¨Romney's world view is couched in a religion that makes stark raving evangelical-inspired Christian-Zionist aggression of the kind W Bush practiced when he took us to war look positively mild.¨

Neoconservative Jingoism Plus Mormon Delusion Equals Perpetual War

If he's elected let's pray Romney isn't a good Mormon! Let's hope he's faking it!

 

¨...As the father of a Marine who was sent to fight in two stupid wars by an evangelical Protestant president I know how presidential theology can exacerbate stupidity. So I shudder to think that we might elect an even more religiously deluded and theologically-motivated president than W Bush was.

And yes, I know one is not supposed to criticize other people's religion in polite conversation. And yes I was once myself a member of the stupid Religious Right as I describe in my book Crazy For God , then I changed my mind. But there's nothing polite about needlessly sending Americans like my son to their deaths.

We Americans have the right to ask what our presidential candidates believe that may impact our lives. Romney's world view is couched in a religion that makes stark raving evangelical-inspired Christian-Zionist aggression of the kind W Bush practiced when he took us to war look positively mild. If Romney is a good Mormon he believes that the United States is the New Jerusalem and/or Zion. If Romney is a good Mormon he also believes that anyone endorsing models of life outside of Mormon/American xenophobic boundaries is warned in the Book of Mormon in (2 Nephi 10:16) as follows:

"And this land shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings upon the land, who shall raise up unto the Gentiles. And I will fortify this land (the USA) against all other nations. And he that fighteth against Zion shall perish, saith God. For he that raiseth up a king against me shall perish..."

In other words from the Mormon "perspective" too bad for the country or person who embraces non-US models of government outside the United States. Too bad for those unaware of the "fact" that they are "fighting against God and His Zion" if they disagree with American policy. And since those not like us are fighting against God when they take on America then naturally they must be dealt with very harshly...¨  please read it all, HERE

Thanks to AlteNet / By Frank Schaeffer

Christianity in Crisis: ¨Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich evangelists...Ignore them, writes Andrew Sullivan, and embrace Him.¨



¨If you go to the second floor of the National Museum of American History inWashington, D.C., you’ll find a small room containing an 18th-century Bible whose pages are full of holes. They are carefully razor-cut empty spaces, so this was not an act of vandalism. It was, rather, a project begun by Thomas Jefferson when he was a mere 27 years old. Painstakingly removing those passages he thought reflected the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, Jefferson literally cut and pasted them into a slimmer, different New Testament, and left behind the remnants (all on display until July 15). What did he edit out? He told us: “We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus.” He removed what he felt were the “misconceptions” of Jesus’ followers, “expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves.” And it wasn’t hard for him. He described the difference between the real Jesus and the evangelists’ embellishments as “diamonds” in a “dunghill,” glittering as “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.” Yes, he was calling vast parts of the Bible religious manure. Andrew Sullivan

 Organized Religion in Decline

¨....Meanwhile, organized religion itself is in trouble. The Catholic Church’s hierarchy lost much of its authority over the American flock with the unilateral prohibition of the pill in 1968 by Pope Paul VI. But in the last decade, whatever shred of moral authority that remained has evaporated. The hierarchy was exposed as enabling, and then covering up, an international conspiracy to abuse and rape countless youths and children. I don’t know what greater indictment of a church’s authority there can be—except the refusal, even now, of the entire leadership to face their responsibility and resign. Instead, they obsess about others’ sex lives, about who is entitled to civil marriage, and about who pays for birth control in health insurance. Inequality, poverty, even the torture institutionalized by the government after 9/11: these issues attract far less of their public attention.

For their part, the mainline Protestant churches, which long promoted religious moderation, have rapidly declined in the past 50 years. Evangelical Protestantism has stepped into the vacuum, but it has serious defects of its own. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat explores in his unsparing new book,Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, many suburban evangelicals embrace a gospel of prosperity, which teaches that living a Christian life will make you successful and rich. Others defend a rigid biblical literalism, adamantly wishing away a century and a half of scholarship that has clearly shown that the canonized Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ ministry, and are copies of copies of stories told by those with fallible memory. Still others insist that the earth is merely 6,000 years old—something we now know by the light of reason and science is simply untrue. And what group of Americans have pollsters found to be most supportive of torturing terror suspects? Evangelical Christians. Something has gone very wrong. These are impulses born of panic in the face of modernity, and fear before an amorphous “other.” This version of Christianity could not contrast more strongly with Jesus’ constant refrain: “Be not afraid.” It would make Jefferson shudder.

