Hustler Magazine Features

AS MORE AND MORE AMERICANS RENOUNCE ORGANIZED RELIGION, BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TAKE CENTER STAGE WITH A DEBAPTISM CEREMONY.

by Paige Thomas
from the College Report – HUSTLER MAGAZINE – January 2010

To white lacy garments required this time around, but a developed sense of humor wouldn’t hurt. With just a quick spritz from the spray bottle of “Unholy H2O” and a nice blowjob from the hair dryer labeled “Reason & Inquiry,” the debaptism of Boise State University freshman Mitch Brinton concluded. Wishing to undo a ritual he’d experienced at the ripe old age of eight, Brinton decided to take part in the debaptisms performed on campus by members of the Secular Student Alliance (SSA).

What led him there had been simmering since he was 16. Brinton’s girlfriend of five months called off their relationship, taking his passion and faith with her. Just like any other fine, young Mormon boy, Mitch had planned on going on his mission. But these newfound romantic feelings and the growing doubt about his faith led him, like so many others, to pick up the pieces of his smashed dreams, dust off his thinking cap and enroll in college. Brinton recalled, “Nothing could save me but myself.” From this realization came his dream to one day attend graduate school to study evolutionary psychology or neuroscience.

Brinton’s debaptism was performed by Alicia Clegg, the “Fund Master” of Boise State’s SSA chapter. Proudly wearing an upside-down missionary badge and handing out “Get Out of Hell Free” cards, Clegg remembered the closeness and community her former church provided. “I miss the events and the people,” Clegg lamented.

The following evening, SSA members gathered at a spaghetti dinner honoring the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Embraced by nonbelievers, the fictional deity spoofs organized religion and creationism.) Of course, the main topic of discussion was the debaptism ceremony. Rebecca Ames, Clegg’s girlfriend and a fellow SSA member, was almost giddy with excitement about the “throngs of people who weren’t afraid to say something.”

The large turnout at Boise State University isn’t surprising. The Secular Student Alliance national organization reports over 160 currently affiliated groups—up from 100 in 2008 and only 80 in 2007. In addition, the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)—evaluating almost 55,000 people—shows the decline of Christian Americans from 86% in 1990 to 76% today. This statistic might come as a shock to those who consider the United States to be a Christian nation.

Meanwhile, an Internet campaign in Argentina called No en Mi Nombre: Apostasia Colectiva (Not in My Name: Collective Apostasy) has been compiling names of people wishing to renounce their faith. Baptized as infants and children, they now consider themselves to be Roman Catholics in name only. The problem in Argentina is that these individuals are included in membership figures the Church uses to lobby for favorable legislation.

In a Time magazine article, Terry Sanderson—president of Britain’s National Secular Society—described why debaptisms and secularism in general have become so popular. “Churches have become so reactionary, so politically active that people actually want to make a protest against them now. They’re not just indifferent anymore. They’re actively hostile.”

According to the ARIS, “the challenge to Christianity in the U.S. does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.” This trend was confirmed when the survey reported: “The ‘Nones’ (no stated religious preference, atheist or agnostic) continue to grow, though at a much slower pace than in the 1990s, from 8.2% in 1990 to 14.1% in 2001 to 15% in 2008.” Luke Galen of Grand Valley State University and the Center for Inquiry cooperated for a follow-up study to analyze the characteristics of this population. It found that “among these characteristics, the demographic factor that most distinguished the nonreligious from the U.S. population as a whole was a high level of education.”

Nonreligious people want to be taken seriously, and they’re going about it with humor rather than violence. Smart, funny people seem to be pretty well liked, and the surveys all agree that atheism, agnosticism, humanism, secularism and free thinking are on the rise. The growing number of well-educated nonbelievers in this country should be a sign to the Religious Right that the silence of science is over. Bring out the hot gothic ladies and let’s worship the Internet!

—————————–
Paige Thomas is a BSU sophomore majoring in secondary education. An “avid hip-hop fan, nerd, mommy, reader, joker, midnight toker and dog owner,” Thomas reckons, “I’m perhaps a bit of an iconoclast, my heart’s in a bind, and my laptop is attached to my fingertips.”

Attention college reporters: If you have an idea for a story involving your school— streaking, stripping, partying, pranks, protests, political or censorship issues— contact us at Features@LFP.com.

