Polygamy Freak Warren Jeffs Defends Cult of Child Molesters

One man freakshow Warren Jeffs, self-proclaimed "prophet" of the separatist Fundamentalist LDS (FLDS aka "old school" Mormon) Church, has fired his lawyers and decided to defend himself and his proclivity for banging 12-year-old girls in "spiritual marriages".  Naturally, most legal experts don't think this is a good idea, considering that he can be facing up to life in prison.

However, it doesn't end there.  He apparently delivered a 55-minute sermon, not only defending plural marriage, but threatening that God would cause "sickness and death" upon those prosecuting him unless they dropped their charges and released him.  In other news, his dumb a*s is still in prison, his trial is still going on, and nobody is particularly afraid of his monster under the bed and things that go bump in the night style threats.  Of course when other fundamentalists say that god will send an earthquake, hurricane, etc to punish gay people, some still take that kind of nonsense seriously, so maybe Jeffs just isn't being grandiose and flamboyant enough.  

As far as polygamy goes, the Bible quite undeniably supported marriage to more than one woman at a time in the Old Testament.  Personally, I can't see what the attraction of having 70 wives to tell me I'm wrong would be when I already have one who is perfectly good at this.  Perhaps God thought the same thing. After all, poor Solomon reputedly had 1000 wives.  

So eternal God changed his eternal mind about multiple wives as christian dogma developed.  It is perhaps one of the few good idea that Christians had, to only have one wife, although they were far from originating the concept.  It's a lot less work, that's for sure.  I mean come on, it's not a machine, ladies.  There's only so much sauce in the squeeze bottle.  

Now this doesn't mean that people won't mess around.  They just have the sense to not get married to everyone they hop in the sack with.  Old Joseph Smith apparently lacked this sense.  He wanted to bed multiple women, but the mores of the time said that he couldn't do this without marrying them.  So he re-invented polygamy for Christians, and there have been problems ever since.  

People like Jeffs highlight just a few of the problems.  When one guy hogs all the broads then there are not enough for everyone else.  Furthermore, there is no way that you can have as dedicated a relationship, spreading your time between 70 women, as you could if you spent that time with just 1 woman.  And something else that old Jeffie hasn't thought about is that these women have needs of their own.  Even if you've got them locked down and believing that you have magic powers, they are gonna have the urge to get freaky with some other guy (or girl) when you're not around.  

Nope, sorry, 70 wives doesn't work.  It doesn't pass the sanity test.  Even players know that trying to juggle 70 different girlfriends isn't fun anymore.  Even if they are supposedly all "sister wives", there is going to be jealousy.  No wonder Jeffs looks so worn out.  It's a little known fact that he's actually only 23 and he just looks like he's in his 50's ;-)  

Naser Abdo, the Muslim Anders Brevik Wannabe

Just as the world was still reeling from the mass-murdering rampage of Anders Brevik, apparently a Muslim soldier by the name of Naser Jason Abdo, is allegedly admitting to planning another murder spree at Fort Hood.  I say "another murder spree" because there was another mass killing at Fort Hood in 2009 by a Muslim extremist, Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded dozens more .

Mr. Abdo apparently was unsatisfied with that level of carnage and wanted to take a second crack at things, including possibly using a bomb as well as guns.  Furthermore, as with Hasan, there can be no doubt that his religious beliefs played a large part in fueling his rage.  Of course they also allege that Abdo had child pornography on his computer, which exposes him to charges of hypocrisy, but then again, huge numbers of religious extremists are hypocritical and have double standards.  It doesn't appear to make them any less extremist.  

Like Hasan he believed that a Muslim soldier should not have to serve in the military when it is engaged in operations against other combatants who are also Muslim.  Well gee, christian soldiers have had to fight against other christians in almost every military conflict the US has ever had.  Why should there be a special exemption when you're a muslim?  

Naturally, logic and careful thinking are often severely lacking in the minds of religious extremists.  

