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The good reason
behind
Good Reason News
“Blogwatch” has
invited other bloggers to make occasional
contributions, with the simple brief: what
do they blog about, and why? Here,
Billy
Deaton tells us about his US blog,
Good Reason News.
I’ve been involved in
journalism for the last seven years and you
know what I noticed? No one ever asks an
investigative reporter why he’s doing it. No
one ever asks Helen Thomas what she’s trying
to accomplish. No one ever scoffs at Bob
Woodward for writing a book.
Have you ever read an
editorial from one side of the political
aisle asking the other why they bother or
what they think they’re going to change? Of
course not. It’s implicit that the nature of
a free press is to bring information to the
people in order to maintain democracy.
That’s why they call it the “fourth estate”
Journalism keeps those in
power accountable to people who may
otherwise be too busy to notice they’re
being oppressed. However, everyone from the
LA Times to my best friends are
shocked and dismissive when it comes to
exposing the oppression of religion.
I started
Good Reason News because, as a
journalist, I am trained and inclined to
point out and explain injustice. I’m not
interested in making atheists or arguing the
point that religion is absurd. But it seems
that it naturally follows that an
institution with the all-powerful,
all-loving creator of the universe behind it
should rise above the errors and prejudices
of its time.
Yet religious
institutions find themselves on the wrong
side of history with startling frequency.
It’s been demonstrated over and over that
the Catholic Church funded the Nazi party in
World War Two, that the KKK counts itself as
a Christian group, that crusades, jihads and
inquisitions in the name of gods has led to
more torture and inhumanity than it could
have possibly been worth, even if there were
a god. The violations against mankind, due
to the baseless notion of God, take up a
large percentage of human history, and 100
per cent of Good Reason News.
Price of
loyalty
I named my blog Good
Reason News because of something Wall
Street Journal reporter and author of
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush the
White House and the Education of Paul O’
Neill, Ron Suskind told me. He said, and
I’m paraphrasing, that behind every action
is a “good reason”. Whether that “good
reason” was valid or not is beside the
point. Everyone from Bush to bin Laden to
you to me believes what they’re doing is the
just and right thing to do.
So, when Bush referred to
al-Qaeda as “the evildoers” and said they
“hate our freedom”, the absurdity in the
President’s approach made me and all people
who’ve learned the lesson of “good reason”
very worried. Because “evil” and “hate”
aren’t “good reasons”. Bush showed a
fundamental misunderstanding of Islamic
terrorism. In fact, he offered the type of
easy, black-and-white language often offered
by religious institutions.
Today we’re seeing a lot
of talk about same-sex marriage. I’ve said
before that the “good reason” behind banning
it is based solely on religious ideology.
Those against it are either religious or
have an idea about what is and isn’t
“natural” that’s warped by religion.
Of course, like the
Islamic terrorists and the “rock ’em, sock
’em” ex-President, those speaking out
against same-sex marriage based on religion
refuse to take the next logical step and
evaluate the premise, that is, “Should
decisions about someone else’s real rights
be based on my unjustifiable beliefs?” The
very nature of a belief stands in opposition
to understanding. As Mark Twain said, “Faith
is believin’ what you know ain’t so.”
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Mark Twain:
“Faith is believin’
what you know ain’t so.” |
What I’ve tried to point
out is that every law about sex that we have
in America concerns sound consent. Those
prosecuted for sex crimes have violated
someone else’s consent 100 per cent of the
time. This is precisely why the “slippery
slope” argument (which, by the way, is an
argumentative fallacy and is hence wrong by
definition) doesn’t work against same-sex
marriage.
Sound
consent
When the religious panic
and say, “If same-sex marriage is allowed,
then what’s to stop bestiality, underage
marriage, etc.”, the difference is clear.
Animals, children and objects can’t give
sound consent. Two homosexual adults clearly
can give sound consent, therefore the
law would have no basis.
I don’t pretend I’m
contributing to a decline in religion, or
that I’ll see a significant decline in my
lifetime. But I at least expect to
contribute to the conversation, expose the
injustice and arm the reasonable. Please
visit me by clicking
here.
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