This is the line in question, which occurs during a conversation between two characters and is spoken by the show’s title character: ““One pastor gets her teeth whitened, and the other drinks wine on Sunday mornings and tells everyone that it’s been miraculously transformed into blood. Which of those is more outlandish?”

““It does not matter that non-Catholics may not accept what happens at Mass. What matters is that they show respect,” commented Mr. Donohue, whose successful career of Catholic advocacy work includes respectfully blaming Jessica Delfino for terrorism, respectfully saying that Jews control Hollywood, and respectfully referring to the creators of “South Park” as “little whores” (they respectfully cajoled him right back in a later episode). He has also waged a profoundly respectful war against PZ Myers for desecrating the Eucharist, and against University of Central Florida student Webster Cook for refusing to be force-fed a magical cracker.

In the final analysis, Bill Donohue is a vaguely anti-Semitic fundamentalist fanatic who gets paid almost $350,000 a year to publicly harass people who don’t play along with his beliefs. The most appalling part of the whole press release in question is that bit about showing “respect.” Being told to be respectful by Bill Donohue is like being told to love your family by Jesus.

More importantly is the simple fact that, no Bill, we do not have to show respect for ritual cannibalism, or any other religious ritual. Nobody is entitled to restrict other peoples’ freedom of speech in order to save themselves from being personally offended by something. There is no freedom to make other people “respect” you. Ridiculing religion is my right as an American; Mr. Donohue would do well to remember that every nation that has ever been subject to the kind of Christian theocracy that could make us respect Mr. Donohue’s wild imaginings about his Sunday snack has shed it, often violently.

I mean, come on, what are we talking about here? We’re talking a conversation on a Fox TV show that was absolutely right. Donohue’s press release never actually explains what “Bones” got wrong with his theology, since it is the Church’s position that the Eucharist cracker is literally transmogrified into Jesus whenever the robed wizard waves his hands and says the magic Latin words. All they did was offend Donohue personally by pointing out his beliefs.

And of course, lets not forget Donohue is in an extremist minority on this one: over two thirds of Catholics are actually smart enough to realize that this magic cracker nonsense might be Catholic dogma, but it’s still silly. Do the 66% of Catholics who do not believe that they are cannibals have the right to demand that Donohue show a little respect for their beliefs?

On Thursday, August 28^th, Webster Cook was formally impeached and removed from his position as Senator. This represents the culmination of many weeks of arduous legal battles and emotional turmoil for Webster and his family, and Webster is left with a permanent stain on his record after an impeachment hearing that was nonobjective and patently farcical.

Those unfamiliar with the situation should learn more here.

During the week between summer classes and Fall semester, the Speaker of the Senate, President Pro Tempore and Legislative, Judicial, & Rules Committee(LJR) chairman met privately with key witnesses to question them about the incident. These conversations were transcribed and presented during the Thursday hearing as evidence. The witnesses were not under oath at the time, and later analysis found that there were numerous discrepancies between the transcriptions and the conversations themselves.

According to the Impeachment Statutes here at UCF, the defendant is explicitly guaranteed the right to cross-examine witnesses. Webster was not granted this opportunity. He wasn’t even informed that the conversations were going to be used in his hearing until the night before, giving him no time to review the evidence or examine the witnesses himself.

The Impeachment Statutes also guarantee the defendant the right to refute the charges presented against him or her, but Webster was blatantly denied this as well. The hearing was scheduled to end at 11:00 PM, and at 10:53 a senator made a motion to table debate and immediately move into voting procedures. Robert’s Rules of Order gave this motion precedence. When Webster protested, he was flatly denied the opportunity to refute the charges, being curtly informed that “we don’t have time for that.”

It seemed as though all of the senators there had an agenda. Those who were not actively attempting to destroy him appeared more interested in getting an early start on Labor Day weekend.

Webster now stands stripped of his title, picking up the pieces after a minor incident was inflated and sensationalized onto the national stage. The impeachment proceedings reeked of both indifference to Webster’s human dignity and biased intent to sacrifice his future to placate a public hungry for his blood after the ridiculous spectacle surrounding his incident.

