iraqi capital, adding that those in Mosul were plaster cast replicas.

Speaking to German news programme Deutsche Welle, Al-Mahdi said: 'None of the artifacts are originals... They were copies. The originals are all here.' The museum director's claims appear to back-up those made by experts on the Iraqi statues.

Within hours of the original ISIS propaganda video being released, analysts questioned why the statues appeared to crumble so easily. Others stated that they couldn't possibly be 3,000 years old as some of the are clearly held together by iron poles - a considerably more modern practice.

It shouldn't surprise me when fundamentalists have it in for artifacts created by previous faiths, but I suppose I find it as silly as a bunch of Christian extremists raiding a museum to smash statues of the Greek gods. Most people in our culture just see Greek mythology as history rather than a competing religious system. It should also be noted that even in the latter case, relative to both Christians and Muslims the number of Greek pagans is pretty minuscule.

If your faith is really so weak that you find it threatened by images that haven't been part of a widely followed religious system for hundreds or even thousands of years, maybe you should question your own devotion to your beliefs rather than trying to wipe out evidence of the history that came before. But clearly this simple observation is lost on these folks. I'm just glad that in the end the statues survived.

Oregon Bakers Charged Asshole Tax

The story of an Oregon bakery that refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and was subsequently ordered to pay damages to the couple has been in the media recently, prompting the usual sort of comments that seem to accompany most large legal settlements. According to critics, all bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein did was refuse to make a cake, and for that the award of $135,000 clearly seems excessive.

However, the Kleins did far more than refuse service. They published the couple's contact information, and then flogged the story as hard as they could in the media. As any reasonable person could guess, this provoked an continuing onslaught of threats from Christians who felt oppressed by their mere existence - and apparently that of lesbian wedding cake.

Conservative media and anti-LGBT organizations such as the Family Research Council promoted the Kleins as victims of religious discrimination.

Rachel Bowman-Cryer said she and her wife received a steady stream of threats that continued as the Kleins promoted their side of the case in national media appearances.

She testified that state adoption officials told them they were responsible for keeping their two foster daughters safe from those threats, and they feared they could lose custody of the girls — who they have since adopted.

In its final order, issued last week, the labor bureau found the Kleins had violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws – but the damages awarded were not a “gay fascism tax,” as some commenters argued.

The bureau found the Kleins liable for the threats made by others against the couple and awarded them to pay “$60,000 in damages to Laurel Bowman-Cryer and $75,000 in damages to Rachel Bowman-Cryer for emotional suffering.”

If the bakery had just refused to bake a cake for the couple they would have been fined a whole lot less. For that matter, if they had been smart about it, they probably could have figured out a way to refuse service without letting on that they were being discriminatory and avoided a fine altogether. But instead they felt entitled to spout Bible verses and so forth at the couple, which made their motivations quite clear.

The Kleins then deliberately set out to make the couple's life hell in the media. They likely did this because they figured they could get a big payout from conservatives opposed to "Christian persecution." They either didn't really care that their actions meant this couple would have to endure a steady stream of harassment and stood a real chance of losing their kids, or perhaps even looked forward to it.

That's not being called being Christians, that's called being assholes. The couple did everything they could to keep the case out of the media, but the Kleins insisted on publicizing it along with their full contact information. From that perspective the damages awarded strike me as completely reasonable. Nobody who reports a legitimate violation of the law should have to fear facing a backlash of such proportions, because all that does is keep people from coming forward.

Grown-up "Devil's Music" Fans Totally Fine

Whenever fundamentalists bring up how evil and damaging role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons are supposed to be (and yes, they are still doing that) I like to bring up my favorite letter of all time from Dragon magazine. In it, the writer pointed out that if you take (A) the number of suicides fundamentalists linked to D&D players and divide by (B) the number of D&D players according to accurate marketing information, the resulting suicide rate was half that of the general population.

