Category: religion

I read about some protestors in Nashville. Here’s a fun quote.

“I’m a United States veteran and a citizen of North Carolina, which is in the United States,” Hoyle says. “I swore an oath to defend the Constitution, and the Constitution says nothing about marriage, and a court can’t decide on marriage. No judge can make a law. A judge cannot rule against the people. We’re for natural marriage.”

Multiple issues here really. The Constitution doesn’t say anything about marriage but the Fourteenth Amendment does have an important concept called the Equal Protection Clause. In short, if there are laws then those laws apply equally to all no matter their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.

Actually, a judge can rule against the people. What if a liberal state decided to vote and say that religious people can no longer protest against gay people getting married? Well, that law would be appealed and eventually ruled as unconstitutional no matter if everybody in California wanted.

Natural marriage is an oxymoron. I’d say there are probably more examples of homosexuality in nature than there are examples monogamy.

This really is the crux of the abortion debate from my perspective.

Dawkins:

If you honestly think abortion = murdering the person the fetus might have become, we’ve reached the deep root of our disagreement.

This is so awesome I just have to share it here. Please go read the whole post as it’s pretty awesome.

So…

I’m still deep in the weeds of the introduction, which is mostly about the special awesomeness that is a Palin Family Christmas: cinnamon buns in the oven, grandchildren playing in the snow, powerful guns and high-capacity ammo clips under the tree. But the Palin family’s Christmas is in danger. Storm clouds are gathering. Sarah fears her family won’t be able to “joyfully and openly celebrate” Christmas with fresh-baked cinnamon rolls and guns powerful enough to murder 20 first graders in five minutes. Years of “relentless attacks” on Christmas—people saying “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas,” the ACLU insisting that the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) applies just like the Second Amendment—are threatening to “drain the joy from our public spaces as well as from our minds and hearts.”

What a fucking drama queen.

There are lots of Americans out there whose religious holidays aren’t also national holidays. The country doesn’t shut down—and public spaces aren’t turned into temples—on Yom Kippur or Diwali or Naw-Ruz. Now, either Jews, Hindus, and Zoroastrians are made of stronger stuff than Sarah Palin… or Sarah Palin is a shit-talking pimp who makes money playing to the carefully cultivated persecution complexes of conservative Christian rubes who wouldn’t know what religious persecution was if it sat on their faces and shit in their mouths. (Maybe that’s not an either/or.)

And if I may: Gay people have been persecuted for years, for centuries, for motherfucking millennia. Really persecuted, primarily by people of faith. And our persecution didn’t take the form of straight people wishing us well but failing to use precisely the right phrase. No, we were burned at the stake, arrested, imprisoned, committed, lobotomized, thrown out of our homes, and fired from our jobs; our children were taken from us, our partners were barred from our hospital rooms during medical emergencies, and on and on and on. And yet… somehow… the joy of giving and receiving blowjobs wasn’t drained from our minds and hearts.

If centuries of persecution didn’t ruin blowjobs for gay people, Sarah, “happy holidays” isn’t going to destroy anyone’s Christmas.

By the way, the persecution of gay people by people of faith continues: Gay sex was recriminalized in India last week after a coalition of Muslim and Christian organizations, among others, asked the Indian Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that had legalized consensual gay sex. People will go to prison.

Someone wished you “happy holidays” at the mall, Sarah? Cry us a fucking river.

via Activists rally – and pray – as Boy Scouts vote on gays – U.S. News.

“The BSA’s executive committee unanimously presented this resolution because it stays true to Scouting’s mission and remains focused on kids,” Perry wrote. “No matter what your opinion is on this issue, America needs Scouting, and our policies must be based on what is in the best interest of our nation’s children.”

Emphasis mine but what? How is discriminating against gay people in the best interest of our nations children?

 

This tweet flashed by on my timeline this morning. Since it was Lou Ann Zelenik sharing the link I felt compelled to get a laugh at whatever inanity she was getting riled up about. She cherry picked a quote from the linked article (which itself is a quote from the YouTube video below):

It turns out there is no better way for a pastor to get kicked out of the inauguration ceremony than quoting the Bible

I think Ms. Zelenik probably just skimmed the article and certainly didn’t watch the 9 minute video of Mr. O’Donnell explanation. I think she just saw the little quoted piece and felt that her type of people (knee jerk religious conservatives, usually young earther types) would be outraged by it and feel that President Obama was probably infringing on Mr. Giglio religious freedom by not allowing him to give the benediction.

Anyway, watch the video as it’s most excellent.