Abstinence Aids Sex-Trafficking

The soi-disant Evangelicals in the US and Britain have fastened onto human trafficking as the new form of slavery, and are engaged in a major effort to publicize it and ultimately defeat it.  This is a noble thing, and we support them.

At the same time, it must be noted that these same Evangelicals are the principal advocates of "abstinence only" as a model of sex education.  So we hope they will think hard about the possibility that this model may inadvertently make it harder for sexual slaves to seek their own freedom.

Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped at 14, raped, and held captive for nine months.  Since her rescue, she has grown to adulthood, formed a foundation to educate children about sexual crimes. Speaking recently at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, she talked about why it was so hard for her to escape:

[Smart explained that] she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

"I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, I'm that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.' And that's how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value," Smart said. "Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value."

Let's not overreach.  For one thing, Smart was not raised in an Evangelical Christian household, but in a Mormon one.  For another, she was kidnapped, rather than than "trafficked" in the commercial sense.  And, critically, we are aware of no evidence at all that the women trafficked for sexual purposes are more likely than any others to come from religious families.

Still, "abstinence only" educational efforts are only one of the many ways that societies worldwide have historically used sexual shame to exercise control over their members, and especially over women.  Take away the shame, and how many enslaved prostitutes might not feel free to break their chains?

How Are People Murdered in America?

The short answer is guns.  The long answer is handguns.

Among the loony claims floating around the Internet, you occasionally come across some variation on this one:  "More people are murdered by hands and feet [or knives, or pressure cookers] than by guns!  Check the statistics!"

We did, and that particular claim is false.

However, we can see where it comes from, and what rhetorical purpose it serves.  According to the FBI's tally of murders in the US from 2007-2011, numbers vary from year to year but the rough outline remains the same.*  In 2011, there were 12,664 murders.  Of those, 8,583 -- almost 68% -- were committed using guns.  In comparison, knives or other cutting instruments accounted for 13%, and "personal weapons" -- hands and feet, perhaps the occasional savage head-butt -- for about 6%.  (Explosives murdered 12 people in 2011, a huge increase from the previous years but still less than a tenth of a percent).

So what's going on?  The false claims start with inflammatory articles like this one, posted at the Daily Caller.  Here's the headline:

You are more likely to be killed by hands and feet than by a shotgun or rifle

It claims, more or less correctly,** that

Total murders by hands and feet in 2011 exceed the total number of murders by shotgun and rifle. Does that mean gloves and shoes need regulation because they are concealing deadly weapons? No, but it does mean that there is no need for any further regulation of long arms

You can see what happened.  The article is about long guns -- rifles, shot guns, and the much-ballyhooed "assault weapons."  And strictly on its own terms, it is accurate.  But excitable readers may fail to ask "What about handguns?"  Then they click all over the web, spreading their own misinterpretation of the story -- a misinterpretation which is all too easily come by, since the Caller article never mentions handguns.  

Here's the fact:  of those 8,583 gun murders in 2011, 6,220 -- 72% -- were committed with handguns.  In 2011, 49% of all murders in the US were committed with a single class of weapon:  handguns.  This is an extremely important fact, of which nobody should lose sight in the current debate over gun laws.  Handguns kill 8-10 times as many Americans as do rifles and shotguns.

Which means that while a ban on automatic rifles might very well make it more difficult for killers seeking mass casualties to commit their crimes, the place to begin, if we are serious about reducing the overall number of murders in our country, is with a dramatic reduction in the number of handguns.

____________________________________________________
*Note that the FBI reports murders, not deaths.  This means that cases in which a death is ruled "accidental" -- father's loaded pistol kills boy in truck; toddler shoots woman at household party, and so forth -- are not included.   
** We say "more or less" because the FBI's numbers also include several hundred "other guns" murders, and over a 1500 "firearms, type not stated."  If as few as 50 of those murders were committed with long guns, the Caller is mistaken.

Report, Don't Guess

In Eastern Europe and the Levant, conspiracy theories are the very stuff of life.  Although we Americans certainly have our share -- did you hear about the time Roy Cohn took Elvis for a ride in his UFO and they shot Kennedy together? -- our natural tendency is more manichaean.  We like our white hats and our black hats, our easily-identified enemies, and even though the world stubbornly refuses to conform to our vision, we keep looking out the window and seeing what we want to see.

So it is that, less than a day after the Boston Marathon bombings, a fair number of Americans began speculating on just which of the usual suspects to blame.  We heard a guest commentator on NPR hinting darkly about the right-wing "patriot" groups that have, apparently, been multiplying in recent years.  To the credit of WBUR and On Point's listeners, a caller quickly shut her up, with a reminder that it is irresponsible to speculate in the absence of evidence.

That scolding carried no weight with the people at Tea Party Nation (an actual website!), where Judson Philips writes:

Unfortunately the sad truth is we will be hit again.  It will happen sooner or later.  It will probably be sooner than later. 

There are two reasons why we will be hit again.  First, we have a determined enemy who hates us.  Second, we have a government that is not committed to protecting America.

It is a pretty safe bet right now that this attack was carried out by an Islamist.  It was a well-coordinated attack.  In its publication, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula called for just this kind of attack.

