Interview with yours truly regarding Blog Against Theocracy

...is here.

Also, I think I've got everyone as of this writing linked over at the BAT website. If your post is missing, fill out this webform and I'll make sure your blogpost gets linked.

Thanks for another great blogswarm!

It isn't too late!

I'll be posting submissions to Blog Against Theocracy received before Monday night at 9 Eastern. Please use the submission form here to send me your post's url. I can't really keep track otherwise. Thanks to everyone who has participated!

Blog Against Theocracy - MUST you do it Easter Weekend?

I had a lovely email exchange with a potential writer for Blog Against Theocracy. He is a sincere, believing Catholic and was happy to participate, but objected to the timing of the blogswarm. I completely understand his position, which from my perspective appeared to be more about the writer's own spiritual practice this weekend rather than a judgment about other participants and their piety or lack thereof.

Blog Against Theocracy has always been held Easter Weekend. That is not a slam on Jesus or a silly way to put down religion or Christians. As many of you know, I am a believing Christian myself, although a great many participants to the blogswarm are not. Belief or not has nothing to do with supporting separation of church and state.

There are two good reasons to time the blogswarm during the Easter holiday. One, I admit, is the selfish motive that Easter Weekend is one of the two times a year when the media actually cover religious issues in the United States with a broad stroke.

The other reason, speaking as a believer, is that Easter is a time when what is divinely good triumphs over human will. If you look at Pilate as a purely secular leader (a stretch) and the Pharisees who demanded Pilate kill Jesus as the self-preserving conservative church of Jesus' day (not a stretch, not at all), it is possible to see the Easter story as a perfect allegory of a power-seeking Church and a pandering State's conspiracy failing utterly to destroy Truth and Reason.

If thinking along those lines interferes with what anyone feels is their right practice of faith during this weekend, post later or earlier and I'll be sure to include you. In any event I will be posting links starting tomorrow.

Happy Holy Week. Blog against theocracy.

one of my favorite Post Secrets

I posted the following during an earlier blogswarm but it bears repeating:

...As a self-professed Christian, and that's really all I can lay claim to, my own sins keep me busy 24/7/365. I'm either doing 'em or repenting 'em, and hopefully the good outweighs the bad.

A significant number of religionists actually GET IT that the freedom to practice their religion comes from the glorious gift of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. And actually, separation of church and state goes back farther than that. There was this old timey Jewish preacher who said something once about render unto Caesar...

I'm so excited and supportive of this blogswarm, I can't tell you. And what is most exciting is the participation of atheist and science bloggers, who are smart and thoughtful and well, I'm just honored to be doing something with them.

I really hope this blogswarm does more than just let the world know how we feel about the separation of Church and State. I hope it improves and awakens how we feel about each other. I may be a "believer" whatever the hell that means, but I can't have too many smart, funny, and fascinating, atheists, scientists, agnostics, LGBT bloggers, etc. etc. around here. Who the hell did JESUS hang out with, anyway?

IMO, Jesus wouldn't have a beer with some "saved" politician or hypocritical preacherman today, even if they were buying. For me, God is Love, and Mind, and Truth. And this blogswarm is all about those.

Thanks for participating.


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Blog Against Theocracy - focus and planning

A reminder to everyone that weekend-after-next, April 10-12, is Blog Against Theocracy. This is a blogswarm in favor of separation of church and state. If you are not a blogger, read on for an opportunity to participate anyway.

I will be focusing my posts on Obama's Faith-Based mumbo jumbo, as well as the whole Prop 8/Gay Marriage issue. Those two issues are key this year. Blog on whatever you like (local angles are particularly appreciated) and make sure you're on topic. Athiests, agnostics, believers, all are welcome to post, but the topic is "separation of church and state," not "why I hate that non-existent God guy" or "the day Jesus came down from heaven and told me to blog for socialism." Those are great topics and might be fab, but they are not BAT posts.

Here are three other websites I recommend as a resource for your posts:

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State

The ACLU's Religion Page

Talk2Action

If you are not a blogger, let me recommend:

StreetProphets or Daily Kos, both of which allow diaries. Street Prophets (part of Kos but run by different editors) is a pro-religion website.


Everyone who is on topic will be included with a link at the main BAT website.

Submit your posts to Blog Against Theocracy here.


PS. If you write something great on any topic over the next four days, send me a link to the POST'S PERMALINK URL. I'm linking at the big blog for Mike through April 6. bluegalsblog AT gmail etc.

Blog Against Theocracy - The Video

Feel free to steal.

More for Blog Against Theocracy

Thanks to Chris Martin of Potlach Celebration for the idea on this one.

Blog Against Theocracy - Call for Logos

If you'd like to help Blog Against Theocracy in the early stages, we're looking for logos. I did this one, I've got another excellent surprise from Tengrain to show you in March, but we need more. To get your juices flowing, remember that the big issues this year are:

Prop 8 and gay marriage
Obama's faith-based fiddle faddle.
Plus the usual religious right stuff. Reproductive rights, creationism, etc.

If you have something you'd like to share, email me at bluegalsblog AT gmail subject line "Blog Against Theocracy Logo". And thanks.


