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More on The Marriage Vow

More on The Marriage Vow published on 1 Comment on More on The Marriage Vow

First, I didn’t talk at all yesterday about the statement of motivations in The Marriage Vow that preceded its fourteen provisions, which included two claims that have since been removed:

  • Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.
  • LBJ’s 1965 War on Poverty was triggered in part by the famous “Moynihan Report” finding that the black out-of-wedlock birthrate had hit 26%; today, the white rate exceeds that, the overall rate is 41%, and over 70% of African-American babies are born to single parent. 

Professor of Religion Althea Butler wrote a scatching commentary on this at Religion Dispatches:

Um, Hell-to-the-yeah slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families. White slave owners broke apart families to sell, raped black women, and often confiscated the babies from these forced unions. Somehow, conservatives like Bob Vander Plaats forget to mention that. They are too busy buying into the fake history of the forefathers from WallBuilders. The statement that a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household is a boldfaced, ignorant lie, designed to tug at conservative white heartstrings and sucker in some African-American Christian conservatives. To wit, let me quote Frederick Douglass from his autobiography: “The practice of separating mothers from their children and hiring them out at long distances too great to admit of the meeting, save at long intervals, was a market feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the slave system… It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes” I am really getting sick and tired of the conservative meme about saving marriage, and placing the shaky foundation of their argument on African-American single parent birth and wedlock rates. Conservatives idolize the founding fathers, yet they conveniently forget the legacy of slavery and its atrocities many of the founders acquiesced to. While conservatives tick off statistics about African-American babies born out of wedlock, Teen Mom is the MTV show where teenage white girls can get their cash on by being pregnant and beating up their boyfriends on TV. Bristol Palin is proof that being a pregnant, unwed white girl is enough for a memoir at 20 called Not Afraid of Life. Put this together with all the reproductive rights rollbacks on abortion and the like, and the schizophrenic hysteria of the right doesn’t hold up. When it comes to vows, pledges, and the like, the last thing I want to hear it from is a white male conservative authoring some sappy pledge for candidates to sign. After reading the report on John Ensign and Mark Sandford hitting the Appalachian Trail, and the RNC using funds at a sex-themed voyeur nightclub, moralizing, asinine pledges aren’t going to stop anyone, including the candidates, from having sex and watching lots of porn. Add in the ahistoricism of the right, and it’s laughable that any pledge from this hypocritical bunch could hold water.

I don’t think I have anything to add to that.

Also, today Salon published an interview with The Family Leader founder Bob Vander Plaats, who authored The Marriage Vow, including apparently the worst photo of him they could find. I’m really not a fan of that, even when the person in question is someone I despise. Some background on TFL generally Vander Plaats specifically:

The Family Leader was formed after the 2010 elections as a coalition of Iowa social conservative advocacy groups, with Bob Vander Plaats as its executive director and public face. Vander Plaats had become the best known conservative culture warrior in Iowa that year after receiving a respectable 41 percent of the vote in the GOP gubernatorial primary; his campaign focused on reversing a 2009 decision by the state supreme court allowing same-sex marriage. After losing in the primary, the fiercely anti-gay Vander Plaats led the successful campaign to oust three supreme court justices who had voted for the same-sex marriage decision. Now at the helm of the Family Leader, he has brought in presidential hopefuls for a speech series and is openly cultivating an image as Iowa kingmaker.

When asked whether TFL’s support hinges on the matter of whether or not a candidate would sign the Vow, Vander Plaats replied:

What we’ve said is that a primary candidate for the office of president will not get our support if they can’t sign this pledge. If they can’t sign the pledge, we’re going to ask them questions like, “Where’s the issue you have with the pledge?” Because we want to have a discussion and a debate. And if for any reason they point out something we’re just wrong on, then we’d admit it and say “OK, we’re wrong on that.” But we don’t see that.

Are you surprised? I’m not surprised.

Regarding the plank concerning Sharia Islam:

There’s one section in the pledge that says the candidate has to reject — the phrase used is “Sharia Islam” — can you describe what you mean by that phrase and what you want the candidates to reject in that? Well, Sharia Islam — and I’m not an expert on Sharia Islam — but I think just in the brief knowledge [I have] of Sharia Islam, one you can have multiple wives, and two is you can have temporary wives, and three is I think it disrespects women as a whole. And so we see Sharia Islam as being an issue. 