While the government and media have fallen all over themselves to downplay this fact, there is a twenty-year-old Saudi student being detained as a “person of interest.”   Person of interest in a nice police term that is used for someone who is not under arrest and therefore does not have to be read his Miranda rights and who hopefully will not lawyer up.

Case closed, right?

For the record, this was posted at 7:08 this morning.  As of the 9:40 press conference, there was nobody in custody.  That "Saudi national" you keep hearing about, and whose rights Philips is so eager to set aside, appears to just be some student who got tackled by a patriotic bystander when he did what everybody else was doing, which was to run away from the explosion.  (That's per John Miller, the John L. Allen Jr. of crime reporting).

Gawker has a guide to even more of this paranoid twittery.

But the one who really frustrates us here is in another (and higher) class altogether: Terry Mattingly, at GetReligion.  In a rambling and self-referential post, Mattingly "waits for the religion shoe to drop in Boston," and gives fellow reporters instructions on how to handle the seemingly-inevitable.  He reminds them to help readers understand the different forms of Islam, and makes suitable comparisons to Christian terrorists such as Anders Beivik and Paul Hill.  All wise and appropriate.

And yet we are left, as so often in Terry's posts, with a nagging suspicion.  Why jump in with this piece now -- unless you are assuming that there will be a religion angle to the story as it develops?  Why drop the word "Islam" five times and "Muslim" three, if you are not trying to play up a little to the inevitable speculation about just what that religious angle may prove to be?  To hint, just a tiny bit, at what you think happened?

The problem is that times like this call restraint, for caution, and for patience.

Maybe we're being unfair.  But we wish that he had held back a little, and either refrained from publishing anything at all or simply written a short paragraph, reminding the pros that, if there does turn out to be a religious angle here, they have a duty to their readers to be as clear and specific about the details as they can be.  Which he did say, of course.

Or, as John L. Allen, Jr. said in the post below, "Getting the story right means you have to respect the complexity of reality."

Miserere

Please pray for the people hurt by the explosions -- now said to be bombs -- at the Boston Marathon.  You have probably prayed for them already; please don't stop.

What About the Crucifixions?

Saudi Arabia, as perhaps you've heard, has recently agreed to postpone the crucifixions and firing-squad executions of seven prisoners, all of them convicted in a string of jewel thefts.  Some of the convictions  were based on confessions extracted through torture, and some of the convicts were minors at the time of their arrest.  For most Americans, the big news is that our Saudi allies actually crucify people.

Number one: ick.  Number two: allies.

Writing in Forbes,  Mark Adomanis makes a simple argument that American foreign policy is inconsistent.  On one hand, Congress believes that Russia should be punished for its abuse of human rights, and passes the Magnitsky Act.  On the other hand, the Saudis torture people and then crucify them, and are rewarded with many billions of dollars of our most sensitive military technology.  He concludes that we have a choice to make, between a foreign policy based on human rights and one based on naked self-interest, and that we have not actually chosen:

But what we have now is a completely incoherent mishmash of both schools, a “selective Wilsonianism” in which the United States uses values against its strategic adversaries while studiously ignoring the far more grievous human rights violations of its close allies and partners in the Middle East. .... [If the U.S.] keeps the Magnitsky bill on the books it should take similar legislative action against the Saudis, the Bahrainis,  the Qataris, the Kuwaitis, and all of the other repressive and dictatorial governments with which it is allied. 

Adomanis glosses over some important side questions.  For one thing, our overall foreign policy is the awkward product of both the executive and legislative branches, which -- to put it mildly -- do not always share a vision.  For another, politics is the art of the possible, not of the ideal. The strain of do-gooderism in American foreign policy has never been thorough or consistent, but it has made a vast contribution to the common good.  Other nations resent our frequent displays of hubris, but when the chips are down they also chide us if we fail to "display leadership" by toppling some dictator.

Still, Adomanis has his ginger on something worth saying.  For many decades, it has been our custom to make alliances with despotic regimes in order to build barriers against larger enemies.  Although FDR's famous remark about Somoza -- "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch" -- is spurious, it reflects a foreign-policy truism.  Along with Somoza, we have allied ourselves with the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos, the Duvaliers, Hailie Selassie, Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein. (Here's a list of some others.)  Sons of bitches all, but our sons of bitches.

America's special relationship with the Saudis is among the most outrageous of these alliances.   Saudi Arabia's official form of Islam, Wahabism, played a major role in the emergence Al Qaeda and similar movements. The most destructive terrorist attack in American history was committed by a team of Saudi Arabian citizens, backed by a Saudi billionaire.  To this day, there are questions legitimate questions about just how much responsibility Saudi institutions and officials may share for the 9/11 attacks -- and the US government has joined its Saudi allies in trying to shut down the people pressing for answers.

It is worth remembering that the House of Saud has only ruled over a united kingdom since 1932, and that for most of the history of that kingdom, American government and business interests have been a major player on the peninsula.  They've never really existed without us, and our development over the same period would have been very different without them.  Simply put, we want their oil.  We sell them our guns (and planes and rockets and God knows what else) so that nobody can come and take the oil from them.  It is national self-interest at its most naked -- and symbiotic.  They are our sons of bitches, and we have become theirs.

