Gingrich: Adoption Agencies Should Be Able To Take Taxpayer Money And Then Discriminate Against Taxpayers

Newt Gingrich, giant baby

Here's something that the GOP candidates (and many other Americans, for that matter) can't seem to grasp:

If an organization wishes to take taxpayer money, they should not discriminate against the very taxpayers who are helping to fund that organization.

Take Newt Gingrich (please), who argued on CNN this morning, that religious adoption services should have the right to turn away gay couples wishing to adopt, in states where it is legal for them to do so.

He argues that these religious adoption services, such as the Catholic Church, have "been forced to close," when, in reality, they closed up shop rather than follow the laws required of them.

GINGRICH: Because you’re saying to religious group, give up your religion. That’s absurd. The idea that the state would impose its secular values on a religious organization is an absurdity.

O’BRIEN: If you want funding. Isn’t that if you want funding.

GINGRICH: No. No. In Massachusetts.

O’BRIEN: You can do whatever you want but if you want funding.

GINGRICH: No, that’s not true. That’s not true. There are states now, including the District of Columbia, which essentially adopt laws that say you can’t offer an adoption service unless you meet the secular standards of the state. They are in effect saying the secular standards of the state are more important than religious freedom. I think it is inherently anti-Christian and anti-Jewish. It is in favor of a secular model, that I think is wrong. And I think that it’s wrong for the government to impose its values on religion. That’s the whole point of the First Amendment, is to not have the government imposing values on religion.

Tebow 3:16 -- Coincidences, Odds & Our Need To Find Order In A Chaotic World

By now you've probably heard that Tim Tebow is a miracle worker. Last night, the bible verse-wearing, sideline-kneeling quarterback threw an 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime to lift his Broncos past the Steelers.

If the entire season had not already elicited talk of divine intervention, last night's overtime win put the miracle-speak in overdrive.

Tebow passed for 316 yards against the Steelers, completing 10 of 21 pass attempts. In other words, he passed for 31.6 yards per completion.

For those unaware, Tebow's favorite Bible verse is John 3:16.

Anyone who dipped into the Twitter stream last night would likely have seen the coincidences piling up. Many of them making any number of peripheral and mundane facts and figures into signs of the divine.

Sure, it's a neat story. The publicly devout Christian football player has had his share of come-from-behind victories this year. He has overcome the odds on many occasions. He happened to throw for 316 yards in the most important game of the year.

Oh yeah, and his coach's name is John. And he threw that winning pass to a guy who was born on Christmas. And the abbreviation for overtime is OT, which is also the abbreviation for Old Testament.

But does it prove anything? Is it more than a coincidence? I mean, seriously, what are the chances?

Lisa Belkin, in a wonderful 2009 New York Times Magazine piece on odds, coincidence, and our need to find order in our chaotic world, writes:

The true meaning of [coincidence] is ''a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection.'' In other words, pure happenstance. Yet by merely noticing a coincidence, we elevate it to something that transcends its definition as pure chance. We are discomforted by the idea of a random universe. Like Mel Gibson's character Graham Hess in M. Night Shyamalan's new movie ''Signs,'' we want to feel that our lives are governed by a grand plan.

The need is especially strong in an age when paranoia runs rampant. ''Coincidence feels like a loss of control perhaps,'' says John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University and the author of ''Innumeracy,'' the improbable best seller about how Americans don't understand numbers. Finding a reason or a pattern where none actually exists ''makes it less frightening,'' he says, because events get placed in the realm of the logical. ''Believing in fate, or even conspiracy, can sometimes be more comforting than facing the fact that sometimes things just happen.''

Belkin reminds us of the mountain of coincidental details that many saw as meaningful after the events of 9/11:

We need to be reminded, Paulos and others say, that most of the time patterns that seem stunning to us aren't even there. For instance, although the numbers 9/11 (9 plus 1 plus 1) equal 11, and American Airlines Flight 11 was the first to hit the twin towers, and there were 92 people on board (9 plus 2), and Sept. 11 is the 254th day of the year (2 plus 5 plus 4), and there are 11 letters each in ''Afghanistan,'' ''New York City'' and ''the Pentagon'' (and while we're counting, in George W. Bush), and the World Trade towers themselves took the form of the number 11, this seeming numerical message is not actually a pattern that exists but merely a pattern we have found. (After all, the second flight to hit the towers was United Airlines Flight 175, and the one that hit the Pentagon was American Airlines Flight 77, and the one that crashed in a Pennsylvania field was United Flight 93, and the Pentagon is shaped, well, like a pentagon.)