PS. There's a lovely art auction on Ebay for Valentines for Palestine. I especially like the Love and Ecstasy piece.

Blog Against Theocracy 2008 - Details

Moving this post to the top for the entire weekend, ma hunnies. Have a great one. -- BG



BAT logo by Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors, who points out:

The theme [of the blogswarm], like always, is the Separation of Church and State — we are for it. But the variations on the theme are many...This is not a bashing of religion - peeps can believe what they choose, however they choose — but it is a reminder that the Government should keep out of religion, and Religion should keep out of the government.

The image above is available for everyone to use. You can grab it here, or at Flickr or Photobucket.

Here is how to participate in the blogswarm.

1. Write a post in support of our United States Constitution, specifically regarding the separation of Church and State. You can write your post anytime, but the blogswarm takes place Easter Weekend, March 21-23. Your post will be linked at the Blog Against Theocracy website during and just after that weekend.

If you have any writer's block on this, here are some great websites to get you started:

First Freedom First (their "questions to ask the candidates" series is very timely)

The ACLU's religion page

And I also love the blog Talk2Action.

2. Send the URL of your post via this online form, and add any comments you would like. I will receive your link and over Easter Weekend (and just after I'm sure) I will post these to the BAT website.

3. Sit back and enjoy the hits, and know that Thomas Jefferson, Buddha, Mohammed, and Jesus his own self would be proud of you. (Yes, personally? I really believe that.)



crossposted lots of different places, including the Blog Against Theocracy site. If you want to pimp this at your own blog, I suggest sending people to that post. Thanks.

Blog Against Theocracy on Easter Weekend

I collaborated with Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors, who also has a great description of the event at that link. He's terrific. The original image is from here and I have my Dad to thank for sending me that bit o' historical Quaker goodness.

not to cast a negative light...

This was in my email box this morning:

Participated for the first time this year in the blogswarn "Against Theocracy." I will never do so again. Now as I read the other essays, I see too many atheists used the opportunity to skip the actual subject matter and blog against religion, instead. I didn't know that's what I was participating in -- that fanatical denial of other people's beliefs is exactly why I don't want our nation run by zealots in the first place. I regret that this is the result of your efforts. It seemed a good idea and I passed the link around. Now, I'm sorry I did.

I don't expect you to change anything but I'm sure you must be curious about why people participate and why some never return. For me, linking my friends to essays calling them retards and idiots for having faith in God was not something I wanted to do. I thought the project was about supporting separation of Church and State.

My reply:

...could you point out specific posts where you saw this. I'd like to leave a comment there along the lines you spoke of.

I'm also going to publish your email (no names) at my own blog. I think it's important that this point be made, too. There's no shortage of egomania in the blogosphere and what you've documented is merely that. Paul said, "none of these things move me"...we need to be less impressed with what those who are wrong or hateful are saying and simply love more.

Welcome, again, to Blog Against Theocracy

I have a feeling that the blogswarm, not to mention someone here who is turning five on Monday, is going to keep me kind of busy for the next few. To cope and because it's timely I'm going to do a "Blue Gal's Greatest Hits" on some earlier posts related to blog against theocracy. I'll pop in with new content as time allows and news inspires. Love on ya. - BG

Here's something paraphrased from some earlier posts, but which really say what I want to say.

So often I talk or email with fellow lefties who have just had it with the religious right to the point that they can't stand Christianity or even religion in general. It's as if there is such a slippery slope in their minds between any admission of faith and total fundamentalism that it's just not worth it to go down that path. No religion is better than any religion, because in the end we all become Pat Robertson or Al Qaeda.

I'm actually quite sympathetic to those lefties who think they hate Christianity. Funny thing is when you engage these lefties in conversation, a great many of them think Jesus was a cool guy, and some actually revere him. Even those who reject Christianity outright are not nearly so angry as they let on.

Let me point something out here, again. Jesus of Nazareth was nailed to a tree by the political and religious CONSERVATIVES of his day because they mistakenly thought they had power and that he threatened that power. ANY Christian, myself included, who thinks they would have rescued Jesus from the cross, that certainly WE wouldn't have gone along with Pilate and Judas and abandoned him like Peter, are just kidding themselves. And those right-wingers who think they're really serving the cause of Jesus by electing Republicans, or working to make America a "Christian" nation? Heh, and once again, Mr. BG suggests I stop saying "fuck" on this blog.



It's that the religious right/Republican Party has so often set the discourse that "God/Jesus equals us" that some of us lefties tend to believe that. Rejecting hate speech, intolerance, and fundamentalism becomes rejecting all religion.

But see, I love Jesus, and I'm strongly committed to making sure YOUR right NOT to believe is protected. I also believe, while we're at it, that I would be SINNING against my God to attempt to convert you. That's His provence. And if I believe (and I struggle to, at least) that God is Love and that God loves his creation, I think smart, funny, gifted non-believing bloggers have one of the better tables at Divine Love's cocktail party. You certainly do at mine.

Here's the deal about Christians, though. We're not all Pat Robertson, and I refuse to allow the Religious Right to define what Christianity is, for me, or for my readership.

Blog against Theocracy is this week.