FILM REVIEW: Pawn Sacrifice

I found out about the new movie Pawn Sacrifice last week and decided to go see it over the weekend at the Pasadena Arclight Cinemas with members of the Occidental College chess club (which I serve as faculty advisor).

The film Pawn Sacrifice is a screen dramatization of the real-life story of how Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) defeated Boris Spassky (Liev Schrieber) in one of the most high-profile chess matches ever in 1972. The Fischer-Spassky match was one of the key proxy battles in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, since chess had been a game dominated by Soviet Bloc (primarily Russians) for decades. Fischer's win is one of the most extraordinary events in all of sports. He is the only American in the modern era to have won the world chess championship.

The movie does a good job of depicting Fischer's meteoric rise to the top of world chess at shockingly young age (at the time he was the youngest International Grandmaster ever at the age of 16 in the mid 1960s) as well as not shying away from showing his troubled upbringing, bizarre (anti-semitic and racist) beliefs and rather frightening (and bewildering)  mood swings.

I know that you are thinking that a movie centered around games of chess must be like watching paint dry but director Ed Zwick (who is mostly well-known  for his television programs thirtysomething and Once and Again) does an outstanding job of directing the film and telling the story in a way that would engage even people uninterested in chess.

Overall I enjoyed Pawn Sacrifice quite a bit and I'm glad that I saw it!


Title: Pawn Sacrifice.
Director: Edward Zwick.
Running Time: 1 hour, 51 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some sexual content and historical smoking.
Release Date: September 16, 2015.
Viewing Date: September 19, 2015.

Writing: B+.
Acting: A-.
Visuals: C+.
Impact: B-.

Overall Grade: B (3.0/4.0).

QUEER QUOTE: Judge Rules "Sodomite Suppression Act" Patently Unconstitutional

Well, well! Score one for common sense. A violently homophobic proposed California ballot measure known as the "Sodomite Suppression Act" has been found unconstitutional by a Superior Court judge so that Attorney General Kamala Harris does not have to process it for circulation before voters. The judge's order is the source for today's QUEER QUOTE:

1. The proposed initiative titled the "Sodomite Suppression Act" (the "Act") is patently unconstitutional on its face;
2. Any preparation and official issuance of a circulating title and summary for the Act by the Attorney General would be inappropriate, waste public resources, generate unnecessary divisions among the public and tend to mislead the electorate; and
3. The Attorney General is relieved of any obligation to issue a title and summary for the Act.

Just in time for LGBT Pride month!

CELEBRITY FRIDAY (BONUS): Is Rachel Dolezal Black Simply Because She Says She Is?

Social and popular media have been going buck wild about the story of Rachel Dolezal, the  apparently white woman who has been posing publicly as a Black woman for at least the last 10 years.

NPR's Code Switch blog has a useful roundup of online coverage:

In a bizarre turn of events, a prominent civil rights leader and Africana studies professor in Spokane, Wash., has been accused of pretending to be black for personal gain. 

Rachel Dolezal, 37, heads up the local chapter of the NAACP in Spokane and has apparently identified as black for several years. Dolezal's story came to light after she was accused of falsifying reports of multiple hate crimes. Local reporters contacted her parents, who made a startling claim backed up by a birth certificate and old pictures. They say their daughter's heritage is Swedish, German, Czech and a little bit Native American. But definitely not black. 

Predictably, this story has blown up all over the Internet as people try to make sense of it all: Why did she do it? Didn't anyone suspect? What's up with that hair?

As many experts have pointed out, people have been "passing" as a different race for hundreds of years. It's just that almost always this has meant that it was people who would generally be characterized as "Black" (or African-American) passing as something else, usually a racial identity which is less marginalized. What makes the Dolezal situation so unusual is that it is an example of someone voluntarily adopting a subaltern identity, presumably to garner some kind of advantage that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to if they maintained their original identity.

Some people are trying to compare the Dolezal story to the Caitlin Jenner story but that is clearly just stupid.

Dolezal engaged in such actions in order to be perceived as black, in a racialized American environment where that matters. Trans people transition in order to be the gender we feel inside and, while there may come a time when posers will appropriate trendy trans culture for profit, right now, there's no advantage to transitioning when you're not trans.

In some sense this Dolezal situation shows that there has been progress of race relations in America where it is possible for some people to actually believe that their social circumstances would improve if they were perceived as Black or African-American.