—————————————————

You may purchase the hard copy of the January 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine only $15.00 with free shipping. at HustlerMagazine.com.

You may purchase a digital copy of the January 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine at UnderCoverMags.com for only $5.99, instant download.

THE GOP’S JIHAD AGAINST SCIENCE
by Chris Mooney

FOR SIX YEARS OF THE GEORGE W. BUSH ADMINISTRATION, the scientific community has been repeatedly disdained, and the bullshitters ascendant. The Bush regime has not only politicized the Justice Department—as with the firings of at least eight U.S. Attorneys—but also politicized science.

It began early on when Bush, asserting that our knowledge about global warming was “incomplete,” rejected the Kyoto Protocol. Then he announced a truly bizarre policy for the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, the major hot-button political issue in the days prior to 9/11. Bush’s decision, made before he had even named his Presidential science adviser, was premised on the false “fact” that more than 60 preexisting cell lines would be eligible for federal funding even if Bush blocked funding for research on any new lines after that. But there weren’t nearly so many lines, and those that did exist were genetically limited, contaminated and had various other attributes that made them undesirable for scientific study.

Understandably annoyed by this kind of crap, scientists grew even more worried as the President left key science posts empty. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—two megagovernment agencies employing hordes of scientists—were stumbling around leaderless for a year. Bush delayed just as long in appointing a Surgeon General.

Then the real nonsense started. Although few have ever heard of them, it turns out that there are literally hundreds of committees, comprised of scientists and other experts, that advise our massive government on all kinds of technical subjects. Most of these committees are so obscure that apparently no one had thought to politicize them before the Bush Administration came along. It took true innovation (along with a certain measure of control-freakery) to interfere with this small army of nerds and technocrats.

One area where the Bush Administration messed with the scientists involved sex. Many of the President’s Christian Right supporters oppose sex before marriage. (Some probably oppose it after as well.) They also like to claim that virtually any form of contraception, or even information about contraception, encourages youthful promiscuity—rather than, say, protect kids who are going to screw around anyway. So they quickly got to work messing with an advisory committee that makes decisions regarding reproductive health drugs.

That included Plan B—the so-called “morning after” pill. It’s a form of emergency contraception that, if taken quickly after sex, can prevent unwanted pregnancy and therefore a large number of abortions.

Christian conservatives hate abortions; yet paradoxically, because of their discomfort with sex, they also hate Plan B. So the Bush Administration installed on the committee its favorite gynecologist, W. David Hager, author of a book titled As Jesus Cared for Women.  After the experts deliberated, they voted 23-4 that Plan B should be available over the counter. But the highly politicized FDA rejected their view, opting instead for Hager’s minority position on the matter. Later, Hager credited God with helping him to block wider availability of Plan B.

For right-wing Christians, when it comes to deterring women from having abortions, fear is the leading tactic. This inevitably involves more bullshit: claims that having an abortion will make you go crazy, give you breast cancer, etc.

Under the Bush Administration, once again, this kind of stuff actually got a hearing. A government document suggested that abortion might indeed increase a woman’s risk of contracting breast cancer later in life (although the vast majority of experts think otherwise). At least, in this case, reality did ultimately prevail: The document eventually got changed back, as not even the Bushies could justify so indefensible a statement for very long.

During Congressional hearings in July 2007, former Surgeon General Richard Carmona testified that his report on global health concerns was tampered with. Carmona’s original draft stressed the role of condoms in AIDS prevention, but William Steiger—a Bush appointee in the Department of Health and Human Services— sent the then-Surgeon General a memo. Steiger told Carmona to add to his report praise for Bush’s purported efforts to both curb AIDS in Third World countries and to improve public health in Afghanistan and Iraq. The HHS never released Carmona’s report, which also denounced violence against women and pollution, but had failed to ballyhoo Bush.

If possible, the administration’s distortions were still more egregious in the realm of climate science. There seemed to be a government- wide strategy of tinkering and meddling with scientific reports about global warming so as to keep the issue off the table and prevent pressure on the President to seriously address it. At one point the White House so heavily edited a government environmental report that the technocrats had to drop the global warming section entirely, rather than mislead the public.