It would also, one imagines, baffle Jesus of Nazareth. The issues that Christianity obsesses over today simply do not appear in either Jefferson’s or the original New Testament. Jesus never spoke of homosexuality or abortion, and his only remarks on marriage were a condemnation of divorce (now commonplace among American Christians) and forgiveness for adultery. The family? He disowned his parents in public as a teen, and told his followers to abandon theirs if they wanted to follow him. Sex? He was a celibate who, along with his followers, anticipated an imminent End of the World where reproduction was completely irrelevant...¨ there is much more, HERE

·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar
·  Thanks to Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Beast)  HERE

YOUNG EVANGELICALS DIVING HEADLONG OUT OF THE RIGHT WING: ¨...have gotten tired of ´Gay Bashing´ and being told they have to vote for conservative Republicans in order to be Christians¨



¨Mainline Denominations Can Have a Bright Future If They Want One¨
By Frank Schaeffer

¨I've been speaking at many small colleges that have historical ties to the oldest mainline denominations in the US. I have been noticing something interesting: a terrific hunger for a deeper spirituality on the part of many young people who come from evangelical backgrounds like mine and also like me are looking for something outside of the right wing conservatism they come from.
I've also noticed that while some people in the so-called emergent evangelical movement are reaching out to these young people the leaders of the mainline denominations both locally and nationally often seem blind to a huge new opportunity for growth and renewal staring them in the face. That new opportunity is the scores of younger former evangelicals diving headlong out of the right wing evangelical churches.


What brings those suffering from spiritual burnout to my talks is that I've been there and done that. I usually get invited to speak because someone at the school shares my former evangelical background and has read one of my books like Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. I'm invited as a speaker who talks about both the religious and political sector where I've been arguing against the "politics of hate," that has overtaken the far right.


The title of my talk is usually something like "Saving Faith from Politicized and Poisonous Religion." I speak about how as someone born into a leading evangelical religious family I found a deeper faith by embracing mystery and paradox.


My college talks are thronged by young people who have gotten tired of being told they have to vote for conservative Republicans in order to be Christians. And they are tired of the false certainties not to mention the relentless gay bashing...¨ please read it all, by Frank Schaeffer,  HERE


· Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar

IN ORDER TO DEPOSE OUR FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT: The Moral Authority of Mormon and Roman Catholic Bishops and Their Evangelical Pals

¨A Moral Authority¨

¨It’s like a bad joke opening, “Two Roman Catholics and a Mormon walk into a bar and demand that all the women stop using contraception...”

To make the joke complete let's examine the “moral authority” credentials of these three clowns and that of the "religious authorities" who want to make religion – say the “issue” that President Obama is not a “real Christian," or he is “anti-religious freedom" – an election year talking point.

Who is it that claims this moral authority and that also demands to be taken seriously? Why the Roman Catholic bishops and a former Mormon missionary of course!

I didn’t bring this up, they did! So cool your jets everyone who only wants religion to be respected and never criticized, even when that "religion" plays hardball politics.

Who are these paragons of tolerance demanding that the rest of us respect the reclassification of robbing women of their right to use contraceptives as “religious freedom?”

Using religion as an election issue in order to depose our first black president.

Back to our “two Catholics and a Mormon walk into a bar,” or rather back to Newt, Mitt and Rick walk into a bar. So what about the moral authority of the religious bodies they are "defending" -- as a way to actually attack the President? They brought religion up so lets talk about it! What right do they or their bishops have to lecture the rest of us?

When Mitt was working for his church as a missionary he was working for a church that at that time banned black men from being ministers.

When Newt and Rick speak for their church’s tender conscience on not being forced to insure women’s health, they are speaking for a church body run by old men who have presided over 50 years of covering up child abuse, sexual molestation and the codling of fascist regimes from Franco to Mussolini.

Like I said, this may be impolite to mention but the rest of us didn’t start talking about religion as an election issue in order to depose our first black president.

And what of the fellow traveler evangelicals ready to yell that they may be "personally" for "allowing" women to use contraception but that they just want to "defend religious liberty?"

Aren't they the people spouting anti-Muslim nonsense from coast to coast? Aren't they the people trying to ban gay men and women from marrying? These evangelicals seem eager to strip lots of people of actual rights these days while crying wolf about their own.

