Check this out: How Dare a Museum Offer an Eclectic Selection of Art?!
Asked in the article is this question: “If it’s wrong for the government to take the taxpayers’ money to promote religion, why is it OK to take taxpayers’ money to assault religion?”
I’m going to sit down with all the folks who claim to speak for this country and its people, and actually recite to them the First Amendment. I’m not sure most of them have ever really sat down and read the thing. There’s an incredibly simple answer to the prenominate inquiry. It’s wrong to take tax money to endorse religion because our constitution (which is very handy when, say, a god-fearing Christian hunter wants to buy a semiautomaic rifle to handle today’s Super Animals, like electric eels) maintains a separation of church and state. And that’s actually a good thing for the Catholics who have been up in arms about the Smithsonian exhibit, and who are the folks who asked the question in the first place: I’ve heard the Vatican has “historians” and surely one of them has stumbled on the history if the United States; and if they’ve even cursorily perused our national history, they might have noticed that the United States, well, it doesn’t much care for Catholics. Hell, the country has, in 234 years, elected one Catholic president and we shot the son of a bitch right quick. In the south, Catholics are just above “Jew” on the Index of Relative Humanity. If we hadn’t inserted this little provision into that hallowed document, the zealous Calvinists—people too religiously extreme for the same 15th century Europe who sponsored the Spanish Inquisition (and not the funny one from Monty Python, this one)—who founded the nation would have made damned sure that the Catholic poorboxes got stuffed with the same smallpox blankets they doled out to the Ottawas.
And one would think that the church couldn’t get too upset about what the nation does with its tax money as, for some reason, they don’t have to pay taxes. Scientific institutions do. Oh, yes. Doctors pay taxes. Priests, no. Aeronautic engineers? Yes. Nuns? No. Rule of thumb for appropriate taxation: astronomers, yes; asgtrologers, no. But the bottom line is as follows: It’s okay to take tax money to support art which happens to condemn or question religion because A) it’s art and B) not federally sponsored religiosity. And there’s not a goddamn thing in the First Amendment regarding the “separation of not going to church and state.” Atheism is by definition not a religion; being critical of religious organizations is protected speech, the same way Glenn Beck’s daily polemics on Obama are protected speech. If any religious types want to get into this “I don’t approve of what you’re doing with my taxes” argument, I’m going to bring back that whole Taxation Without Representation thing and make mention of the conspicuous lack of atheistic senators or congresspeople, and how I don’t want a cent of my money spent on any Faith-Based Initiative or church-run youth group. Why not church run youth groups? Oh, a lot of reasons. But I can’t help coming back to this one.
AOL search records accidentally released in August of 2006. The number on the left is a single anonymous user's ID.
Anyways. Here’s the video in question: A Fire in My Belly, Wojnarowicz. Auteur Wojnarowicz died of AIDS in the early 90s. The video’s images, used to depict the suffering of AIDS patients, involve a scene of ants crawling on a crucifix. If you try to link directly to the video on YouTube, the site will tell you it’s not suitable for minors. Taking minors against their will to an institution in which they’ll weekly be told that they’ll burn in agony for all eternity if they, say, explore their own genitals (or ask why god didn’t answer their prayers; or try and opt out of going to said institution for a weekend of sleeping in; or ask why it’s okay that so many people in the Bible had slaves) is okay, and not child abuse. But this video, which questions the relative merits/compassion of religion in the early days of AIDS, is absolutely deleterious to kids. Like a fucking cancer. Makes sense to me. Interestingly, all those Christians who—post September 11th—scoffed at the uppity Muslims who declared fatwa after fatwa on the Danish cartoonist who (gasp) dared to draw Muhammad don’t seem to see any problem with damning this video’s author and those who would see it for desecration of their idol. Reason #47,356 that I’m not just an atheist, I’m an antitheist.
Question for Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League: Since anyone who had or has AIDS is suffering a plague in retribution for sinning against god, wouldn’t you want this video to be out there? I mean, could you have a clearer instantiation of your message? “Lookee here! This faggot insulted god and now he’s dead of AIDS.” Pass the collection plate after showing A Fire in My Belly, then some pictures of AIDS victims, and I think you’d find it extra full that week. But queerly enough, Donohue calls A Fire in My Belly “hate speech.” He says, “This is not the first time the Smithsonian has offended us,” said Donohue, who’s previously moaned about the Smithsonian’s propensity to post work by artists he’s judged to be anti-Catholic. “Why should the government pay for this?” he asks. Again, Mr. Donohue: see above. It’s truly upsetting that your feelings have been hurt, and possibly irreparable damage has been done to your fragile sensibilities. So, I’ll make you a deal: I’ll exhume Wojnarowicz and he and I will, à la Weekend at Bernie’s, apologize to you, just as soon as you apologize for hurting the feelings/damaging the sensibilities of every non-Christian who’s ever sat through a sermon and been told that he or she is an awful, despicable person without whom the world would be closer to paradise. Or the centuries of upholding the righteousness of slavery based on your Hamitic Curse theory (bonus points to anyone who’s read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and recalls what he says about the difference between religious masters and areligious ones). Or if the Pope gathers together a group of no less than 100 children who have been sexually abused by a trusted religious official and apologizes to them, sincerely, one at a time for allowing their lives to be ruined, then helping to cover up the criminal offenses.
