No rule of law: when everyone has committed a crime

I am very dissapointed by Carnegie Mellon's response to the brouhaha over the "half-naked pope" costume worn by one of their art students in a parade. The student has been charged by the campus cops with indecent exposure. The authorities claim that this is simply a matter of violating a local ordinance, and not about the subject of this woman's performance. For good measure, they also charged a man who got naked as part of a non-political performance in the same parade.

My strong suspicion is that this is a political prosecution, orchestrated by the school's administration in order to placate a bunch of conservative rabble-rousers. There's also the fact that the Catholic Church has a lot of influence in Pittsburgh; some of this influence comes from their ownership of a lot of land in CMU's neighborhood, which gives them influence over local zoning ordinances and would allow them to refuse to sell said land that CMU might want for future expansion.

There are two lines of evidence for my suspicion that this is not simple law-enforcement. First, it seemed to take a long time for the police to charge this woman. I'm sure that cops were present during this parade, and they could have issued her a warning or citation on-the-spot. The fact that they did not immediately issue a warning suggests that nudity is tolerated under these circumstances. 

My second line of evidence that this is a political prosecution comes from various reports that nudity has traditionally been tolerated (if not encouraged) at these parades. I read this claim in the comments section of an article posted at the website of the CMU student newspaper, the Tartan when this all started. I followed up by looking at the official promotional material for this parade. Notably, the pictures from the 2013 parade have been removed from Flickr. However, the 2012 parade pics are still available. They make it clear that the parade is typically pretty raunchy (facebook shows a subset of the more tame photos). There are even a couple of pictures showing exposed buttocks (and ass crack), which falls foul of most indecency ordinances that I've looked at. For the sake of documentation, I'm going to repost the picture here, though I must warn you that it isn't pretty (original):

To top it off, the School's Facebook account even promoted the event by saying "last year got a little out of hand... we expect nothing less this time around." When your combine that attitude with the student's report that she was encouraged to be politically provocative, I arrive at the sad conclusion that she is being scapegoated as part of a conflict between the Arts faculty's impulse to be provocative, and the university administration's impulse to constantly expand the influence of the institution. This has made a mockery of the law, and once again shown how arbitrary law-enforcement can be... to the point that there is no law, just power plays.

The only good thing about this is a sort of Streisand effect -- where the Church has brought attention to it's efforts to silence dissent and caused me to question whether "sacred" is a bad word, and CMU has exposed it's politicization. This may even stoke a bit of a "free speech movement" on a campus that is historically apolitical and has a high rating from FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education).

Some other thoughts:
Boy @ the window

The Catholic Church is a political organization

There's been a bit of a fuss in Pittsburgh over a public art performance in which a CMU student dressed up as the pope and handed out condoms -- while showing off her cross-shaped pubic hair. It took a couple of days, but eventually someone complained: first the local bishop, and then a bunch of rabble-rouses across the nation (such as the "Catholic League").

The bishop seems to be the most articulate and reasonable among these complainers. He apparently is primarily concerned with the use of the cross in this demonstration, and with an increasing disregard for "the sacred". My inclination is to respond "fuck the sacred". In my experience, "the sacred" is a ploy that some people use to impose themselves on others, and I am quite happy to say that either everything is sacred, or nothing is. (These opinions have not received extensive thought, so I'd love to discuss them). Furthermore, if a powerful person uses a sacred symbol to reinforce his authority, then he is the one who politicized it and invited sacrilege.

The more obnoxious complaints are of the "victimized American Christian" variety... as if American Christians are an oppressed class. Catholics may have some claim to special consideration in America, since they were historically marginalized (particularly if they migrated from English-occupied Ireland), but as a group, Catholics have made a pretty solid transition into the establishment. For instance, they are over-represented in Congress (31%), and it's been about 50 years since the USA had it's first Catholic President. Given this influence, I'm don't give serious attention to superficial claims that Catholics are being treated unfairly. That's not to say that Catholics aren't subject to hate crimes (like every other group), but only that there is no reason to assume that any mockery of Catholicism represents anti-Catholic bigotry and likewise that our society doesn't need organizations that are specifically dedicated to protecting them (such as the "anti-defamation" Catholic League, which was founded after Kennedy's presidency).

