Gawd sez, You better like women, but not too much

You really got your Weiner in a jam now, didn't you Anthony? I'm speaking, of course, about Congressman Anthony Weiner, who always seemed to have a name too unfortunate for a top leadership, though he has proven himself a fiery, and entertaining speaker at times. Now Pelosi is calling for his resignation, and Weiner is allegedly checking himself into sext-a-holics anonymous. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Of course, right-wing theocrats have long and gleefully waged a jihad against Weiner, a Jew whose wife is a Muslim. Their latest tactic was to claim that he had phone communications with a 17-year-old Delaware girl. While I tire of defending this Weiner-brain, I don't think it takes more than 3 seconds of searching to confirm that the age of consent in Delaware is 16, and nobody is saying that Weiner actually had sex with this unnamed girl. In fact the girl denies that any inappropriate communication too place, and you know that has to be true, because otherwise it would be all over the internet by now.

My only amusement is that this comes on the heels of Tracy Morgan bashing gays. See he wants us to remember that God hates fags. That would make you think that he loves the Weiner. But apparently it's more complicated than that. While God wants you to love women, and the Old Testament thought polygamy was a dandy marriage, the Eternal One apparently changed his mind later on. He decided that you should love women, but just not too much. At least their God should take consolation that Weiner wasn't sexting dudes.

Why we stick with scandalous pastors...and politicians

CNN has an interesting article analyzing why people stick by embattled priests and pastors like so-called "Bishop" Eddie Long, who was accused by several men of pressuring them into sexual relationships. For some people it is because admitting that the pastor was fraudulent might make our own spiritual experiences with that person seem fraudulent as well. For others, it's about watching the spectacle. Long before reality TV, these preachers, especially in the historically black and evangelical communities, were often putting on quite a show every Sunday.

A mainline protestant or Catholic mass is pretty subdued by contrast. Not that there isn't plenty of the same stuff going on in some Catholic dioceses, particularly due to the unrealistic celibacy policy for priests. The problem is really a more universal one of personally investing too much faith in an individual, so that one's own faith becomes challenged when this individual inevitably falls short.

It is not exclusive to religious leaders, though at least some political leaders don't claim to be paragons of virtue. To the extent that some politicians on the right-wing of the political spectrum have tried to take this holier than thou attitude, it might have produced some short term gains, but long term, I think it has proven risky to their careers. People are not quite as enamored with the Palins and other self-styled evangelical politicians as they were even a few years ago, except for some die-hard tea bagger types. That's got to be some kind of progress.