Like they say, people who live in class houses shouldn't throw stones. If the bishops want this fight, bring it on!...¨   please read it all, HERE  (photos and color emphasis added by Leonardo Ricardo)

Frank Schaeffer is a writer. He is just launching a speaking tour called Theocracy or Democracy.

·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar
·  Thanks to MSNBC, photo

THE LAST LAUGH: President Obama is succeeding in spite of the fact that he’s been up against a Republican Party willing to destroy the economy in order to destroy him.

President Obama Will Be Vindicated

As Ryan Lizza writes in the NEW YORKER:

“Obama didn’t remake Washington. But his first two years stand as one of the most successful legislative periods in modern history. Among other achievements, he has saved the economy from depression, passed universal health care, and reformed Wall Street.”

Mitt Romney, ¨a vapid twit paid for by corporate interests¨

¨So when are President Obama’s critics, people like Paul Krugman and Mitt Romney, going to offer President Obama an apology? Both have often loudly predicted that he made the economy worse and was putting America on the wrong economic path. Both are being proved wrong by the economic comeback we are in. I mention them not to pick on Krugman, who I respect or even on Romney (who I regard as a vapid twit bought and paid for by corporate interests) but to make a point: President Obama is going to have the last laugh on his critics, no matter what ideological spectrum they hail from...¨  read it all, by Frank Schaeffer,  HERE

·  Thanks to The New Yorker
·  Thanks to Ryan Lissa 
·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar
·  Thanks to President Barack Obama

A bad case of déjà vu: ¨...the Republicans and the Loony Religious Fringe¨

¨Every single one of the sops Newt Gingrich and the other Republican candidates are throwing the far right have been scripted for them by generations of so-called Reconstructionist "thinkers", Roman Catholic ideologues and Christian Zionists that have been pushing the religious community -- and America -- steadily in the direction of overthrowing democracy and replacing it with some version of an Americanized theocracy...¨  please read it all, by Frank Schaeffer,   HERE

·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar
·  Thanks to Flickr Photosharing
·  Thanks to "Burn In Your Hell" by Herr Müller

THE GREAT AMERICAN RELIGIOUS FRAUDSTERS: ¨...wrap themselves in the flag, but when push comes to shove, their religious values, theocratic values, they are not talking about the same America the rest of us are looking at...¨

Michele Bachmann is a Minnesota Congresswoman and the sweetheart of the Tea Party. She has ignorantly riled up thousands of people with barrels of lies and propaganda against Obama and the Democratic party. Her actions have been at best irresponsible and at worst, criminal. All the while, she has smiled and made some of the most hysterical comments ever made in a political arena HERE

Governor Rick Perry of Texas

¨....any guy that starts a national run by calling a prayer meeting and mixing the issues of church and state as he has in Texas is someone who has his eye on this little group. But I say one more time just before we go. It's total hypocrisy because these people know that group helps them win the primary but when the Republicans get into office it's about serving corporate Wall Street interests.

It has nothing to do with the social agenda they get elected on so it's a scam, but it's a scam that keeps working. Forty years of Republican domination of the American political process based on abortion, gay rights, these other things they wave around, but actually it's really about corporate America.¨  By Frank Schaeffer, HERE

Congresswoman Bachmann comes from the ¨literal understanding of the Bible¨ evangelical movement

Her own anti-gay views have been well-documented and her allies in the fight against us are some of the most violently homophobic people we have seen in this decade. The Reverend Bradlee Dean/pictured (who has defended the execution of gay people) is her pal. HERE

¨...It will be a liability with the general public when they learn how radical she is.
She comes from a wing of the evangelical movement where takes the Bible literally, and that includes the old testament that has passages about stoning gay people to death and all the rest of it...

Half-term Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin is a member of the far ¨religious right¨

...And, of course, Michele Bachmann, like Sarah Palin and others on the far religious right is too politically savvy to express clearly what she believes...