Sound familiar? If we were to start digging though other statistics from the game, and from Tebow's life (and believe me, many are busy piling these up right now -- we will continue to see them trickle out this week), we would find an endless stream of forced, and increasingly thin, coincidences.

We would also find the same coincidences by crunching numbers related to our own daily lives -- even those of us who are not devout. The most breathtaking of happenings, Belkin says, could actually have been predicted by statistics.

The mathematician will answer that even in the most unbelievable situations, the odds are actually very good. The law of large numbers says that with a large enough denominator -- in other words, in a big wide world -- stuff will happen, even very weird stuff. ''The really unusual day would be one where nothing unusual happens,'' explains Persi Diaconis, a Stanford statistician who has spent his career collecting and studying examples of coincidence. Given that there are 280 million people in the United States, he says, ''280 times a day, a one-in-a-million shot is going to occur.''

Throw your best story at him -- the one about running into your childhood playmate on a street corner in Azerbaijan or marrying a woman who has a birthmark shaped like a shooting star that is a perfect match for your own or dreaming that your great-aunt Lucy would break her collarbone hours before she actually does -- and he will nod politely and answer that such things happen all the time. In fact, he and his colleagues also warn me that although I pulled all examples in the prior sentence from thin air, I will probably get letters from readers saying one of those things actually happened to them.

Robert J. Tibshirani, a statistician at Stanford University, uses the example of a hand of poker as a great example of how we ignore the millions of meaningless events in our lives, but find meaning in the events which happen to trigger a mental connection.

''The chance of getting a royal flush is very low,'' he says, ''and if you were to get a royal flush, you would be surprised. But the chance of any hand in poker is low. You just don't notice when you get all the others; you notice when you get the royal flush.''

The odds that Tim Tebow passed for 316 odds are similar to the odds that he'd pass for 309. We simply would not have made any big deal out of it if he threw for 309 yards (except for the fact that it was impressive yardage that helped him win a game).

Still, the faithful will continue to insist that there simply has to be meaning. They will continue to say, "Coincidence? I think not," and ask, "What are the odds?" Again, these people are focusing on the seemingly meaningful connection, and ignoring real-world statistics.

Belkin describes 'The Birthday Problem':

There are as many as 366 days in a year (accounting for leap years), and so you would have to assemble 367 people in a room to absolutely guarantee that two of them have the same birthday. But how many people would you need in that room to guarantee a 50 percent chance of at least one birthday match?

Intuitively, you assume that the answer should be a relatively large number. And in fact, most people's first guess is 183, half of 366. But the actual answer is 23. In Paulos's book, he explains the math this way: ''[T]he number of ways in which five dates can be chosen (allowing for repetitions) is (365 x 365 x 365 x 365 x 365). Of all these 365 5 ways, however, only (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) are such that no two of the dates are the same; any of the 365 days can be chosen first, any of the remaining 364 can be chosen second and so on. Thus, by dividing this latter product (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) by 365 5 , we get the probability that five persons chosen at random will have no birthday in common. Now, if we subtract this probability from 1 (or from 100 percent if we're dealing with percentages), we get the complementary probability that at least two of the five people do have a birthday in common. A similar calculation using 23 rather than 5 yields 1/2, or 50 percent, as the probability that at least 2 of 23 people will have a common birthday.''

Got that?

Using similar math, you can calculate that if you want even odds of finding two people born within one day of each other, you only need 14 people, and if you are looking for birthdays a week apart, the magic number is seven. (Incidentally, if you are looking for an even chance that someone in the room will have your exact birthday, you will need 253 people.) And yet despite numbers like these, we are constantly surprised when we meet a stranger with whom we share a birth date or a hometown or a middle name. We are amazed by the overlap -- and we conveniently ignore the countless things we do not have in common.

We are pattern-seeking creatures. This is likely part of our biology, a behavior that evolved to help us survive. Early humans needed to be hyper-aware of anomalies in order to detect threats. And while these happy accidents provide many with hope and inspiration, our willingness to attach meaning also works to our detriment. We have, in many ways, become fundamentally irrational beings.