Hat/tip to Wonder Man

QUEER QUOTE: President of The Gambia Threatens All Gay Men With Murder

The heads of African countries are notorious for their virulent homophobia, but even among that group, today's Queer Quote, which is this statement by the President of the Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, is pretty horrendous:

"If you are a man and want to marry another man in this country and we catch you, no one will ever set eyes on you again, and no white person can do anything about it."

President Jammeh also said "If you do it [in the Gambia], I will slit our throat." He apparently said the words in a local language (Wolof). In 2013, Jammeh has been quoted saying this:

Homosexuality is anti-god, anti-human, and anti-civilization. Homosexuals are not welcome in the Gambia. If we catch you, you will regret why you are born. I have buffaloes from South Africa and Brazil and they never date each other. We are ready to eat grass but we will not compromise on this. Allowing homosexuality means allowing satanic rights. We will not allow gays here.

How much do you want to bet there are gay men having sex in the Gambia RIGHT NOW? It never ceases to amaze me how homophobes think that by making a statement like "We don't have any gays in Iran" or "We will not allow gays here" that they think it actually has an impact on whether gay people actually exist in that country or not. Of course, what they are really trying to do is enforce the cultural norms of their society and to mandate universal compulsory heterosexuality.

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: The Protester From Yesterday's Supreme Court Argument

This week for Godless Wednesday I figured I would feature another examples of abusive behavior by the "godfearing." Yesterday, during oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court about whether civil marriage must be available to same-sex couples in every state of the union, the guy pictured above, Rives Miller Grogan, disrupted the proceedings by yelling out "If you support gay marriage then you will burn in hell!" and as he was being hustled out of the room "It's an abomination!"

Lovely, hmmm?

Even more bothersome, in my opinion and others, was Justice Scalia's response, which was "It was rather refreshing, actually." Really? "Refreshing"? In what way, exactly?

QUEER QUOTE: CA Proposed Ballot Measure Would Authorize Death Penalty For "Sodomites"

Wow. Now this is some pretty crazy stuff, even for heterosexual supremacists. A religious zealot has filed a proposed ballot measure called the "Sodomite Suppression Act" with the Attorney General of California that says "any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purpose of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or any other convenient method."

Matt McLaughlin filed the measure and paid the $200 fee required to get the ballot measure in the system. He then has to collect the signatures of 5% of the votes cast for Governor in November 2014. Because turnout was so low, the magic number is a mere 366,000 valid signatures to qualify an initiative statute for the statewide general ballot. I suspect we will see quite a lot of crackpot ballot measures filed seeking to make the November 2016 ballot.

Hat/tip to Joe Jervis

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Creationist Says "Aliens Going To Hell (So We Should Stop LookIng)"

*sigh* Creationist Ken Ham is the religious fundamentalist nut behind The Creation Museum (where humans and dinosaurs are shown frolicking together!). He debated Bill Nye on the topic of "creation versus evolution" this spring and issued numerous cringeworthy logic-free lines.

Recently Ham made headlines responding to NASA head Charles Bolden saying "It's highly improbable in the limitless vastness of the universe that we humans stand alone" by declaring:

"You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation."

So basically Ham is saying the search for extraterrestrial life should cease "because Bible." Umm, no. What if taxpayers don't agree with what you say your religious text says? Why should we make public policy reflective of what religious fundamentalists think about anything? Especially since they are willing to make statements that countermand demonstrable scientific fact.

Hat/tip to Huffington Post.

QUEER QUOTE: Pasadena's Public Health Director Condemns Homosexuality (& Oprah & Jay-Z!)

Oh dear! I live and work very near to Pasadena, California in the north-east section of Los Angeles. Pasadena is having its own "bigot eruption" right now as the virulently anti-gay (and bizarre) beliefs of
Dr. Eric Walsh, the City Director of Public Health have come to light in the local media.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Dr. Walsh has been put on administrative leave from his taxpayer-funded job, for which he was paid more than $250,000 in 2012.