So anyway, as is common for American Christians who deny their privilege, these offended Catholics are claiming that a major university (i.e. liberals) would not tolerate mockery of other religious figures. My first counter-example would be the Iranian Ayatollah's, and I'd follow up with the King/Queen of England (head of the Anglican church), Pat Robertson, and the generic character of a revival tent-preacher or faith-healer. Granted, most of these are Christians, but there's a good reason for that -- only Christian religious leaders have substantial influence in our society. My remaining counter-example is a political leader, but so is the Pope.

The Pope is not only is influential, but he heads an explicitly political organization. As such, he is fair game for criticism and mockery. While all religious institutions have political impact, this passive political influence is not enough for the Catholic Church. Rather than just teaching that "abortion is evil" and then allowing laymen to take up the political battles, Church leaders insist on getting directly involved with organization of political campaigns and lobbying of politicians. For instance, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops takes positions on state policies that are not directly relevant to the church (e.g. access to emergency contraceptives), and many bishops use their religious authority to pressure state officials to change public policy (e.g. by denying communion to supporters of abortion rights).

While the political activities of the Catholic Church in the USA are not very intense, the church can  be downright oppressive in countries where it is dominant. The pressure that they expert on legislators is much more intense in parts of Latin America, both because exclusion from the Church has a much greater impact and because the Church strives to influence a wider range of topics. Furthermore, there are several countries where the Catholic Church receives special privileges and powers (such as subsidies in many countries).

All in all, the Pope is a political leader, therefore he has opened himself up to a range of attacks that would normally be considered inappropriate if targeted at catholic laymen or a low-key religious leader.

tip

Flag desecration; Mohammad defamation

As we hear (once again) of lunatic riots in Muslim communities being sparked by the defamation of Mohammad, we are treated to another installment of election campaign lunacy, as candidates use every opportunity to criticize and vilify their opposition. In this case, Republicans (getting their talking points directly from Romney, I think) are up in arms over the Obama administration's supposed apology to rioters. While the conciliatory statements never indicated that the US government should have done anything to limit the distribution of "The Innocence of Muslims", but Obama's critics are bemoaning his refusal to defend free speech.

Funny thing... I seem to remember this same crowd calling for the prohibition of desecration of the American flag.

If blasphemy laws come to the US, they will not come from Islamists, but from our homegrown state-worshipers.

Why I don't discuss my atheism

I generally don't discuss religion on this blog because I don't consider it to be intrinsically political, despite the frequent interaction of religion and politics. Furthermore, I rarely discuss religious beliefs in face-to-face conversations; but there are different reasons for my silence in those situations. Part of the reason that I don't engage in personal religious conversations is that I don't know what to say, so I'm going to use this blog as a format for getting my thoughts straight, even though this topic is tangential to the focus of this blog.

The first reason that I don't engage in discussions of religious beliefs is that I don't see any benefit in it. I don't expect to learn anything, and I don't expect my opinions to be persuasive to my conversation partner (more on that later), so I just don't have any motivation to participate. To make it worse, I doubt that it matters whether I believe in God or not.

The second reason that I avoid these conversations is that there is always a risk that the other person will be upset by what I say, either getting insulted, or defensive, or possibly even having their faith shaken. It's hard to politely tell someone that they appear to have built their life on wishful thinking, and that I have no interest in joining them in their delusions.

Still, this is one of those topics that is often worth broaching just as a "get to know you" type of thing, so I should figure out how to talk about it... and I'm gonna have to review how I got to where I am.

I used to be interested in religion. I grew up nominally Christian, though mainly I was a fairly passive theist. Really, all I wanted from God was some signs as to what I should do with my life. When I realized that I wasn't going to get these signs (around age 16) I had my major break with theism. I continued to explore theism for several years, with books and friends, but by my mid-twenties was pretty much done with it.

Discussions of theism often get started with a sort of "natural theology". Of course, this is the most logical entry point for a discussion when a theist is talking with someone whose beliefs they don't understand. I regularly encounter a few basic theist arguments -- what we might call "first mover", "intelligent design", and "magnificent universe" -- that I find completely unconvincing. It's kinda hard to produce anything but a blank stare when someone dishes me these lines. It seems that I can either arrogantly point out their logical error (e.g. assuming that a powerful intelligence is behind anything of interest) or just play stupid and say "I don't understand what you mean" until they give up in frustration. Neither is appealing.

