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There are some new videos on the Republican Climate channel. In one of them, Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern (in Jesus' words) strains out a gnat and swallows a camel. In another, Mitt Romney's mask explains why he just cannot understand the middle class no matter how hard he tries. We also explore the uncomfortable possibility that Mitt Romney doesn't actually have a soul.

Another Conservative Camel

This essay, like the previous, is adapted from one that will appear on my science website.

In the previous essay, I wrote about how conservatives, such as Oklahoma state representative Sally Kern, are straining out gnats and swallowing camels, to use the same wonderful imagery that Jesus used in criticizing the conservatives of his day. In that essay, I explained that the gnat that the conservatives were straining out was gay rights. They claim, totally without evidence, that homosexuals will bring about the collapse of America. Meanwhile, they ignore the clear dangers posed by our destruction of the environment, dangers that are severe enough to cause our downfall. Conservatives supposedly believe that the environment is God’s Creation, but they seem to not believe this very passionately. And the Bible has identified one particular environmental problem—the loss of topsoil, resulting from the failure to let the fields rest from agriculture—as one of the principal reasons that the Kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians.

There is another major theme that conservatives ignore. While they scream about homosexuals, they ignore the problem of poverty. I know that some conservatives (among them Sally Kern) make a show of working in soup kitchens, but they staunchly and zealously support the economic structure that reinforces poverty. They want what they call a “free market” in which the rich can get richer by oppressing the poor. For example, they believe that banks should have unlimited rights to do whatever they want to their poor creditors, such as charging usurious interest rates that not only force the poor to remain poor but drive them further into poverty and prevent them from ever repaying their debts. (At the same time, conservatives utterly reject a free market approach to solving the marijuana problem.) The burden of debt is so heavy, and the bank CEOs are getting so rich from it, that most Americans (the middle class, not just the poor) feel utterly crushed by it. But conservatives want to maintain this system. The freedom of the free market is enjoyed only by the very wealthy. Judging from its actions, the Republican Party would rather have America collapse than to have the taxes on millionaires raised even slightly.

This situation brings to mind some things that the Old Testament prophets said. The second prophet who went by the name Isaiah (chapter 40, verse 1) spoke words that have been immortalized in the music, played each Christmas, by George Frideric Handel: Comfort ye my people, cry unto them that their warfare is accomplished. How can I express the feeling of relief that comes from this music and these words? You can just feel the burdens of a nation sliding off of our shoulders. But how is this to be accomplished? Not by the free market. According to the third verse, a voice cries in the wilderness. And what does this voice say? The fourth verse says, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low.” The meaning of this passage is clear to everyone except conservatives. The rich and powerful will be humbled, and the poor shall be raised up. Not just given some food in a soup kitchen, but actually lifted out of grinding poverty. The only way that our nation, like ancient Israel, can experience relief from our burdens is by making our social relationships more equitable. This is not a call for socialism or communism; there will always be some people who are richer than others, often but not always because they deserve to be. But the extreme disparity between rich and poor in America—which is greater than any other nation in the industrial world and greater than any time in the last hundred years—has to end. The laws and policies that enforce this disparity have to change. As the first Isaiah said (chapter 3, verse 15), God opposes those who “grind the faces of the poor into the dust.”

The solution to our environmental problems also depends on bringing relief to the poor. If people are desperate, they will do whatever they need to do in order to survive. For example, they will try to raise food in marginal soil, which will erode away and cause deserts to spread. There is no hope for our Earth, just as there is no hope for our society, unless the valleys are exalted and the mountains humbled.

Conservatives consider themselves defenders of Biblical religion. But the only thing some of them talk about is how evil homosexuals are. And their solution is that these evil people need to come to their churches and donate money. Conservative churches cannot make money off of denouncing the rich or defending the Earth. On the issues that the Biblical prophets considered most important, conservatives are eerily silent.

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Conservatives: Straining Out a Gnat and Swallowing a Camel

I have adapted this essay from one that will appear on my website soon, but have changed it to expand upon the religious message for this blog. My website is devoted to science, not to religion.

Conservatives are missing the point not only of what is important in the world but even what Jesus said. They are focusing their attention on things that are not important and are ignoring major problems that will destroy our nation and world if left unsolved. I focus on the first of these “camels” in this essay.

In Jesus’ day the Pharisees were a religious group that closely resembled the conservatives of today. They focused their righteous zeal on obeying minor Biblical laws in exquisite detail, while ignoring the important things. For example, they figured out intricate rules for how to tithe not just their income but also the herbs that grew in their gardens. Jesus denounced them in one of the angriest speeches in recorded history, preserved in the twenty-third chapter of the gospel of Matthew. He said to them, “You tithe mint and dill and cumin, while ignoring the weightier matters of the law.” He summarized their brand of religion by saying that they were “straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.” Besides being a masterful bit of humor, this statement made it clear that religious conservatives, then as now, pay attention to small things that are not a problem—you could eat quite a few gnats without noticing them—and ignore major problems. Nor did they do so at random; conservatives, then as now, gave the most attention to the rules that would give their religious hierarchy the most power, and ignored all the principles that would empower and bless the poor and downtrodden, and save the Earth.