The more personal the event, the more meaning we give it...

The fact that personal attachment adds significance to an event is the reason we tend to react so strongly to the coincidences surrounding Sept. 11. In a deep and lasting way, that tragedy feels as if it happened to us all.

[This] sheds light on the countless times that pockets of the general public find themselves at odds with authorities and statisticians. Her results might explain, for instance, why lupus patients are certain their breast implants are the reason for their illness, despite the fact that epidemiologists conclude there is no link, or why parents of autistic children are resolute in their belief that childhood immunizations or environmental toxins or a host of other suspected pathogens are the cause, even though experts are skeptical. They might also explain the outrage of all the patients who are certain they live in a cancer cluster, but who have been told otherwise by researchers.

While the Tebow divine intervention anecdotes themselves are harmless, and while many may find inspiration and hope in his story, we must remember that there is a down-side to cobbling together random bits of information and forming a conclusion.

In some ways, the Tebow narratives reinforce many people's irrationality. We are simply too caught up in the feel-good nature of the story to realize that this is the same type of thinking that has fueled everything from truthers and anti-vaxxers, to bigotry and grilled cheese sandwich auctions.

Santorum Wants To Be The Dictator Of Your Sexual Realm

In light of Santorum's recent surge in the polls, and his near-tie with Romney in Iowa, it's worth revisiting his appearance on Piers Morgan's show.

In the below interview from August, Morgan asks Santorum whether or not homosexuality is a sin.

MORGAN: Well, let's clarify a few things. Do you think homosexuality is a sin?

SANTORUM: Well, that's a decision not for a politician. That's a decision for someone who is a cleric. I'm not in that line of work. There are a lot of things in society that are, quote, "sins" or moral wrongs that we don't make illegal. Just because something is immoral or something that is wrong doesn't mean that it should be illegal, and that the federal government or any level of government should involve themselves in.

He goes on to state that, if he were a state legislator in Texas at the time of Lawrence v. Texas he would have voted against it. "I don't think that's something the state should involve itself in," stated Santorum.

Piers then presses him further on the homosexuality issue. (You have to give Morgan credit here -- his 'entertainment' show on occasion demonstrates more journalistic doggedness than any of the major network or cable news shows.)

MORGAN: So, you must have a view about whether homosexuality is a sin. I think if American people want to vote for you either way as president, they are entitled to know an honest answer to a straightforward question. You did invite me to ask you any question I liked.

SANTORUM: Yes, I did. And, of course, the Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is a sin. I'm Catholic and subscribe to the Catholic Church's teaching. But that's not relevant from the standpoint of how I view these issues from a public policy of view and that's (why) I answered the question the way I did. From a public policy point of view, there are a lot of things I find immoral -- morally wrong or as you would use the term "sinful" that don't necessarily rise to the level that government should be involved in regulating that activity. And so, I answered it correctly. I answered it, in fact, succinctly and directly, that while I think things are morally wrong, that doesn't rise to the level of government involvement in that activity.

So, the question seems to be: Which 'sins' merit government involvement in Santorum's world? Certainly consensual sex acts between two adults in private should not be on par with, say, rape or burglary.

In Santorum's blurred church-state view, these things apparently do rise to the level of government involvement.

Quite simply, Rick Santorum doesn't believe anyone should have sex unless it is a penis entering a vagina for the purpose of sexual reproduction. Recreational sex? Absolutely unacceptable.

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Counter to how things are supposed to be?

Who, exactly, decides how things are supposed to be? Apparently, it's Rick Santorum and the Catholic Church.

Bryan Fischer: HIV Does Not Cause AIDS, Massive Drug Use Among Gays Causes AIDS

I am a horrible person.

By now, it's clear that Bryan Fischer, of SPLC-designated hate group The American Family Association, is either a brilliant work of performance art or simply just a horrible, willfully ignorant, bible-thumping hatemonger suffering from acute narcissistic personality disorder.

He was already vying for 'Worst Person in the World,' but this week Fischer ratcheted up the batshit yet again.

Via Right Wing Watch:

It really should come as no surprise that there is no depth to which Bryan Fischer will not sink in his relentless assault against all things gay, as he is now openly promoting the idea that the HIV virus is not the cause of AIDS.

