Pearls Before Swine

Most recently, news of the present sociopolitical unrest in Egypt has been filling the front page of news periodicals. The cause of the upheaval there, as usual, is a conflict of ideological (read: religious) dogmas…in this case between the Muslim and non-Muslim (Coptic Christians, etc.) segments of Egyptian society. As Egypt threatens to tear itself apart in the coming weeks, my thoughts turn anew to the pathos of the human condition and most specifically towards the roles that human in telligence and religious beliefs play (or don’t) in creating, fostering and perpetuating conflict both among individuals and groups of like-minded individuals.

A few weeks earlier, I devoted a few cortical surges to syndicated cartoonist Stephen Pastis, creator of the ‘Pearls Before Swine’ comic strip that has such a deliciously cynical edginess to its humor. The name Pastis has chosen for his strip has always been a favorite phrase of mine due to the fact that it almost perfectly characterises the relationship that many human beings have with erstwhile ‘higher wisdom’. The phrase alludes to the fact that knowledge and ‘wisdom’ may only be effectively embraced if one’s level of intelligence (read: intellect) permits receptivity of abstract knowledge and is then capable of rational analysis of that data (assuming also consequent ability to make an enlightened, intelligent behavioral decision, based upon the outcome of that process).

Real pearls thrown in front of real swine would doubtless be gobbled up along with the corn kernels, since pigs are not known to place high value on expensive jewels. Similarly, pearls of wisdom tossed out among the hoi polloi are similarly disregarded by human swine, although that’s probably an unhappy and undeserved insult to real pigs, since our four-footed porcine friends are actually quite intelligent, relatively speaking, and many of their human counterparts are most definitely NOT.

Be this as it may, as I consider the latest violence in Egypt over religion, I am constantly drawn back to the matter of why so many people in our society are so ignorant (both in ‘self’ and in opinion), despite the fact that there actually is quite a bit of wisdom ‘out there’ to draw upon. There are, actually, as many forms of ‘ignorance’ to consider as there are definitions of ‘intelligence’.

An expression of a somewhat different sort of ignorance that is closer to home maybe found in the activities of certain American religious organisations that claim affiliation with the Christian faith, rather than Islamic (or otherwise). Notable among them are certain groups of fanatically extreme evangelical Pentecostal fundamentalists that were either directly founded by or are affiliated with a certain Scott Douglas Lively, who is a perplexing mix of things. Lively, who supposedly is based in Sacramento, CA, has proven intelligence and ability, since he is a considerably articulate individual who is able to express his unfortunate opinions and attitudes in a succinct and coherent manner that belies the virulent and hateful sentiments his beliefs espouse and promote. Ironically, he seems to share many assets in that sense with other charismatics like our old buddies Uncle Adolf (Hitler) and Josef Stalin.

Possessed of a law degree from a law school associated with the ‘Evangelical Free Church of America’ (i.e. Trinity Law School, in Santa Ana, CA), Lively is an author,activist, speaker and (we are told) a devout Christian fundamentalist who has founded a number of evangelical Pentecostal religious organisations. The President of ‘Abiding Truth Ministries’, a conservative religious group situated in Temecula, CA, a former state director (for California) of the ‘American Family Assn’, and author of several books…notable among them ‘The Pink Swastika’ (whose thesis is that Hitler’s Third Reich was a coterie of homosexuals), and ‘The Poisoned Stream’ (a similarly controversial expostulation along similar lines), along with a number of shorter treatises on evangelical Christian topics, Mr. Lively is anything if not modestly prolific. A biograph appearing on-line references lively’s apparent ‘conversion and transformation’ from ‘a homeless alcoholic to Christian Leader’ [Note: some of the most fanatical proponents of religious beliefs and faiths tend to be ‘saved ex-sinners’ who see themselves as having been ‘lost’ until new-found faith in a god or religious belief straightened them out; there is a considerable body of information on the psychosociology of this personality dynamic out there that would likely have some relevance to this individual] which should immediately raise a few eyebrows.

The single most forceful aspect of Lively’s collective evangelical activities appears to be an outspoken condemnation of ‘gays’ and homosexuality, based upon the extreme interpretation of the Christian bible his ‘faith’ is based upon and his unshakable faith that homosexuality is the root of most human sin. In this context, Lively has been actively fostering anti-gay sentiments for at least the past ten years, both in America and abroad. Every other sentence Lively writes carries some sort of message that homosexuality is an abomination that ‘God forbids and reviles’. Any ‘true believer’ in the ‘word of God’ must, he thinks, feel similarly.