The reason for his suspension is this list of things that Dr. Walsh believes, according to the Pasadena Star-News, should disqualify him from serving as Pasadena's Public Health Director

• Oprah Winfrey is harboring the spirit of the anti-Christ;• The prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam, was influenced by Satan;• The devil set up Catholicism;• Acceptance of homosexuals is a satanic ploy to destroy America;• Rapper Jay Z is a disciple of Satan;• Single mothers are ruining their children;• Disney movies, which are loaded with violence, sex and magic, are a satanic ploy to split up families;• Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a “satanic belief”;• The distribution of condoms to a public in need leads to higher AIDS rates;• The pope is the anti-Christ.

But it is this choice quote which makes him today's Queer Quote:

“In our public school system they began to teach moral relativism. They began to teach that there really is no absolute right or wrong. It’s more a matter of what you think or what you accept. And (according to that doctrine) if two adults agree to do something, it’s not wrong because they are both consenting adults. That is doctrine from the pits of hell. What makes something right is not based on man, it is based on God.”

One website thinks that is basically saying that gay people come from the "pits of hell" but maybe that's not what the good doctor meant?
Hat/tip to The New Civil Rights Movement

#FAIL: CA Heterosexual Supremacists Claim Prop 8 Is Not Dead

Wow! How invested in your own bizarro view of the world warped by rampant homophobia that you refuse to acknowledge reality? I guess the heterosexual supremacists over at ProtectMarriage.com are going to let us know. Two weeks ago their last-ditch attempt to (again) stop same-sex couples from getting married in California was summarily aborted by the United States Supreme Court, so they have decided to return to the California Supreme Court, a place they have won twice before, to try to claim that Proposition 8 is not dead.

They have filed a claim called Hollingsworth v. O'Connell before the California Supreme Court making the (frankly ludicrous) argument that the federal injunction currently in effect against Proposition 8 only applies to the two counties in which the original plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit are from, namely Los Angeles County and San Francisco.

Moments ago, we filed a new petition in the California Supreme Court against all of California’s 58 county clerks, and state officials, seeking to restore the enforcement of Proposition 8, the state’s constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a man and a woman.  The undeniable fact is, the man-woman definition of marriage, as passed by a majority the voters, is still a valid part of our state constitution. 

Yet county clerks statewide are lawlessly defying that law by issuing gender-neutral marriage licenses. We are asking California’s Supreme Court to restore the rule of law and the public’s confidence in the integrity of the initiative process. 

The action we filed today contends that at least 56 of the 58 county clerks must continue to follow Proposition 8 because they were not parties to the recent federal lawsuit against Prop 8, and that the state’s governor and attorney general have no legal authority to order local county clerks to disregard the state constitution.

Amusingly, AFER, the organization behind the Proposition 8 federal lawsuit, has not even bothered to dignify ProtectMarriage.com's claim with a response.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera was not so kind, and gently explained the basics of the law and reality to the fuzzy thinking homophobes:

This motion is a desperate obstruction tactic used in the vain hope of pursuing an unconstitutional agenda. The opponents of the freedom to marry have chosen to ignore the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and the well-settled California marriage case of Lockyer v. San Francisco, which they themselves celebrated at the time. Their motion has essentially no chance to succeed. The most basic concepts of American law tell us that a state court cannot and will not overrule the federal judiciary. The citizens of California are left wondering when these people will realize that, having lost the moral struggle years and years ago, they have now lost the legal struggle as well. Marriage equality is now the law in the State of California, and will remain so from this point onward. Together we will soon see the day when it is the law all across America.

I've emphasized the key sentence in the middle of the quote. The homophobes won before the California Supreme Court in 2009 in Strauss v. Horton when the state's highest court ruled that Proposition 8 did not violate the state constitution. But in Perry v. Brown, the homophobes lost in federal court and the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hollingsworth v. Perry that they have no right to appeal that ruling. Ergo, Proposition 8 is dead.

Actually, what is even more ironic is that the case of Lockyer v. San Francisco which the homophobes won is now coming back to bite them on the butt. Then the state Supreme Court ruled that state officials and not local county officials have the sole right to determine who can or can not get married in response to Mayor Gavin Newsom's wilful defiance of state law way back in 2004. This resulted in the annulment of thousands of same-sex couples' marriages who had been married at the time between February 12 and March 11 in San Francisco. But that same principle is now what prevents ProtectMarriage.com from claiming that 56 of 58 counties can enforce Proposition 8 while 2 of them do not. (Actually the make the even more nonsensical argument that all 58 counties have to enforce Proposition 8 because it is still present in the California Constitution, but I digress.) The responsible state officials Attorney General Kamala Harris and  Governor Jerry Brown have recognized that a federal court is stopping them from enforcing Proposition 8 and thus same-sex couples can get married.