Fisher dedicated two segments on his program yesterday to interviewing Peter Duesberg, author of "Inventing the AIDS Virus," who asserts that the idea that HIV causes AIDS was a scheme concocted by scientists in order to get research grants and that the symptoms attributed to AIDS are really caused by massive recreational drug use among gay men.

And it is a theory which Fischer wholeheartedly endorses.

The full interview can be viewed below, if you can stomach it.

Culture Wars 2012: Faux Religious Persecution

Sarah Posner, over at Religion Dispatches, writes about how 2012 will be a "banner year in the faux religious discrimination wars."

She highlights a full page ad placed in the Washington Post by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The ad provided the Bishops with a venue to voice their disapproval of the Department of Health and Human Services rule which requires employer health insurance plans to provide contraception without co-pay. The Bishops claim that if Obama does not amend the rule, his administration will be guilty of religious discrimination.

Posner writes:

The Bishops’ opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services rule—which they describe as mandating “preventive services” (scare quotes in original)—was to date the most public salvo from their Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty. That effort was launched last June because, in USCCB president Timothy Dolan’s ominous words, “never before have we faced this kind of challenge to our ability to engage in the public square as people of faith and as a service provider. If we do not act now, the consequence will be grave.” At the Bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore this past November, Dolan took his charges into conspiratorial territory, telling reporters that “well-financed, well-oiled sectors” were attempting to “push religion back into the sacristy.”

While many may see this as simply more of the same Catholic 'recommendations' we've seen over the years, the Bishops are poised to put their money where their mouth is.

Staffed with ten of the Bishops’ brethren, the Ad Hoc Committee will be assisted by the USCCB’s former top lawyer and now Associate General Secretary, Anthony Picarello, who served on Obama’s first Advisory Council to his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. A staff lawyer and a lobbyist have also been hired and assigned to the effort.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution last October, Bishop William E. Lori, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee, described LGBT equality and access to reproductive care as “serious threats to religious liberty,” that “represent only the most recent instances in a broader trend of erosion of religious liberty in the United States.” The problem, he went on, is like a disease that must be treated immediately, “lest the disease spread so quickly that the patient is overcome before the ultimate cure can be formulated and delivered.”

Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, sees the Bishops’ framing as “significant,” noting that, “They’re really trying to put a spin on what’s happening, and they’re hoping that they can convince people that their rights are the ones being violated.”

These faux religious discrimination claims are a phenomenon that we have seen mirrored in US culture for years, although it seems to have been ramping up recently.

These claims come from two angles:

On one side, as Posner illustrates, we see religious organizations and legislators condemning any tax money being associated in any way with the funding of services at odds with religious teachings (contraceptives, abortion, etc).

On the other side we see cries of religious persecution any time harmful or discriminatory religious ideology is condemned or challenged.

Daily, we hear politicians claiming that equal treatment of gays and lesbians encroaches on their religious liberty -- essentially their 'right' to aggressively discriminate against gays and lesbians.

Just a few days ago, I engaged Peter LaBarbera on Twitter. Peter LaBarbera is the president of the anti-LGBT Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, an organization which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

LaBarbera had re-tweeted a comment that stated, "The left likes to immediately shut people's views down by shouting "Racist, sexist ,homophobe" - since 80s."

In other words, LaBarbera and his ilk believe that, if their religion states that something is true (i.e. that homosexuality is an 'abomination,' or that women should submit to their husbands), and they act on that 'truth' by way of discrimination, then society is wrong to condemn these acts as homophobic or sexist. They are scripturally 'true,' after all, and our constitution protects the freedom to practice our religion.

Recently, on the campaign trail, Rick Santorum stated that he would seek to invalidate gay marriages via a constitutional amendment. During his trip to Iowa this week, he stated (as he has on many occasions) that "rights come to us from God." This is not dog-whistle politics. There's no subtlety about it. This reflects Santorum's insistence (and that of many other GOP candidates and legislators) that anti-LGBT, anti-choice legislation is in keeping with God's law, and is therefore wholly American.

We have seen resistance to hate speech legislation (and same-sex marriage legislation) in which opponents wrongly proclaim that ministers would be prosecuted for preaching against homosexuality.

We have seen legislation which allows for anti-gay bullying, as long as it is religion-based.