In another case the executive branch had a lawyer named Philip Cooney—who had no scientific credentials, but had previously worked for the American Petroleum Institute [the oil industry's most influential lobbying organization]— editing the language of scientific documents pertaining to global warming. Needless to say, Cooney emphasized how uncertain everything was. Later, after his edits were revealed, he moved on to work for ExxonMobil. Talk about conflicts of interest.

And even as government scientific reports were getting the red-pen treatment, climate scientists working for the government were, at times, being blocked from talking to the press. Perhaps the most famous case involved James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous climate scientist. Sometimes called the “father” of global warming, Hansen works for NASA. In early 2006, the scientist charged there had been a clampdown on his freedom of speech after he had given a public lecture discussing the dangers of global warming.

In one case a young NASA aide named George Deutsch helped to divert an interview request for Hansen that came from a National Public Radio show. Deutsch later resigned when it was revealed that contrary to his résumeé, he had not yet graduated from Texas A&M University.

James Hansen’s case is made all the more outrageous because of the urgent message he was struggling to convey to the rest of us. Hansen has become convinced that we have an ever-narrowing window in which to address global warming before we suffer its severest consequences—namely, the destabilization of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. This, in turn, could lead to massive sea-level rise on the order of tens of feet, and thus the submersion of many heavily inhabited continental coastal areas and islands in coming centuries.

But Hansen wasn’t the only example of a government climate scientist who experienced constraints upon his ability to discuss global warming with the broader public. Take Thomas Knutson, a constituent of Rush Holt (D-New Jersey). Knutson, a soft-spoken scientist, runs massively complex climate models on massively expensive supercomputers at a government lab in Princeton. The classic technocrat also happens to be an expert on the relationship between global warming and hurricanes. So after the devastating 2005 Atlantic hurricane season—which featured four Category 5 storms, including Katrina—Knutson was prevented by government PR flacks from giving two national television interviews.

In August 2007, Bush announced plans for an international “climate change summit.” Greenpeace responded: “It’s a step forward that Bush no longer denies man-made global warming, but there has to be a concern that this is yet another attempt to derail the U.N. climate change negotiations set for December… Bush speaks about…voluntary targets… [This summit] must not allow Bush to distract the U.N. from December’s meeting, where the goal must be the kind of deep binding emissions cuts that Bush still strongly opposes.”

You might argue, of course, that these are just anecdotes—a few outrageous stories, but scientists don’t draw general conclusions without real statistics, and neither should we.

It turns out that we do actually have statistics about how bad the situation has gotten with respect to science in the Bush Administration. A group called the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which tracks the issue, has collaborated with a number of other organizations to survey governmentemployed scientists about political interference. A number of surveys have been conducted by various branches of the government that employ lots of researchers—the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the FDA, etc.—and the results are eye-opening. For example, in a survey of government climate researchers, the UCS found that 46% of respondents felt pressure to remove the words global warming or climate change from various documents, while 43% reported that edits had altered the meaning of their scientific results.

In other words, the spreading of bullshit has become systemic within the federal government. When the interests of religious zealots, oilmen and the rest of Bush’s backers are involved, ideology always trumps science in this corrupt administration. Finally, it’s important to note that the scientific distortions aren’t merely occurring below the radar in the editing of scientific reports, the quashing of scientists or the stacking of advisory panels. The President himself has uttered them.

As recently as 2006, Bush could be found falsely claiming that a “fundamental debate” still existed over whether human greenhouse gas emissions are causing global temperatures to rise. And on an issue where there’s even more scientific certainty, evolution, the President voiced his support for teaching the pseudoscientific “intelligent design” concept in high school science classes nationwide.

Still, it’s a fair question as to why this so-called “war on science”—which involves distortions, misrepresentations and suppression across the government— has emerged under Bush rather than under previous Presidents. While there’s no single answer, it’s quite clear that many of the attacks on science are intended to reward and appease the special interests that helped put Bush in office in the first place. That’s especially true of corporate America, which has a vested interest in downplaying global warming, and the Christian Right, which obsesses about sex and abortion as well as Darwin. In short, the whole thing looks a lot like a good old-fashioned spoils system.

