Christianism Watch

"Mormons spend two years of their lives as missionaries, preaching an anti-Christian doctrine. I don’t want someone out there, if I can help it, who’s going to be acting on an anti-Christian faith as the basis of their decision-making," – Barbara Heki, 51, from Johnston, Iowa, a Huckabee supporter.

"I’m concerned a lot of Christians are thinking about the values issues and forgetting about the creator behind the values issues. I guess I feel like this country and this world needs a president who would be able to pray to the God of the Bible and he would be able to hear his prayers," – Glenda Gherkey, an evangelical from Evansdale, Iowa, on why she’s supporting Huckabee.

When you see the abuse of religion in politics come back to haunt its architects, it’s hard not to feel the deepest pleasure. Religious intolerance couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of cynics, could it?

The Origins Of E

A reader writes:

As opposed to popular myth, Merck’s development of MDMA was intended to provide a new way to induce blood clotting, not to ‘suppress appetite’ as commonly believed:

The company [Merck] did develop the drug in 1912, but the appetite suppressant story is an urban myth, passed on from source to source through "uncritical copy-paste procedures". Instead, documents from the time show that ecstasy emerged during the company’s efforts to develop a potentially life-saving medicine that would help blood to clot.

The best available blood clot medicine at the time, hydrastinin, was patented by Merck’s local rival Bayer. Merck chemists believed that a similar compound called methylhydrastinin would be equally effective and set about trying to make it from scratch in a way not covered by the Bayer patent. Ecstasy, also known as MDMA, was first produced during these experiments, but attracted little attention. Merck’s recent search found just a passing reference to the drug: in a patent the company filed in 1912 to protect its new blood clot agent, which had been tested on patients in a Berlin hospital. Patent 274350 did not refer to MDMA by name, but described its properties among a list of other new intermediates: "colourless oil, boiling point 155C at 20mm pressure, its salt forms white crystals".

You live and learn.

The Conflict Within Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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I did not know this about Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Somali culture began to demand that Ayaan too become a submissive woman who scrubbed away her own personality and sexuality. When she was five years old, she was made “pure” by having her genitals hacked out with a knife. It was a simple process. Her grandmother and two of her friends pinned her down, pulled her legs apart, and knifed away her clitoris and labia. She remembers the sound even now – "like a butcher, snipping the fat off a piece of meat." The bleeding wound was sewn up, leaving a thick tissue of scarred flesh to form as her fleshy chastity belt. She could not walk for two weeks.

Ayaan soon realised that in a culture so patriarchal it could not tolerate the existence of an unmaimed vagina, "I could never become an adult. I would always be a minor, my decisions made for me. But I wanted to become an individual, with a life of my own."

When you read Johann Hari’s poignant, sensitive account of this remarkable woman’s life, you understand more profoundly why she can say both this:

"I see no difference between Islam and Islamism. Islam is defined as submission to the will of Allah, as it is described in the Koran. Islamism is just Islam in its most pure form. Sayyid Qutb [the thinker who inspired al Qaeda] didn’t invent anything, he just quoted the sayings of Mohammed."

And this:

"It’s wrong to treat Muslims as if they will never find their John Stuart Mill. Christianity and Judaism show people can be very dogmatic and then open up. There is a minority [within Islam] like [reformists] Irshad Manji and Tawfiq Hamid who want to remain in the faith and reform it… Can you be a Muslim and respect the separation of church and state? I hope a large enough number of Muslims will agree you can, and they will find a way to keep the spiritual elements that comfort them and live in a secular society."

Between those two quotes lies our future.

A Mormon Question Romney Should Answer

I’m with Hitch on this one:

Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization. Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one.

The awful history of the LDS church’s treatment of African-Americans requires an accounting by any leading Mormon, as Romney is, who didn’t protest at the time. I blogged a while back about Darron Smith, a black Mormon fired by Brigham Young University for compiling an anthology on the Mormon church’s historic demonization of African-Americans. It was an eye-opening read.

Attention, Wikipedia

I haven’t actually, you know, endorsed anyone for either party’s nomination. I like Obama, Paul and McCain, as any reader could tell you. But that’s it … for now. I think a blogger should make up his or her mind when it matters, so I hope to make a clear pick for both sides before Christmas, and I’ll make a pick for president next fall. But I haven’t yet.

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

You wrote:

Imagine an Obama-McCain race: adult, graceful, necessary, and good for us.

At first glance, this seems instinctively correct. But I fear that if it is indeed Obama vs McCain, you’ll come to rue these words someday, especially if McCain were to swallow his pride and dignity (something he’s done freely and often during the past seven years) and hire Rovian types, who would gladly play the Obama-Osama/Isn’t-he-a-Muslim? card. I could easily see McCain – close to reaching his dream of the White House, and therefore so anxious were he to slip in the polls to the young whippersnapper Obama (a likely scenario) – becoming desperate and start slinging the mud. He has sold pieces of his soul time and again since 2000 – why wouldn’t he sell what’s left of it in exchange for the ultimate victory?

It doesn’t matter whom the GOP nominee will be, Andrew: There will be nothing adult, graceful, necessary, or good for us about his campaign.

You can already see the hot-button issues forming: fear of immigrants; endorsing torture and destruction of the Constitution to protect us from those A-rabs; advocating "victory" in Iraq and sabre-rattling about Iran; scaring everyone to death about "socialized medicine"; and implying that the Democrat(ic) nominee is a closet Muslim and Osama cousin (Barack), lezbo castrata (Hillary), or a closet queer ("Breck Girl" Edwards).

You’ve got half of your equation right: Obama would run an adult, graceful, and necessary campaign that would be both "good for us" and in marked contrast to the debased mudfest the GOP would have in store. And we would learn an awful lot about the American people by whom we’d choose, and what ultimately motivates us more: Hope and Inclusion, or Fear and Division. The biggest reason to support Obama is the stark and utterly refreshing contrast he will provide to the GOP nominee.

But don’t bet your mortage, or your health benefits, on the outcome.