But come on.  Russia, for all its abuses (and they are many) has abolished the death penalty.  On the list of nations that execute people, Saudi Arabia comes third, after those human rights giants China and Iran.  The Saudis torture people -- including, in the case at hand, minors -- then cut off their heads.  Or shoot them or crucify them.

A country, like a man, is often known by the company it keeps.  Maybe we should rethink this particular friendship.

Pray for Ethan

If you have not already, please pray for Ethan.  He is the 5-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome and attention deficit disorder who is being held captive in Alabama.

His mother calls him "Love Bug."

Ethan was pulled off his school bus by a man with a rifle, and is being held in an underground bunker by a severely deranged man.  News reports say that he is "unharmed," meaning that he has apparently not been shot, which is a very good thing.  But let us be clear that the boy is not, cannot possibly be, unharmed.  The psychological toll of this captivity will be immense and long-lasting.

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Charles Albert Poland Jr., the bus driver who refused to give an armed intruder two hostages, and was killed for his resistance.  He may very well have saved another child from suffering like Ethan.

And, while you're at it, pray for the success of the police negotiators, and for the criminal, Jimmy Lee Dykes, that God will keep him from doing any worse evil than he has already done.

As we go to bed on Thursday, this terrible story continues.  We hope to wake up and hear some good news.

Sometimes, Conspiracy is No Theory

You've probably read the bad news from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  If not, brace yourself.

Documents disclosed recently demonstrate clearly that Roger Cardinal Mahony and his assistant, Father Thomas Curry (now Auxiliary Bishop of the diocese), actively conspired to protect pedophile priests from prosecution.  As late as 1987, they were shuffling from parish to parish and diocese to diocese priests whom they knew to be abusive felons; in one case, they discussed sending one to a psychiatrist who was also an attorney, specifically to use attorney-client privilege as a way around the reporting required of health-care professionals.

The story is sickening.  (Read it here, or anywhere else on the net).  Perhaps the most frustrating parts of it are the public apologies that both men have offered.  As Catholic Culture reports:

 “I wish to acknowledge and apologize for those instances when I made decisions regarding the treatment and disposition of clergy accused of sexual abuse that in retrospect appear inadequate or mistaken,” said Bishop Curry. “Most especially, I wish to express my sympathy to all the victims of sexual abuse by clergy. Like many others, I have come to a clearer understanding over the years of the causes and treatment of sexual abuse.” 

What is this nonsense?  Does this man seriously expect us to believe that, as late as the 1980s, he didn't have a "clear understanding" that sexually abusing minors was not just bad pastoral care but a serious crime?  That it had the potential -- indeed, the likelihood -- to do permanent and lasting psychological damage?  Because if he didn't understand those things, then it is simply because he wasn't paying attention.  The rest of us sure as hell did.

And even if he didn't understand, well, so what? The criminal code was clear as Waterford crystal.  All he had to do was obey the freaking law, and see to it that priests who couldn't do likewise were properly punished.  His "understanding" wasn't relevant then and it isn't relevant now.

Mahony does no better.  He says he is sorry, and that he prays for the victims.  That is, literally, the least he can do.  Granted, the archdiocese has reached a record $660 million settlement with victims, which counts for more -- but may still not be enough.  The fact is that Roman Catholicism in America, and by extension Christianity in America, may never recover from the damage that that these men and others like them did to its credibility.

We'd point out that these scandals simply demonstrate that, underneath the truly scabrous polemical attacks leveled against Roman Catholicism by Protestants and atheists over the centuries, there was at least a grain of terrible, painful truth.  We would point that out, we repeat, if only our last story hadn't been about a Methodist minister who beat his wives to death, and if Stalin hadn't been an atheist.

"The Sinister Minister"

That's a song by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.  It's also the nom de press of the Rev. Arthur Schirmer, a parish pastor in the United Methodist Church who (per the LA Times) has just been convicted of killing his wife Betty in 2008.  It also seems likely that he killed his first wife, Jewel, years earlier.  And yes, he was cheating on them when he did it -- which led an embittered husband to commit suicide in Schirmer's office.

He beat Betty to death, and then faked a car accident.

Need we say that the word "reverend" is here used in its least literal sense?  In this case, it means that somebody, long ago, had the poor judgment to ordain him.  It does not mean that he should be held in reverence.  Quite the contrary.

The guy is obviously a fiend from hell.  We rejoice in his mandatory sentence of life without parole.

Guns

We're not sure how old this is, or which year is intended, but you get the idea.  Courtesy of the Brady Campaign.

Yesterday, while we waited for the kid to come home from kindergarten so we could hug him too much and then pretend that everything was normal, we had a little time to think about guns in America.  We even took time to skim over the Supreme Court's decision in D.C. v. Heller, the case that overthrew the capital's handgun ban.

It's a well-written essay.  It's easy to imagine how, were one inclined to believe that lightly-fettered gun ownership were a moral or social good, one might take great comfort from Heller.

