Equality's all well and good for other people.

Like most superstitions, organized religion as a rule stands for ignorance and backwardness. Certainly, religious organizations have shown moments of great moral courage, such as the role of some progressive congregations in the Civil Rights movement and the principled anti-war stances of some denominations. Latin American liberation theology -- which the US made sure its mercenaries and paid death squads nipped in the bud in the 1980's -- comes closest to a truly sustainable doctrine of progressive religion, but it too was eventually reigned in and more or less destroyed by the mainstream of its church hierarchy.

Thankfully, here we have separation of church and state. Maybe. Rejecting the founding fathers' distrust of religion, this country has long been susceptible to the dangers of hocus pocus posturing by theocrats intent on replacing the Constitution with their own version of repressive religious ideology.

It is only because their crackpot ideas -- which of course can be backed up by one of the most miserable haters of all time, the Apostle Paul -- are decidedly un-market friendly that they haven't met with greater success in the latter 20th century and early 21st century. Bush's stem cell research stonewall is only a rearguard action, a bone thrown to rabidly regressive cretins, that will not stand against the pressures of the US medical market. Likewise, formerly divine doctrine -- such as the Mormons' relegation of Blacks to not-quite-completely-fully-human status, which ended in the 1970's -- falls by the wayside as it becomes evident that societal changes have made it unmarketable.

The Dover, PA, voters recognized that last year when they tossed out the Creationists who wanted to turn that town into a little model of Kansas, where the next step is teaching how the fossil record was falsified by Satan himself.

However, we need to remind ourselves constantly that like other diseases, it's hard to wipe out ignorance. Case in point comes to us today from Watertown, New York:

The minister of a church that dismissed a female Sunday School teacher after adopting what it called a literal interpretation of the Bible says a woman can perform any job -- outside of the church.

The woman had taught there for 54 years, but apparently all those years she was an abomination in the face of God. Or at least of Paul. Her dismissal letter included Paul's gem, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." It's pretty strong Biblical backing for the relegation of women to second-class status, and it was a really popular passage back in the 19th century, and apparently also today.

The story gets better, though, because the minister in question is not only the minister of the First Baptist Church in Watertown, but he's also a member of the town council, reflecting the religous right's emphasis over the past few decades to think globally and act locally, as in get active on your local school board and local council and local politics in general. The right-wing media especially enjoys talking about "Islamo-Fascism" and they correctly point out the regressive -- i.e. conservative -- nature of these theocratic movements, even if they can't do proper analysis, but I'm willing to bet that this story will be nowhere near the talking points of the right-wing hotheads who maraud the airwaves.