Exactly. If only more people realized this.

It’s a question of integrity. If I don’t agree with some of the church’s most central teachings that rule out – on a spectrum from abomination to sinful – contraception, abortion, sex before marriage, homosexual sex, divorce and women priests, then I really shouldn’t be a member.

Quite right, not least because your membership does its bit to endorse those central teachings. Membership is a kind of vote – passive, but nonetheless countable. If you think some of the church’s most central teachings are reactionary and hostile to women, then quite right, you shouldn’t cast your vote for them.

I haven’t practised since I made my Confirmation, yet my name is still

Salon has an amusing piece by Alex Pareene on what the pranks of Andrew Breitbart mean. First Pareene quotes Politico’s take on that:

Responsible people in power and in the mainstream media are only beginning to grapple with this new environment — in which facts hardly matter except as they can be used as weapon or shield in a nonstop ideological war. Do you dive into the next fact-lite partisan outrage — or do you stay out and risk looking slow, stupid or irrelevant? No one is close to figuring it out.

then points out

Actually, VandeHarris, lots of people figured this one out! It was really easy!

Does that remind you of anything? It reminds me of anything. … Read the rest

Several people (some via email rather than comments) have pointed out this observation of Glenn Greenwald’s in a letter at Salon:

I think it’d be worth it to sue [Andrew Breitbart] just to uncover his “source” who did the editing. “Journalists” are supposed to expose their “sources” if they use the journalist to perpetrate a fraud.

Ignore the part about suing, that’s not the issue here. The issue is the implicit claim that a fraudulent “source” does not deserve or have a right to remain anonymous and the explicit claim that journalists are supposed to expose such sources when they (the sources) use the journalist to propagate the fraud. The above-mentioned people note that this means Chris Mooney, being … Read the rest