Basically, Scalia -- we take it that the decision was principally Scalia's -- says that the right to keep and bear arms is a form of natural right, recognized by common law and affirmed, but not conferred, by the 2nd Amendment.  He separates it, completely, from the ideas of "regulation" or a "militia," on linguistic grounds which seem to us feasible but by no means certain.  Over and over, the decision returns to the idea that guns provide a means for individuals to protect themselves; ultimately, the right to own guns is founded on the right to defend one's own life.

The decision has nothing to do with, for example, a right to feed oneself by hunting, or to entertain oneself by collecting or competing at marksmanship.  It is, entirely, about using guns for self-defense.

Surely you can see what's wrong with this idea.

Guns are not, by their nature, defensive weapons.  If somebody shoots a bullet at you, the biggest gun in the world will not stop that bullet from hitting you.  A vast pile of sand will.  A wall may.  A suit of body armor might, although it probably will not.

But do you know what works pretty well as a defense against guns?  Fewer guns.

The trick is that it can't be a couple of guns fewer.  If, like the United States, you have the world's highest rate of gun ownership (88 per 100 residents), it isn't enough to just cut the  number in half -- Switzerland has 45 guns per 100 residents, and the second-highest rate of gun-related deaths in the developed world, after us.

To really cut the levels of gun violence, you can't just worry about the unlicensed guns, or the large-caliber guns, or the automatic guns.  You can't trim a few Walthers here and snip a few Colts there and expect results.  No, you need to change your laws in some pretty dramatic ways.  A new and very strict regime of regulation, tracking and accountability is needed.  

It's not just about reducing the absolute number of guns, either.  Jamaica has a fairly low rate of gun ownership (7 per 100) but a sky-high rate of deaths by gunfire.  El Salvador is similar.  (On this terrifying chart, all of Latin America looks like a free-fire zone.) Clearly, these are places where the criminals can get guns, even if other people cannot.  That's why regulation and accountability -- things that the developing world sorely lacks, but which developed nations can impose when they choose -- are so important.

Frankly, we don't have much hope of American laws ever changing that much.  We love our guns too much; they are a deeply emotional symbol of individual freedom, of the power to defend oneself not only against criminals but against a coercive state.  In much of the country, a politician trying to limit gun ownership will very quickly become a former politician.  The supposedly (but don't kid yourself) apolitical Supreme Court is no help.

So far as we can see, there is no real way out of this mess.  A country that cannot even stomach a ban on paramilitary rifles and submachine guns is certainly never going to accept the sort of laws that would make handguns and bolt-action hunting rifles as rare as hand grenades or sarin gas.

That's a shame, because until change on that scale takes place, we are at the mercy of the lowest common denominator.  Perfectly legal guns, owned by reasonably responsible people, will still fall into the hands of criminals and crazy people.  They are found in stolen cars or handbags, in burgled homes -- or in Mom's closet, Dad's pickup -- and then used in terrible, terrible ways.  Although there is much we could do to help them, we can't make the criminals or the crazy people disappear.  But we could take away their weapons -- if only we were not convinced that those weapons were somehow keeping us safe.

Eddie Long is Now a King

And not the "Martin Luther King, Jr." kind, either.

Eddie Long, the Prosperity Gospel pastor accused of diddling the choirboys, has returned from a hiatus ("to work on problems in his marriage") just in time for his own coronation, which took place at his church -- if that's the word we want -- on Sunday. And mind you, Long wasn't just crowned king; he was crowned a Jewish king, which is much more impressive to a certain sort of sectarian mentality.

Anthea Butler posts some video at Religion Dispatches, as well as tart commentary. ("If it weren’t so offensive to Christian and Jewish sensibilities, it would be laughable.") Butler goes on to suggest -- okay, to state bluntly -- that Long is the leader of a cult, and a potentially dangerous one. She makes explicit comparisons to Jim Jones.

For us, it brings back terrifying echoes of Jack Hickman, the choirboy-diddling secret rabbi of Massapequa.

Twilight of the American Idols

A couple of balloons got deflated recently:

Idol #1: Rick Perry is no longer a viable candidate for the Republican nomination. He made a fool of himself in the most recent debate, struggling to remember even his canned threat against the Department of Energy. Afterward, Perry himself remarked that "It's a good a thing I was wearing my boots, because I really stepped in it." The guy is clearly not ready for prime time.

Since Perry is sitting on a big old pot of money, it is unlikely that he will slink away in defeat. It is likely that he will stay in the race, for all the usual ego-and-2016 reasons. If you ask Herman Cain, Perry has been trying to destroy him out of sheer meanness, and such a thing is not impossible. The real question is whether Perry's schadenfreude will extend to the destruction, attempted or complete, of Mitt Romney.

Idol #2: Joe Paterno. Needless to say, this is far more important than the mere presidency of the United States -- it's football. Paterno, who is 84 and probably should have retired years ago, was fired by Penn State for failing to take sufficient action when one of his assistant coaches was discovered raping a 10-year-old boy in the locker room.

The story is appalling on every possible level. Over 15 years, assistant coach Jerry Sandusky serially molested young boys, often using the Penn State athletic facilities to do so. He was observed doing this on several occasions, and by several people.

