Eddie Tabash

The Assault on the Gay and Lesbian Community:
A Window into the Still Undiminished Power of
the Religious Right

Sunday, June 20
11 a.m. at CFI-L.A.
4:30 p.m. in Costa Mesa*

Eddie Tabash, the Chair of CFI-L.A. and a board member of CFI Transnational, also chairs the national legal committee of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. A noted constitutional lawyer, he will explain how the attack on gay rights demonstrates that the religious right is as string as ever. Come hear what you can do to stop this horrible menace from dismantling the modern secular state.

*This lecture will be repeated at 4:30 p.m. at the Costa Mesa Community Center at 1845 Park Avenue, Costa Mesa. map
Hosted by the CFI Community of Orange  County.

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

Note: There will be no lecture on Sunday, July 4.
Happy Independence Day!

Tom Quinn

God Needs Therapy

Sunday, July 18
11 a.m. at CFI-L.A.
4:30 p.m. in Costa Mesa*

Yahweh is a mess. He wants love but is full of wrath; demands obedience but comes up with humans; and insists that history go his way but keeps starting over with Eden, the Flood, Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Egypt, and Canaan. Emmy-nominated writer/producer Tom Quinn will explore how this god came to be and how he has psychologically evolved over the centuries from a lonely fertility god into the all-powerful and all-knowing, if slightly confused, deity we know today.

The stories about God reveal a colorful literary character who changes, grows, learns, and occasionally screws up. He is driven, wise, demanding, rather an egotist, often short-sighted, and forgiving. Maybe it's because the god of the Bible is actually a hybrid of two earlier gods: El and Yahweh. Each had his own personality, priesthood, and agenda, and each can still be found in the pages of the Old Testament, which was written to fuse them into a single, hybrid deity. His personality is a tug of war between these two earlier deities.

Quinn has written and produced programs for the Discovery Channel, History Channel, and others, and has traveled the world making programs that explain silly ideas and bizarre beliefs - from urban legends and The Da Vinci Code to religious myths and conspiracy theories. A graduate of the American Film Institute, Quinn worked in development for HBO and Dreamworks and has been a Los Angeles-based film critic and entertainment reporter. Excerpts from his upcoming book, What Do You Do with a Chocolate Jesus? (An Irreverent History of the New Testament), can be found on his blog site: Choco-Jesus.blogspot.com.

*This lecture will be repeated at 4:30 p.m. at the Costa Mesa Community Center at 1845 Park Avenue, Costa Mesa. map
Hosted by the CFI Community of Orange  County.

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

Mel Gordon

Mondo-Judeo: A Special Presentation

Sunday, August 1
11 a.m.

Professor Mel Gordon will be presenting four lectures over six hours on outsider Jewish culture beginning at 11 a.m. with our “Feed Your Brain” lecture. The series will begin with “Chagallism and the Russian Yiddish Stage,” followed by “The Tragic Origins of Jewish Humor”; “Jews and the Occult, or Why Madonna’s Kabbalah is the True Kabbalah“; and “Hanussen, Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant.” You may join any or all of the lectures for just $10, or $4 for students, or free to Friends of the Center. There will be 15-minute breaks after the first and third lectures and a half-hour lunch break after the second one. Canter’s is providing a lunch truck that will sell food to participants during a lunch break beginning about 1:30 p.m. on the parking lot.

Gordon is Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of California, Berkeley. A director and writer, he is the author of 13 books and 130 articles on popular culture and American, French, German, Israeli, Italian, Russian, and Yiddish theater. This summer he co-authored Siegel and Shuster’s Funnyman: The First Jewish Superhero, From the Creators of Superman.

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $10
Students: $4

Edward J. Larson

Scopes at 85: An Anniversary Look Back at the History and Folklore if America's Most Famous Trial

Sunday, August 15
11 a.m. at CFI-L.A. only*

(Eighty-five years ago, famed free-thinker Clarence Darrow battled with fundamentalist politician William Jennings Bryan over the teaching of evolution in public schools at the now legendary trial of John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee. Broadcast across the nation and reported on around the world, that trial focused popular attention on the spectacle of a state outlawing the teaching of a scientific theory for religious and alleged social reasons. It gained even more lasting fame through the hit Broadway play and enduring motion picture about it, Inherit the Wind. In his talk, Prof. Edward J. Larson will look back at the trial and its evolving legend to see what Americans have learned from this episode.

Larson is the author or co-author of 15 books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning history, Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Controversy Over Science and Religion. He has also authored numerous articles on Clarence Darrow and co-edited the Modern Library edition of Darrow's words and writings. An attorney as well as a historian, Larson is University Professor of History and holds the Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University. He lectures frequently at universities in the United States and around the world. His next book, An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton and the Heroic  Age of Antarctic Science, is due out soon from Yale University Press.

Admission
Friends of the Center: Free
Public: $8
Students: $4

*Costa Mesa will feature a different lecturer - TBD

Labor Day Huge Book Sale and Food Fest

Sunday, Sept. 5
Noon - 3 p.m.

Join us for a holiday celebration with our biggest book sale ever on the patio while enjoying various food selections for sale from several food trucks that will gather in our parking lot!

You can also contribute books for sale and benefit to CFI-L.A. by bringing them to the Center no later than Monday, August 30. And we’ll take CDs and DVDs, too. (Please, no video or audio tapes or phonograph records.)