That being said, to end the debate completely again, the Legislature should pass a state constitutional amendment removing Proposition 8 from the state Constitution and re-affirming marriage equality so that the people can have their voice heard again on this question in November 2014.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

The Next Governor of Virginia May Be A Raving Homophobe

Virginia Attorney Genera Ken Cuccinelli is running for Governor and he is a raging homophobe. Evidence of support for this characterization is his decision to appeal a recent ruling striking down that state's "crime against nature".

The Washington Blade reports:

Caroline Gibson, a spokesperson for Cuccinelli, told the Blade in an email that Cuccinelli believes the dissenting judge on the three-judge panel was correct in stating the Lawrence decision applies only to sex between consenting adults in private and doesn’t apply to cases involving a minor. The case in which the three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the Virginia sodomy law involved a man charged with soliciting oral sex from a 17-year-old woman.

“We believe the panel decision was erroneous, and that the dissent correctly concludes that the petitioner was not entitled to federal habeas corpus relief, Gibson said, referring to the court’s decision to overturn the man’s conviction under the sodomy law. “So the full court should have the opportunity to decide this matter,” she said.

“Like most people, we think the court made the right decision,” said James Parrish, executive director of the LGBT advocacy group Equality Virginia.

“We think what needs to happen is the General Assembly needs to remove the current sodomy law that has been declared unconstitutional,” he said.

Cucinelli is running for Governor of Virginia as a Tea Bag Republican, someone who thinks that Supreme Court justice Antonin Scali is "too liberal." Back in 2009, when he was running for election as Virginia Attorney General, Cucinelli said:

 My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. ... They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”

This is the man who may be elected the next Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia in roughly 7 months.

FILM REVIEW: Silver Linings Playbook

One of the most unusual movies of the year is David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as two damaged people who are desperately trying to connect emotionally with another person. Cooper plays Pat Solatano, Jr. who at the beginning of the film is seen being released from a mental institution by his mom, Debbie Solatano (played by the veteran Australian actress Jackie Weaver). Pat asks his mom to give a friend named Danny (played by Chris Tucker) that he met during his stay at the mental institution history a ride home but soon we discover that Pat is actually trying to use his mom as an accomplice to help Danny escape! This is just the first sign that something is "not quite right" with Pat.

Soon we have even more evidence that multiple members of the Solatano household are "not quite right" when we meet Pat's Dad, Pat Solatano, Sr (played by 2-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro) who is absolutely obsessed with the Philadelphia Eagles because his primary source of income is acting as a bookie for bets on football. We (the audience) obtain this information because Debbie tells Pat before they enter the house that his dad is doing this and admonishes him not to bring it up when he meets his dad for the first time in 9 months. The first thing Pat does when he walks in the house is mention the bookie thing, causing Pat Senior to remonstrate with his wife for revealing this information. Pat Senior has his own quirks as well, not only does he basically make his living from illegal sports gambling but he also has a curious delusion that if he does certain things it will improve the chances of his team winning. This goes well beyond the typical magical thinking or superstitions of many sports fans because Pat Senior insists that the actions of other people around him can also impact the "luck" his favored team will have.

Pat gets invited to his best friend Ronnie's house for dinner and there he meets a girl named Tiffany Maxwell who is Ronnie's sister-in-law and a recovering sex addict and recent widow. The dinner is a pretty calamitous affair, with Pat and Tiffany each showing off their quirks to this person hey just  met unabashedly. Pat goes to this somewhat dressy occasion wearing a Philadelphia Eagle jersey and demonstrates his obsession/infatuation with his ex-wife Nikki whom he deludedly thinks he is going to get back together with even though she has filed for divorce, moved away, and taken out a restraining order to keep him from getting to within 500 feet of her or contacting her in any way. Tiffany asks Pat about what meds he is taking and they proceed to have a jaw-dropping exchange about 3 or 4 psychoactive medications each has taken and their side effects while Ronnie and his wife look helplessly on. Once this conversation is over Tiffany abruptly gets up from the table and asks Pat to walk her home (even though they are barely into the salad course). While they are walking home she promptly propositions him for sex, which he refuses (because he is being loyal to his "relationship" with Nikki). These actions just reinforce that neither of them really has their self-destructive obsessive behaviors (sex addiction for her, delusion about his ex-wife for him) under control.