Ah, and if you’re looking for hate speech, Mr. Dononhue, here’s the best I can do: The world would be closer to paradise without your god, without any gods. Gods are ruining the planet as quickly as nuclear proliferation and, now that I think of it, half the time disgust at a rival clan’s antiquated tribal god image is the primary motive for arming one’s country to the teeth. Your plagiarized religion and its hero (Jesus=Horus, Osiris/Dionysus, Mithra, &c.) were beneficial in the formation of civilized societies, I’ll give you that—mostly because they encouraged a self-righteous spirit which justified all manner of theft, usurpation, and imperialism (thus advancing technological evolution much faster than it previously would have). But what have you or your god, or any gods, done for us lately?Well, there’s the childhood rapes I mentioned, and stories of eternal hellfire so deeply engrained that they have made good, moral peoples entire lives miserable for no rational reason; there’s the bilking of money that could be put to much better use; there’s the keeping away of birth control from women who later die from abortion-induced sepsis (as opposed to having to birth and raise children born of rape, or children whom they know they won’t be able to feed and whom they’d rather not learn to love while simultaneously watching them waste away); and there’s the holding back of condoms which let AIDS become as common in Africa as cold sores are in America—but don’t worry, I blame the cold sores on beer pong, not you. There’s the sinking test scores of American students who are no longer able to compete in the science-based tech marketplace because our educational system wastes time on young-earth creationism when it could be teaching, well, anything else contemporary science has offered us (sulfur-based life with DNA different than any other creature on earth, dark matter).
What else, what else? Does anyone else recall Mother Teresa’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in which she lamented for quite some time on the tolls of overpopulation, on starvation, and misery, and then said, “I was surprised in the West to see so many young boys and girls given into drugs, and I tried to find out why — why is it like that, and the answer was: Because there is no one in the family to receive them. Father and mother are so busy they have no time. Young parents are in some institution and the child takes back to the street and gets involved in something…These are things that break peace, but I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion.” (Note: if you’re not able to spot it, the ironical part about this sentiment is that all of the things that this myopic woman spent her life fighting against are totally preventable, if you understand that the killing of a zygote—it is killing—is far more merciful than allowing that zygote to turn into an unloved child, an abandoned child, a child dying of inanition, a child sold into slavery to feed the rest of its family. The only person who could argue for the superiority of the latter is a sadist. Or someone who thinks that real, visceral human suffering doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean anything, because after slow painful death comes Candy Land. Life is not always a gift. )
And finally, if you want to branch out and speak ecumenically, what’s the last big thing religion’s done for this country? Oh, yeah. Some people flew a couple of planes into some skyscrapers a few years back. G.W. Bush and his god recall it, so you might, too. Now. Lest you go and say, “Well, September 11th was the work of extremists. We’re not all like that.” Check this out: Fuck the Father, I Give His Son to Mom & a Holy Ghost
And people wonder why I’m passionate about my antitheism. The party line is always, “Hey, let people have their own private gods, and do what they will. If they’re not terrorists, then what’s the big deal?” The big deal is this: everyone else’s private gods always become public policy and fuck up other folks’ lives. Good folks’ lives. Chilean women can’t terminate their rape babies, who (thanks to shoddy care for poor women) might just end up killing them during the birthing process because of someone else’s private god. By 2020, everyone in Africa except Angelina Jolie will have AIDS because of someone else’s private gods—but on the upside, that might change since Pope Benedict recently decreed that, if you’re already a man fucking a man, you might as well wear a condom, since you’re already going to hell. His decree has nothing to do with the safety of gay men, it’s all about how tragic it would be to accidentally infect a an otherwise righteous Christian. In 2010 the idea of gods have served their purpose. At best, gods are training wheels. They’re ankle weights on Usain Bolt as he trains for the big race. At worst, gods get your children to trust pederasts. They get them to strap on explosive vests and walk into supermarkets. Gods get your daughter’s clitoris sliced off with a broken Rolling Rock bottle. They demand she be killed if she’s dared to get raped. And, if your kids are gay, they, these private gods, don’t mind if someone drags them behind a car until they exsanguinate (heck: it might just save their soul!). At worst, gods are heavy ankle weights Usain Bolt forgot to take off before the actual race.
A private god took this boy’s father from him. In a country where most fathers don’t want shit to do with their kids, one was actually fighting to be with his. A rational atheist sitting on the bench would at least have continued shared custody of the child to the parent who’s got a stable job and wants to be a part of his kid’s life. Hey, the guy doesn’t smoke crack and, in America, that’s all you’ve really got to prove to be allowed to spawn (though if you’d like to discuss the ethics of forced sterilization of people who repeatedly prove to be unfit to breed, I’d be happy to: I’m pro-Mandatory Breeding License). This god-fearing judge might have just granted custody to the mother, even if she happens to be a crack smoker, because she also happens to attend Easter mass. Apparently, religious divorcées make better child custodians because having an imaginary friend automatically guarantees a two-parent household. Weird that this doesn’t also work for schizophrenics. A god-fearing judge denied this gentleman access to his own child, not because he was a danger to the child’s mind or body, but because he was a potential danger to the boy’s soul. By the way: If you can’t find “Soul” on the periodic table of elements, you’re looking in the wrong place. It’s above Hydrogen, and always gets cut off by the copier. Don’t worry: the church is working on it.
One person’s private god always ends up public policy. It lost this man his kid. Personal private gods killed 2,996 in the World Trade Center ordeal. And now personal gods want to dictate what institutions of higher learning and culture can and cannot display—which shouldn’t be news, since it’s been going on for decades. Anyone else remember Piss Christ?
Fuck your gods. All of them.
