As CNS News reported yesterday, Westboro Baptist Church, a virulently anti-gay organization that has picketed the funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq, had threatened to picket the funerals of five Amish teenage  girls recently murdered in an act of mass violence in a Pennsylvania high school.

'State-based' divine retribution ?

[ CNS News ] The Westboro Baptist Church -- described as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League -- has made a name for itself by picketing the funerals of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. The troops are dying as punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality, the group says.

The Westboro group says the Amish school girls were "killed by a madman in punishment for Gov. Ed Rendell's blasphemous sins against Westboro Baptist Church.

"Gov. Ed Rendell -- speaking and acting in his official capacity to bind the State of Pennsylvania -- slandered and mocked and ridiculed and condemned Westboro Baptist Church on national Fox TV," the group says on its website.

Today, however, the Kansas based church group has stated, on a Pdf file available on its website, that its planned picket of the Amish funerals has been called off.

The statement reads:

"In consideration for having WBC's representative on the Mike Gallagher show, from 10 AM to 11 AM, Thursday, October 5th, WBC has cancelled the above picket."

Tony Perkins' apparent defense, by misdirection, of sexual predation inspired me to add the new line of work to the FRC's organizational subtitle.

On October 2, 2006 Tony Perkins wrote, on the Family Research Council website:

Democrats seeking to exploit the resignation of Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) are right to criticize the slow response of Republican congressional leaders to his communications with male pages. But neither party seems likely to address the real issue, which is the link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse.

Down the slippery slope of moral dissolution, Perkins reinforced that attempted point the same day, on CNN and, in doing so, inadvertantly indicted himself and his own organization:

Last Thursday I attended an event of the ACLU of Ohio, featuring speakers from Equality Ohio. I wrote just a bit about it here, but haven't had a chance to write up much of it until now. I was particulary interested to hear Adam Leddy of Equality Ohio describe the experience of attending a service at Rod Parsley's World Harvest Church, which I have written up here.

More of what he told us about Rod Parsley, as well as the other big players in this movement, below the jump.

This Thursday at 7 p.m. EDT, DefCon will hold a book club chat with Chris Mooney, author of the bestselling Republican War on Science, whose updated, paperback addition was recently released.

In a case that appears to be similar to an incident in which Southern Delaware Jewish family eventually fled its home of over a decade and a half following harassment and threats that ensued after a complaint about religious proselytizing in the Indian River School District of Delaware, the Tennessean reports on a lawsuit recently pickd up by the ACLU :

In a little noticed story picked up by the Chicago Tribune in a September 28, 2006 story, a national meeting of antiabortion campaigners gathered recently for a new campaign against contraception in general.

CHICAGO - Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement's success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it's time to mount a concerted attack on contraception.

Their voices were raised in Rosemont, Ill., last week at an unusual anti-abortion meeting that drew 250 people from around the nation to condemn artificial birth control. Experts at the gathering assailed contraception on the grounds that it devalues children, harms relationships between men and women, promotes sexual promiscuity and leads to falling birth rates, among social ills.

"Contraception is more the root cause of abortion than anything else," Joseph Scheidler, an anti-abortion veteran whose Pro-Life Action League sponsored the conference, said in an interview.

The apparently self-contradictory statement by Joseph Scheidler, above, may refer to the erroneous claim, made by many religious right groups, that birth control methods which prevent fertilization of human eggs are abortifacients. ( For more on this, see
 "Every Zygote Is Sacred", or "Can I have my BC already?"

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger's Veto - of a bill designed to ensure local control of a California public television broadcast license -  was the latest development in a long running struggle between a local entity and Texas based religious broadcaster Daystar, for Orange County's sole public television station.

As the Orange County Register reported on Sunday, October 1, 2006:

The legislation, AB523, would have paved the path for the station to be resold to its own foundation rather than the highest bidder. That bidder --
DayStar Television, a Texas-based televangelist network -- is currently suing the Coast Community College District for not accepting its previous offers.

The struggle for control of KOCE-TV is only the latest in a series of pitched battles fought over the past decade as religious broadcasters have begun to pick up broadcast licenses in bands previously controled by local and public broadcasting entitities.

For related stories, and wider background, see CSN, Christian LPFM Empire threatens to Self Destruct. But don't hold your breath., Theocratic Media Advancing ? Pay No Mind, Have a Tawdry Scandal !, and Talk To Action's Broadcast And Media topic area.

They are both victims of a sex-negative culture. Ms McGee's crime is that she believes the human body is beautiful. And Rep. Foley behaved like someone from a culture that teaches children to repress sexual feelings.

In some cases, it is easy for a group to people to decide that there is something wrong with a particular piece of legislation, and even to agree what is wrong with it.

However, it is still useful to be explicit, to state the argument in clear and unambiguous terms so that those who do no share that opinion, and those who remain undecided, can see the case laid out.

That is what I have attempted to do here.

In Christianity, there are a welter of "Brethren" groups but only one "Exclusive Brethren" ( or maybe two, as it were ). The secretive cultish religious association - out of concern over gay marriage -  has recently moved into active engagement in politics. Of special interest to American politics, leading up to the '06 election and beyond as well, are the accusations that the "Exclusive Brethren" have abused nonprofit status, conducted anonymous political capaigns, and engaged in partisan politics while receiving public funds.

Lately, Democrats have been gathering to "shoot torture in a barrel", and that's fine. But, moiv, writing at Talk To Action, puts a little perspective on the Democratic Party's impending cave-in to the Christian right on abortion and reproductive rights through its likely support for the DFLA bill.

At issue is the "Democrats For Life" (DFLA) so-called "95-10" Bill co-sponsored by Congressman Lincoln Davis (D-TN) that claims to be merely about reducing abortions but includes a host of Christian right sponsored mandates that would force physicians to spew disinformation on the effectiveness of condoms, funnel women seeking abortions to often deceptive 'crisis pregnancy centers', and so on.

By backing the DFLA bill the Democratic Party stands to turn a winning approach - a practical initiative to reduce abortions and so defang the assault of the hard antiabortion right - into an exercise in pointless capitulation to Christian right ideology and a dubious political alliance with political elements that would sooner throw the floundering Democrats a cinder block than a life preserver.