Husband Marcus Bachmann’s Ex-Gay Problem is part of Michele Bachmann´s secret hypocrisy, HERE

...But the fact of the matter is, the part of Christianity she comes from is radical even for evangelical Bible believers. And so I think- I think gradually, it will become apparent to American voters that she could not win the general election. And Republicans are going to have to make a choice to either be a normal political party or, really, theocracy in waiting with people like Michele Bachmann, who in the best of all possible worlds, as far as she would see it, would produce a theocracy in the country where the Bible would be paramount and no longer the Constitution or the Bill of Rights...¨ By Frank Schaeffer, HERE

Former ALASKAN Governor Sarah Palin and Todd Palin are linked to ¨secessionists¨

¨...Well, you know when you mentioned her husband talking about gay people being barbarians and if you look, for instance at Sarah Palin's family, they've had a lot to do with the secessionist movement in Alaska. You're not part of a movement that says it wants to secede from the union in the United States if you like this country...¨ By Frank Schaeffer, HERE

·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer*, sidebar
·  Thanks to Crooks and Liars, sidebar
·  Thanks to Video Cafe
·  Thanks to MSNBC's Richard Lui
·  Thanks to Box Turtle Bulletin, sidebar
·  Thanks to Jim Burroway
·  Thanks to City Pages, Minneapolis HERE
·  Thanks to Illustration by Robin Eley for City Pages
·  Thanks to G.R. Anderson Jr.
·  Thanks to Talk About Equality,  HERE
·  Thanks to Anna Grau, Nueva York    HERE

* For anyone not already familiar with Frank Schaeffer, I posted this interview back in 2009 just after Schaeffer came out with his book, Crazy for God -- Frank Schaeffer, Author of "Crazy for God" on What's Left of the GOP: Today the Republican Party is rooting for doom. Schaeffer has a new book out, this time focusing on his mother rather than his father as the previous book did and MSNBC's Richard Lui brought him on to discuss the current crop of GOP presidential candidates and whether Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry should he get in, would actually have a chance at winning the nomination.  Heather

WEARING OUT YOUR WELCOME? ¨Most Americans don't want idiots who pander to creationists, global warming deniers, secessionists, birthers, believers in the right to life of stem cells etc., running the country.

¨...Like most Evangelical fundamentalist movements, the American Religious Right advocates the fusion of state power and religion through the reestablishment of the "Christian America" idea of "American Exceptionalism" (i.e., a nation chosen by God), the form of government adopted by the Puritan's successors during the age of early American colonialism. What sets the Evangelical Religious Right apart from other Christian movements is its historical obsession with purging other Americans who do not conform to its twisted interpretation of Christian scripture...¨

...The unstated agreement goes like this: Republicans will pander to the Religious Right on the social issues - abortion, gay rights, prayer in schools, creationism in text books, etc., etc., as long as the Religious Right turns a blind eye to the fact that the Republican Party will A), do nothing substantive to change any of these things, and B) sell the soul of the country to corporate America, a place where one percent of the population grab as much wealth as the lower 50 percent...

...Eventually the party that makes the Goldman Sachs rape of the world possible, but depends on voters who say they believe every word in the Bible, will have to come to terms with Bible verses like this one:

"Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'" (Matthew 19:21).

As for the general public, the Republicans are wearing out their welcome.

Most Americans don't want idiots who pander to creationists, global warming deniers, secessionists, birthers, believers in the right to life of stem cells etc., etc., running the country.¨  please read it all, HERE 

FRANK SCHAEFFERS NEW BOOK:  Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway

·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar
·  Thanks to Saudi "Royals" and Republican Hypocrites
·  Thanks to Photobucket, ¨Blind Eye¨ and ¨Puritans¨

Note: emphasis and photos added by Leonardo Ricardo

The ¨Religious¨ Republican Liars: A message to the so-called “Real American” conservative critics of our president; those liars like Donald Trump, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin

An Open Letter to the Republican Liars Club

Bin Laden's Dead: Up Yours to Obama's "Real American" Critics!

¨This morning I got up at 4 AM to walk across the street to congratulate my Marine son (now home safe with his wife and two little children after 5 years service and war) on having been a small link in the chain of service that hunted down and killed bin Laden. I wanted to thank someone who wore the uniform of the US military. I also sent up yet another “up yours!” to the so-called “Real American” conservative critics of our president; those liars like Donald Trump, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin et al who have nurtured the racist-motivated attacks on our first black president.

Was the SUCCESSFUL hunter of bin Laden a “secret Muslim”? Was he “born in Kenya”? Was he “soft on terrorism” or as far right religious leader/birther Franklin Graham put it giving radical Islam a “pass”?

I used to be a Republican until the party became to be the mouthpiece of not just “Birther” nuts like Trump but home to the loony conspiracy-driven far right “Death Panel” loons.

Unlike the neoconservative shills that drive us to war after war my son actually volunteered and served.