Only a “brief knowledge,” yet apparently it is such a threat that it must be specifically mentioned in a statement on protecting marriage that presidential candidates are being asked to sign. Got it. Are we supposed to assume that the candidates know more about Sharia than Vander Plaats does?

Regarding pornography:

Another part of the vow that’s gotten attention was the clause about promising to protect women and children from a long list of evils. Some of those things were obviously crimes — human trafficking was one — but there was also pornography. What would you say to people who don’t see pornography as a threat to women? And secondly, do you think only women need to be protected from pornography or should men be, too? Well I think if you read in that, there’s also the word “coercion” — “coerced.” I don’t have the vow in front of me right now, but I think if you read that it’s going to talk about coercion as it relates to abortion, prostitution, pornography. What we’re trying to do is have a high standard for women and for children, as well as for marriages and for family. Some people were saying that the pledge was somehow calling for a ban on pornography, is that what it was intended to do? No, not at all. I think if the Family Leader could have its way, we’d probably say we’d like to have a ban on pornography. But that’s not the vow. The vow was [about] forcing women into pornography.

Really? Let me remind you, Mr. Vander Plaats, of what the vow you authored actually says on that:

Humane protection of women . . .from all forms of pornography. . . and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.

Sure sounds to me like you’re defining pornography as a form of coercion, or at least “stolen innocence” (whatever that means), from which women need to be “protected.” Suddenly consent matters!  Just not enough to make it clear in the document presidential candidates are being expected to sign, apparently.

“All great leaps forward in liberty and equality”

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Ed Brayton has a very moving (to me) post today about the progressive acceptance of equality in the face of absolutist proclamations that the faith of the majority rejects it. Using an argument from Southern Baptist Al Mohler which appeals entirely to tradition and biblical exegesis as an example, he notes that advancements in equality for virtually every minority have been faced by the objection that a person who takes his/her Christian faith seriously could never accept this “moral inversion” in which what was formerly considered sinful is now acceptable, and those who object considered the immoral ones:

The same thing always happens when society struggles to leave behind a traditional prejudice and embrace equality instead. In a remarkably short period of time in this country, slavery went from being a God-ordained institution that had existed from the earliest human civilizations with little to no doubt about its moral standing to being viewed as perhaps the single most inhumane thing one can do to another person, the greatest immorality of all. In a remarkably short period of time in this country, miscegenation went from being viewed as a great moral evil — preached as such by the very same Southern Baptist church that now stands against same-sex marriage — that society had outlawed for centuries, to being declared a protected right by a unanimous Supreme Court. And guess what? The same exact arguments were used against that ruling as are used against same-sex marriage today. The constitution itself is a perfect example of this dynamic in many ways. Prior to the constitution the norm was for all governments to be built upon a religious foundation. All written charters or constitutions prior to that time were expressed as covenants with God, complete with punishments for blasphemy and heresy. All of the colonies with the exception of Rhode Island had official churches prior to the constitution and forbid and punished even the preaching of other Christian denominations. In Massachusetts, one could be arrested, banished and even put to death (and many were) for preaching the Baptist or Catholic brand of Christianity, much less preaching Judaism, Islam or — God forbid — atheism. In Virginia, Anglicanism was the official religion and Baptists were thrown in jail. And nearly all of them had religious tests for office, requirements that one be of the right brand of religion in order to hold public office. The constitution rejected all of those things. It guaranteed freedom of religion and outlawed religious tests for office. Instead of a covenant with God, it forbid all such establishments of religion. It guaranteed freedom of speech, including the right to blaspheme and preach what others might consider heresy. and in a remarkably short period of time, everything changed. One by one the states did away with their religious establishments and adopted new constitutions without religious tests and protected free speech. This is the way it is with all great leaps forward in liberty and equality, what was previously seen as terribly immoral was legalized and legitimized — leaving conservatives making the same old arguments from tradition that Mohler is making now.

Pareidolia of the day: Holy sh!t!

Pareidolia of the day: Holy sh!t! published on 2 Comments on Pareidolia of the day: Holy sh!t!

Today’s incidence of pareidolia is a doozy. Or a doo-….no, I’m just not going there. The title for this post was enough. For the record, pareidolia is

a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.