I wanted to give a short summary of some of the key events at the beginning of the film to give the reader a sense of how the movie introduces us to the characters and gets us intrigued and invested in their well-being. Even though I described them as "damaged" earlier, one of the key points of the film is that everyone in the film has something "not quite right" about their behavior, but it is only Pat and Tiffany who get the dreaded "crazy" label by everyone around them. But that doesn't mean that they don't have good qualities as well, i.e. a "silver lining."

Through an interesting (albeit somewhat contrived, plot device) Pat and Tiffany end up spending a lot of time together and the audience gets to see how good the two would be for each other long before either of the two characters realize it. The filmmakers can't disguise the fact that Cooper and  Lawrence really are incredibly attractive people, even if they are playing "regular" folks here who have disturbing personalities/behaviors. This fact makes watching the film an enjoyable exercise for people who appreciate male or female beauty (those eyes! that hair!). The main suspense of the film's plot is whether Pat and Tiffany can battle through their mental barriers to actually connect with each other. And by the end of the film, we really really care about what will happen to these characters.

Overall, Silver Linings Playbook is a heart-warming film, with extraordinary acting (the cast has the rare distinction of having Oscar nominations in all four acting categories for Cooper, Lawrence, De Niro and Weaver) and a thought-provoking script that will make you reassess your views about mental illness, the nature of "obsession" and love itself.

Title: Silver Linings Playbook.
Director: David O. Russell.
Running Time: 2 hours, 2 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for language and some sexual content/nudity.
Release Date: November 21, 2012.
Viewing Date: January 3, 2013.

Writing: A-.
Acting: A.
Visuals: B+.
Impact: A-.

Overall Grade: A (3.66/4.0).

Let's Talk About Gun Control!

The New York Times has a great op-ed by Nicholas Krystof today "Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?" where he brings up the topic of sensible gun control in light of the horrific massacre of 20 children under 10 and 7 adults at an elementary school in Newtown, CT on Friday morning.

Here's an important excerpt:

The fundamental reason kids are dying in massacres like this one is not that we have lunatics or criminals — all countries have them — but that we suffer from a political failure to regulate guns. 

Children ages 5 to 14 in America are 13 times as likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries, according to David Hemenway, a public health specialist at Harvard who has written an excellent book on gun violence. 

So let’s treat firearms rationally as the center of a public health crisis that claims one life every 20 minutes. The United States realistically isn’t going to ban guns, but we can take steps to reduce the carnage.

and then he goes on to make some concrete suggestions that has improved the situation in other countries:

Other countries offer a road map. In Australia in 1996, a mass killing of 35 people galvanized the nation’s conservative prime minister to ban certain rapid-fire long guns. The “national firearms agreement,” as it was known, led to the buyback of 650,000 guns and to tighter rules for licensing and safe storage of those remaining in public hands. 

The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of firearms in private hands by one-fifth, and they were the kinds most likely to be used in mass shootings. 

In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to data compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and the suicide rate with firearms has dropped by more than half. 

Or we can look north to Canada. It now requires a 28-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and it imposes a clever safeguard: gun buyers should have the support of two people vouching for them.

How much longer are people going to let the National Rifle Association prevent reasonable regulations on gun ownership that would help reduce the 30,000 Americans who are killed by these instruments of death every year? Come on, people! Let's talk about gun control.

Queer Quote: Barney Frank Shames Gay Republicans

Rep. Barney Frank said the following about the curious case of gay Republicans who support the Romney-Ryan presidential ticket.

"Frankly I’ve been appalled to see the Log Cabin club, in the face of this worse and worse record on public policy by Republicans on our issues. Mr. Cooper said, ‘Well at least they’re not saying bad things about us.' That’s just extraordinary. Again, 30 years ago when we were emerging from the vice of prejudice, I understood that. But no, we shouldn’t be accepting a kind of second class citizenship, [and saying], ‘You can treat us badly as long you don’t yell at us.’ 