While the war-loving “neocons” pontificated on American "exceptionalism" and power and went to parties in Washington DC hosted by the defense industry I stayed up at night worrying while my son was shot at. He came home safe, but no thanks to Fox News and the other perpetual war shills who talk “patriotism” while other people’s children – mine for instance – do all the heavy lifting.

While in Afghanistan my son John worked in signals intelligence, went on secret missions looking for bin Laden and did his part with thousands of other heroes. Meanwhile back home liars and racists took over the Republican Party and told us our commander in chief wasn’t a real American. Outright lies were leveled again and again and the Republican “leadership” did nothing to shut the Birthers, Death Panel blatherers up.

¨I know who the people are who aren’t “Real Americans” they are the unpatriotic liars wrapping themselves in the flag my son fought for...¨

A lunatic “Tea Party” was largely a reaction of white people unable to stomach the sight of a black man smarter than them sitting in the White House. That black man is leading our country out of a failed economy and also had the will and guts to kill our sworn enemy.

I know who the people are who aren’t “Real Americans” they are the unpatriotic liars wrapping themselves in the flag my son fought for and that they use to sell books, reality TV shows and their racist ideas with.

Today the American right wing phony patriots look smaller than ever, about as stupid as Trump's hair.¨ read it all,   HERE


·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar
·  Thanks to President Barack Obama

FUNDAMENTALIST/EVANGELICAL WARNING: ¨If Religion Kills America There Will Be No Resurrection (Happy Easter!)¨ Frank Schaeffer

Ignorance has been elevated to a new form of "virtue"

¨...One group that has perfected the art of special pleading for respect for non-reality-based "ideas" are the religious fundamentalists otherwise called Evangelicals. They train their families from birth to be the sort of gullible dupes the Palin/Trump/Bachman/Becks of this world manipulate.

Evangelicals are a group to which no idea is too farfetched. From birth they are told that facts are lies and that "true believers" like them -- and they only -- have access to the actual and only truth: the Bible.

And this isn't just any Bible theirs is the literal "I-believe-every-word-to-be-true" Bible.

When you raise people on the idea that black is white and white is black, green is red and blue is yellow.... don't be surprised if eventually a whole class of folks are color blind.

Someone repeatedly told that God-hating elites deny the "fact" that dinosaurs and humans coexisted a few thousand years ago; that the world is 6000 years old; that gay men and women choose to be that way and can be "cured"; that everyone besides "born-again" Evangelicals are going to hell; that Jesus will come back soon... etc., etc., becomes the sort of person who, quite literally, will believe anything.

Talk about alternative medicine, here's a whole alternative reality: "You believe in human evolution, but we know better!" "You believe that president Obama was born in America, but we know better..." please read it all HERE (bold emphasis, photos and caps by LR)

·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer
·  Thanks to ¨Sex, Mom and God¨ HERE
·  Thanks to Flickr Photo Sharing

¨President Obama has met the vile far right (and religious right lynch mob) and also met the disappointment of the shrill impatient left with a calm smile and good humor...¨

Obama Is Now and Will Be a Great President

The "disappointed" left says president Obama sold out. The racist-laced Medicaid-mugging, billionaire-codling right staggers under the weight of terminal "birther" mythology (now trumpeted by moron-come-lately Donald Trump). Meanwhile president Obama continues to bide his time and looks down the road to the post-2012 reality when his patience with an impatient country, his thoughtfulness in the context of a sound-bite-entertain-ourselves-to-death era of short attention spans and historical amnesia will be vindicated.

If you think that president Obama played the Republicans in the last lame duck congress like a violin just wait until after 2012 when the rotten Tea Party will be about as relevant as 1930s hate monger radio priest: Charles Coughlin (the "father" of hate radio), is today.

U.S. President Obama honoring Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu

President Obama has met the vile far right (and religious right lynch mob) and also met the disappointment of the shrill impatient left with a calm smile and good humor. He's even reached out to what remains of the Republican Party languishing hock deep in the quagmire of their own frightened and wholly imagined paranoid "victim" status. President Obama has also played chicken with each new crisis and -- invariably -- pulled last moment hair raising victory from what critics said would be defeat...

Before he'd served a year president Obama lost the support of the easily distracted (bitter?) left of the Left and also became the target for the white hot rage of the hate-filled right of the Right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds are sticking with our president.

Frank Schaeffer

I happen to be a white fifty-eight-year-old former Republican. In my new book I explain why I left (fled!) the right and religious right movement my family helped found Sex, Mom and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway. HERE (In this book I deconstruct evangelical "thinking" about politics and the Bible in a way that I hope entertainingly exposes the religion-created sexual dysfunction that has been the only actual motivating factor for the so called culture wars.)