Or in this case, bird poo. From Bryan, Texas:

Image Of Virgin Mary Appears In Bird Dropping On Area Family’s Truck The image that came in an unlikely form of a bird dropping appeared on Sunday. That was the first time Salvador Pachuca had been back to the home since having an accident there four months ago. “I told my brothers come over here and see what this is and they say this is the Virgin,” he said.

Family members made their way outside to see the image on the truck’s side mirror. Cristal Pachuca said she took pictures and began making calls to invite others to see, what she describes as, a miracle. “We just all feel protected. It’s a blessing to our family and to everybody that comes to see it,” says Cristal Pachuca. Cristal says the truck doesn’t get much use, but last weekend her husband decided to take it out of their garage and wash it. 

A few moments later the image appeared. Since Sunday, a steady stream of family, friends, neighbors and strangers has stopped by to pray and take pictures of the image. The Pachuca’s say the image is more than a coincidence especially since it happened on the 12th. The family says in Mexico, Dec. 12 is celebrated as the day of The Virgin Guadalupe. 

Onlookers say the image is a miracle because the distinct colors and outline of the image on the truck match the image of Virgin Guadalupe. The Pachuca’s say they will continue to welcome anyone who wants to see the image, because the image isn’t going to go away anytime soon. “I think we’re going to just put it on a shelf outside, probably take off the mirror and keep it there cause its something special to us. I’m not going to wash it off,” says Cristal Pachuca. 

Un-toasted terrorist

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Hemant Mehta looks at the revenge party after Osama bin Laden’s killing in which t-shirts, political cartoons, and newspapers exult and proclaim that bin Laden is burning in Hell, which a CNN poll says a majority of Americans actually believe, and says simply:

Osama bin Laden is not in hell. Because hell doesn’t exist. Damn, it feels good to get that off my chest. 

 Heh.

And if it did exist, by the way, I would not wish him there.

The dangers of superstition coupled with despair

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Best to skip this one if you don’t want to be depressed. Reuters reports:

Hundreds of girls raped, murdered in Tanzania for black magic AIDS ‘cure’Hundreds of albinos are thought to have been killed for black magic purposes in Tanzania and albino girls are being raped because of a belief they offer a cure for AIDS, a Canadian rights group said on Thursday. At least 63 albinos, including children, are known to have been killed, mostly in the remote northwest of the country. “We believe there are hundreds and hundreds of killings in Tanzania, but only a small number are being reported to the police,” Peter Ash, founder and director of Under The Same Sun (UTSS), told Reuters. “There is belief that if you have relations with a girl with albinism, you will cure AIDS. So there are many girls with albinism who are being raped in this country because of this belief, which is a false belief.” Around 1.4 million Tanzanians among a population of 40.7 million have the HIV virus that leads to AIDS. Albino hunters kill their victims and harvest their blood, hair, genitals and other body parts for potions that witchdoctors say bring luck in love, life and business. “(It is believed) a person with albinism is a curse. They are from the devil, they are not human, they do not die, they simply disappear,” said Ash. . . The Tanzanian government says it is determined to halt the macabre killings, but has been widely criticized for inaction. 

I wonder if the effort to halt these rapes and killings has included telling people that there are no such things as witches, that black magic doesn’t exist. That medicine is how sick people become well (if becoming well is possible), you can’t cure a disease by attacking someone, and albinos are people just like anyone else.

Even sadder is that this isn’t actually news– the report above is from today, but the slaughter of albinos in Tanzania for black magic purposes has been going on for years.  In 2009 the government instituted a “ban on all traditional healers,” but it doesn’t seem to have stopped the practice.

Have we evolved to reject evolution?