One example of modern conservatives straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel is the crusade of Sally Kern, an Oklahoma state representative, against gay rights. She gave a speech that was secretly recorded and a few minutes of which have spread around the internet, in which she compared gays to a spreading cancer and said that they were more dangerous than terrorists. It is not my intention to criticize her in detail, because I am no expert on the issue of gay rights.

The point I want to make here is that Sally Kern was straining out a gnat. There is no evidence that gays and lesbians are ruining society. Sally Kern, like anybody else, has the right to consider their actions to be wrong, but that is not the same thing as saying that they are destroying the country. I know some gay men, and they have never tried to recruit me to their ranks. They consider themselves to be born gay, and therefore they do not believe in recruitment. They just want people to leave them alone and give them the rights of American citizens. Did homosexuality cause Mesopotamia to fall? Persia? Rome? The British Empire?

Meanwhile, conservatives like Sally Kern are swallowing a camel. Gay rights will not destroy America, but our ecological problems may destroy us. Take, for example, the loss of our topsoil through wind and water erosion. This is a problem conservatives ignore. But it will, not many decades from now, undermine our ability to raise food.

Moreover, the sin of ruining the environment was one of the principal reasons, according to the Bible, that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah fell to the Assyrians and Babylonians. In the laws of Moses, the Israelites were commanded to let their land lie fallow every seven years, and to recover from the strain of agriculture. This law has been known as the Sabbath of the Fields. There is no evidence that the Israelites ever obeyed this law. According to tradition, the Israelite nation persisted for 490 years; therefore they owed the land 70 years. Near the end of the second book of Chronicles, the writer drew a clear connection between Judah’s failure to keep the Sabbath of the Fields and their downfall. The writer said, “And so the land enjoyed its rest.” The Israelite homeland lay fallow for 70 years.

The Bible clearly indicates that failure to take care of the land can cause a country to collapse, just as an individual can be hurt if a camel sits on him. There is no such statement about homosexuality—the gnat in the cup—causing a nation to fall. Why don’t modern conservatives decry the way America is destroying God’s creation, instead of spending all their time attacking gays?

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Conservatives are Missing the Point, part one

I have begun reading a book by Oklahoma state representative Sally Kern. Kern is infamous not just in Oklahoma but around the nation for certain inflammatory remarks she has made regarding gays, as well as her attacks on evolutionary science. So I decided to read what she has said about herself in her book, The Stoning of Sally Kern.

What was it that she said that has become so infamous? In a speech, which was secretly taped, she compared gays to a cancer, and implied that they were worse than terrorists. Gays will cause America to collapse: this is her clear message.

I would like to make four points, in this and upcoming essays, about what Sally Kern said in her speech and in her book.

First, she seemed genuinely surprised that she received so much hate mail and public notoriety for her statements. She received thousands of emails, many of them filled with unprintable invectives. Protests against her public appearances have been vitriolic. Her opponents have treated her with extreme disrespect, and have passed on some false information about her. For example, they said that her son had been arrested for homosexual activities, and that she was therefore a hypocrite. But, as it turns out, the man who was arrested had the same first and last names, but not the same middle name, as her son. I am not aware that Kern’s critics have retracted or apologized. She repeatedly describes herself as a cookie-baking grandmother who loves everybody, including gays—she really wants God to heal them of their evil.

But, of course, she should not have been surprised at the response. Gays believe themselves to have been born gay. Therefore to criticize their sexual orientation is to criticize their very biological identity.

Gays respond to such criticism the way minorities respond to racism: with a deep visceral anger. I have only the slightest experience with this. A woman in our neighborhood has repeatedly displayed evidence of racism against Native Americans. As a member of the Cherokee tribe, I felt deeply offended and became angry far past the bounds of logic and reason. And yet I am only part Cherokee. How might fullbloods have felt? One of my former neighbors, a young Native woman, cried as she told me about the woman’s racist remarks, almost a year after they had been made. When you condemn someone for who they are, rather than for something they have chosen to do, they will react violently. In a similar way, gays responded to Kern’s message with their guts, which is where she kicked them, rather than with their heads. It’s not right, but it’s very human and only to be expected.

Second, Kern presents her brand of Biblical conservatism as the only alternative to amorality. She defends her position by explaining how America, like any society, has to have some concept of right and wrong. This is true, of course; but her brand of morality is not the only possible ethical standard upon which a nation can be built. She uses the same faulty reasoning that the creationists use: you have to believe that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and believe in the Flood of Noah, or else you are an atheist. Not surprisingly, Kern is a creationist who is as infamous for her creationist legislation as for her attacks on gays.

Third, Kern focuses her attention on a relatively minor issue and ignores the big ones. There is no evidence that homosexuality has ever caused a nation to collapse. But there is evidence that nations have collapsed as a result of environmental catastrophes. Kern appears to be opposed to any policies that would encourage environmental stewardship, choosing instead to embrace the so-called free market. The Old Testament clearly links the collapse of the Kingdom of Judah to their failure to take care of the land (see next essay), rather than to gays and lesbians.

Fourth, Kern also totally ignores the problem of poverty, as a legislator. She works in a food kitchen for the poor but defends the economic system that keeps them enslaved in poverty. The Old Testament prophets, especially Isaiah (see later essay), clearly link the problems of Israel and Judah to their oppression of the poor, never once saying that gays and lesbians caused God to punish them.