Yes, Batsh*t (crazy) Brevik Is Definitely A CHRISTIAN

Whenever some unhinged fanatic, like Anders Brevik, does something appalling and indefensible, the standard reaction is for people to say "This mans is not really, truly, sincerely one of us.  He just calls himself by our label. Why this person is just using our label in a 'cultural sense' as an 'identity' and to 'appeal to a larger audience'. "  That is how some muslims attempted to deal with the inconvenient extremist Osama bin Laden, and that is how many Christians, and fring-right-wing tea-party lunatics are attempting to distance themselves from mass-murderer Anders Brevik.  However, at least an occasional honest individual in the media has the honesty to call out the angry fanatics and fringe-right wingers who populate fundamentalist christianity.  

A case in point is Stephen Prothero writing for CNN's religion blog, who points out that Brevik very certainly professed christian beliefs that went far beyond mere "cultural identity".  Brevik, for example, made a youtube video in which he talked about how he "martyrs" like him would "soon dine in the Kingdom of Heaven".   He quoted extensively from books of the Bible such as "Exodus, Samuel, Judges, Psalms, Luke, Matthew, Isaiah, Daniel, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians", and cites verses such as "God can be a Man of War if He wants to be".  

This is not all that different from right-wing Christian fanatics like the so-called "Army of God" who endorse bombing of abortion clinics and the killing of doctors who perform abortion.  They have biblical quotes all over their eponymous (look it up to figure out the url) on their website explaining how it is a-ok to kill anyone who their religion calls an "evildoer", which is everyone who is not a fanatic, bible-literalist.  

BTW, this is why it is always funny to listen to religious fanatics who claim to believe in "moral absolutes".  They love to claim that they believe in these "absolutes" and everyone else is a "squishy relativist" who thinks that morality is "situational".  Then, when they want to justify killing abortion providers and the people who work for them they say, "The bible isn't against all killing.  It's just against UNJUST killing".  Oh really, so the commandment says, "Thou shalt not kill UNJUSTLY".  Or they say, "we are just against the taking of INNOCENT life".  Again, I don't recall the commandment saying, "Thou shalt not kill INNOCENT people". See there is always a way that you can say "My kind of killing is the GOOD kind, because it advances MY agenda, but the kind of killing that other person does is BAD killing, (because it works against my agenda)."

See Batsh*t Brevik thought his kind of killing was GOOD killing, and the kind that Muslims do is BAD killing.  Anti-abortionists think that killing their opponents is GOOD killing, but anyone who might try to kill them would be BAD.  The Crusaders and Knights Templar thought they were killing according to God's will and with God's blessings when they destroyed towns, not just in Palestine, but in Europe and Asia Minor.  Saladin thought his actions against the Crusaders were justified by his religious commitments to Islam.  

The point, dear friends, is that religion is one of the easiest tools to invoke and manipulate when you want to kill someone else.  It's one of the easiest rackets of all time to use to justify just about anything.    

Mass-murdering Christian Psychopath Breivik "Possibly" Insane?!

It is being reported that the lawyer for the confessed mass-murderer Anders Breivik says that the current evidence "suggests his client is insane".  No kidding.  They apparently found quite the sharp tack to defend Mr. Breivik.  Breivik claims to be a Knight Templar, and is trying to launch a crusade of extermination against non-indigenous inhabitants of Europe.  I'm not sure at what point his lawyer noticed the crazy train had left the station.

A lot of people do not understand what the term pyschopath means because it gets misused so often.  Psychopaths are often otherwise well-functioning individuals who have none of the classic signs of mental illness, such as hallucinations or depression, but who often are extremely manipulative, good at playing false roles, have a very high opinion of themselves, enjoy taking extreme risks, and have a complete callous disregard for others.  In some ways they are similar to people with borderline personality disorders, only more pronounced.