That said... I voted for Obama and have been impressed by the success of his presidency so far (we're not in an economic depression because of his interventions) and heartened by the promise of his post-2012 presidency that is shaping up to be historic. . : ¨ please read it all, HERE

PERSONAL NOTE:  I live in Central America. I´m a retired person and a U.S. Citizen and there are many, many ¨Americanos¨ who own second homes near me and enjoy the best of both worlds or simply live abroad all year round-- most, I would guess about 95% of my fellow U.S. citizens are Democrats (we actually had our own Inauguaration Ball to celebrate in 2008)  and will  very likely help reelect President Barack Obama in 2012 by sending in overseas/absentee ballots after legally filing for them, receiving them and then voting (it´s not as complicated as it sounds).  Contact:  democratsabroad_guate@yahoo.com , or The Embassy of The United States near you (Consular Section) for information...online is easy too and there are several options for absentee/overseas resident voting, here is one HERE , it´s not too early to register for 2012.  Leonardo Ricardo

·  Thanks to President Barack Obama
·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar

FRANK SCHAEFFER: ¨2011 will see the USA rebounding, the Democratic Party doing well in 2012, the country in boom times by 2013 and the President having a great second term.¨

¨Obama's Critics Owe Him a New Years (Fact-Based) Apology¨

¨The left of the left -- at least as represented by some of its commentators hovering around the Democratic Party -- has a choice: make a New Years' resolution to rejoin the reality-based community, or head for its own version of Tea Party la-la Land negativity.


Or put it this way: commentators like Paul Krugman owe President Obama an apology, an "I was wrong" about the economy, the direction of our country, the success of President Obama's methods of "compromise" (as opposed to their's of "bold" ideological intransigence...)


Why? Because 2011 will see the USA rebounding, the Democratic Party doing well in 2012, the country in boom times by 2013 and the President having a great second term.


I happen to be a white fifty-eight-year-old former Republican. I explain about why I left the far right movement my family helped found in my forthcoming book Sex, Mom and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway


President Obama is the first Democratic Party presidential candidate I ever voted for. I am hoping that others will join me in committing to a new level of support for our president.


We find ourselves in the position of survivors of a shipwreck clinging to a life raft. President Obama is that "life raft." Our young president is leading us at a time of extraordinary peril. He and we face overwhelming challenges including two wars and a financial crisis he had dumped into his lap by fools.


When we hear that jobless numbers are going down faster than expected, that shoppers spent money over the holidays, that economic forecasts are being revised upward and so on, it's time for a reassessment of the President's critic's claims of impending doom because of his many alleged "mistakes." (These include such "facts" as the accusations that Obama "sold out" to Wall Street, is "too ready to compromise" etc., etc.)

A reassessment should come from what might be called the Krugamites. They could do what Rachel Maddow did when she said "I was wrong" while speaking of how she'd given up hope that the President could pull out his year end list of remarkable victories.


Then again Maddow hasn't staked her reputation on our president's failure, as have people like Krugman, who has never warmed to our first black president...¨ read it all, HERE

· Thanks to President Barack Obama, at his website HERE
· Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar
· Thanks to The Huffington Post, sidebar

¨If there is one thing all Christians should have learned by now it's that we -- of all people -- should never, ever cast aspersions on anyone else's sex life!¨

Conservative Christians Circling ¨sexual sin¨

Gays, the Military and God

¨In the light (or should I say "dark") of the Republican's stand against repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" we need to understand the wider context of the fight that pits human rights against the conservative Christians who have taken over the Republican Party.

If there is one thing all Christians should have learned by now it's that we -- of all people -- should never, ever cast aspersions on anyone else's sex life!

When it comes to pointing the finger over sexual "sin" the worldwide Christian community -- from the halls of the Vatican, to some Evangelical conservative "home church" established in somebody's basement two minutes ago -- is in the morally compromised position of a sometime violent habitual rapist criticizing a shoplifter for stealing a candy bar.

We're not talking about "a few bad apples," but the whole edifice of religion top to bottom.

I look at these issues from an inside perspective. My late father, Francis Schaeffer, was a key Evangelical founder and leader of the American Religious Right. I grew up in a home where we knew all the key actors in the anti-gay Evangelical/Far Right "cause". I changed my mind and I changed my politics. I explain why I quit the evangelical movement in my book Crazy for God -- How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back.

