Santorum Only Hears What He Wishes

Some LGBT websites are throwing kudos at Rick Santorum for his comments about gays serving in the military. I thought the compliments unwarranted. Agent provocateur Dan Savage had this guy pegged when he created a website in the politician's name and used Wikipedia to define it as the spent fluids of anal congressus diabolicus, the comingled tinctures of gay coitus per vas nefandum. Santorum's new-found "liberalism" in this area strikes me as phony in the extreme. For one thing, he conflated orientation with sexuality in general in his debate comments, pointing out that the military cracks down on fraternization (by which he means male-female) as it is. For another, he is an evangelical and their agenda includes erasing the line between church and state. The last time I read Leviticus and that misogynistic homophobe "Saint" Paul, I came away thinking that Santorum would put us all in Marcus Bachmann Rehab programs. You want to see crony capitalism? Wait till Santorum makes the Rev. John Hagee Secretary of Religion and Morality. Yes, people can change, but to judge from Santorum positions taken fairly recently, if ever there were a wolf in sheep's clothing on any issue involving same-sex people, Santorum is it.

Jasper, Texas Racist Killer To Die for Dragging African-American Man Behind Truck

Have you ever noticed how the most rabid supporters of the death penalty are Tea Partiers and evangelical Crusters? I don't care what the Jasper man did or to whom, I am against capital punishment. Capital punishment is cruel and unusual. It is also immoral and unethical. None of the reasons given by its apologists is valid. For example, it costs more to appeal than to keep the person in prison terminally (try a three- squares budget of about fifty cents a day), and in a majority of cases the killer will never do it again (usually, he knew the victim). We are the only civilized democracy that takes a life for taking a life. Only in mathematics -- and using imaginary numbers at that -- do two wrongs ever make a right.

The Cruster Plot to Mythologize Separation of Church and State: Comment on Origin of the Phrase

The phrase itself is, I believe, from a letter of Thomas Jefferson, my main man. The evangelical boobs and T Party types claim that this proves the phrase is not in any founding document, but just as the Supremes latched on to the concept of a legal umbrella in the First Amendment and found a right to abortion there as a result, the First Amendment by clear implication disallows any government involvement in religion and, I argue, vice-versa as well. But the trend is away from the umbrella and back at the mercy of the elements. When you stop to think that the same old Catholic justices form the "New Majority," you get skewed results. Do you really think Scalia leaves his faith at the door when he comes to work?

Ugandan Homophobes For Michelle Bachmann

When the radical evangelical Christians began to push their phony Christianity on Africans a few years back, I thought, par for the course. Then the Ugandans actually had a bill in their parliament to mete out capital punishment for homosexuality. Uganda is 84% Christian and one-half Catholic. One of the websites I read daily had a story about evangelical-Ugandan contributions to Michelle Bachmann's Republican presidential campaign, including ties to a pastor who "was once imprisoned in Uganda for a supposed terrorism plot."


Duh! That is precisely the point. Evangelical Christianity is terrorism. The terrorism of brainwashing LGBT babies from birth to believe in a religion that despises sexual identity and gender difference. Like Nazis (they probably think Mengele was a hero), they sought to use this African nation to serve as an object lesson in Stone Age superstition and the ignorance of science. Terrorism in instilling in young gay males conflicting feelings and urges and exposing them to the co-conspiracy of schoolkid bullying. Terrorism in villainizing abortion doctors and using loony tunes men to buy guns and shoot to kill. Terrorism in trying to arrange the foregone conclusion they have reached that war in the Mideast will result in their nightmare fantasy, the Rapture.


It must have never occurred to them that some of us who don't believe in such superstitious nonsense think the world is moving ever closer toward self-destruction without the need of any meddling by people who have delusions of being taken up to heaven with Jesus (or was it Osiris, Tammuz, Attis, or even Apollonius of Tyana?). Wait, there is a plus to all this. When we freethinkers wind up in Hell, we will have breakfast with Einstein, lunch with George Carlin, cocktails with John Huston, and dinner with Voltaire.

TAKE COVER!