Of course his insanity brings up the chicken and egg riddle of religion.  Is he drawn to extremist religion because he is crazy, or is he crazy because of his extremist religious viewpoints.  It's often hard to tell.  Some have said that he is not really religious and just uses that as an "identity".  However, that is true of a great many religious people, including many of the crusaders, templars, and even modern terrorists like bin Laden.

Of course they use religion as an identity.  That does not mean that we can entirely discount the influence of religion upon their minds.  Yes, they manipulate religion to suit their purposes, but so do Pat Robertson and and Tim LaHaye.  That doesn't mean that they don't believe it in any sense.  They love religion all the more because of its inherent usefulness in manipulating others.  They probably think God made it that way, and they probably think they are going "the Lord's work".

In reality their massive egos conflate God's will with their own.  This is part of the reason that religion can put one in a dangerous frame of mind.  There is nothing more grandiose than the belief that you are infallible because God is on your side.  This is a characteristic that is often also found in far right-wing ideologies, who model their love of authoritarianism upon the authoritarian nature of God and religion.

Perhaps we can finally taste the bitterness of that toxic admixture now.

Anders Breivik is Rush Limbaugh Only Younger And Less Chickensh*t

Make no mistake.  There is an epidemic of right-wing christian lunacy in the US too, but the primary difference is that right-wing blowhards in the US tend to be far too cowardly to actually act upon their idiotically ill-conceived ideologies. Not so in other parts of the world, like Norway, where right-wing fundamentalist Anders Breivik randomly murdered people with a car bomb, and targets of opportunity on an island campground called Utoya.

His calls for "pre-emptive war" and a "crusade" against muslims, despite the fact that his victims are almost exclusively non-muslim, should sound familiar in the US because they were part of the Bush Doctrine.  Right-wingers in the US were proud of pre-emptive warfare, and our disgraced former president Bush frequently used terms like Crusade, pretending that he was too dumb to know how terms like that would play in the rest of the world.  Granted, some right-wing Christians like Timothy McVeigh, who also used a fertilizer bomb to attack his own government, have acted in this country.  However, for most of them, the only thing they shoot off is their big fat mouths.

The same right-wing racists like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity who scream about immigrants, and want to launch a "war of civilizations" against Islam have given aid and comfort to people like Breivik.  They too are "Marxist hunters" like Breivik called himself.  They too advocate constant violent rhetoric, putting pictures of gunsights on the pictures of their political opponents, and speaking of "2nd Amendment remedies" and "bullets not ballots" to force society to goosestep to their authoritarian demands.  

A man like Breivik is really what Rush Limbaugh wants to be, but is too fat, stupid, and cowardly to actually be.  This is not to say that it would be a good for him to try, nor is it saying that Breivik can be considered "brave" to shoot unarmed teens and blow up bombs that kill civilians.  Instead of bravery, he had a callous disregard for his own life and the lives of others, putting the lie, yet again, to the notion that extremist Christianity is a "pro-life" movement.  

No, extremist christians worship violence.  Look at the Book of Revelation.  They worship a bloody apocalyptic vision of the end of the world where the blood will be so deep that it will reach the height of a horses bridle for 1600 stadia around Jerusalem (Rv 14:20).   

This delusional punk Breivik declared himself a Knight Templar, and apparently had written an elaborate, 1500 page treatise attempting to recruit others to purge racial impurities from Europe by 2083.  Yet this is not that different from the "scholarship" coming out of home-school raised, bible-college educated american fundamentalists who want to replace our constitution with old testament biblical law.  It too was racist and xenophobic, and wanted to impose death as the standard sentence for almost any offense.  

I would recommend that secular, non-religious people take appropriate steps to defend themselves against the Andrew Breiviks who may be living among you right here in the US.  Go ahead and get your concealed carry permits.  Get over your standard liberal hangups and recognize that a gun does not have to be dangerous, if you are smart and diligent.  It can make you safer from people like this who are increasingly on the rise in the US.  