Regrettably, such incidences of questionable integrity within college student government associations are anything but rare. In high school, student political proceedings are at least superficially monitored by responsible adults whose job it is to ensure that the rules are followed and that things stay clean. Once college rolls around, the political corruption starts; those who aren’t just in it for graduate school application padding quickly find that they can deviously pursue their own ends with impunity. There are a dedicated few, though, a few who seek to challenge the norm and facilitate progress towards a greater good.

These few are quickly punished. Webster has long been a passionate, outspoken critic of giving public money to dogmatic organizations, both religiously affiliated and not.

Here’s a quick primer:

Each UCF student pays an “Activity and Services Fee,” to the tune of $12 per credit hour. This money then goes to student government for allocation.

Explicitly religious student groups received $75,000 of public money last year alone.

Few raise an eyebrow at this, if they even care to know about it. Many senators at UCF spend their meetings batting balls of paper around, doodling, whispering casual conversation to one another, and generally being ineffective, one senator (not Webster) tells me. During one financial allocation hearing, one awe-inspiringly brilliant senator expressed credulity at the legitimacy of allowing a group of 40 people to decide things for the entire student population.

Isn’t that the very nature of the Senate?

This general level of incompetence was certainly reflected in Webster’s impeachment hearing; “it was like they were making it up as they went along,” Webster later told me. Webster’s father was also there, powerlessly left to watch as the committee flagrantly disregarded the rules. The senators didn’t even officially debate the issue, instead just dutifully following the recommendation of the LJR committee.

Interestingly, the LJR committee is comprised of just seven people, four of whom are Catholics. It is up to each individual to recuse themselves from a potential conflict of interest. Not surprisingly, none did.

Webster had a thoughtfully written statement prepared to refute the charges, but as already mentioned, he was denied this right. The three who arranged the clandestine meeting with the witnesses did so by completely disregarding the direction of the Impeachment Statutes. Webster was not allowed to cross-examine these witnesses prior to the hearing. Such are but a few examples of the mockery of justice that was Webster’s hearing.

Now, Webster is doing everything in his power to fight for his rights and do what he can to clean up this situation.

Those wishing to help Webster out are more than welcome to contact our SGA Chief Justice Jordan Axelrod at 407-823-4721 or at sga_cjus@mail.ucf.edu

Editors Note: For the back story to Crackergate, please consult the following articles:

• Orlando Sentinel Article
• PZ Myer’s Take

]]> http://factonista.org/2008/08/30/webster-cook-impeached-without-due-process/feed/ 8 http://factonista.org/2008/08/18/peoples-guide-to-the-catholic-league/ http://factonista.org/2008/08/18/peoples-guide-to-the-catholic-league/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:53:33 +0000 Chris Ray http://theedger.org/?p=448 It takes some practice to get used to reading the Catholic League’s nauseatingly self-promoting, whiny press releases, but once repetition vaccinates you against the obnoxious professional victimhood of its patriarch Bill Donohue, you see that certain patterns start to emerge. One thing you notice is that even though the League’s mission statement identifies it as a “civil rights organization,” the League does not appear to have ever done anything that could even be mistaken for “civil rights” work at any point in its history. That document also explicitly informs us that the League is by Catholics, for Catholics, but none of its seven volunteer offices are in the most densely Catholic part of the nation: New England.

Another motif: the Catholic League really, really likes the Republican Party, and really, really, really, really does not like the Democratic party. Even its famous campaign against virulently anti-Catholic pastor John Hagee’s endorsement of John McCain, which successfully shamed that particular pulpiteer into changing his own theology in favor of looking good to the public, was all spent criticizing Hagee, without so much as a peep about McCain himself. Contrast this with its “coverage” of Obama’s Catholic National Advisory Council, or Obama’s own endorsement by a suspect clergyman, which extended into talking about Obama’s “pro-infanticide” record (a charge that has been proven untrue, but the League has issued no correction) to general harassment of the Democratic National Convention (without a syllable uttered about the GOP’s habitual endorsement by the routinely anti-Catholic Evangelicals). They attack all kinds of Democratic politicians, but also outspoken media figures who endorse certain Democratic platform positions, like Bill Maher and then-moderate Lou Dobbs. Reading through just the 2008 third quarter’s press releases from the Catholic League, there are about twenty that in some way attack Democrats or Democrat-leaning media commentators or defend Republican stooges like Deal Hudson, there are zero that directly criticize Republican politicians, and exactly one compliments a Democrat: Hillary Clinton.