The late comedian and wit George Carlin, may Anti-God bless his soul!, mused during a routine about God's seeming arbitrariness. For example, he said, why is it that women have to cover their heads at the cathedral but are forbidden to wear head coverings at synagogue. He was probably hip to the Christian hypocrisy of going to church on Sunday, which even violates the Ten Commandments and admits simultaneously of the influence of paganism since the Roman name for Sunday is Die Solis, or Sun Day quite literally, the day sacred to Sol Invictus (a.k.a. Father Mithras), whose birthday the Constantinian Christians also "borrowed." Syncretism was the order of the times.

I got started on these musings while shopping at Sprouts, a kind of poor man's Whole Foods in one of our strip malls here. It is the kind of store where good produce is almost always to be had, in season, and where "health foods" are supplied, including various naturopathic tinctures and supplements and a wide variety of nuts, candies, pastas, rices, dry beans, and other bins. I bought fresh peaches, some whole wheat bagels, and a few other things and took them to the checkout counter. The checkouts in this store face each other and I glanced at a chocolate-skinned man with a brushy mustache in the aisle across from mine.

My God!, I thought (yes, I still use "His" name in vain, even though I do not believe in his existence anymore than I believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy). He has a yarmulka on his head. And he did, a prominently placed, forward of the spiral, crocheted yamulka. I had to look away immediately to keep from laughing. Being an atheist is hard work. We have to suppress laughter at the silly lengths to which gullible believer types go to show their devotion to a scientifically disproved, completely illogical entity who did it all in less than a week and created the guy in red tights with a pitchfork, a guy who can quick-change into a talking snake, just to bedevil us when we exercise our freedom of choice, also "God-given."

Unfortunately, I think this guy sussed me out. I think he almost smiled himself, and while it is entirely possible he was being neighborly, it is also possible he was thinking, Yes, I have a kippah on my head. So what? I didn't know much about the kippah actually until I read the Wiki entry. The Talmud demands covering our heads "in order that the fear of heaven may be upon you." I thought so: pure superstition. Pure dogma. It's the old bogey man routine. Create a straw man to fear and make the gullibles, the small heads believe they have to cover their heads or face damnation of one kind or another. In this way the rabbis can extract shekels. Everyone works at something. The rabbis are selling myth and superstition to earn their pay.

One famous rabbi is said to have gone no further than four cubits(about five feet) with nothing covering his head, "because the Divine Presence is always over my head." Yes, and I had some good shit last week, too. I tried some of that synthetic marijuana and I felt the Divine Presence as well, and I did not go out without covering my head. I am prone to skin cancer and must always go topped unless indoors. I have to hope God stops at my front door so he cannot see my naked head when I am inside, walking six feet or more this way or that. And while He is at it, could he explain why he doesn't make the evangelicals believe in climate change. It's getting hotter and I am more prone to skin cancer than ever. I mean, I sometimes worship Sol Invictus, but this is getting ridiculous.

Just as Ted Turner Said

Christianity is a religion for losers. Instead of taking responsibility for their actions, believers rely upon and feared their God. It seldom occurs to themselves that there are some things for which you just can't be forgiven. Yet Christians believe that there is NO sin God will not forgive. The same could even be said of the Jew. (Now there is a people born to feel guilty.) Would a Muslim say, Allah wills it? The common thread running through all the monotheisms is reliance on or submission to "God." But the passing of responsibility to an entity whose existence is supported by a complete absence of evidence and mounting proof to the contrary renders such people helpless to act from true will. They need big doses of the mottos of such organizations as the Cairo Mystery School, which taught that all scripture is shit: "Nothing is true; all is permitted," and even of the Theosophists, their founder Mme. Blavatsky stating quite correctly: "There is no religion higher than the truth."