Bachmann bach-pedals on de-gay-ification

In the wake of revelations that Michele Bachmann and her husband operated a clinic that tried to re-program homosexuals to be straight, some evangelicals claim that they have been quietly backing away from the practice for years. It must be a very quiet operation, because the average, rank-and-file evangelical certainly has not gotten the news. Huge numbers of them still believe in exactly this kind of thing and want to send their children to reprogramming clinics the moment there is a blip on the gaydar.

In fact, according to this article, counsellors at the Bachmann clinic still see it as an illness that can be treated, primarily with prayer, but it's just that they admit, at least according to secretly recorded office visits, that they are not particularly competent at dealing with it.

In the transcripts of the Time.com article, for example, the therapist laughably suggests that a person might become a homosexual by seeing another man take his shirt off at an early age. Well gosh, I think just about 100% of boys have seen at least one other boy without a shirt, and yet the overwhelming majority of these boys never turn out to be homosexuals. I hope that people are not paying good money for this kind of advice.

It's great to hear that some evangelicals, like Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler can finally admit that, "sexual attraction and a profile of someone’s sexuality is a complex of factors, some of which are certainly not chosen". However, I doubt that the Bachmann's or any other right-wing politicians will run on a clunky slogan like that. Instead they still say you can "pray away the gay".

Wife Throws Hubby's Junk In Garbage Disposal

Wow. What a pre-dick-ament. I've heard of a pecker wrecker, but come on. No, this isn't some strange religious circumcision ritual. Apparently some dude in Cali pissed off his old lady so badly that she drugged him, hacked off his manhood, and then ran it through the garbage disposal. My theory is that he left the toilet seat up one too many times. See guys, it really DOES matter.

Well, actually, they were in the process of getting a divorce, before she decided to divorce her husband from his male member. Seriously, I've heard about the wife getting half of everything, but this is ... wait for it.... re-dick-u-less.

In other news, this might be the only thing that causes redneck peckerwood republicans to support stem cell research. Perhaps Speaker of the House John Boner will propose legislation that permits stem cell research only for the purpose of replacing and restoring man-meat, should one's pecker become inadvertently bobbetted, or should I say beckered, in situations just like this.

Bachmann's "clinic" performed de-gay-ification

It's hardly surprising that the mantle of far-right religious craziness has fallen from Sarah Palin and passed to Michele Bachmann. Palin seemed to be pretty far into looney tune land with her crazy pastor who thought that he could resurrect people from the dead, and believed that Alaska would become a "refuge state" when the apocalypse came. However, ultimately Palin didn't even have enough personal leadership over her family to prevent her own daughter from getting knocked up.

Compare this to Michele Bachmann, whose "clinic" Bachmann and Associates was "curing" gay people or "ex-gays" as they call them. She's not only indoctrinating dozens of foster kids, but she's running the lives of the kids of strangers. I suppose one could regard that as a sinister step up from Palin.

Of course, it is obvious to everyone that for men to like women or women to like men is biological and hormonal. Nobody claims that it is a "choice" for men to like women, for if it was, then we would expect about half of men, on a random basis to reject women in favor of the same sex. Why then, if opposite sex attraction in straight people is acknowledged to be hormonal and biological can it not be acknowledged that same sex attraction is based upon similar hormonal and biological programming?

The reason is purely theological, though I have long said the word should be pronounced "the-illogical" (Get it ;-)? Pronounce the first 'o' in theological more like an 'i'). You can't condemn a person for making immoral choices if it is no more a choice than for straight men to like straight women. You can't condemn nature as immoral. So they have to insist that gay people are pretending to have this attraction and that it's really just 100% a choice.

They say that gayness can be controlled, but so can straightness. We could all choose to be monks, although I hear they have have lots of mainly same sex relations on the sly too. But, maybe President Bachmann will cure us all of the desire to have sex, perhaps by showing us unairbrushed centerfold pictures of herself.

