Hey Gordon Klingenschmitt, Challenge Accepted

A school in Wisconsin was recently told that they could not have their graduations in the church they'd been having them at because it was obvious violation of the Separation of Church and State.

Republican candidate for the Colorado General Assembly, Gordon Klingenschmitt, had an interesting response to this.

If the atheist complainer is so uncomfortable when they walk into a church that there's something inside of them squirming and making them feel these feelings of hatred toward the cross of Jesus Christ, don't you think it's something inside of the atheist complainer that's wrong?

I have a solution.  Let's do an exorcism and cast the Devil out of them and then they'll feel comfortable when they walk into church.

I'll leave the correcting of his errors to Hemant Mehta, who's already covered it better than I could, because I have a different response.

Challenge accepted.

I welcome Mr Klingenschmitt to come to Nebraska and perform whatever exorcism he likes (within legal & medical limits, of course) on me.  We can record the process if he wants.  I will go to any venue within 50 miles of Omaha, Nebraska for the event.  If he's any good at it, he should be guaranteed to leave the event fully satisfied that any demons currently in me have left.

While, I'm obviously comfortable enough inside a church to attend services occasionally, I am regularly offended by things I see there, and I do have my own fights on Separation of Church and State.  I challenge Klingenschmitt to come to Omaha and perform an exorcism on me.

If he has any faith his ability to exorcise demons, or in his god, he should have nothing, including failure, to fear.  Or is he afraid that I'll still be an atheist/secular activist after he gets the demons out of me?

A Lesson In Poe's Law - An Open Letter To Wannabe Satirists

Today, I learned that the Smithsonian was planning an exhibit on atheism in America.  Unfortunately, I learned this from an article announcing its cancellation.  When some Christians learned about it, they launched a campaign to stop it.  A campaign that included death threats.  Except, not really.  The article was not real.  It was (an attempt at) satire.

This is an all too common thing I've been encountering.  Websites with fake news like are often mistaken as real.  Part of this is because people, including otherwise good skeptics, fail to vet these sites before sharing them.  But I think the bigger problem is these sites themselves.  The goal of these sites seems to be satire.  The result is them simply making shit up.

This Smithsonian story is believable because it's plausible.  It sounds a lot like something that could actually happen.  That's not good satire.  Good satire is readily recognizable as satire.  You don't succeed in lampooning anyone but yourself when you successfully trick your reader into thinking what you wrote was true.

Poe's Law states:

Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.

It's based on the premise that we're so used to extremists doing the unbelievable, that we're likely to believe they've done just about anything.  In other words, the point they want to make (that these people are extremists) is already understood by just about everyone.  Or as Jamie Kilstein put it at the Reason Rally, "Everyone already knows Pat Robertson is an asshole!"

If the goal of these sites is to bring to light the shitty things that extremists are doing, they're missing the mark.  By repeatedly misleading people for their own attention, all they accomplish is damage to the credibility of the real reports.  The more people learn they'd been tricked by reports that appeared real, the harder it becomes to get attention to incidents of actual extremism.

For both things you could be attempted, you're bad at it.  If you write for one of these sites, and it's not The Onion, please just stop.  You're not helping.  You're making a mess of things.  We have enough bullshit flowing around the Internet.  We don't need you adding to it.

Leave the satire and parody to The Onion and Stephen Colbert.  Leave the bullshit to people like Fox News.  And leave the outing of the assholes to places like Media Matters and Right Wing Watch.

Christian Bigot, Kevin Swanson Wants You To Buy Girl Scout Cookies

Right Wing Watch has posted clips of Christian Radio hosts Kevin Swanson & Dave Buehner saying some stupid shit^[1] about the Girl Scouts, "lesbianism" [sic], and singer Sara Bareilles^[2].  In the clips, Kevin Swanson begs their listeners to not buy Girl Scout cookies.

The individualism of feminism has been devastating to this country. I’d say you ought to say no the Girl Scout cookies too. I don’t want to support lesbianism, I don’t want to support Planned Parenthood and I don’t want to support abortion, and if that be the case I’m not buying Girl Scout cookies.