About Eric Cantor

jmmartin — 8/6/11 7:53am

I am trying my best to not sound like a racist s.o.b., and I do mean racist: Cantor has in common with the leaders of HAMAS and Hijballah a Semitic heritage: Judaism is a religion; one cannot be racist toward a religion, which is why I think application of "anti-Semitic" as applied to Jews alone is a fiction). All of the Mideastern religions have Abraham in common, too. All that said, I must ask, rhetorically, when in American history did Jews gravitate to the GOP? Cantor is so evil I have no trouble soever calling him a ****. A Yid, an M.O.T. Choose your racist epithet. If a person of any particular race misbehaves and acts to the detriment of the American people, he or she becomes worthy of the slurs. Those of us who are a little left of center (well, in my case, a lot) are just as prone as anyone to resort to such miscreant practices.

Nevertheless, as a minority, Jewish people in the U.S. tend to be Dems. This was true even when the Reverend Jesse Jackson referred to NYC as "hymietown." Jackson ran for president and had about as much chance of winning a single primary as Newtie, the born-again Catholic. I ask when Cantor became a symbol of Jewish abandonment of the Democratic Party because it would aid in understanding a society in which such a transition becomes possible. One is inclined to think it has something to do with the so-called Jewish lobby, with AIPAC. Smart lobbyists always oil the machines of both parties. At some point the perception arose that Democrats were not as protective and not as favorable toward Israel. I would have to believe, not knowing much more about him, that this drift led to the geek we now know as Eric Cantor. (And isn't that surname delightful? That adenoidal, sissy voice of his should have ended up singing parts of the Torah, not going on the stumps.)

As anyone reading this can surmise by now, I despise Rep. Cantor. I think someone should tie him down and perform foreskin restoration surgery on his penis; force feed him 25 pounds of pig guts; make him go to church on Sunday; make him grow his beard, and blindfold him, put him on a camel, and send him back in time about 5,000 years. Goodbye, Eric! Byeeeeeeee byeeeeeee.

Why Perry (Huckabee, Bachmann, Cain, and Santorum) Are Not Fit to be President

Texans should mount a recall and get this theocratic nitcompoop out of office. Belief in prayer is completely irrational. Prayers never work. If the desired result comes about, a score or more of *other* reasons may have been the cause: it is irrational to assume that because you prayed for something and it happened, your prayer caused it to happen. And if it does not happen, Perry would shrug and say, "God wanted something else." Deeply religious people and people who merely want the public to think they are deeply religious (it makes little difference which) are dangerously deluded and should never be trusted with the reins to government.

Little Arguments With "God" Part One

My sister in law recommended I see the Sigourney Weaver movie, Prayers for Bobby, and I knew from the title that the picture is going to have some religion in it, but I will see it as a DVD, as it is only $1 plus sales tax in the Red Box Kiosk. I am hoping the film winds up saying that what Bobby needs is not prayers but understanding and compassion. He certainly will not get anything like that at evangelical behavior modification centers like Mrs. Dr. Marcus Bachmann’s Phd-holding husband.

As is befitting a subservient hand maid Stepford wife (pardon the neo-criticism of the wonderful Ira Levin novel). As the Bachmanns firmly believe their scripture – the canonicals and the letters of Saul-Paul the Syrian zealot – finds same sex couples “abominations unto the Lord,” Mrs. Dr. Bachmann’s reopened the nature versus nurture debate is critical to an understand of where these simpletons are coming from.

With only dogma to guide them (or, perhaps, justify their fear, distrust, and total lack of human compassion), the Nurturist Argument goes, gay people are “that way” because they choose to be. The Naturist Argument, with which I am much in sympathy, holds that environment has nothing to do with it at the fundamental level. The Naturists have science on their side and make the better argument, that neurobiology tends to confirm Lady Gaga’s thesis we are born that way.

The religious Nurturists have a problem. They say on the one had that homosexuality is "an abomination unto the Lord," yet the Lord keeps putting gay people on earth. This brings one back to the Argument from Evil, as these same Nurturists urge upon freethinking peoples their pitiful free will argument: "God" allows people to commit evil acts even though God is good and omnipotent and could prevent the choice to do the evil as adverse to the good thing. “God” gave us freedom of will. If we choose to be evil, that isn’t “God’s” fault.

But it is. A good, omnipotent “God” could have designed man so that every choice he has allows selection because it is the right thing to do: a genuine example of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, a lesson of Confucius many centuries before Christ, by the way.