"They’re accepted on [the GOP's] terms. They’re willing to be accepted with no rights -- no right to marry, no right to serve in the military, no right to be protected against hate crimes, no right to be protected in employment. I’ll be honest: For 20 years now I’ve heard how the Log Cabins are going to make Republicans better, but they’ve only gotten worse. I now understand why they call themselves Log Cabin: their role model is Uncle Tom."

This is pretty harsh, but is it really untrue? I understand that in order to fully advance LGBT equality it can not be seen as a partisan issue, but there are some basic principles that one can not compromise on, and one of those are basic civil rights of gay people: equal treatment under the law. If Log Cabin Republicans are not willing to apply these principles, then they are indeed vulnerable to all the criticism they get.

What do you think?

Queer Quote: Michele Bachmann

This week's Queer Quote comes from Michele Bachmann, the certifiably insane Congresswoman from Minnesota who ran for President in 2011 and 2012. Bachman gave an interview (recorded on video) to USA Today where she said that "Obama is extremely wealthy":

Well, President Obama is extremely wealthy. He and his wife have been wealthy for a number of years, and so I think that's really the issue. President Obama is wealthy, what do, or -- what does he understand about the common man right now?  

And I think what people care about is not hating someone for what their assets are -- the American people don't hate President Obama because he's a very wealthy individual. What they care about is how their lives are, would their lives be better? And I think it's very clear under the Romney-Ryan ticket the average Americans' lives [sic] will be much better, they'll have a lot more money to spend in the way that they want, and they'll also have a much more secure future for their children. That's what the American people want, and that's what we'll offer with this new Romney-Ryan ticket.

Fascinating that she would attempt to contrast President Obama's wealth with Mitt Romney's. Obama has been at most wealthy since he became a United States Senator in 2004 and published best-selling novels books. Romney's father George Romney was Governor of Michigan, ran for President and was chief executive of American Motors Corporation. Clearly Mitt Romney has been wealthy for his entire life; his wealth is currently estimated to be between 200-250 million dollars, and this is only an estimated number because unlike his father, Romney refuses to release his tax returns while running for President.

But facts mean nothing to Michele Bachmann or most Republicans, particularly when they are delivered in a political setting, which is basically every day until the Presidential election. Happily, most Americans know the truth that Republicans favor rich people, while Democrats favor people who are below the 1% in the wealth spectrum.

hat/tip to Joe.My.God

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: "Faith-healing" Parents Who Watched Son Die Avoid Jail Time

17-year-old Zachary Swezey is dead because his parents
believed faith could heal his appendicitis. It didn't.

This is a jaw-droppingly nauseating story about the real-life deadly effects of belief in "God." In Okanogan, Washington two parents Greg and JaLea Swezey were charged but ultimately acquitted in the death of the 17-year-old son from a ruptured appendix (what an awfully painful way to die!)

Friendly Atheist has the perfect reaction:

Imagine this scenario: A father and mother take their child to a park and the child falls into a lake. The parents can swim, but their child cannot. Despite this, they do nothing and watch the child drown.

What should happen to the parents? Immediate arrest? Removal of all their other children? Jail time for manslaughter? Some combination of those options?

How about letting them take advantage of a law that allows them to let their children die and a plea deal that allows them to avoid prison?

Insane? Yes.

Immoral? Absolutely.

Washington State has a law (RCW 9A.42.005) that allows treatment by a “duly accredited Christian Science practitioner in lieu of medical care” but the Swezeys are members of the Church of the First Born, not Christian Scientists. The Swezeys have now accepted plea deals which will allow them to completely avoid jail time for their complicit inaction which resulted in the death of their child.

The Swezeys were acquitted of second-degree murder after a four-day trial in mid-May, but the jury could not agree on whether the Carlton couple should be convicted of second-degree manslaughter. 

On Thursday, rather than face a retrial on manslaughter charges, JaLea Swezey pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal mistreatment on Thursday, and Greg Swezey signed papers agreeing to plead guilty to the same crime after two years, if he follows court orders and commits no felonies during that time.

The bizarre part is that the attorneys for the Swezey wanted to appeal the ruling to get the exemption in the law that only applies to Chistian Scientists to apply all religious people who want to use faith instead of medical treatment.

Back to Friendly Atheist:

I agree the law should be changed, but in the other direction.

This monstrous carve-out must be wiped out. Religious exemptions are bad. Religious exemptions that cost children their lives are an outrage to human decency.

What he said.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God