He hates women being equal to men (feminism), lesbians, Planned Parenthood, and women having control over their own bodies (abortion).  So he's not buying the cookies.  But I love all those things.  So I'll be buying plenty of them this year.

He's also got a problem with the Girl Scout's stated vision:

It does and I don’t want to promote a wicked organization that according to its own website doesn’t promote godly womanhood, it just doesn’t, I don’t see anything that promotes godly womanhood. The vision of the Girl Scouts of America is antithetical to a biblical vision for womanhood, it’s antithetical to it.

Let's take a look at their website to see what it says.  From their Advocacy page^[3]:

Girl Scouts of the USA's advocacy efforts help demonstrate to lawmakers that Girl Scouts is a resource and an authority on issues affecting girls. Based on almost 100 years of experience and developed from extensive research, the Girl Scout Public Policy and Advocacy Office:

• Encourages girls' healthy living through combating Relational Aggression and promoting girl-positive media images;
• Ensures girls feel emotionally and physically safe;
• Promotes girls' involvement in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM);
• Develops financial literacy skills; and
• Gives a voice to girls in underserved communities.

I wonder if it's anything from in that getting Swanson all upset.

Or maybe it's something from their page on Diversity^[4]:

Diversity has been a core value of Girl Scouts since its founding in 1912. At a time of segregation and before laws promoting civil rights were passed, our founder, Juliette Gordon Low, ensured that African-American, American Indian and Hispanic girls were able to become Girl Scouts. She led efforts to make Girl Scouting available to girls who lived in rural and urban areas, to girls who were rich, middle class and poor, and to girls who were born in this country as well as immigrants.

Since his complaint is a lack of Biblical womanhood, let's take a look at womanhood in the Bible.

1 Timothy 2:11-12^[5]

11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.

There's also Ephesians 5^[6], which I recently wrote about in more detail^[7].

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Kevin Swanson is a sexist who has a problem with women being independent, without a man in charge of them.  What else could he mean by "Biblical Womanhood"?^[8]  He's an asshole for that and probably many more reasons.

I hope you'll join me in buying Girl Scout Cookies this year, and then tweeting pictures of the purchase to Kevin Swanson^[9].  I want him to know just how much his hate has backfired.  I want this asshole to know he's helped the Girl Scouts, not hurt.

Personally, I'll be sending him pictures^[10] of my future Sara Bareilles purchases as well.

If you can't support any of them financially, following them on social media supports them in its way.

Girl Scouts^[11]: Twitter^[12] & Facebook^[13].

Sara Bareilles^[14]:  Twitter^[15] & Facebook^[16].

National Planned Parenthood^[17]: Twitter^[18] & Facebook^[19]

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland^[20], where I send donations directly:  Twitter^[21] & Facebook^[22]

However you choose to support any of these, please let Kevin Swanson know you've done so.  Maybe even thank him pointing you toward them to let him know how much he's helped them.

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1.  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/kevin-swanson-begs-you-not-buy-communist-lesbian-girl-scout-cookies
2.  href="http://www.amazon.com/Sara-Bareilles/e/B0017PAUAM/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&qid=1382410558&sr=8-1&tag=omahathe-20
3.  http://www.girlscouts.org/who_we_are/advocacy/
4.  http://www.girlscouts.org/who_we_are/diversity/
5.  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+2%3A11-12&version=NIV
6.  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+5&version=NIV
7.  http://aparticularblogbyaparticularatheist.blogspot.com/2013/09/gender-equality-in-bible.html
8.  http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/eccl/women.htm
9.  https://twitter.com/kevinpswanson
10.  https://twitter.com/aparticularA/status/392495018772271104
11.  http://www.girlscouts.org/
12.  https://twitter.com/girlscouts
13.  http://www.facebook.com/GirlScoutsUSA
14.  http://www.sarabmusic.com/
15.  https://twitter.com/SaraBareilles
16.  https://www.facebook.com/sarabareilles
17.  http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
18.  https://twitter.com/PPact
19.  https://www.facebook.com/PlannedParenthood
20.  http://www.plannedparenthood.org/heartland/
21.  https://twitter.com/PPHeartland
22.  https://www.facebook.com/PPHeartland