“God” disproves himself by fallacious reasoning. He proves himself an impossibility.

Prosperity Gospel & Gay Marriage

I've always speculated on the role discretionary spending plays in the minds of evangelicals. Ted Turner said Christianity is a "religion for losers," and we know the popular refrain, "nice guys finish last." The Prosperity Gospel is a feel good free trade doctrine inimical, one might think, to the prophet's philosophy. One is supposed to help others, after all, not horde wealth. (This hypocrisy is hardly limited to Christians. How much equality is there in a Muslim country ruled by oil profiteering ayatolahs who siphon riches off the top and throw the crumbs to the rest of the believers?)

Enter gays and lesbians requesting the simple human right to marry. The wedding planners in New York State are working overtime throwing that cash around. Studies show that partnered queer people make on average 44% more income than similarly situated heterosexual couples. Could it be that what really chafes Tony Perkins' ass is not that the Booble says gays and lesbians are abominations before the Lord, it's the Prosperity Gospel saying queers shouldn't be entitled to all that much money. This might make being a homo attractive to Perkins' children so that they could fall into the clutches of the perverts and have their lives destroyed as a result.

Yes, and Santa Claus has a reindeer named Rudy and the Easter Bunny comes with spring every year. And there's a real Tooth Fairy. No one has any more proof of those imaginary beings than we have of "Jesus Christ," much less proof that a personal deity gave a son for whatever religion says are our sins.

Why the Rapture is Stupid

At the time John of Patmos penned his "Revelations" the known world was ruled by Rome. Nero had spies everywhere. Like the Nazis with their Enigma Code, the early Christians utilized a system of letter-number transposition known as esopsephia. (Those practitioners of Cabala (Qabalah) employ a similar system in Hebrew known as gematria whereby Hebrew letters were assigned numbers, supposedly to reveal divine messages in the O.T.)

It is no coincidence, then, that To Mega Therion in Greek equals not only "The Great Beast" but also "Nero Caesar." The number, 666, in isopsephia is the same for both phrases. In order to warn his Christian brethren of the greatest enemy facing them, John sent coded epistles to far-flung corners of the known world -- coded because, obviously, if a Roman centurion managed to confiscate the parchment (or whatever they wrote on), no suspicion would be raised that the gibberish found in the document said anything about the emperor. Discretion was the better part of valor.

Now, here come these apocalypse freaks, claiming that signs and portents spell doom and gloom, and their silly, gullible followers, clutching their Bibles, run about with "The sky is falling" on their lips, Chicken Littles all. How ridiculous they look, trying to pinpoint the exact date of something that happened, if at all, a couple of thousand years ago.

The real danger, exemplified by the likes of John Hagee and his American-Israeli organization, is that the Rapture Nuts view the Palestinian problem as "God's" plan for bringing about the End Times. In other words, a foregone conclusion. They do not want peace in the Mideast. The exacerbation of existing tensions is part of their agenda to bring about total annihilation of the peoples of the earth. This is why they are all dangerous lunatics who should be shunned as pestilence. Viewing the Book of Revelations as prediction of future events would be comical if it were not so deadly serious.

Commercialized Jebus Crustian Gospel According to Black Rap Singing Bishop

Christianity, as a valid religion, began to decline late in the 20th century, especially in America. The rise of the electronic media was its partial crucifixion, but the surrender of the soul has become a 21st century phenomenon, largely propelled by the marginalization of the believers. That is only partly due to believers' susceptibility to criticism from freethinking people, and then there is their ongoing utter debasement -- I would call it whoring -- in death throes, which is most unseemly. Small wonder that so many cracker evangelicals openly rail against Shariah law: they're jealous of the inroads made by Muslim clerics toward theocracies, which as we have seen of late tend to be inimical to democratic principles.