If Bachmann becomes president, expect the government to be operating brainwashing camps for "ex-gays" and perhaps even "ex-straights".

Atheists Get Hollywood Movie

There aren't too many movies about atheists, an even fewer that portray them in a positive light. Hollywood is changing that today with its release of a movie called _The Ledge_, written by Matthew Chapman. The all-star cast which includes Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Terrence Howard, and Christopher Gorham examines what makes life worth living, especially for those who have no belief in an afterlife.

Chapman, who happens to be a cousin of famed naturalist Charles Darwin, believes that this movie might be a "Brokeback Mountain" for atheists. That is, he hopes that it will help promote consciousness about the small, but growing atheist minority in the US and worldwide, which is often misunderstood and reviled by religious believers. Time will tell if it can match the lurid and forbidden appeal of Brokeback and parlay it an Academy award.

From initial reviews it sounds like it simply may not be compelling enough in its writing or subject matter to really wow people. Psychological thrillers and think pieces can't compete with fluff like _Hangover II_ . However, be that as it may, it may still get people thinking and talking, which is perhaps the most important thing as far as raising consciousness.

Pope says selfish food speculators driving up prices

Pope Benedict complained about the "selfish attitudes" of speculators, whom he accuses of driving up the prices of food, especially in the Third World. He then ate a $10,000 filet mignon off a solid gold plate, wiped his mouth with a $50,000 silk napkin, and took a dump in his platinum toilet that flushes with Dom Perignon instead of water. Ok, so the last part is slightly exaggerated to make the rather obvious point that a man who lives in a palace of priceless artworks, and who carries jewel encrusted scepters, and sits on a throne is in no position to lecture others about being greedy. Therefore, even though I agree with the Pope's sentiment, he is certainly the wrong person to be making the appeal, for this reason, and also because other church policies have made poverty even worse.

You know what I'm talking about. I'm sure that the Vatican's very next statement was to encourage the Third World to have lots more children and make sure not to use condoms or other forms of contraception which might thwart the will of the impotent almighty. The Lard will provide, right? Not so much, or the Pope wouldn't need to get off his throne and complain about how other greedy people, except for his church, seems be part of the problem.

Rhode Island Passes Civil Unions

Only five days after New York state passed laws allowing gay marriage, the Rhode Island legislature has passed a civil unions law and the governor, Lincoln Chafee (a Republican turned "Independent") says that he will sign it. While civil unions usually confer more limited rights than full marriage, it seems a step in the right direction, and perhaps the beginning of a trend inspired by actions in New York. It is notable that even some opponents of gay marriage found that they could accept these more limited civil unions. Remember that evolution, in biology, and public opinion, operates on a slower scale than we might often like.

As usual, religious extremists are apoplectic, claiming that such bills are unpopular with voters and suggesting that such laws could be repealed. It does remain to be seen whether these laws will help or hurt democrats. It could very well give republicans another rallying cry to help turn out votes. Some have suggested that the Republican legislature in New York may have allowed the bill to pass on purpose in order to have an issue to run against, given that they cannot run on their unpopular economic policies of fiscal austerity in a time of severe economic hardship.

We also should not have any illusions about gay marriage spreading to all states. There is no chance that Bible Belt red states in the deep south will allow it. These are states that still make homosexual activity a crime.

Gay Marriage passes in New York...sky still hasn't fallen

Well gay marriage is now law in New York State. Despite a Republican-controlled Senate, the vote was 33 to 29 with a handful of Republicans crossing party lines to support it. Governor Cuomo was on hand to sign it shortly after passage.

A lot of religious extremists pulled out the stops to oppose this, most notably ex-NFL player David Tyree and Archbishop Dolan. One is tempted to ask, "don't you feel stupid", we that is probably a feeling they have on more than just today. It's also pointless to ask if they are furious beyond comprehension, for the same reason -- they're always furious about things. As it turns out, the two conditions are connected, because, contrary to myth, ignorance is not quite as blissful as advertised, at least for these people.

