Whenever I’m feeling uninspired, the “weird news” section on MyYahoo! always gives me something to think about.

Today, I see that Sir Elton John has decided to issue a fatwa on organized religion. He has decided that it needs to be banned because it promotes homophobia and turns some people into “hateful lemmings.” Sir Elton has been remarkably silent about what sort of awful influence out there causes people to refer to others as “hateful lemmings.” Inquiring minds want to know.

As much as I do enjoy the rantings of Sir Elton, I must admit that there were a couple of things that happened on Sunday that made me wonder if he hasn’t got a point.

I was engaged in my usual Sunday morning chat with my folks (which I do on my cell phone because long distance calls are free), and I had wandered into the back yard while I was talking to pick up a few things that Mocha had decided to haul out there to chew on, and then I stayed out there for the duration of the conversation because Ray was watching television and he likes his TV loud.

When I came back in, Ray told me that we’d had the missionaries come by, and I missed it. They were missionaries from one of those faiths that has “Thou shalt spread the Word to the ignorant door to door at inconvenient hours of the morning so as to catch them before they leave for the day” as one of its central commandments. You know the ones I’m talking about.

Since we have a sign on the door that says “No Soliciting,” Ray elected not to answer, feeling as I do that if one isn’t entirely certain that the sign applies to them, it’s an indication that it almost certainly does. Also, the last time I opened the door for a couple of missionaries, one of them was an elderly woman who needed a walker and I felt kind of guilty about saying, “I’m sorry,” and slowly closing the door on them. I blame them for putting me in that situation.

I got off track for a moment there. Where was I? Oh, yes. So, whichever group it was slipped one of their educational fliers in the door jamb and went off in search of other people who might be home (since it’s Sunday morning, clearly only sinners would be at home and not at church, right? I just got that).

The flier was one of those usual kinds of religious treatises, printed on cheap paper (but in four-color — clearly this outfit has some money), describing the joys of getting to know Jesus Christ (as interpreted by our pastor, Jesus being unable to speak for himself), and the wonders that God will bring into your life. Oh, and homosexuals are evil.

Seriously, it was right there. A total non-sequitur. God is great, Jesus loves you, gays are evil. I guess it’s a good thing that Ray didn’t answer the door.

At some point later in the morning, while trying valiantly to save my iPod from what I’m afraid is becoming a more and more certain death, I logged on to Audible.com because I needed to retrieve some audiobooks that I bought in order to reload them (My carpool has been going through withdrawal because we haven’t heard an installment of Shantaram in some time). Right there on Audible’s front page was an ad for a book by someone I will describe as a pseudo-scholar, the latest in a series of books he’s written decrying the evils and misdeeds of “the world’s most intolerant religion.” (He’s referring to Islam. You’ll forgive me if, as a gay man living in Texas, that wasn’t immediately obvious to me.)

I’ve heard of this guy before — it’s hard to work in my field and not be aware of people like him — and he’s published all sorts of books that are designed to let everyone in the West know that Muslims are actively plotting to come into your home, dictate your personal lives to you, and probably re-decorate your houses with something outdated and made of burlap while they’re at it. It’s worth noting that he didn’t publish his first book on this particular topic until 2002, when there was a ready-made audience of people in the West who had already decided to hate the Islamic world and needed reasons to back it up.

Having worked in the Islamic world, I can’t say that Muslims are more or less tolerant or intolerant than anyone else (see: I’m gay and live in Texas — both here and abroad, it’s a constant choice as to whether or not to be open about it, and here and abroad if I don’t think there’s a cogent reason for people to know I keep my mouth shut). There are plenty of intolerant Muslims out there, don’t get me wrong. But there’s also some intolerant Christians, a few intolerant Jews, and a couple of intolerant Hindus out there. How could one possibly prove that one group is more intolerant than another?

In fact, anyone with the slightest knowledge of how quantifiable social science works knows that there’s no possible way to back up statements like “[insert name of faith we don't like here] is the most intolerant religion in the world.” As a general rule, “experts” on TV and in the media who use superlatives (“most,” “best,” “worst,” “bloodiest”) are making it up on the spot. You can’t prove a statement like:

• Homosexuals are the most depraved, perverted …
• Muslims are the most intolerant …
• Christians have the highest moral standards of any religious community …

It doesn’t work that way. It’s a dead giveaway that says, “I have an agenda and am promoting it.” I know this because I am the world’s foremost expert on bullshit. (Prove me wrong.)

This all relates back to Sir Elton’s theory of organized religion as bad. I don’t know that I think that all organized religion is bad, but I certainly think that there are a lot of people out there who hate people who don’t subscribe to their vision of God-as-love.

It’s a little weird to me: I mean, if you were going to try to spread a vision of love, wouldn’t you want to be, I dunno, nice? Did the people who left that lovely flier in our door honestly think that we were going to run out and scream, “Oh, we don’t want to be gay anymore! Save us!” Does this guy think his book is going to be picked up in the Islamic world and suddenly all 1.2 billion Muslims will say to themselves, “Oh, I didn’t know that! Hey, where’s the nearest Christian evangelist? I want to be saved!!” Does al-Qaeda honestly believe that the world’s 2 billion Christians get closer to the verge of saying their shahadas and embracing Islam with each passing car bomb in Baghdad?

Of course not. They’re using organized religion as a way to decide that they’re better than everyone else, so that they can feel better about themselves. If we all practiced the same religion the same way, you can bet that someone would figure out a way to create a heirarchy (“Yes, God loves us all equally. He just loves me more equally than he does you”).

The simple fact is that religion is just a tool for quality of life. Unfortunately, as Sir Elton has pointed out, there are a number of people out there in the world right now who are using it as a tool to make themselves feel better about their own quality of life by proclaiming for all to hear that others have less quality of life because they live a certain lifestlye or practice a different religion. Methinks that some of these groups doth protest a little too much …

This has been your Monday morning sermon. Go and be fruitful amongst the things. And for the sake of God / Allah / Buddha / Brahman / Almighty Bob … be nice to each other for a change.