I thought I had seen it all when a local megachurch headed by a moonfaced buffoon with spiked hair and a voice that would be envied by a carnival barker sent out salacious postcards displaying scantily clad couples whose marriage needs a jolt of Prosperity Gospel viagra. Then Rev. Bil (yes, one "l," he's never heard the word "affectation") and his perfect little Barbie Doll wifey copastor (these women are given dispensation from the requirement of remaining nothing but a help mate; after all, the wifey copastor is always part of the shill). You will pardon my use of carny language but when the shoe fits, --

These two bimbolimps put huge Bil-boards on every freeway in town with slogans like "Don't Go to the Megachurch. -- SATAN." And "I Died at the Megachurch. -- SATAN." I am surprised the city did not remove them to prevent accidents as people slow down to gander. This seemed to me the most incredibly flagrant example of what I consider the degradation of the Christian religion. With such mindless commercialism and rank hucksterism taking place, we atheists can simply sit back and watch the religion fade, like the worship of Dionysus, into history and legend. Christianity is already a myth; we are seeing the death of the cultus.

Enter Bishop Prince Moultry. Here is his curriculum vitae:

"Bishop Prince J. Moultry is the Pastor of the InTouch Christian Center. He is renowned for his innovative approach to addressing the overwhelming social issues such as gangs and violence that plague the urban Cleveland, Ohio community. He has received numerous awards including in F.B.I. Directors Community Leadership Award in 1995. Bishop Moultry is a facilitator at the Antioch Baptist Church's Project Respect, a job and readiness and placement program, the CEO of the Greater Cleveland Jail Division Program, and Chaplain for the East Cleveland jail.

"Bishop Moultry authors a weekly column in the Cleveland Life Magazine and is the composer of the first Roman Catholic Church Gospel Soul Mass. He will embark on a concert tour later this year."

Imagine that! He's also a shameless proselyte whose latest ploy was a "mock retrial of Casey Anthony," staged at his In Touch With Christ Christian Center in Cleveland. Apparently, Moultry thought it was the business of the church to impart "the important lesson...to protect children in Cleveland from the same fate as little Caylee Anthony." Excuse me? The last I looked our state courts are apolitical entities. You can't even post the so-called ten commandments inside a state courthouse so that religion doesn't intrude to far into judicial proceedings; we're now allowed to affirm rather than swear, which protects certain religious sects even as it protects atheists for having to say things they do not believe (and ironically thus become bearers of false witness). Religion in justice crosses the barrier between church and state.

Of course, the Moultry types do not believe in that doctrine, hypocritically -- in view of the dearth of factual proof in the historicity of their own prophet -- referring to it as a "myth." (See entry at this site about their whacky "historian," who appears on the disgraced Murdoch cable "news" as an "expert" in American history but never fails to distort or falsify recorded reality. Have I not said before, these folks are delusional?) Moultry must have thought he could do a better job than the civic minded participants in the Anthony trial, or else why stage another one? If he can preach, why couldn't he have born his "lesson" home simply by discussing the Anthony case from the Sunday pulpit?

No, Mr. Rev. Mouldy is a rap artist. His website identifies him as "Presiding Bishop" (appeal to authority) of a "Church in touch with it's [sic] Community" (aside from the spelling error, an appeal to masses) and having as its mission "winning lost souls to the glory of God" (do I envision a Crustian mission where a guy can get a bowl of soup just for praying a while?). Get this one. In the commercial web site at Facebook, Mouldy says the Church's "Products" consist of "The B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth," a dead giveaway that he is a Dominionist (i.e. theocratic) evangelical who is dedicated to bringing about the Rupture Rapture as soon as possible right now. Read your Booble while we encourage governments to take us to the Paradise with 72 Virgins and -- ooops!, wrong eschatology. Oh, well, it's the gimmicks these comedians use to get the sheep in for the shearing: pass the plate, now.

Like Woody Allen, from whom I borrow the line, I have no trouble with the Rapture, I just don't want to be there when it happens. That probably won't be the case as I think I will pass from earth from amazement at what these carnival shuck and jive artists will think of next.

P.S. The vote was eight to four in favor of guilt. Maybe Mouldy has an ulterior motive: let the congregation blow off steam. Here is the bottom line: what is the point of retrying an American in a church when a jury of her peers in a fair and impartial trial found the woman not guilty? It's too bad we can't sue Mouldy for violating the double jeopardy clause. Such a "service" at Mouldy's church (they actually called it a "service"!) does a disservice to democracy, the Constitution, reason, and common sense. Jesus said turn the other cheek. Yeah, right.