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Following on the Pope post, there are various theories about whether people might reject evolutionary theory because it contradicts their intuitions. One was described by developmental psychologist Paul Bloom in an article he wrote for Natural History magazine entitled “In Science We Trust.” Bloom, who lays out a theory of intuitive mind/body dualism in his book Descartes’ Baby, believes that we have intuitive “theories” about physics and agency which cause us to operate as though they’re inherently separate things. Following from that, he basically argues that we may reject or misunderstand evolution because we have a hard time imagining something conscious being made out of non-conscious things (that is, consciousness as an emergent property), or that evolutionary change could happen without conscious guidance. This doesn’t make it impossible to understand and accept evolution– of course, since plenty of us do just that– but it would suggest that we have some built-in biases in our thinking which predispose us against doing so. Bloom writes:

A minority of Americans subscribe to an unusual theory about the origin of people and other animals. They are often adamant about the truth of this theory, and believe that it is the only one that should be taught to children. But if you press them on the theory’s details, their answers are muddled. It turns out that these people understand little of what they are defending; they are just parroting back what they have heard from others. Who are they?  They are Darwinians–people who claim to believe in evolution by natural selection. . .  Psychologist Deborah Kelemen of Boston University, for instance, finds that children insist that everything has a purpose. Educated Western adults believe that human-made artifacts have purposes (cars are to drive around in) and that body parts have purposes (eyes are for seeing), but young children take this further, saying the same for animals (lions ate for being in the zoo) and for natural entities (clouds are for raining).  And psychologist Margaret Evans of the University of Michigan found the most direct evidence for natural-born creationism. She carried out a series of studies in which she asked children flat out where they believe animals come from. Their favorite answer is God. That is true of children whose parents are fundamentalist Christians–no surprise–but it is also true for children whose parents accept the theory of natural selection! Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was right to complain, then, that it seems “as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism.” . . .   Looking within the United States, the difference between Darwinians and creationists does not reduce to smarts or education: studies of college students found no difference in how well (or poorly) they understood the theory of evolution, whether they believed it was true of not and no matter how much biology they’d studied. When researchers asked the students who endorsed Darwinian beliefs to explain the theory of natural selection, their answers were on average no more accurate than those of the students that rejected evolution. Many in each group misunderstood the theory, coming up with something closer to Lamarck’s view than Darwin’s.   So while an evolutionary biologist might argue that giraffes evolved long necks because the ones with longer-than-usual necks got more food from trees and hence tended to have more offspring, many students would say that it is useful to have a long neck and so (somehow) giraffes will have longer-necked children. They believe, as Lamarck did, that there is some mysterious force that causes animals to become better adapted to their environments, and they confuse this with modern evolutionary biology.  

Those are just a few excerpts; you can read the whole thing for free at the link above. I don’t find it at all surprising to think that there are plenty of people who profess to accept evolution but don’t actually understand evolutionary theory. I wouldn’t be surprised, for that matter, if such people constitute the majority of evolution-accepters. The idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics which Lamarck advocated just seems to be easier for people to grasp whether they are pro-evolution or not. The matter of why some people find this misunderstanding of evolution perfectly okay and others abhorrent does not seem to be about who is more educated or who thinks more critically per se, but very likely more about religious and/or political affiliation. That’s my thought, but I don’t have the research to back it up…yet.

In the meantime, people advocating that evolution should be taught in public school science classrooms and never creationism should sit down with a cup of tea and a copy of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea if they’ve never done so. Consider it an intellectual gift to yourself.

The Pope misrepresents evolution

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Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him
as an Australopithecine.

Apparently in his Easter address last night, the Pope had some unflattering words for evolution:

Pope Benedict XVI marked the holiest night of the year for Christians by stressing that humanity isn’t a random product of evolution.  Benedict emphasized the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily Saturday, saying it was wrong to think at some point “in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it.”  “If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature,” he said. “But no, reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine reason.”  Church teaching holds that Roman Catholicism and evolutionary theory are not necessarily at odds: A Christian can, for example, accept the theory of evolution to help explain developments, but is taught to believe that God, not random chance, is the origin of the world. The Vatican, however, warns against creationism, or the overly literal interpretation of the Bibilical account of creation.

…which is kind of like saying that enjoying a thick, juicy steak every now and then doesn’t conflict with vegetarianism because hey, steak is the only meat you eat. Just a technicality here, Pope, but I don’t think you can really claim to accept evolution if you a) don’t understand it, and b) firmly exclude humans from it.  As Jerry Coyne says sardonically on his blog, “Hey, Pope! Haven’t you heard about natural selection? Human evolution isn’t all mutation and genetic drift, you know.” I’m guessing that the Pope actually doesn’t have the foggiest idea how much randomness has to do with evolution; he’s just using it to mean “not guided by God.” Because who cares about causality if God isn’t the cause?