Their “About Us” section also provides a helpful list of endorsements by prominent Catholic clergy, mostly bishops and archbishops. Some of the League’s supporters are on the level (for example Boston’s Cardinal O’Malley), but then, the only criterion for being an “on the level” Catholic clergyman these days is not being involved in a sex crime or in otherwise bankrupting the Church morally or financially. For people like you and me, this is a pretty easy qualification to meet, but it seems notoriously difficult for frocked Catholics. Lets have a closer look at some of the Catholic League’s clergy supporters:

• Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop of New York, says that “[t]he Catholic League performs an invaluable service in defending the Faith.” Egan is also himself so incompetent a leader that he personally had to preside over the closing of numerous Catholic properties just to keep the cash flow in the black, closing ten and melting eleven into other parishes (a considerable net loss against the six new parishes opened under his jurisdiction). Of course, we would be lucky if this were at all his worst offense; he is also on record as being an accessory to child molestation by permitting several known child rapists to keep working for him and the Church.
• Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop of LA, gushes that everyone should join the League on behalf of not just Catholics but “all victims of anti-religious bigotry.” Mahony fought against having to release Church files on pedophiles all the way to the Supreme Court (and lost), and is currently a defendant in a lawsuit by a Mexican parishioner for his involvement in playing pass-the-pedophile with Mexican priest Nicolas Aguilar, among other crimes.
• “Most Reverend” Charles Chaput commends the Catholic League’s “courage” in fighting the “good fight,” but Chaput’s own “good fight” has involved buying forgiveness from the victims of sex crimes to the tune of over $5 million so far. This certainly helps explain Chaput’s own personal crusade against making it easier for victims to seek their just reward from the seemingly insatiable lust of the Catholic clergy.
• Edwin O’Brien, Archbishop of Baltimore, may say he is “privileged to support the Catholic League,” but the League might not be so privileged to have him: he is a known, vocal opponent of sexual abuse victims’ rights, going so far as to fire a priest who had the audacity to believe that the Church needs to come clean on its sins against abused children.
• Perhaps saving the best for last, Benedict Groeschel says that “membership in the Catholic League is a must.” Groeschel’s theological beliefs are most interesting here: he says that reporters who help expose the Church’s brutality against children are “doing the work of Satan” and are all liars who hate the Church itself. This fanatical whacko’s interesting perspective on the Problem of Evil is rivaled perhaps only by his interpretation of doctor-patient accountability: in his own words, priests he “counsels” (he counsels priests who have been placed on “administrative leave” for, you know whatever reason) have a “right of confidentiality,” which has absolutely no parallel in the medical community; for real mental health workers, if you suspect that a crime is taking place involving a patient, you tell the police.

The League’s president, whiny professional victim William A. Donohue (you can sample his eloquence here and here) is himself a crude parody of the activist archetype: an overweight, loud-mouthed, homophobic, vaguely anti-Semitic wingnut who has made a career out of slandering the ACLU, John Kerry, and others, he flaunts the Vatican’s condemnation of “excessive wealth” by taking a salary of more than $300,000 every year from the Catholic League (the League itself took in more than $16 million in 2006). He refers to homosexuality as the “gay death style” and to Hollywood as being “controlled by secular Jews” who “hate Christianity.” Mere days before Mel Gibson was observed pontificating on Israeli foreign policy from behind his disfigured steering wheel, Donohue launched a defense of Gibson’s “the Passion of the Christ,” a Christian BDSM snuff flick about nailing Jesus (or something like that, I fell asleep halfway through this boring zombie movie).

And lets not forget the League’s war on PZ Myers and Webster Cook. The League has already been excoriated elsewhere on Edger for its refusal to meet even the same decency standards as the numerous American Muslim organizations that condemned 9/11, so I will not go into this issue too much in depth just now. All I will say is this: it has been 16 days of silence from the League since PZ Myers blogged about our efforts to get the League to take responsibility for the revolting behavior of its surrogates. It is clear that Donohue values the metaphysics of the Eucharist far more than the moral value of living, breathing human beings.