Local Bumper Sticker: "Prayer: The Only Defense Against Evil"

One may pray and pray and nothing that happens can with any certainty be said to have been brought about "because" of the prayer: that is post hoc reasoning. "I prayed and God granted my prayer" in addition to being solipsistic can only be a falsehood when one considers the statistical improbabilities involved. A poor man might pray for a fortune. The following day, a rich uncle dies and leaves him a mint. The poor man got what he wanted, but at what a cost! So, blaming himself for his uncle's death, the poor man shoots himself. "How sad," the grave digger observes. "Poor fellow having a brain aneurism." The logical problems inherent in claiming that prayer is efficacious keep it from proof: as with all things not proved, its failure lay in the complete absence of scientific evidence. When hospitalized persons were prayed for they did worse than those who were not, similarly situated.

Bill Burroughs once said we could pray in one hand and shit in the other, see which one fills up faster. Precisely.

Is Marcus Bachmann a Queer? Was Paul a Homophobic Misogynist?

Mrs. Marcus Bachmann, like her nutty hubby, is committed to the Booble. The O.T. in Leviticus, and the N.T. in the gospels of the raving homophobe and misogynist zealot Saul-Paul of Tarsus, make homosexuality an "abomination," which brings the penalty of stoning to death. (I think Shariah orders beheading for the same abomination.) What LGBT (my word: "Queer") people and many progressives and freethinkers know from science and reason is that Queers are born, not made. If it were possible to fulfill the mythical gay agenda and turn all little boys and girls into raving gays and lesbians, as the nurture argument goes, then the nature argument is false. (There appears to be no room for a middle, although I myself muse on it from time to time.)

The naturists, mindful of the bumpersticker slogan "Homosexuals Prove Darwin Was Wrong," point out the illogicality of a god who condemns gays but goes on putting so many on earth, implying an arbitrary, even perhaps perverse god, certainly not one worthy of respect, much less worship. The Bachmanns want to have it both ways. Since the O.T. condemns homosexuals and the O.T. as we all know is the literal word of "God," then homosexuals must be an abomination. One must suppose that the Prosperity Gospel allows Marcus to accept Medicare funding for his homo no more clinic, even as his lunatic wife runs for president lambasting Medicare. The most abominable thing, however, may be her marriage itself: to a deeply closeted, self-loathing closet queer. He should be congratulated: he has at least reached the status of "Saint" Paul: a self-loathing homophobic misogynist.

The Christianization of the American Armed Forces

The saying, “there are no atheists in foxholes,” is a lie. In their proselytic zeal, Christians show a willingness to stoop to any fib to foist Jesus off on anyone willing to listen. They do it outside abortion clinics, they do it at gay pride events, and they do it in military barracks. They even proselytize with the dead: witness their cynical, fraudulent attempts to put causa mortis words into the mouths of Einstein and even Darwin (the latter while the proselytes are simultaneously claiming fossils were only an example of God “fooling the evolutionists”). Remember, when the lies did not work during the witch pogroms (against women who helped abort unwanted babies), they went auto da fe and used fagots (yes, one “g”) for kindling. In other words, the same crimes they are laying at the feet of evangelical Muslims in general and Wahhabists in particular, Christians and especially evangelicals themselves prove guilty.

It’s our way or the highway. Our God is the only God and he wrote or dictated every line in the Bible/Koran. But both religions cherry pick their dogma and most Christians don’t even practice the basic tenets of the faith proposed by their own prophet. How can you deny women and LGBT people basic rights or rights not equal to the “average” heterosexual male and claim that you are compassionate? Why are we ignoring diurnal reality in favor of things that existed on the ground circa 5,000 B.C.E. (O.T.) and circa 800 C.E. (Koran)? Those people didn’t even have printing presses for God’s sake!

(Ooops. Naw, I don’t believe in God, but I have a nostalgia for Him.)