One of Coyne’s readers notes the irony in the fact that (if you ignore the word “randomly”) the statement “in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it” is quite beautiful, touching, and humbling. He/she says

I actually think that is a lovely poetic passage. We are bits of the universe that have evolved to bring rationality into the world — what a beautiful sentiment! It sounds rather like Sagan. I’m amused that, for me at least, it had precisely the opposite of its intended effect.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? I’m sure it’s possible to understand evolution and still find it depressing and threatening, but it’s remarkable how many people who find it depressing and threatening do not understand it.  A hard-liner could quibble about the idea that we evolved “to” do anything at all, but in the context of simple order of events it is quite true that we evolved rationality into the world, in the same way that Daniel Dennett wrote that we evolved free will into the world. At least our version of it, in our world. Richard Dawkins, probably the greatest proponent of evolutionary theory alive today, likes to dwell on the unlikelihood of each of our personal existences, however significant they are to us. In Unweaving the Rainbow he wrote:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

The reaction I have to such thoughts is awe and wonder. The reaction that people like the Pope have is apparently revulsion and fear– we, you and I, could not have come into this world without an act of special creation. Life has no meaning otherwise.  Yet here all of us evolution-believers are, comfortably denying ourselves to be the product of a design independent of the process of natural selection, and yet somehow managing to not commit mass suicide in a fit of despair. Some of us believe that there is a god behind the whole process and others don’t, but the simple idea of being evolved individuals doesn’t shake any existential pillars and cause our sense of teleology to come crashing down. How is that?

I know, by the way, that the Pope wasn’t announcing anything new– that the Church’s doctrine has long been that evolution can be accepted but that the human soul was a special creation. But Benedict chose this Easter to reiterate that doctrine in a way that betrays a clear willingness to see understanding (much less accepting) evolution as optional, whereas drawing inferences about its existential significance is not. In that sense he was pretty much promoting willful ignorance as ordained by God. And that I find depressing.

Some thoughts on religious anthropomorphism for Easter

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Michael Blume writes concerning the “personification of the universe” model of religion:

Religious traditions seem to derive their motivational, cooperative and then reproductive potentials from the belief in superempirical agents – ranging from deceased ancestors to various spirits, angels and demons to gods, bodhisatvas and alien visitors from outer space to God. . .   In fact, non-personal systems such as early Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism (etc.) had to adopt superempirical agents (such as bodhisatvas, khami, tirthankaras, the Lord Tao and many more) in order to survive demographically. The underlying logic is rooted into evolutionary theory itself: As human beings, we might be ready to accept commandments from supreme “personalities”- but not from abstract and non-living objects or principles.  As Friedrich August von Hayek rightfully observed: A theistic commandment such as “Be fruiftul and multiply” (Genesis 1, 28) may be accepted by religious believers as authoritative and even beneficial, although it cannot be verified empirically. By personification, religion is able to attribute value to forming families and having children.  In contrast, to accept empirically tested hypotheses as “teaching” normative commandments would constitute a natural fallacy contradicting our evolved feelings as well as philosophical lore. Although modern definitions of Darwinian or Evolutionary Fitness agree on the importance of reproductive success in evolutionary processes, we are simply not ready to accept any “commandments” thereof.

I’m pretty well convinced myself that when it comes to religion, agency is where it’s at– even when official theology says otherwise. If you want to read a good defense of that point, I would highly recommend Jason Slone’s book Theological Correctness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn’t.  He marshals a great deal of evidence from experimental psychology to show that people who are thinking religiously are thinking in terms of agency, and that they think of supernatural agents (gods, spirits, bodhisattvas, and so on) as essentially being like humans with some superpowers tacked on.

The argument is basically that religion is ultimately about intuitions– that theology is something believers accept to signal that they are part of their own particular religious community, but their reflexive reactions suggest that there are more deeply-rooted, fundamental ways of thinking about agency which are applied when thinking about the supernatural.  In other words, that given the right circumstances you can “tease out” convictions in people about how supernatural agents think and behave that rely more on ordinary intuitions about how humans think and behave than on the particular dogma that defines one’s faith.

Update

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Terry Jones is on trial this morning by a Michigan jury which is going to decide whether or not he can protest at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn without having paid a $100,000 “peace bond.”  If that makes you do a double-take and say “Whaa?” I’m right there with you.