About half a decade ago Lively toured extensively through a number of the former Russian socialist nations and with Slavic ‘New Generation Church’ preacher Alexey Ledyaev founded a group called ‘Watchmen on the Walls’ in Riga, Latvia, a group that is among the most virulent anti-gay organisations in the world. Although this Latvian group vehemently denies that it is 1) a hate group, and states 2) that it does not ‘hate gays…or anyone else’, the evidence of their activities demonstrates otherwise, as incidents involving acts of extreme physical violence directed against gays (or persons perceived as gay, whether they actually are or not) continue to occur. Sometimes described as ‘Slavic evangelical Pentecostals’, the actions of persons in this country identified as believers of their vicious dogma make it very clear that these are people to keep an eye on in our ‘free’ society.

Since Sacramento (CA) has become a known epicenter of gay & homosexual culture (along with Portland, OR, and San Francisco, CA), it was a bit startling to find that our area (and nearby ‘Sheridan, CA’, located about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento) appears to also be Lively’s home turf, as well. Word has it that Lively’s focus is being especially directed to these areas as part of an active campaign to battle these manifestations of what he regards as modern day Sodom & Gomorrah surrogates.

Of course,the simple fact is that his virulent anti-gay philosophy is predicated upon a single basic assumption: that as a fundamentalist Christian who believes in a particularly conservative expression of Christian faith, homosexuality (or any deviance from conventional male/female sexuality, for that matter) is a mortal sin. I think it’s fair to say that those (such as myself), who do not believe in gods and deities, tend to think people like Mr. Lively belong on another planet, where individuals with equally bizarre delusions and faith-based interpretations of human experience might possibly be able to find a more receptive audience.

I myself am not, as I’ve said many times before (simply as useful context), gay or someone with homosexual sympathies, but I am strongly dedicated to the constitutional freedoms granted to all Americans by our constitution. What makes these right-wing Christian evangelical Pentecostals so particularly dangerous is the fact that you don’t even have to actually be gay or homosexual to incur their wrath. In his writings, Lively uses a home-brewed word ‘Homosexualist’ that insinuates anyone interested in protecting gay rights is equally tainted. The message this distorted nomenclature delivers to the less astute among his flocks is that the definition of what defines ‘gay’ or ‘homosexuality’ is pretty much left up to the individual to determine. Innuendo, rumor, indirect impugnment, suggestion…all are fair criteria for casting suspicion on others as being bin the gay or homosexual camp. Under the terms of those rules, everyone is a potential suspect, which is even more ludicrous because by Lively’s definition, all that it takes is a subjective decision (no matter how myopic or narrowly based) that someone is gay to defame them.

Thus, an individual male who might be slightly built, soft-spoken or otherwise not congruent to the stereotypic image of a heterosexual ‘manly man’ might be openly taunted, physically assaulted and/or publically put-upon purely on a whim. That's got to be scary by anyone’s understanding.

These extreme fundamentalist ‘Christians’ are extraordinarily dangerous (even more so than most other contemporary religious faiths, including radical Islam) in that they are fanatical Christians who brook no compromise of what passes for the fundamentalist’s version of the Christian bible’s message, yet also hide behind the protective curtain of the Christian 'God's will'. One of their strongest convictions is that so-called gay and homosexual individuals are not entitled to the same basic human freedoms supposedly enjoyed by all Americans under the US Constitution, by virtue of the fact that they are an aberration in the ‘eyes’ of their Christian god, and therefore beyond his protection. Beyond that, their fanatical extremism inspires many of their less-intelligent (perhaps also more mindlessly reactive) members to publically assault those they superficially identify as ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’. Viewed through this narrow lens, anyone at any time could be labeled a gay and singled out for harrassment…even someone wearing Spandex shorts on a bicycle, or sporting a Speedo at the beach.

Interestingly enough, the expressed dogma of Lively’s peculiarly conservative evangelical faith comes across as well written and almost entirely devoid of the sort of gross evidence of illiteracy that one might expect from such a highly inflammatory mind-set as his. This is merely further evidence that one can be reasonably well ‘educated’ in the conventional academic sense and still be dangerously ignorant in far broader (philosophic) terms and concepts. Supporting evidence of this may be seen in the great number of individuals who attain higher academic credentials (such as PhDs) and still adhere to ideas, concepts and beliefs that a rational non-theist might feel are contrathetical to an ‘advanced’ state of enlightened understanding of life. An excellent example of this involves an old friend of mine, who despite having obtained his PhD and become a world-recognized scholar of the works of C.S. Lewis, remains a devoutly religious person (in fact, much like his mentor, C.S. Lewis). Of course advanced degrees simply mean that the holder has managed to clear specific academic hurdles (of highly variable legitimacy, in some cases)…a status that carries with it no implicit guarantee that the degreed person in question is a rationally competent, philosophically astute, humanely balanced or broadly perceptive individual. Merely that he has paid the fees and expended the elbow grease required to pass the course requirements.