Tim Pawlenty (of Shit) on David Brooks' Editorial

If you caught Meet the Press today, you saw Gov. Tim Pawlenty (of shit) saying, of David Brooks' anti-Tea Party editorial: "Now is not the time for Rockefeller Republicanism." Duh! Nelson Rockefeller's perennial campaign to be president revealed a fairly candid, middle of the road politician who had socially liberal positions (he divorced at a time when it was tantamount to murder). What this obviously means is, Pawlenty (of shit) doesn't think normal Republicans should be consulted, implying that Brooks' chastisement of the GOP for its stubborn intransigence in debt ceiling negotiations was too sensible a solution. Pawlenty (of shit) was fortunate that the host did not bring up his failure to tell Mitt to his face that he was unelectable because of "Obamneycare." Instead, Pawlenty (of shit) was prodded into saying Mrs. Marcus Bachmann did not distinguish herself in the U.S. House. How could she? She was sponsoring such incredibly important legislation as putting the Founding Fathers, including John Quincey Adams, on a new U.S. postage stamp; a federal law making pregnant mothers of unwanted babies wait nine months before they are eligible for an abortion, and amending the U.S. constitution to read that all speech except Shariah is protected by the first amendment.

Words, Words, Words: The Semantics of "Family"

The road to hell is paved with best intentions.  Semanticists would cringe at some of the twisted ideations behind new uses of certain words, and, sadly, "family" is one of them.  Although as we all know this is an age of extended families, the traditional "nuclear family unit" is what is contemplated by the bigoted evangelicals.  They want "family," like "marriage," to be the special province of bigoted evangelical social policy, and it's tempting to flaunt the Anthony's as evidence of what many, if not most, nuclear families end up looking like.  (Note that in this case, the Anthony's really are a nuclear family: mom, pop, a boy, a girl.)  We can start with the obvious: they probably had religious upbringings, too.  All four of them are devout liars.  If false witness were punished by an omniscient God, hurling lightning, the Anthony's would be long gone, as would such Pastors as John Hagee and such PAC ops as Tony Perkins.  These people bear false witness about science and reason and a good omnipotent God would have bolted them with a billion volts long, long ago.  Of course, this begs the question: If God is omniscient why did He create the Anthony's, Hagee, and Perkins in the first place?  And while we are at it, who created God?

A Modest Proposal to Marginalize Theocratic Candidates

Like Swift, I occasionally come up with modest proposals.  Being the wife of a rabid homophobe who compares us to "barbarians," and following the same faith (evangelical Christianity -- an oxymoron if ever there was one) poor Mrs. Bachmann just can't express an opinion of her own.  First, she has become the butt of educated peoples' jokes ("John Quincey Adams was a Founding Father," "The Revolution's first shot was fired in Concord, New Hampshire"... I could go on).  Second, like Billary, you are getting a pair of ignoramuses when you vote for Mrs. Bachmann: together, like Beast and Scarlet Woman, they will bring down the U.S.A. in a blaze of Rapture as we bomb Iran and Pakistan retaliates and....Think about this: do you really want that horrid woman quite so close to the red button built into the Oval Office desk?  Third, quit calling her Michelle.  She is only a Stepfordian cypher, a mere help mate to Mr. Bachmann.  Under the circumstances, I think we should also start calling them the Backwards.

They Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth

http://ramonasvoices.blogspot.com/2011/07/friday-follies-on-bachmann-founding.html

Pat Buchanan Says America Cannot Survive Gay, Lesbian Marriages

Not to forget, this is a guy who said pretty much the same crap at one of the Republican Presidential Conventions not too many years back. Queer people all over the country complained. Look where he is coming from: he is an Irish Catholic. Catholic dogma says homosexuality, male or female is a no-no, yet the Vatican hides behind its “statehood” to prevent investigations that would show that the Popes know all about the sheltering of pedophile priests. Lawyers will tell you there is an almost impenetrable shield secreting away miscreants in robes let go with slaps on the wrist in the form of rehab and reassignment to other parishes where they can sin some more. Pat Buchanan puts his religious beliefs (and very likely the Vatican) above his belief in the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence from Europe says that all men are equals, not just all heterosexual men.