Suffice it to say, in moral terms, the League has quite a bit of catching up to do. The next time Donohue goes into some shameless tirade against someone’s endorsement of a political campaign, remember that the League’s endorsements mostly come from accessories to pedophilia. The next time the League wails and whines about some media figure’s comments on Catholics, remember Donohue’s comments about Jews, homosexuals, atheists, and even the Democratic party. The next time Donohue wags his chubby finger at someone else’s misbehavior, ask him his opinion of the death threats against Webster Cook’s family. But, be careful, you might just end up in a press release somewhere.

For those unfamiliar with the whole ordeal, it goes something like this. You see, in the Catholic tradition, upon ordination, priests are imbued with the magical ability to summon Jesus at will and to transmogrify your ordinary baked goods into the literal flesh and blood of the zombified Messiah. Despite the doctrinal importance of the Eucharist to Catholics, when the Catholic League (a fiercely inquisitorial non-Church-affiliated public advocacy organization led by professional victim Bill Donohue) caught wind of UCF student Webster Cook’s decision to steal a magic Jesus cracker from a Catholic Church service, Donohue was filled with the spirit of forgiveness and Christian love and humbly tolerated the fully legal protest. Just kidding, Donohue called it worse than hate speech and organized a mass email campaign to UCF president John Hitt demanding Cook be expelled.

Meanwhile in Minnesota, accomplished science blogger and UMinn life sciences professor PZ Myers picks up on the story, appropriately regards it as ridiculous, and proceeds to desecrate his own Eucharist cracker. Sure enough the Inquisitors catch wind of Myers’s activities and another mass harassment campaign begins, this time against the University of Minnesota, where Myers works.

Publicly attacking people who disagree with your pet cosmologies is legal. What aren’t legal, however, are the death threats that started arriving in the inboxes of Myers, Webster Cook, and even Cook’s family. So, Rodrigo and I decided that our rallying banner would be free speech, our bugle call would be good citizenship. We drafted letters to UCF and to UMinn, but most of our efforts were on a letter to the Catholic League itself, calling on Bill Donohue to publicly condemn the threats of violence against the Catholic League’s targets. This letter was picked up by Myers’s blog, and CFI student group leaders everywhere have already sent their letters off to the League.

But why should the League even bother? There’s currently no evidence that the threats actually came from a League employee, or even from a League subscriber. Wouldn’t it just make them look responsible if they come out and condemn these threats?

Firstly, it is in the League’s own best interest to condemn these threats. Right now, casual induction links the League to the wackos responsible for these crimes: the Catholic League, which has tens of thousands of members, puts out a fatwa on Myers and Cook, and days later the threats start rolling in. If the League is really serious about defending its faith tradition, the burden is on them to elevate the discourse above this childishness. The language of the threats (some of which can be read on Myers’s blog) clearly demonstrate that the motivation is religious offense. The League and the offenders in question appear both in the same camp, then, as they are both driven by their religious zealotry. If the League wants to be taken seriously, and if it wants a real conversation about how societies should treat religious protest, then they need to make it clear that their tactics will not include even a tacit endorsement of physical intimidation.

Secondly, it is simply good citizenship to distance yourselves from those who fly the same banner you do while making mischief. After 9/11, dozens of Muslim groups in the West openly and repeatedly condemned the numerous atrocities carried out in the name of the religious faith they themselves follow. Was it because the hijackers worked for peaceful Muslim groups in the West? Was it because these groups caused 9/11? Of course not. It was because any person who respect their own ideology will fight not just against its detractors, but also against its maniacs. Beyond protecting the reputation of the ideology itself, it gives the public certain cues for how to spot the nutters from those who really have something to say in defense of their tradition.

Right now, the Catholic League’s tight lips on this issue (and I sincerely doubt they have not received any of these letters yet) are making them look like fools. They are twiddling their thumbs and pretending that no wrong has been done in their name while militants and terrorists sit at their computers and try to do the League’s dirty work for them. If the Catholic League does not step up to the plate on this issue, I am sure that there are many, more reasonable Catholic organizations who would just love to publicly shame the League as much as they would love to publicly shame the threat-writers themselves.

A running count of how long we have been waiting for the League to show a little maturity is maintained on the sidebar of this author’s blog.