My fellow D&D nerds and I had a good laugh back then about how fundamentalists were bad at math and didn't understand statistics. However, a new study of kids who grew up listening to "the Devil's music" - that is, heavy metal - shows that maybe those numbers were more accurate than we realized. Back in the 1980's a lot of metalheads also played D&D, and according to the study metal fans in fact grew up to be happier and better-adjusted than their non-metal listening peers.

With dramatic testimony in courtrooms and at Congressional hearings, concerned parents and even government officials warned that groups like Iron Maiden and Metallica were enticing our teenagers into moral and spiritual darkness—up to and including devil worship.

So now that three decades have passed since this alleged attempt by Satan to infiltrate young brains via eardrum-shattering sounds, how are those headbangers doing? Did their punishingly loud and intense music send them spiraling into lives of despair?

Not so, according to a newly published study. In fact, researchers find that former metal fans "were significantly happier in their youth, and better adjusted currently" compared to their peers who preferred other musical genres, and to a parallel group of current college students.

While I realize it's just as much of a statistical stretch to link metal to gaming as it is to link gaming to suicides, what it does show is that the fundamentalist obsession with "damaging media" is basically nonsense. I'm also reminded of the enormous effort conservative researchers have put into trying to find a link between media and violence, media and mental illness, media and trauma, and so forth - with nothing solid to show for it.

So it seems that the human mind has evolved to deal with dark imagery quite well without resorting to suicide or mass murder or whatever it was that the scolds were so worried about. Music censorship such as that advocated by anti-metal groups back then is quite simply pointless, and this is something we should keep in mind whenever a religious group starts warning about the dangers of different musical genres. Those fears are as old as the jazz age, and have never held up.

Ten Commandments Not Down Yet

It seems I may have spoken too soon when I declared that the saga of the Oklahoma Ten Commandments monument had come to an end. Last week the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that Ten Commandments Monument on the state capitol grounds that has been the center of controversy for several years must be taken down. But now Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin is ordering the monument to stay put pending an appeal.

Since the 7-2 ruling was handed down by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, as far as I can tell the only place she could appeal the case is the Federal Supreme Court. And I can tell you exactly how that will go based on previous rulings. The Supreme Court will allow the monument, but only so long as all other religious groups have equal access. So Lucien Greaves may want to hold onto that Baphomet statue a little longer.

Fallin on Tuesday said the monument was staying while the state attorney general appeals last week's 7-2 decision declaring that the monument was unconstitutional because public property cannot be used for religious purposes. Legislators opposed to the ruling are considering amending the state constitution to allow the monument to stay.

"Oklahoma is a state where we respect the rule of law, and we will not ignore the state courts or their decisions. However, we are also a state with three co-equal branches of government," Fallin said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit challenging the monument and pursued it to the state Supreme Court, shrugged off Fallin's comments. Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, told The Huffington Post he doesn't think the governor's statement disobeys the court decision.

"We fully expect the state to respect the rule of law and comply with the court's decision," Mach said. Brady Henderson, legal director of the ACLU of Oklahoma, said if Fallin defies the court decision, it would amount to "chaos."

"She hasn't violated her oath yet, but she has made a statement that she's willing to do so," Henderson said. "The highest elected official in the state is essentially saying, 'I am willing to break the law.' My hope is very much that this is political grandstanding."

Facebook Without Sin

One of the things I've always found bizarre about many evangelical Christians is that they insist on creating their own inferior copies of popular culture that are supposedly more "pure" in some fashion. This is especially true with music, to the extent that "Christian music" has essentially become a joke, but it extends to other forms of media as well. And now, apparently, this trend is being extended into the realm of social networking.

A group of evangelical Christians in Brazil have created a social networking site called Facegloria that they are billing as "Facebook without sin." So, in effect, it's a place to hang out online free from anything remotely resembling violence, titillation, swearing, and pretty much anything that makes life even marginally edgy and/or interesting. Anything related to gay rights is banned on the site, and I imagine any reference to non-Christian religions will be as well - since the mere existence of such seems to mortally offend these folks.

