by Angela Bonavoglia
from On The Issues Magazine

If ever there were doubt about the relationship between the Catholic Church's spectacular failure to address the clerical child sex abuse crisis and the church's glaring system of gender apartheid, the Vatican put it to rest in July. Engendering a firestorm of criticism, their new canonical guidelines for handling and punishing the most "grave crimes" in church law revealed just how enraged the hierarchy is at women who dare to challenge them. Along with the crimes of sexually molesting children and developmentally disabled adults, and of using and distributing pornography, the Vatican listed: "the attempted sacred ordination of a woman."

Recently here on Talk to Action, Rachel Tabachnick mentioned an anti-Islam "Ground Zero Mosque Rally" to be held on Saturday, September 11 by the so-called "Freedom Defense Initiative" and "Stop Islamization of America."  This event is one of many protests against the construction of mosques and other Muslim-related buildings in various places around the country.

I'm aware of two counter-protests by defenders of religious freedom.  One will be held in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, September 11.  The other will be held in New York City on Sunday, September 12.

Details below the fold.  Please spread the word to everyone you know who is concerned about the recent rise in bigotry against Muslims and other religious minorities.

In recent weeks the American broadsheets announced that a prenatal pill used to treat congenital adrenal hyperplasia could have the side effect of reducing the likelihood that females treated with the drug will be gay.  The news prompted wide discussion of the future trajectory of chemical and biotech engineering for eugenic purposes.  

September Harper's has a remarkable article by Jeff Sharlet - not yet available online.

Following are a few quotes from John Hagee's latest book, released June, 2010.  Also see the Media Matters post on the book and excerpts at Simon and Schuster's website.

The Archdiocese of Denver recently ordained five new priests bringing the total to 58 men commissioned to serve in Northern Colorado who had been trained in its two seminaries. Based upon the 2000 through 2009 archdiocesan annual reports and articles appearing in Archbishop Charles Chaput's weekly newspaper, the Denver Catholic Register, over $70 million in donations has supported the two schools since their founding in the late 1990s.

Nationally known Focus on the Family founder James Dobson has a new book out with advice on raising girls, Bringing Up Girls. Over the past several decades, Dobson has become a trusted authority on child-rearing for perhaps millions of Americans, and he's also compared child-rearing to canine behavioral management. So let's look at his view on how to treat dogs.

In his 1976 book Dare To Discipline that helped launch his national career (Dobson has recently come out with an updated sequel, The New Dare To Discipline) Mr. Dobson, in a  passage that seemed worthy of opera or a least a Viking ballad, described belt-whipping his miniature-Dachshund:

Here is a link through the local paper to some of the documents connected with the lawsuit by the Atheists of Florida against the city of Lakeland, Florida.

Who was really responsible for the Holocaust ? It's a question people have been asking since before Milton Meyer's 1950's landmark book, featuring post-WW2 interviews with average Nazi Party members, They Thought They Were Free, hit the press.

Over a half-century later, there's a huge amount of free-floating fear in American society about something called "The New World Order." With the current American president claiming the power to assassinate American citizens, concern about government encroachment on human rights is quite reasonable but conspiracy theory, which usually contains aspects of truth, is easily weaponized.

Which brings us to Patrice O'Neal. In an impassioned speech on PRISONPLANET.TV, an adjunct of Alex Jones Infowars media empire, O'Neal asks,          

"Who do you blame for, like, the Holocaust ? Do you blame Hitler, who essentially was a little crazy man with a mustache ? Or do you blame the thousands and thousands of soldiers who, at the whim of his command, would kill their fellow citizens, kill their fellow people ?"

As Young Earth Creationist impresario Ken Ham wrote in a July 6th post on his Answers in Genesis web site,

"Recently, atheists met at a conference in Copenhagen and released what they call their "Copenhagen Declaration on Religion in Public Life," which really means they released their statement of faith and their declaration against Christianity... These atheists think they can indoctrinate the public by their statements, but many are awake (and hopefully this blog post will help even more people to awaken) to their agenda to indoctrinate the public in their anti-God religion"

Radical conservatives are launching an attack on Texas higher education by way of a so called "transparency law" in Texas colleges and universities.

This news article states that some churches are already seeking money from BP because of the oil spill, and others are considering it.