Reality isn’t up for a vote, though, and our government is supposed to remain competent and intact throughout multiple Presidential administrations. That’s where the true damage from the GOP jihad on science makes itself felt: A huge alphabet soup of government agencies—staffed by scientists and technocrats whose salaries are paid by the public—has now had its credibility thoroughly undermined. Why would a talented young scientist want to go work in one of these agencies, given the alarming stories about science politicization and the low morale among scientists already working there? And why would we, the public, continue to trust these agencies?

On November 7, 2006, Democrats took control of Congress and have already started investigating some of the most egregious cases in which the Bush Administration attacked science. James Hansen, Tom Knutson, Philip Cooney and George Deutsch were called to testify before Congressional committees. We’ll see whether this new, high-level pressure makes the Bush Administration more honest or not. But so far, it has only helped to prompt one of the most incredible bullshit admissions yet.

Earlier this year, the White House had the gall to put out a statement claiming that President Bush has “consistently acknowledged climate change is occurring and humans are contributing to the problem.” It was a bold-faced lie, but a somewhat hopeful one. At least this time around, the Bush Administration’s denial of reality involves denying its previous denial of reality.

THE PARTISAN PREACHER FACES HIS MAKER—AND HIS UNMAKING.

In 1988, HUSTLER’S publisher won a historic Supreme Court case that was immortalized in the Hollywood movie The People vs. Larry Flynt. The courtroom clash pitted the Reverend Jerry Falwell against Flynt in a battle royale that came to be known as the preacher versus the pornographer. The flashpoint was a November 1983 HUSTLER parody ad (reproduced on the opposite page) that included a mock interview with Falwell highlighted by a totally off-the-wall “revelation”: While both were drunk on Campari liqueur, Falwell had lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse.

Falwell—ironically, the son of a bootlegger—was unamused and sued Flynt for $45 million. When the dust finally settled, after years of appeals, the self-described smut peddler prevailed over the self-righteous Holy Roller. In a surprise decision the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in HUSTLER’s favor, establishing a First Amendment precedent and vastly expanding Americans’ free speech rights.

When Jerry Falwell passed away in 2007, media outlets sought out HUSTLER’s publisher,who declared: “He knew what I was selling, and I knew what he was selling.” Flynt sells sex and irreverence—but what exactly was the Reverend Falwell selling?

If religion is “the opiate of the masses,” Falwell’s theocratic toxic brew, which mixed old-time religion with GOP politics, was the crystal meth of the people. As Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) once observed, the polarizing preacher was “an agent of intolerance,” demonizing gays, feminists, non-Christians, secularists and others who didn’t share the vicious smear merchant’s twisted creed. Before Falwell enters the Pearly Gates, he has lots of explaining to do:

★ The fundamentalist Christian was a racist who called civil rights “civil wrongs.” According to Media Matters’ Max Blumenthal, “Falwell was a rabid segregationist who railed against the civil rights movement from the pulpit.” After the Supreme Court’s desegregation ruling, Falwell sermonized: “If Chief Justice Warren and his associates…desired to do the Lord’s will…the 1954 decision would never have been made. The facilities should be separate. …[Integration] will destroy our race eventually…[A] pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live…as man and wife.”

★ Falwell called Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa “a phony.” During a 1980s visit to that country, Falwell criticized sanctions against the apartheid regime and encouraged followers to buy Krugerrands (South African gold coins).

★ On his Old Time Gospel Hour, Falwell bashed gays as “brute beast…thank God this vile and Satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated.” Falwell also commented, “AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals.” When Ellen Degeneres came out as a lesbian in 1997, Falwell called the comedienne “Ellen Degenerate.” In 1999, Falwell accused purple Teletubby Tinky-Winky of being gay. According to the BBC, Falwell condemned South Park as “vile and impudent.”

★ In Falwell’s book Listen, America! he decried, “The Jews…are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.” At a 1999 evangelical conference, Falwell announced that the Antichrist was alive, male and Jewish.

★In a Bicentennial sermon, Falwell proclaimed, “The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”

★Falwell’s most outrageous comment was made on September 11, 2001: “[T]he pagans…abortionists…feminists…and gays… the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America— I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped [9/11] happen.’”