Brazil's Facegloria is currently only available in Portuguese but other language services and a mobile app are also planned. Brazil has the world's largest Roman Catholic population. "On Facebook you see a lot of violence and pornography. That's why we thought of creating a network where we could talk about God, love and to spread His word," web designer Atilla Barros told AFP. Gay material is also banned from the social media platform.

Mr Barros and his three co-founders were working in the office of Acir dos Santos, the mayor of Ferraz de Vasconcelos, when they came up with the idea. Mr dos Santos has since invested $16,000 (£10,000) in the start-up. "Our network is global. We have bought the Faceglory domain in English and in all possible languages. We want to take on Facebook and Twitter here and everywhere," he said.

Facebook does have a lot of issues with privacy, and many authors like myself are unhappy about how page reach has been throttled down in order to force people to pay for "promotion" and ads - which, by the way, hardly ever generate sales, in case you were wondering. At the same time, though, a number of alternatives have come and gone, unable to generate the critical mass of users necessary to sustain a truly alternative network.

I expect that this effort will attract a lot of evangelicals and hardly anyone else, since the sanitized world of the "true believers" also happens to be incredibly dull. But at the same time, that may very well be just how they like it. Personally, I think its great. If the Poor Oppressed Christians and their supporters start gathering in one place online, that makes it easy for people like me to avoid.

"Church of Cannabis" Holds First Service

So apparently this church is no joke.

During the original flap over Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Bill Levin filed paperwork chartering "The First Church of Cannabis" in Indiana. At the time it sounded more like a Satanic Temple-style publicity stunt, deliberately pitting religious freedom against marijuana prohibition. However, yesterday the new church held its first service. Local law enforcement showed up in force, and issued a statement that anyone caught with marijuana would be arrested. However, no arrests were made and the service proceeded without incident.

The opening of the church had been marred with police attention after Levin said marijuana would be part of the church's services, with warnings of intervention from IMPD and Marion County's prosecutor.

Marijuana is currently illegal in Indiana for both medical and recreational use.

Neighbors also expressed frustration with the new church. The properties that surrounded the church were lined with caution tape and "No Parking" signs. One neighbor even said she spent nearly $4,000 to build a new fence to keep church attendees out.

Levin filed to open the church on the same day the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was signed into law.

Now here's my question. Were there no arrests because no marijuana use was observed, or because the officer who makes the arrest that allows a court challenge based on the RFRA will probably see his or her career come to an abrupt end? If the organizers are really looking to overturn the law they first need a case, and I expect the powers that be don't want them to be given that opportunity.

But does that then mean members of the cannabis church can smoke up with impunity at services? The whole situation is quite frankly a mess from a legal perspective. While the Indiana RFRA was amended to prohibit discrimination after a loud public outcry, the law still passed and nothing in the amended text mentions drug laws. It remains to be seen if they can indeed be trumped by individual religious beliefs.

Oklahoma Ten Commandments Must Go

The saga of the Oklahoma City Ten Commandments monument appears to be over. Yesterday the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered that it be removed from the grounds of the State Capitol. The court ruled that the monument represented a clear endorsement of religion on the part of the state government, and therefore had to be moved elsewhere.

In a 7-2 decision, the court said the placement of the monument violated a section in the state’s constitution, which says no public money or property can be used either directly or indirectly for the “benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion.”

Lawmakers have argued that the monument was not serving a religious purpose but was meant to mark a historical event.

This opened the door for other groups, including Satanists and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, to apply for permission to erect their own monuments on Capitol grounds to mark what they say are historical events.

The court apparently chose the simpler of the two possible constitutional options. Either public grounds must be open to symbols of all religions, or to none of them. Allowing the symbols of one religion but prohibiting those of another, as Oklahoma lawmakers originally tried to do, represents an endorsement of that religion's beliefs and is not allowed.

So I suppose this counts as another win for the Satanic Temple. They never got to put up their planned Baphomet statue, but they succeeded in bringing enough publicity to the issue that they were able to get the Ten Commandments removed - which was really their goal from the start.