And let's be clear, this isn't a "sex scandal" in the same way that Bill Clinton's in-office adultery or Newt Gingrich's serial infidelity are. This goes well beyond even Herman Cain's alleged groping of an employee. Sandusky is accused of at least two counts of rape, a crime of violence -- in his case, against children. And to be sure, there is an element of scapegoating here; Paterno is only one of the many links in a chain or irresponsibility. After all, he reported the allegation to the administration, thereby doing the bare minimum to salve his conscience.

But as one of our friends, himself a professional athlete, observed this morning, Paterno -- a living legend so legendary that even Fr. A. has heard of him -- was in many ways superior to the administration at Penn State. For years, he has run his program like a medieval prince. If he had wanted Sandusky gone, the guy would have been gone in a heartbeat; if he had said a word, Sandusky would have been in prison. So why didn't he?

The Paterno case begs comparison to the scandals within the Roman Catholic Church. Paterno does indeed sound like one of those bishops who took little or no action against the reported abusers on their team. Paterno is also one of those sports figures who has often pontificated on "values." If anything, though, a coach of Paterno's stature has more power than the average bishop.

"Refuse to Be Terrorized"

That, in a nutshell, is the way to defeat terrorism, at least according to Spencer Ackerman at Wired. He argues that Al Qaeda was never as potent a threat as we imagined, and is by now reduced to the comparatively small-scale menace of car-bomb plots. From this, it follows that their lasting victory, so far as they have one, is the massive security state that the US has built up over the past decade. Setting aside the cost of the wars and the new bureaucracy and the spying and what-all else, consider (and this is us, not Ackerman) how much income is lost by the airlines, given the massive disincentives to travel now imposed at every airport.

Here, in short, is his diagnosis:

In case you haven’t noticed, hysteria is what the terrorists want. In fact, it’s the only win a decapitated, weakened al-Qaida can get these days. The only hope that these eschatological conspiracy theorists possess for success lies in compelling the U.S. to spend its way into oblivion and pursue ill-conceived wars. That’s how Osama bin Laden transforms from a cave-dwelling psycho into a world-historical figure — not because of what he was, but because of how we reacted to him.

So why don't we just quit ... reacting? Stop spending trillions and trillions of dollars to fight an enemy whose best remaining weapon is a car full of fertilizer? Here's why:

Former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has an answer. “There’s going to be a terrorist strike some day,” Clarke told Frontline for its “Top Secret America” documentary this week. “And when there is, if you’ve reduced the terrorism budget, the other party, whoever the other party is at the time, is going to say that you were responsible for the terrorist strike because you cut back the budget. And so it’s a very, very risky thing to do.”

The risk, in other words, is a political risk.

That's why it is, as Ackerman says, "a bipartisan race to the bottom."

There's a lot more to it. Ackerman makes an exception for nuclear terrorism, a means by which the bad guys can create truly massive casualties. This is the one area in which he says we have "shamefully underreacted." In other words, we can stop being afraid ... of most things.

We're not sure we agree with all of this, mind you. We at the Egg have always supported the war in Afghanistan, and frankly cheered on President Obama's liberal use of Predator drones, Hellfire missiles, and all the other scary weapons that we have and the enemy hasn't. The whole point to asymmetrical warfare is that it's asymmetric: one side has a lot more stuff to work with, and doesn't need to be devilishly creative when it can vaporize your leaders with robot planes from the stratosphere.

But still, we think Ackerman is onto something. America overreacted from the very beginning, and the overreaction has been costly. The bizarre, immoral, expensive and unnecessary invasion of Iraq is the most obvious instance, followed closely by the TSA lines and their ever-changing list of absurd restrictions. Add those to the rest of it -- the decay of our democratic institutions, the day-to-day anxiety promoted by politicians and the media -- and you've got a seriously high-ticket freakout.

So maybe ten years on is a suitable time to take a deep breath and control our panic. Get a grip on the loose nukes, not to mention the bacteria, but let some of the rest of it go. Agree that we won't blame each other for the one or two times that the bad guys score against us, in exchange for a chance to take back our country and our way of life.

Modern Doomsday Cult

Long, long ago, we mentioned Shoresh Yishai, a creepy faux-Jewish cult begun by a pair of Lutheran pastors on Long Island, years ago. They were (and their successors apparently remain) an awful bunch. Start with the child molestation and go from there. Anyone who has served a parish in Nassau County knows some of the heart-wrenching story.

We recently received a note from an anonymous correspondent, who claims to have been a member of this group for most of his or her life, and who has just recently started a blog devoted to going public on the subject. There isn't much there yet, apart from this nice bit of snark:

In the 1980’s, the cult was known as Shoresh Yishai, but the name has changed over the years. Currently they refer to themselves as the Abensaur Family or simply as the Family. As you probably know, the Family is not the most original name. The charismatic founder of the cult, Jack Hickman, also known as Abba to his followers, was not the most original cult leader. Most of the ideas and dogmas that are alive in the cult today he stole from others. This is rather fitting with his character as he did after all live a parasitic lifestyle.

The least a cult leader can do, we imagine, is show a little creativity. Give us flying saucers and mind-reading machines or stay home.

Anyway, if you are interested in Jack Hickman and his followers, stay tuned to Modern Doomsday Cult, and encourage the author to keep working.

