U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr. denied an attempt by Yes on 8 supporters to withhold disclosure of campaign donors to the state’s same-sex marriage ban. Yes on 8 campaign officials said hundreds of people have alleged harassment, intimidation or threats.

Attempts were made by Yes on 8 to blackmail No on 8 donors  but No on 8 campaigners didn’t go bawwwing about it to the courts. Instead they stood fast, supporting California’s Political Reform Act, approved by voters in 1974, which requires disclosure of the name, occupation and employer of anyone contributing $100 or more to campaigns.

Attorneys for Proposition 8 argued that First Amendment rights to be free from retaliation outweigh the state’s interest in disclosure.  But the judge disagreed:

The court finds that the state is not facilitating retaliation by compelling disclosure.

 (WARNING:  EXTREMELY DISTURBING IMAGES)

Christian religious extremism hits the American psyche when a fundamentalist church– Assemblies of God, which thinks Harry Potter is the gateway to Satanism, while facing charges of child abuse requests a $500,000 earmark from the federal government.  Or when Sarah Palin is cleansed of witchcraft by a Kenyan Assemblies of God minister. 

This form of religious extremism when exported to Africa is killing people and causing rampant child abuse.

For decades, fundamentalist evangelical churches have sprung up throughout Africa. Some are affiliated with American congregations, while others are a bit more free form; all claim belief in Jesus. Many of them of share a common hysterical belief in "witchcraft."

"Witch" gets misinterpreted as anyone who is different, weaker, who can be scapegoated for one’s troubles. Heck Sarah Palin and her pals "prayed a witch" out of Alaska. And the prayer group gleefully recounted the results.

In Akwa Ibom State, the center of the Nigerian child witch hysteria, the State Governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio, lamented:

The church will torture children and some of the churches will pretend to use oil to try and remove witchcraft from a child. So far we have we have 165 children some of them are not up to 9 months old who have been thrown away by their parents because the church said those children will bring them misfortune.

The Governor  has taken a firm stance, declaring

The churches are busy deceiving people in many aspects including avoiding deaths. We have to do something to re-strengthen the Child Right Law. We must fight against the abuse of children and ensure proper education for them.

AllAfrica news service reports:

Analysts trace the phenomenon to poverty which drags parents to Churches and other spiritual centres to seek prosperity…Further investigations show that such parents are usually ready to pay anything to the spiritualists to "deliver" their children from the "grip of the devil."…In some cases, all that is needed for parents to begin to suspect their children of witchcraft, is a manifestation of certain "strange" behaviour. Others are "identified" any the presence of an "inexplicable" illness afflicting them.

Strange behaviors for the Assemblies of God?

Smoking
Drinking
Drugs
Homosexual behavior
Staying in room alone
Dressing in black (fingernails, lipstick)
Body piercings
Demonic symbols on jewelry & clothes
Music (Marilyn Manson, Godsmack, Korn)
Books (Majick, Harry Potter)
Unusual scars and burns on right hand

 Time to send Trey or Tiffie to Teen Boot Camp.

Or time to crack down on religious abuse of children at home and abroad.

Warren’s recorded remarks about science,  available on the Saddleback’s revised site, are very important for a couple reasons. Throughout his teachings, Pastor Rick reminds his followers that

The Bible commands us to remember the influence we have on an unbeliever.

  Melissa Etheridge, are you listening?

This recording shows that Warren wants his followers to be nice while evangelizing to shift the view point of the scientific community away from science and towards a New Earth fundamentalist thought process (not to say that you can’t believe in God and in science). 

More importantly, this snippet demonstrates that Warren feels that he and his followers should act nicely towards non-believers, gradually bringing them around to thinking along a fundamentalist lines, to "change" their ways of thinking.

It’s not them and us…To act like it’s them and us sets us a false barrier that we need to break through as believers…These are people who need to know Christ just like you and I need to know Christ. If you and I start to act like it’s a them and us kind of a thing we’re never gonna reach the scientific community or those who think qoute unquote scientifically…Obviously science is willing to change…

Here’s how Rick came to believe in creationism and rejection evolutionism (from a PDF of the site before it was revised):

I believed that evolution and the account of the Bible about creation could exist along side of each other very well. I just didn’t see what the big argument was all about. I had some friends who had been studying the Bible much longer than I had who saw it differently…Eventually, I came to the conclusion, through my study of the Bible and science, that the two positions of evolution and creation just could not fit together. There are some real problems with the idea that God created through evolution… My prayer is that you will have this same experience!
 

And just to let you know what that brainwashing experience entails, here’s what Pastor Rick said about dinosaurs:

The Bible’s picture is that dinosaurs and man lived together on the earth, an earth that was filled with
vegetation and beauty…man and dinosaurs lived at the same time…From the very beginning of creation, God gave man dominion over all that was made, even over the dinosaurs.

Warren also urges his followers to eschew in vitro fertilization and stem cell research:

*Deciding against any infertility options that allow embryos to be frozen and later discarded. (This is a tough decision for couples who have yet to have a child.) 
*Deciding to speak out against overzealous stem cell research, even though you know it slows down the process of finding a possible cure for someone you love.

Rick Warren’s approach of being open and friendly is simply sneaky. He’s deceptive in his kindness, much like the fundamentalist’s snake.

On the heels of her wife Tammy Lynne Michaels’ blog about Rick Warren, Melissa Etheridge posted her feeling about Pastor Rick on HuffPo.

After eloquently explaining the struggle for equal rights and her preconceptions of Pastor Rick, Etheridge describes her phone conversation with Warren:

He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn’t want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. 

She goes on to say that maybe instead of marching on his church

we can show up en mass [sic] and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world. Maybe if they get to know us, they won’t fear us.

Well, okay…not to nit pick, but his church doesn’t believe in condoms or family planning for HIV/AIDS prevention, and works hard in Africa to proselytize his message of Jesus and abstinence, using HIV outreach as an evangelical tool. His church believes that gays who are actively practicing homosexuality are not welcome as members. And Warren says gays should suppress their urges the same way other people suppress anger or shyness.

Melissa, Warren and his ilk aren’t "afraid" of gays: They think gays are sinners who are convertible to their belief system, which includes no gay sex and straight sex only in marriage. 

If you can get Warren to believe that civil marriage equality  does not mean a religious marriage..right on. If you can get him to expand his vision to have marriage be more than just a religious concept, that would be awesome. And, btw, he’s wrong about 5,000 years of marriage being solely between one man and one woman. There are plural marriages still in Islam, as there have been for 1500 years, as well as in the past history of the Mormon church and in current Mormon sects which allow for polygamy…

Many pray daily that closed minds like Warren’s are opened, that the scales will fall from the eyes of Pastor Rick and his ilk. But thinking that "they" are afraid is a wrong move. This type of Christian think they are right, and that (their) God is on their side. And there’s too much at stake in terms of worldly power and wealth to make a sudden sea change. But I do share Melissa’s view that:

…we are headed in the direction of marriage equality and equal protection for all families.

I just don’t share her views that Rick Warren could be a vehicle for that. But hey, if he gets Divine Revelation and sees the light–halla-freakin’-lujah!