Dealing therefore with dangerously narrow-minded groups such as these articulate ‘evangelical Pentecostal’ organisations is far more difficult than dealing with more rudimentary ones, but sadly enough, even though a normal percentage of the people belonging to them appear reasonably intelligent, there are very likely a far greater proportion of their members who are quite literally just a few bricks short of a full load. These latter among their ranks are the truly dangerous ones…the ones that are perhaps actually intellectually challenged and/or IQ deficit…since they are more likely to physically act out the sort of poisonous hatred being fed to them by those formulating the group’s theological dogma. It’s one thing to have your intellectual reasoning ability polluted by poisonous hate-mongering polemics; another entirely to put those attitudes into actual practice to the point of carrying out acts of physical violence against others who do not share your particular Weltanschaung. Think of these people as the less astute 'Sturmabteilung' or SA whom Hitler so effectively used in the early days of the NSDAP (until the began to get out of hand and threaten his strategic plan for control the party, and by extension, the German nation).

One of Mr. Lively’s more recent outrageous (just to illustrate the egregiousness of much of what he publically espouses at his ‘Defend the Family’ website) assertions is that President Barack Obama is gay and that he used to frequent gay bars, among other things. To support this aspersive nonsense, he indulges in rumor-mongery (seemingly a favorite tactic) and testimony by sources that are anything but upstanding members of the community, but again, the mere suggestion that the President is himself gay is enough to permanently corrupt many less astute people’s perceptions of factual reality.

As someone who has German relatives and ancestry, I was particularly interested in reading Lively’s intensely homophobic book (co-authored with Kevin E. Abrams, a Jew living in Israel, apparently) ‘The Pink Swastika’, to examine the contents and determine exactly what documentational citations he used to support his thesis that the Third Reich was an exclusive coterie of intensely warrior-like homosexuals in the ancient Greek mode.

Although I haven’t fully ploughed through the sea of aspersions contained in that imperfect work, I did learn that Lively draws substantially upon documentation of the 40s era that has subsequently been shown (by historians) to actually have stemmed from a covert Soviet plot to discredit the German National Socialist movement. Much of what he uses in his book as evidence, in terms of supposedly authoritative quotes and published material ‘documenting’ homosexual activity in NaziGermany, consists of cleverly crafted sociopolitical fabrications and assumptive conclusions by others who deliberately attempted to cast disrespect and ill repute on the NSDAP. Other ‘evidence’ he cites has been grossly taken out of context so as to convey a meaning and inference never intended by the original author, but this is a rather common tactic taken by many less-than-scrupulous authors of historical works. Lively also is quite fond of saying things like '...rumored to be homosexual' or '...suspected of being gay', etc., which is not ad has never been an acceptable gambit for a serious documentarian to employ.

Although it is true that some key figures in the early NSDAP (such as Captain Ernst Roehm) were overt homosexuals (or even had well-documented pederast tendencies), the infinitely small number of these individuals in proportion to the whole membership of the NSDAP has been blatantly overstated, with untoward inferences drawn forth from material containing little or no actual substance. When the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ occurred (the SA purge of late June, in 1934) it was the result of a far more highly convoluted political power struggle carried on within the NSDAP by Hitler and his ‘internalised’ party antagonists than a discrete effort to remove a few homosexuals from the NSDAP. The fact that Lively is an ‘educated’ and literate individual, who knows how to construct ‘believable’ documentary scenarios, therefore makes what he has to say quite compelling to someone who may lack the intellectual ability to actually penetrate his aspersions and challenge his sources and differentiate actual historical facts from highly colorful insinuations. While it is also true that Himmler’s obsession with the occult, with ancient Nordic myths/legends and with ancient Greek cultural nuances might lead the unlettered individual to conclude that Lively’s (et al) assertions are ‘gospel’, the more astute can quickly determine where Lively and Abrams are straying from the path of factual truth to make their grossly distorted allegations. Careful hiostorians often refer to this as 'reinventing history for the sake of convenience' (AKA: historical revisionism). And not being one to leave any discursive escape routes open in his distorted logic, Lively states (among many things) that although there were few ‘unmarried’ Nazis, marriage in and of itself was no ‘proof’ of not being gay. Once again, it is a technique repeated throughout his book, since by Lively’s definition an unfounded rumor or allegation is equally as good as factual and undisputed evidence to ‘prove’ the point being made.