When Arm-Twisting Turns Evil

For the record, our tongue was in our cheek when we suggested, yesterday, that we would have enjoyed watching the Archbishop of Canterbury make somebody cry. A display of resolution is one thing; cruelty is another.

Speaking of Anglicans, gay people, arm-twisting and cruelty, we have the case of Nolbert Kunonga, the deposed and excommunicated bishop of Harare. Kunonga is a close ally of Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF, which means that he has enough political support to continue posing as an Anglican bishop, to muster a gang of supporters, and even to win a few legal judgments regarding property. Of course, being an ally of Mugabe also means that he is closely connected to a network of violent thugs, who will use any means at all, including murder, to achieve their ends. And in fact, Kunonga has been accused for many years of orchestrating violent crimes.

Among these is the rape, mutilation and strangulation of an octogenarian lay minister named Jessica Mandeya, as well as a series of death threats threats and home invasions directed toward other Anglicans who will not accept his authority.

To these accusations, Kunonga gives a chilling response:

“You must have a very good reason to kill people,” he said. “Being a political scientist, I know who to eliminate if I wanted to physically, and to make it effective. I’m a strategist.”

Mr. Kunonga added, “If I want to pick on people to kill, [the recognized bishop, Chad] Gandiya would not survive here.” As for allegations that he and his men were involved in Mrs. Mandeya’s killing, Mr. Kunonga retorted, “What would an illiterate 89-year-old woman do to me to deserve death or assassination?”

Brrr. This is from Celia Duggan's recent article in the Times. Between the lines, it seems to say "I admit nothing, but when I do kill people, I'm very good at it."

There is a sex angle here, too, although to our eyes it seems strained:

Mr. Kunonga often echoes Mr. Mugabe’s favorite themes, including the president’s loathing for homosexuality. This issue provided Mr. Kunonga’s rationale for withdrawing from the mainline Anglican church in 2007.

He claimed homosexual priests and congregants had gained influence in the church, though mainline church leaders here, as a matter of policy, do not conduct same-sex marriages or ordain gay priests. Bishops in the mainline church saw Mr. Kunonga’s move as a power grab.

So, let us get this right. Kunonga -- rather like poor Colin Coward, not to mention Tailgunner Joe of yore -- has a list of gay priests. And so, even though the church in Zimbabwe doesn't take a particularly soft official line on homosexuality, he used this to justify schism at the least and, well, murder at the worst? (If he didn't like the church's policy, weren't there some committee members he could have reduced to tears?)

Frankly, we're going to call bushwah on this gay thing. African Christianity in general is not especially hospitable to gay people; the divide seems to be between those who hate them and those who want to kill them. We expect that Kunonga is using "gay priests" as a bogey-man, so that, to a certain kind of socially conservative foreigner, he can look like "one of those Southern Cone Anglicans you hear about," when he's really more like Hermann Goering.

Like many less frankly evil political figures in other countries, Kunonga hopes to rally sympathy for himself personally, by making people think that he is their ally against the Great Lavender Satan. This would be merely callous and cynical if it were not, in context, also homicidal.

Over at GetReligion, Terry Mattingly complained about the Times article, but did himself no credit in the process. He proposed that the article was short on certain key details, which is true -- all newspaper articles are short of some details. We ourselves would like very much to know more about the church polity details, which are pretty complicated. When an Anglican diocese withdraws, as Harare did under Kunonga, the whole province apparently needs to be reconstituted. Did that happen here? Or did Kunonga's deposition moot that requirement? All of this is likely to bear on the church-property cases brought into Zimbabwe's civil courts.

But Terry, as he so often does, thinks that the important details are doctrinal -- what does Kunonga believe that Chad Gandiya does not? That seems beside the point to us, but okay. Our real concern is the way Terry went about posing the problem.

First, he points out that Kunonga has a degree from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, the Methodist school where Rosemary Radford Ruether teaches, Ruether being "an articulate Catholic feminist who is on the far left edge of the Vatican’s most fiery critics." (It helps to know that the use and abuse of the word "evangelical" is a regular GR theme. It also helps to know that many seminaries manage to employ professors with sharply divergent theological and social views, so that the presence of, say, Mark [Lewis] Taylor at Princeton doesn't mean that Bruce McCormack is either a Schliermacher fan or a Communist).

Then he poses two possibilities:

I think it’s possible that many if not most readers would do the following math — “evangelical” seminary plus opposition to homosexuality means that this rebellious bishop, who may or may not have blood on his hands, is another one of those crazy African Anglicans on the right that the Times has told us so much about.

Possible, although it seems like a stretch. It seems like more dots than most readers are likely to connect, especially wrongly. But then he asks ....

... is there another scenario? After all, this brilliant anti-colonialist political scientist with a doctorate from a high-quality liberal campus (who is fighting the conservative Anglican bishops on his conservative continent) may be something completely different. Might be be rather complex, some twisted combination of liberal beliefs and totalitarian tactics?

Do we know that for sure?

No, we don’t. Again let me say: No. We. Do. Not. Know.

You see, we don’t have enough information.

