Misogyny and bigotry all wrapped up in a spiritual disguise

My Sunday “movie” was actually a live play I attended Saturday evening. My friend and debate partner invited me to a performance at Theatre Nova in Ann Arbor, a professional theater in a small venue (I think it seats less than 80). The play was a new one, Arabic to English by David Wells. It is a three character play and it is about one act long. It takes place in Detroit. The Detroit metro area has the largest Arab population outside the Middle East. The time is when the nasty guy imposed travel bans of people from Arab countries. Trevor is a lawyer dealing immigration issues, such as handling all the paperwork and trying to prevent deportations. His office assistant and translator is Amina. Her parents are Muslim immigrants with a great expectations of what their daughter will do. She feels caught between what they want and what she wants. She believes one expectation is not to marry Trevor, who very much wants to marry her. He’s got his own racial biases that trip him up. The third character is Faheem. He came to America on a student visa, married at age 19, and divorced 18 months later. A decade later Homeland Security is now claiming the marriage was a sham, that he entered into only to get his green card. He is scared of deportation because he knows very little about the country of his birth. Faheem’s English is much better than his Arabic. Even so, when before a judge he wants Amina as translator so she can choose words more appealing to the judge. She considers this unethical, which sends Faheem off discussing the nature of speech and language. Some of the dialog is in Arabic. What looks like a painting on the wall becomes a display of subtitles. In addition to allowing us to understand what the characters are saying we can see the small changes in meaning in Amina’s translation. This was an interesting and entertaining way to explain what some of my neighbors are going through. I enjoyed the evening. This show will play one more weekend. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that the Southern Baptist Convention held a convention (with at least 13K delegates?). The biggest news items out of it are a reaffirmation that women are not allowed to be pastors and that two congregations with women pastors are expelled. Their reason is that a woman is not to have any authority over a man. The SBC says it is following biblical teaching. Indeed, there is this passage from 1 Timothy 211

Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.

In a way similar to their reasons behind their treatment of LGBTQ people they chose the most misogynistic passage of the Bible to declare must absolutely be followed. Of course, there isn’t any contrasting and comparing with how this passage fits with the rest of the Bible and, more importantly, with what Jesus says in the Gospels. One of the churches expelled is the Saddleback megachurch in California. It was started and built up by Rick Warren and is currently led by women pastors. Rick Warren, who has pretty good SBC credibility is one of many who said the ruling was wrong. Wrote Einenkel:

The nature of the American Christian nationalist movement is fundamentally a political one of misogynistic control and bigotry, all wrapped up in a spiritual disguise. Christian conservative organizations like the Southern Baptist Convention support attacks on women and LGBTQ+ folks, claiming they are protecting women and children from sexually deviant predators. And yet, just one year ago, a 288-page investigative report of its leadership detailed its own protection of sex abusers among its clergy. The contradictions that church leaders are unwilling to wrestle with mean the Southern Baptist Convention will continue to be nothing more than a political interest group with very weak morals.

Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon that describes another consequence of the votes. Boys are looking out the windows of a treehouse that has a sign, “No Gurls Allowed.” Two girls on the ground call them “Future Southern Baptists...” A tweet by Eric Michael Garcia reinforces the point that the SBC has become a political interest group.

One of the interesting things to me: Bush is a sincere born-again Christian who attributes his faith to him quitting drinking, but many evangelicals thought he didn't deliver. But much more LOVE Trump, a thrice-married casino owner, because he delivered politically

Mark Sumner of Kos discussed that with the indictments over the nasty guy’s handling of classified material he really is in trouble. For decades he’s paid a fine, maybe a few million, and the problem goes away. But that won’t work this time. Yeah, he’s been treated much more kindly than anyone else facing espionage charges, including being allowed to leave the courthouse rather than being put in jail. The nasty guy keeps saying he’s allowed to keep the records because of the Presidential Records Act (his explanation is exactly backwards). But that’s not what these charges are about. They’re about the hiding and lying he did after he was asked to return the records. That means if he had cooperated with returning what he took there would be no indictments, not even for improperly handling classified documents. If found guilty he won’t be getting out of this one by signing a check. Kerry Eleveld of Kos wrote that in 2022 one of the main campaign points by Republicans was crime – how they’re the party of law and order and that Democratic controlled cities were crime infested (not anywhere close to as bad as they’re portrayed). But these indictments of their likely nominee means those crime talking points won’t work on most of the country. His base is fine with whatever he does. They’re hearing a different message.

Some version of "they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you and I’m just standing in their way" has been standard Trump fare for several months now.

So here’s a message that Democrats can do a lot with. One hopes they will. Hunter of Kos wrote:

Every single time we have learned that sedition-backing Donald Trump likely committed a crime, it takes no more than a day for House Republicans to begin planning out how they will best defend him. Every single time, the chosen defense is not that Trump didn't do whatever astonishingly crooked thing investigators have uncovered; instead, they declare that whoever discovered the corruption is part of a vast conspiracy against the career con artist, and that the investigators are the ones who need to be punished and/or jailed.

This pattern has been going on for years. It is currently being led by Rep. Jim Jordan.

The catch now, however, is that Jordan is not attempting to sabotage a federal probe or an impeachment trial. Jordan and his fellow House Republicans are attempting to sabotage state and federal criminal cases against Trump; in demanding that the indicting prosecutors turn over their notes, their witnesses, and their evidence, Trump's Republican allies are plainly attempting to obstruct prosecutors, not investigators. And that is usually something that is a really top-notch, prison-worthy crime for anyone who is not a sitting member of Congress. ... As for why attempting to obstruct an ongoing criminal probe and indictment isn't illegal if you're a member of Congress, that's a hell of a question. ... We'll have to have the experts explain that one to us all. It needs to be again emphasized, though, that Republicanism now defines itself around the notion that Republicans get to do crimes.

John Darkow of the Columbian Missourian tweeted a cartoon of a huge meteor labeled “Trump” streaking towards the earth and one dinosaur says to another, “Yeah, but what about Hillary?”