In recent years (2009), Lively travelled to Uganda with several evangelical cohorts to give a series of talks and presentations on the threat gay culture posed to traditional Ugandan family values. These presentations inspired a member of Uganda’s parliament to author a bill calling for the death penalty in criminal cases involving homosexual abuse (pederasty, etc.). Although Lively later expressed mild regret that his sentiments had provoked so strong a reaction in Uganda, the eventual broader result of the furor that resulted was a wave of ‘gay murders’ and killings of anyone in Uganda suspected of merely being gay in that nation. To compare that to a reign of terror is an understatement.

In 2013 a Federal judge allowed a suit to stand brought against Lively by a gay coalition, relating to this Ugandan legislative bill (a resolution that came to be known as the ‘Kill the Gays Bill’), affirming that the sentiments expressed and activity associated with it constituted a legally acceptable definition of ‘crimes against humanity’ and could therefore proceed before the bench.The case remains in contention.

Lively is extremely clever, of course, and also well versed in the legal ins and outs of what he is doing, so he poses a somewhat difficult target to focus attention on. In his activities he is ‘aided and abetted’ by a host of equally narrow-minded and highly vindictive Christian evangelical Pentecostal groups (again, some of which he actually initiated and others that have found him to be the articulate spokesman and proponent of conservative Christianity they’ve long wished for).

Even more recently, there has been a strong anti-gay movement in Russia, strongly supported not just by extremist Christian (Slavic) evangelical Pentacostals but by the Russian legislature, to criminalise homosexuality as being inherently immoral and ‘un-Russian’; consequently the individual freedoms of certain individuals identified (by whatever means) as ‘gay’ are being curtailed or eliminated.  It is simply more evidence of the danger these twisted religious organisations pose to any free society.

Despite efforts by many to alert the world to the danger of non-Islamic extremist religious cults (and yes, I consider these to be cults), far too often admonishments to keep them under observation and limit their outrages amount to those previously alluded to ‘pearls before swine’ and are lost among the corn kernels in the human intellectual food trough. Humanity has a track record of ignoring balanced, reasoned, humane and wisely considered logic in favor of highly emotional and volatile subjective sentiment and this is largely attributable to the nature of human beings and our patterns of social behavior, emotion and interaction. We are indeed ‘imperfect’ creatures, but not because we are sinners in the eyes of someone’s god. It’s just the way we have evolved, and we must stop putting the blame for our bio-chemical cognative indiscretions as a species on the shoulders of someone’s fancied deity and take responsibility ourselves.

As far as I am concerned, the matter of one’s sexuality is purely an individual concern, and there’s certainly nothing at all ‘sinful’ about it. I fully agree, however, that whatever one’s sexual preferences, immature human beings (read: children, or those juveniles that are still not fully formed, either physically or mentally) should be protected from capricious sexual depredation. Things like pederasty (sexual relations by adults with children) are potentially devastating, fraught with horrific psychological consequences, and must therefore be made ‘off-limits’ in any civilised society. But otherwise, it’s a matter of whatever turns you on (without consciously hurting or traumatizing another human being in the process). That’s my position on the matter of sexual preferences and attitudes.

I suppose we should thank Mr. Lively for providing us with quite a considerable history of sexual perversions and practices (as in his book ‘The Pink Swastika’), since although things like that have been going on since the dawn of recorded history, many of them have likely escaped our awareness in the recent past. I always find it helpful, furthermore, to recall Billy Shakespeare's famous admonishment "...Methinks he doeth protest too much!"

My apologies for the rather hasty manner in which the above opinions have been set down (and for numerous typos and spelling errors that may exist), since it’s all been a rather quick effort on my part to express a few personal feelings about these examples of severely narrowed human perceptivity (i.e. those exemplified by the Slavic evangelical Pentecostals, and their leaders, like Mr.Lively).

I have a distinct feeling that Mr. Lively is going to be seriously disappointed when he dies and finds that all his dogmatic religious baloney makes a meat sandwich look like an organic vegetarian snack prepared for him by atheist author Christopher Hitchens!