The culture wars have come down to this: opponents of progressive legislation have run out of cards to play. Their beliefs are not backed up by the science. The studies do not support their anti-LGBT, anti-choice ideology. (And in the case of contraception, 98% of Catholic women use birth control, despite its ban in the church.) All they have left is the supernatural, which is protected by religious freedom, and that's the only card they have left to play.

What they fail to understand is that religious beliefs cannot become law simply because they are religious beliefs. Religious beliefs may indeed dovetail with secular law -- for instance, stealing is frowned upon for many reasons that have nothing to do with religion. It is not illegal because God said so somewhere in the Bible. We do not have laws against wearing blended fabrics -- such a law would not have a secular purpose.

If the basis of proposed legislation (or your opposition to legislation) in any way relies upon supernatural concepts (i.e. 'soul,' 'sin,' 'God,' etc.) you can be pretty sure that it's unconstitutional.

It is not religious discrimination to employ and enforce secular law (or to extend secular rights to all citizens). It is not religious discrimination to oppose and strike down the legislation of religious ideas which have no secular basis.

I would ask any religious conservative if they are okay with implementing Islamic laws requiring women to cover all of their bodies except their hands and face. If not, why? Most likely, they would answer that this is not something they believe, and that it as extreme and discriminatory. This is how many Americans view the beliefs of the Christian right.

To impose these laws on us is the same as imposing Islamic law on them. To deny citizens their secular rights because of your religious beliefs is impose your religion on those who do not subscribe.

Lame Crimson Tide Shirts Employ Violent Homophobic Taunt

Some Alabama Crimson Tide fans are really banking on a defeat of LSU on Jan. 9, because they have a lot of really classy shirts to sell.

Stay classy, sports fans!

They apparently think it's a) okay to call opponents 'homos,' and b) okay to beat the hell out of 'homos.'

The Website heyhomeauxs.com is promoting the sale of shirts declaring Alabama the winner, and employing a lame, homophobic play on words, and a suggestion that it's cool to beat the hell out of gay people.

Elsewhere on the site, where submitted questions are answered:

"So how about changing the colors of the shirt to purple and gold and having the correct score. Maybe adding the wording "Those coonasses kicked your teeth in"."
-W.J.

The proprietors respond:

Sorry, but we do not encourage violence.

Suddenly, I'm a huge LSU fan.

Pat Robertson: God Told Me Who The Next President Is, But I'm Not Supposed To Tell You

The Nostradamus of our time.

Pat Robertson, who is batting below the Mendoza line in prophecy, has some new prophecies for 2012.

Pat speaks to the Lord on a regular basis, and gets all kinds of inside information. Kind of like Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic.

Today on the 700 Club, Pat passed on some of his inside info. He said that God told him who would be president (but he can't share that info). He also lets us in on the fact that God is not fond of Obama, and that we may be in for some economic hard times. Imagine that.

I spent the better part of a week in prayer and just saying, ‘God show me something,’ some things I’ll share with you. I think he showed me the next me the next president but I’m not supposed to talk about that so I’ll leave you in the dark—probably just as well—I think I’ll know who it will be. I’m going to read just as I wrote down as if I’m hearing from the Lord these words.

Your country will be torn apart by internal stress, a house divided cannot stand. Your president holds a radical view of the direction of your country which is at odds with the majority, expect chaos and paralysis. Your president holds a view that is at odds with the majority, it’s a radical view of the future of this country, so that’s why we’re having this division. This is a spiritual battle which can only be won by overwhelming prayer. The future of the world is at stake because if America falls, there’s no longer a strong champion of freedom and a champion of the oppressed of the world. There must be an urgent call to prayer. The Lord said, a time of maximum stress and peril, greater than at any time since the CBN ministry began. This country will begin disintegrating.

I started thinking, when did we start this place? We started CBN in 1960, you think of all the things that went on, you had the assassination of the president, assassination of Martin Luther King, you’ve got a war in Vietnam, you’ve got all these things, He is saying you will have worse stress than before. So I’m saying, God, let me give you some suggestions and you tell me if any of them is right, pick one. I said, is it an EMP blast? No that isn’t it. Is it a cosmic or solar or radiation blast? No. Is it Mayan galaxy alignment? No. Is it Iranian or North Korean nuclear threat? No. Is it an earthquake or a volcano? No. Is it a massive power failure? No. What is it? It’s an economic collapse. And God said, This is not my judgment, they are bringing it upon themselves.