In Finding Inner Peace and Strength, Falwell boldly pontificated: “The Bible is …absolutely infallible, without error in all matters.” But the outspoken and biased preacher was highly selective in his scriptural interpretations. Although the Ten Commandments stipulate “Thou shalt not kill,” Falwell didn’t oppose capital punishment or the Iraq War. Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, never preached about homosexuality, abortion or Republicans, for that matter. But he often spoke about the poor, calling them “the salt of the Earth…the light of the world.”

Falwell’s intolerant brand of Christianity was hate-filled. Where in it was the compassionate Christ who rhapsodized so eloquently in the New Testament’s 1 Corinthians? “I may be able to speak the languages of men and even angels,” Jesus cautioned, “but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a bell. I may have the gift of inspired preaching…I may have all the faith needed to move mountains, but if I have no love, I am nothing.”

Like all fearmongering, hate-spewing, Bible-thumping blowhards, Jerry Falwell was an egregiously noisy gong.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO EQUAL-OPPORTUNITY HATER AND FORNICATOR AL GOLDSTEIN, FORMER PUBLISHER OF SCREW

I LOVE THE CHAOTIC AND THE DISORGANIZED. The word organized means there is a system of followers and leaders. Since religion is a fairy tale—like Peter Pan or Heaven and Hell—it is a diversion to keep us amused, distracted and under the thumb of the organizers.

Religion proposes there is a payoff for being good. The proposal, though, is deceptive. Religion is akin to whacking off to the girls in this magazine. We make believe it is a real experience.We pretend the girl on the page is real. We try to fool ourselves. Religion is like the sergeant I had when I was in the Korean War in 1951. He was a bully, a fascist and an overcompensating schvartze. He was a man who hated the white recruits that he bossed around. A little power goes a long way, and for this little pygmy, it helped make up for every indignity he had suffered.

I was only 19, but this jungle bunny had the power to slice and dice me. He could make me do jumping jacks, push-ups and sit-ups. He made me peel potatoes and question why I, as a Jew, was in this prison they called the Army.

This sarge was like my God. He controlled my life, and that is the purpose of religion.

If religion had some constructive purpose, it would give us peace and harmony. Instead, it has given us the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Crusades and currently a sectarian civil war in Iraq. There, Sunnis and Shiites kill each other even though they pray to the same deity.

When I was in college, I read a book that said the less sure we are of something, the more willing we are to die for it. I see examples of this every day. Stupidity and ignorance cloak us in the immunity of selfrighteousness. Religion has made its leaders and preachers rich. This even includes those kooks in Jonestown and Waco.

Religion not only gives us order and beginnings and endings, but also has us travel on a road filled with thorns. Religion lifts us out of the serpent-filled jungle of chaos onto structured terra firma. Religion, which is nothing but Aesop’s fables on LSD, takes us on a path stacked high with leaders, losers and victims. It covers us under a prickly blanket of selfdeception, where we can ignore cancer coursing through our bodies, the hardening of our arteries from too many Twinkies and the imminent future of being six feet under, where the maggots can feed on us.

Karl Marx said, ” Religion is the opium of the masses.” (Some might argue that for most Americans nowadays, whether they consider themselves religious or not, the real opium is a new Lexus or McMansion.)

The thing about chaos is that it’s exciting. Chaos is like watching a new movie or being with a new woman. It is filled with anticipation and surprises. It also destroys the illusion of control and the illusion that there is some order to life besides death. For me, the pleasure of the unexpected is as sweet as Godiva chocolate. Chaos is not for the weak of mind and the frightened. If you want tranquility, start taking lithium, get married or kill yourself.

If the excitement of the unknown is your turn-on, then the world of confusion and a universe that has run amok is your vehicle of pleasure. The advantage of marriage and relationships is that you become a living zombie, and the only question on the table is when you will take your last breath.

Keep in mind that many philosophers were atheists, including Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. Only people with the intellect of cavemen believe in the magic of a mythical god with a flowing white beard who gives a shit about human beings.

Aldous Huxley’s sci-fi novel Brave New World featured a drug called Soma, which blurred the line between reality and hallucinations. In the near future, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the pharmaceutical industry will probably make the world of Soma a reality. But until then, we have religion.

New Yorker Al Goldstein lives alone in the borough of Queens. You can read his weekly blog at Booble.com, buy his autobiography I, Goldstein at bookstores everywhere and contact him (especially to offer food, work or pussy) at AlvinGoldstein@Gmail.com.