If it doesn’t, here’s why it should: the content of Jones’ speech is irrelevant to the matter of whether he should be allowed to protest. The Supreme Court has determined this time and time again. So long as his protest is peaceful he has a right to do it, and you cannot attempt to prevent someone from exercising their rights by charging them an enormous amount of money to do so. Ed at Dispatches writes:

All of this is blatantly unconstitutional. The boundaries of the First Amendment are not determined by juries. And the practice of requiring those who wish to protest to put up bonds before holding controversial protests was declared unconstitutional decades ago by federal courts. This principle goes back to the civil rights era, when cities run by racist leaders who wanted to prevent legitimate civil rights marches would try to charge those who organized those protests for the extra police protection needed to keep them safe from the KKK and others who might react violently to them. That it now involves someone who preaches against civil rights for Muslims is not a legally relevant difference; the government must protect the right to protest and protect those who engage in protest from violent reaction no matter how heinous the message of the protest may be. . .  No matter what the jury decides tomorrow, the state court’s ruling is baffling and almost certain to be struck down by a higher court if challenged.

The ACLU supports Jones’ right to protest, and so do more Dearbon Muslims:

Majed Moughni, a Dearborn attorney, agrees that Jones has the right to protest. Moughni is not a fan of Jones, having burned him in effigy last year outside his Dearborn home because he had threatened to burn the Quran. Jones later oversaw the burning of a Quran last month. But Moughni says it’s wrong for the city and county to try to hinder Jones’ rights. Moughni added that this is turning Jones into a hero. “Instead of him being the bad guy, now he’s the hero,” Moughni said. “They’ve turned him into a hero of the First Amendment.” “The prosecutors should withdraw their demands and let him speak as he wishes, which is his right under the Constitution.” 

Update: According to the Detroit Free Press,

A Dearborn jury just sided with prosecutors, ruling that Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp would breach the peace if they rallied at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn 

Demonstration denied in Dearborn; Dawud declares doubts

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Dawud Walid

Anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones takes his show to Michigan…or at least attempts to. In a bid to become to Muslims what Fred Phelps has been to gays and the military, Jones announced that he and his church would be protesting at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, the largest mosque in North America. But city officials in Dearborn are not keen to allow that:

Concerned about a potential outbreak of violence, Wayne County prosecutors have filed a complaint in court that seeks to compel Florida pastor Terry Jones — who oversaw the burning of a Quran last month — not to rally outside an Islamic center in Dearborn this week. . . Filed Friday in 19th district court in Dearborn, prosecutors say that if Jones shows up outside the center, “the greatest danger is the likelihood of a riot ensuing complete with the discharge of firearms.”

Maybe they should have asked local Muslims first what they thought:

Not everyone shares the Wayne County Prosecutor’s concern that Dearborn will be unable to constrain its passions in the face of Terry Jones’ planned protest Friday.  Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations – Michigan says he’s doesn’t support the legal effort to thwart Jones’ event.  He told the [Detroit] Free Press that “their action innocently played into Jones’ objectives, which is to paint Dearborn as a pro-sharia city that’s oppressing Christians, which is, of course, not true.”  Walid also said the court filing inaccurately tries to “equate the actions of zealots in Afghanistan with Muslim Americans in Dearborn.” He described the Dearborn community as a peaceful one that would not harm Jones.

Terry Jones

If you’re going to let the KKK march in Skokie, you have to let Islamophobes with odd mustaches demonstrate in Dearborn. In addition to it being a violation of the First Amendment to prevent Jones’ demonstration, it is also as Walid points out a kind of slap in the face to American Muslims to assume that they will be provoked to violence. Normal, sane people will not interpret banning the protest as having pro-sharia motivations, but extreme right-wingers who like to talk about “creeping sharia” and have successfully (and redundantly) banned its implementation in Oklahoma will. In reality, it is a well-intentioned but deeply misguided violation of a bigoted group’s right to freedom of speech. Jones’ demonstration permit has been denied pending a court appearance:

Jones is due in 19th District Court in Dearborn on Thursday to answer prosecutors’ claims that his demonstration could cause a riot and demands he post a “peace bond” to cover police costs.