You see what he did there? First, he accused the Times of dropping dark hints, which we don't think it actually did, and then he dropped some dark hints of his own. Which we think he did on purpose. Kind of cheesy.

Now, Terry Mattingly didn't just declare that Nolbert Kunonga is a classic American liberal Christian, steeped in the doctrines of feminism and liberationism, and that it is just these liberal theological ideas which have led him to rebel against a traditionalist African church body. He didn't just attempt to blame Rosemary Radford Ruether for the death of Jennifer Mandeya.

But he didn't exactly not do it, either. He certainly provided a superficially plausible scenario, by which the sort of ill-informed and knee-jerkingly biased reader he imagines hissing at the word "evangelical" might begin to argue that liberals are all Stalinists. Let us repeat that: He. Did. Not. Say. It. But you can bet that somebody else will.

Anyhoo, our real point here is that Kunonga is a creep of the first order. The very fact that we at the Egg are whining about one of our favorite bloggers is a sign of how effectively his "blame the gays" strategy works to provide him with protective cover in the West. And the longer he keeps us thinking that the problems in the Zimbabwean church are about our favorite Western controversy, the longer he keeps us from looking closely at his own all-too-typically African moral turpitude.

Creepy Evil People

Two items struck us lately, both grim. Neither, we regret to say, is especially unusual. But each is dreadful in its own way.

First, we see that the Rev. David Radtke has been arrested for repeatedly fondling a teen-aged student from Spain who was stating with his family. Radtke, an LCMS pastor who for the moment remains under call at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Gibbon, MN, has apparently confessed and said that he will take responsibility for his crimes. This is a nice sentiment, and but there is no meaningful chance that Radtke will be able to undo the damage he has done, either to this poor (but quite brave) girl, or to his own parish, or the the reputation of the Christian churches throughout the world. So thanks for nothing, you creepy pervert.

And in the same news feed, which clearly originates in Hell, we read that Libyan soldiers loyal to Gaddafi have been using rape to punish and terrify their victims. Apparently, they have been doing this on a pretty large scale -- a psychologist investigating something else entirely stumbled upon 200+ reported cases, meaning (as it always does with sexual violence) that there are likely to be many, many times that number which will never be reported.

We will spare you the details of both stories; trust us when we say that one cannot read them without rage. Follow the links if you must.

And while it may seem unfair to throw a creepy middle-aged man giving unwanted midnight "massages" to his houseguest up alongside bloodthirsty killers, we aren't so sure.

We just wrote, and deleted, a long and pretentious post on power, privilege and the narcissistic misuse of sex. But you know what? Egg readers are smart people, and we're going to bet that you already have that stuff down cold.

So instead, after a couple of weeks when the former Governor of California and the former director of the International Monetary Fund have given breathtaking witness to the capacity of powerful men to use abuse powerless women, let's just take a moment to remember the obvious fact that not all these men are movie stars and Socialist bankers, living lives of obvious privilege. As we all know, evil is everywhere.

China Stamps Out Flaming Monks

Literally.

A Buddhist monk in China is reported to have set himself on fire to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Chinese soldiers are then reported to have beaten and kicked him.

First, let us say that if the Vatican has some trouble managing its image, China has even more. Seriously, people, hire a PR firm. Or, better yet, stop doing bad things.

Second, let us point out the obvious: this is how real oppression works. It not only provokes people to take terrible actions, it then -- and gratuitously -- punishes them for it. The guy was already burning himself alive, for crying out loud. What possible purpose could a sound beating have served?

East Meets West Meets Prison

A guy in Buffalo cut off his wife's head. Now he's going to jail. The story is disturbing for oh-so-many reasons, but two grab our attention: (1) the killer, Muzzammil "Mo" Hassan is a prominent Muslim businessman; and (2) straight through his trial, Mo claimed that he was the real victim. As opposed to, say, his late wife.

Hassan and his wife Aasiya Zubair Hassan founded Bridges TV, a cable network described by its website as "the first channel of its kind that offers a broad range of lifestyle oriented programming that aims to foster a greater understanding between the West and MESA (Middle Eastern/South Asian) religions, its cultures, and diverse populations." Um, right. One of the founders killed the other. So much for greater understanding.

Aside from cheap irony, the truth is that Hassan's crime helped to undermine East-West understanding, by playing into one of the readiest anti-Muslim cultural tropes. Soon after he walked into the police station in February 2009, speculation began that the murder had been an "honor killing." This interpretation has been firmly rejected by the victim's own family, and was not part of the prosecution's case against Hassan. As reported by the Buffalo New here and here, the case was far less exotic. Hassan abused his wife for years, both physically and emotionally. She filed for divorce, so he killed her. Same thing happens in trailer parks and suburban split-levels all over America.

(On the subject of speculation, note this: In one of the emails presented as evidence, Aasiya claimed that her husband suffered from narcissistic personality disorder. The district attorney commented that during the trial, Hassan displayed "an incredible lack of self-awareness," which extended to firing his attorney and representing himself -- poorly. Let those who know our preoccupation with narcissistic church leadership hear and shudder.)