The times that I have tried to engage with the above ideas, I have completely failed to connect with the monotheists whom I am speaking with. When I follow those lines of thoughts, I end up at some sort of pantheism, and with an exasperated conversation partner. The other problem is that I have only encountered one phenomenon that suggested intelligent design, and that is the interaction of the human brain with the compounds within psilocybin mushrooms. There are a variety of reasons that I refrain from bringing up that experience, depending on whom I'm speaking with.

If we get out of natural theology and deal instead with revelations, then I am forced to confront the credibility of whatever religious tradition inspires my partner. This is just asking for trouble. Once I get around the general problems with revelation, then we have to deal with the well documented history of lies and threats that separates us from the supposed revelation. I really don't want to go there.

The final problem that I have when discussing religion is that I don't have a nice label for my beliefs, and I don't belong to any organized school of thought. Others are content to identify as a "Christian" or a "Jew", despite the great variety of beliefs that fall under those labels. I could point to a variety of philosophical traditions, of which I only have passing knowledge. So I could say that I've liked what I've read about Epicurus' philosophy. I like Zen Buddhism, if you drop the mythology. I like the ideas of Christian Unitarianism and Universalism, but that's more about aesthetics than conviction. If we get into philosophy, I find myself to be really the odd-man out, and without any champion that I can defer to. I'm a solipsist of sorts, though I'm told that no serious philosopher is a solipsist (maybe we're using different definitions). The term "subjective idealist" seems to fit my ideas, but I don't think that I'd agree with George Berkeley.

So here I am, left without much to say when my friends talk about their deepest thoughts. Oh well.

That bigoted pope...

To the extent that Catholicism is defined by acceptance of the authority of the pope (in any role -- religious, political, or corporate), I am anti-Catholic.*

In part it is because of my opposition to hierarchical social systems, and in part it is because of the pernicious opinions repeatedly expressed by the pope and other church leaders.

Most recently, the pope has claimed that the Nazis were the product of atheism:

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).

I have to interpret this as slander. You may question whether he really meant to say that Nazism was the product of atheism--he doesn't say it directly, but in the context of his speech I cannot find any other interpretation for the above paragraph.

The Nazis were not atheist my any means. Based on what I know about Nazi politics, what I remember from books like "They thought they were free" and read in Wikipedia, the Nazis were not an atheist movement. Like all totalitarian regimes, they sought to destroy any independent authority (such as churches), but they did not do this by promoting atheism. At one point they promoted a pagan religious system, but they faced too much resistance from the German people so they instead settled for co-opting Christianity.

The idea that they would advocate atheism is ridiculous in light of the fact that one of the main pillars of the fascist regimes was anti-communism -- and the communist movement at that time was dominated by an explicitly anti-theist school of thought

The pope's defenders will probably say that even though the Nazi party did not advocate for atheism, the leaders had rejected God and were atheists at heart. Leaving aside the fact that this probably makes all non-Catholics into atheists, it is nothing more than the classic bigots defense. Bigots regularly redefine identity words (white, black, jew, atheist) so that they can use it to belittle others and redefine the world according to their hateful ideology. "White" means greedy. "Black" means lustful. They redefine these terms as a way of denying any association with unpopular people (a few popes come to mind), while associating those outcasts with whatever group the bigot wants to scapegoat.

If the pope thinks that he can see into people's souls (and all atheists are the same), then he is either delusional or a liar. If he is saying that the Nazis advocated atheism, he is either as ignorant as your typical Klansman, or he's just another power-monger who values the influence of his own institution over human fellowship or the truth. In other words, he's probably what he would call "an atheist".

*The other level at which I am anti-Catholic is political. The Catholic Church regularly acts as a political advocacy group (and they are especially blunt about it in Latin America), so to say that one is anti-Catholic is no different than saying that one is anti-Republican or anti-Nazi. Of course, the Catholic Church is nowhere near as bad as the Nazis at the moment, but the basic issue is the same.

tip to Evolving thoughts