Speaking of rapists, an impartial inquiry into child abuse at Catholic institutions in Ireland found that the top church leaders knew that sexual abuse was endemic in boys' and girls' institutions. A nine-year government inquiry investigated a sixty-year period when more than 35,000 children were placed in a network of "reformatories," "industrial schools" and "workhouses." All of them suffered physical and/or sexual abuse that more than two thousand witnesses confirmed to the commission. They were placing children in these camps until the 1980s. Physical and emotional abuse was a built-in deliberate feature of these institutions for young men and women. The inquiry proved that child rape defines Irish Catholicism as surely as the sign of the cross once did.

Anglican and Member of Parliament, David ¨Kill the Gays¨ Bahati, UGANDA

(Rachel Maddow recently interviewed David Bahati, the author of the "Kill The Gays" Ugandan bill and he said that "We must do this to protect our children." I thought that actually if logic ruled and protecting children was the goal, gays would be free but Roman Catholic bishops and priests would be rounded up as a preventative measure. Okay, I'm kidding but on the face of the evidence that would make more sense!)

Closer to home the Family (or The Fellowship) ran a residential "ministry" specializing in housing and indoctrinating members of Congress in their Washington DC, C-Street residence. Several Family members -- Nevada Senator John Ensign, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and former Representative Chip Pickering of Mississippi -- were all found guilty of adultery. This fact would be meaningless to anyone but their wives, except for the fact that all three also defined their political careers by loudly advertising their so-called Christian family values. Sanford admitted to an affair with a woman in Argentina. Ensign admitted that his family paid $96,000 in hush money to his former mistress and her family. Pickering is said to have conducted his adulterous affair, within the walls of the Family's C-Street complex.

Then there was George Rekers, who played an important role in many of the most extreme Evangelical assaults on gay people's rights. His career started in 1982 with his publishing a homophobic "textbook" Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality. Rekers was a co-founder with James Dobson of the gay-bashing Family Research Council. In 2010 Rekers was found to be "in a class by himself" when it came to sexual hypocrisy (as New York Times columnist Frank Rich noted). A Baptist minister with a bent for "curing" homosexuality, sixty-year-old Rekers was caught by a Miami New Times reporter with a twenty-year-old male escort at Miami International Airport. The "couple" was returning from a ten-day trip to London. Rekers only mistake, he told Christianity Today magazine, was to hire a "travel assistant" without proper vetting. Rekers said, "[my assistant] did let me share the gospel of Jesus Christ ... read it all   HERE 

· Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar
· Thanks to The Huffington Post, sidebar
· Thanks to Flickr Photosharing

CHRISTMAS REALITY ALERT: ¨President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty ´supporters´ or hate-filled Republican detractors!¨

Barack Hussein Obama II , OUR 44th President United States of America and his family

Obama Will Triumph — So Will America
By Frank Schaeffer

Before he’d served even one year President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds -- including this white, straight, 57-year-old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with our President. Why?-- because he is succeeding.


Barack Obama takes the oath of office of the president of the United States January 20, 2009

Meanwhile back in the reality-based community – in just 12 short months -- President Obama:

#Continued the draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Restored America’s image around the globe
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Banned torture of American prisoners
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of the American economy
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Stood up for educational reform
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Won a Nobel peace prize
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had failed to even begin
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor and patience
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of job losses
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the “blood of tyrants” needing to “water the tree of liberty”…
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR -- President Obama “failed”! Other than that he didn’t “live up to expectations”!

Who actually has failed...

...are the Americans that can’t see the beginning of a miracle of national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for this President to fail so that they could be proved right in their dire and morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned “news” into just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted infantile country.

Here’s the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty “supporters” or hate-filled Republican detractors!

The Future Looks Good

After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on all fronts -- with a canny and calculating eye to the possible succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved not just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was falling.

Just because we didn’t get everything we wanted in the first short and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of us stayed the course. And we will be proved right.

Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, depending on your point of view) to everyone!

PS. if you agree that Obama is shaping up to be a great president please pass this on and hang in there! Read it all, by Frank Schaeffer, click HERE


Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of “Patience With God – Faith For People Who Don’t Like Religion (Or Atheism).”

Frank may be contacted at Frankschaeffer.com

·Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, at the sidebar
·Thanks to Wikipedia
·Thanks to Flickr Photosharing