In The Raw

I guess it hit me when I read this article about Anne Rice that I realized something was going on. It was the article, amoungst a pile of other things, that truly got my attention. That story caught my eye about a week or so after seeing this Tom Brokaw story on NBC that looked into the lives of born again Christians, specifically those around New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

It had been building for some time. President Bush has spent 5 years talking about “faith based organization” and allowing his then Attorney General Ashcroft to run bible study sessions inside government buildings (they were not manditory meetings, but it would appear that some staffers might have felt obligated or left out if they did not attend) – as reported in many places (such as the ACLU website or Pat Robertson’s website). The terror attacks on New York have often been framed as an “us versus them” situation, and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan put down as the fight between good and evil (as Daddy Bush would say, “between good and evil, right and wrong”).

The US is becoming an agressively fundementalist christian society.

There are endless fights right now about cross on city logos and a judge secret installing a 5000 pound monument of the 10 commandments in the courthouse lobby. There is a massive christian backlash against the federal and supreme courts enforcing seperations of church and state. There have been fights over issues like the lord’s prayer in schools, bible study classes, and just about every other issue to deal with public schools and christian teachings. Pretty much down the line, the courts have ordered the schools to stop forcing students to participate in christian rituals in public places.

The US was originally settled (or should I say stolen from the indians) by a mix of catholic christians and protestant people, and has seen a great mix in it’s ethnic makeup and religious beliefs. The US has spent a long time being very tolerate of all religious groups, all the while the christians held the power. The last 20 years have been a low point for the catholic church, and attendance has hit an all time bottom.

However, as Brokaw reported, there is a major upswing the in the “casual christian” churches. Those demoniations such as the New Life Church that follow the bible but don’t really seem to hold to the old traditions of prayer and hymn. That has been replaced with flashy stage shows, pyrotechnic displays, live rock bands, and preachers delivering sermons in the same way that self help gurus stir up a crowd to spend $300 for a bunch of tapes and books. These religous organisations are not only building support for “god”, but they are also politically active, backing PACs and other situations to apply pressure on the government of the day to get certain thing done or moved along.

Since Bush took power, there has been a very quiet but very aggressive campaign against porn, smut, and dirty thoughts. From Janet’s boob to Howard Stern, from Max Hardcore to Goalie Entertainment, the FCC, the FBI, and the DOJ have been working hard to surpress free speech and to punish those people who are not truly responsible for that is going on (such as attacking the Super Bowl network of the day for Janet secretly deciding to market large nipple rings on live TV).

In the adult online business, newly re-written administative rules (under usc 18 section 2257) would require adult entertainment companies to maintain overlapping and duplicate databases of performers for each company involved in the production and distribtuion of legal adult materials. This would mean that not only the company producting the movies would have to prove that the models are over 18, but each company along the way (including the companies that reproduce the DVDs, the companies the print the boxes, and potentially even the companies that ship the boxes to the stores) would each have to keep complete personal records on every person involved in each video they handle – in a cross referenced database that can be looked up in about 10 different ways as specified by the DOJ. Their goal? They say it is to “cut down on child porn”, but in reality, it is to put porn site operators out of business by requiring burdensome and wasteful paperwork. In the case of a website operator, records would have to be kept for each individual image each time it appears on a website, with complete records for each model each time.

The Christian people in charge know they cannot legally stop porn (straight fucking ain’t obscene, so they can’t do anything about it directly) so they use administraitve punishments to try to slow down or shut down the industry. It is the same as using zoning laws to move adult bookstores and video shops outside of the city by effectively making it impossible to obtain a leasable commercial space within a city that matches the zoning rules.

This has all come as a result of 9/11/2001, Bin Ladin, and the apparent hate of the US by certain Muslim factions in the world. As they have become more aggressive and more militant, the US has replied with more and more “god bless america” and “I pray” and “faith based organizations”. The current Iraq conflict is basically a christian / muslim war. The current unrest in France is essentially lead by muslim youths, even as their leaders have issued an edict against rioting – as if they should be told not to burn cars, destroy buisnesses, and such. Drudge had it on his site as (paraphrasing here) “the start of the jihad in europe”. There is an intense fear amoungst christian groups that they will be pushed out of countries by the muslim people, and they fear losing control of the world.

They may be right. Who knows?

My fear is that as the US faces more threats from the outside, there is increased pressure to “join the winning side” which Bush basically equates to being a good god fearing Christian. Born again / new christians are some of the most annoying people on the planet, because they insist on trying to share their recent conversion to god with everyone else. Their churches have sunk to new lows to attract younger members, by supporting rock and rap groups (such as Evanescence) and getting those acts into non-christian settings. Getting those subtle and not so subtle relgious messages out to the youth in a format the little ones will swallow whole is the idea. Other hard rock acts like P.O.D are taking the message very subtly into the alternative and hard rock mainsteam arenas.

Where is all this leading? I have a feeling that as the attitude hardens on either side, we end up with more resistance on both sides, and more anger, and in the end, a bigger and uglier war. Christian versus muslim, with an all out battle to the end.

Does anyone really want that?