So Hassan's religion is less relevant to the crime than to public perception in a society primed to explode with rage against Islam. On the other hand, his persistent claim to be the victim provides a different comment on our times. Sure, its the usual self-serving narcissistic crap, made more frightening by the fact that he probably believes it. But take note of the language Hassan used to express the idea:

He also said the judge, prosecutors, police officers and medical professionals who testified against him did so based on their preconceived notion that only women can be abuse victims. In closing arguments, he referred to their adherence to a "religion of patriarchy."

He told jurors he stands against this gender-biased model of "false beliefs" the way Gandhi stood against colonialism, the way former President Ronald Reagan stood against communism and the way one-time South African President Nelson Mandela stood against apartheid.

Set aside the grandiosity of a murderer comparing himself to Gandhi. Focus on "gender-biased" and "religion of patriarchy." It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to appropriate the language of academic feminism to justify killing your wife. Not to mention that "lack of self-awareness" we were talking about.

The truth is that, based on these press reports, Hassan would have been better off pursuing some form of diminished-competence plea. You know, the insanity defense -- arguing that he couldn't distinguish right from wrong. It's a long shot, thank heaven; and frankly, we're glad he didn't waste the court's time with it. The guy belongs in jail.

Which is where he will spent the next 25-to-life. The trial was delayed for nearly two years, but the verdict wasn't. The jury deliberated for under an hour -- one of the speediest verdicts the lead prosecutor had ever seen. Sentencing is March 9. Hang 'em high, Judge Thomas Franczyk.

The Lord has Turned Our Sunsets

... into sunrise, and through the Cross changed death to life. So says Clement of Alexandria. (Exhortation to the Heathen, Chapter 11)

Last night, Father Anonymous, with his family and a few of the faithful, joined a thousand or so of their closest friends on one of the great central piazzas here in Cluj. There was rock music blaring from the steps of the opera house, and a worship service in the Orthodox cathedral, which let out just before midnight. It was cold, but not that cold. We stamped our feet and drank champagne.

At the stroke of midnight, the fireworks began, and we began to sing a Romanian song -- the one people sing at birthdays. It was all very jolly.

But not so very far away, as the crow flies, a different group of worshipers was coming out of another church. Also Orthodox, as it happens -- Coptic, rather than Romanian. And they didn't walk out into a grand civic celebration. They walked into a bloodbath, as a bomb went off and killed at least 21 of them. Riots ensued. A mosque was attacked.

It has been a long time since Alexandria was the intellectual powerhouse of the Christian world, since Clement ran his famous school, expounding on the meaning of the Logos whose Incarnation we celebrate during Christmas. But there are still Christians in Egypt -- something like ten percent of the population, meaning eight million or so people. They aren't being brutalized the way the Christians of Iraq are -- it isn't genocide in Egypt, at least not yet. But they are being brutalized.

Please pray for the victims of this atrocity. Please pray for the perpetrators, too, and for all the people of Egypt. Let them seek reconciliation now, while they can, and before their nation descends into the sort of chaotic religious war that is too easy to imagine.

Is It Genocide Yet?

The Times has a piece on the Christians in Iraq -- as persecuted a minority as any on earth, or nearly so. Surely you remember the massacre of 60 worshipers last October. Regular readers will also be aware of the way violence against Christians in Iraq has driven many to leave the country while they still can, reducing their numbers by nearly two thirds, at least by some accounts.

Although there have been large Christian communities in what is today called Iraq since the first century, those communities may not endure much longer. They are being driven off by their neighbors.

Today, as Christians all over the world celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Christians of Iraq are afraid to visit their churches. Their fears are grounded in reality. Please pray for them.

Sad Guys

Depending upon how you look at it, Muslim suicide bombers are either (a) brave martyrs giving their lives in defense of God's people; or (b) deluded religious fanatics bent on mass homicide. Right?

Or maybe they are really (c) clinical depressives committing suicide by the one means their society sanctions.

Here's a Boston Globe report on some new research, which suggests the last of these possibilities may often be the case. A jihadi recruiter says that they "look for sad guys" to do their dirty work. More quantitatively, an Israeli researcher studying both would-be bombers and the men who organized their mayhem found that 53% of the bombers exhibited 'depressive tendencies" versus 21% of the organizers, and that 40% of the bombers had actually attempted suicide, versus zero percent of the organizers. Big surprise, right? Suicide bombers are crazier than the average person.

We know nothing about the state of mental health care in Muslim societies. But we will bet that even if he elites can have their heads shrunk and their meds prescribed just like any Westerner, the average guy on the street has fewer options. And, as the Globe says, Islam is the only one of the three "Abrahamic" faiths (shudder, and move on) which has a scriptural prohibition against suicide. Meaning that, for a very long time, "martyrdom" in which one dies by killing other people has been the socially-appropriate vehicle for self-destuctive urges.

This would actually move us to pity for the poor saps, except that after 9/11 our heart was turned to stone. And, okay, it actually does. People who are sick should get the help they need. Still, our compassion for mass murderers is limited. So, to the part of our stony heart that lacks compassion, this report offers some interesting ideas for the place where foreign aid and defense spending overlap. The DoD might buy caseloads of Zoloft and ship them abroad. Or hook up gas mains in certain countries, and buy the inhabitants nice big ovens. Like the one Sylvia Plath had in her apartment.