Tyree was notable for claiming that this *law*, if passed, would lead to *lawlessness* or "anarchy". He later backpedalled when he was confronted with the fact that (1) he didn't even know what the word meant (or how to spell it) and (2) he had no evidence for any of his claims except what he heard his preacher lying to him about on Sunday mornings. He even said that if he could give back his superbowl winning catch that he would do to prevent gay marriage, at which point they stopped the interview and had to tell him that Hot Tub Time Machine was not a factual documentary.

Dolan, on the other hand, is not ignorant by circumstance, but by vigorous, conscious efforts and choices. He still has his head in .... the Middle Ages ... arguing that the state doesn't have the right or authority to define marriage, despite the fact that all states and nations have done it, pretty much since the Middle Ages. He is still railing against modernism in a post-post-modernist world.

Of course, he's also playing the standard game of equivocating about the difference between state marriage and church marriage. He knows the distinction, but he thinks others are too dumb to catch his obvious maneuver. After all the Church doesn't automatically recognize any marriage that it does not conduct, but you don't have to be married in a church to be legally married. He knows that people can be legally married by a justice of the peace, and that this form of legal marriage was all that the New York Senate was ever considering. Hello, they're the state law-making body.

The most hilarious maneuver of all was for this man with the title Archbishop to claim for a state to adjust its own marriage requirements amounted to the establishment of a "secular theocracy". He then made the reporter kiss his ring, and returned to palace to issue more nonsensical decrees condemning anything and everything that is not his part of his church.

He even claimed that the definition of marriage was "as old as human reason", but apparently thinks that reason had a rather late start, because "1 man + 1 woman" was not the old testament definition of marriage. It was more like "1 man + 1 woman, her sister, cousins, servants, and goats". Well maybe not the goat part, but you get the idea.

Marriage has changed hugely even in the last century or two. Mormons were practicing polygamy officially until the 1890's (and still do in places today). Laws against inter-racial marriage existed in the US until quite recently. The age of marriage varies and has been tweaked. Common law marriages were defined. Genetic testing and licensing were required. There are tons of things that have changed about marriage, all well within the scope of human reason.

Perhaps Dolan just meant that he can't be reasonable on the subject, but I think we already knew that.

Legal Marriage versus Church Marriage

You see fanatic religious know-nothings running around with signs about "1 man + 1 woman = marriage", insisting that people are trying to "redefine marriage". A few points need to be made. To begin with nobody is saying that "1 man + 1 woman" is not a form of marriage. Those of us with at least middle school literacy are aware that other definitions for marriage already existed for thousands of years, including "1 man + lots of women, slaves, cousins, even daughters = old testament marriage". The pretense that marriage has always been defined as monogamy is laughable enough.

However, there is another much more basic point that opponents of gay marriage intentionally miss. Religious marriage is not being redefined for the basic reason that state legislatures never define what a particular church believes. We don't hold a vote and tell the Vatican what they think. Democracy is not a strong point in many religious traditions. Nobody is redefining the kind of marriage that these loud-mouths care about, which is religious marriage.

They were only ever talking about legal marriage, which has long been completely separate from what you do at a church. You don't get your marriage licensed issued by a church. It is issued by the state. You can then choose to get married by any person licensed to perform marriage, which includes religious people and non-religious people alike.

The definition of legal, state-established marriage gets changed all the time, depending upon where you are. The age at which you get married, requirements for genetic testing, etc are all things that vary from time to time and place to place.

When people talk about "God's marriage" that is not something that any state legislature claimed it would or could change. As I've already said, the New York State Senate only passes laws relating to their state. Nowhere do they claim to vote about, or care about, the various definitions that your church may have relating to theological doctrines.

Many churches do not even recognize the marriages of those outside the faith. Therefore gay marriage is simply one more thing for them to not recognize.

The fact that religious people are confused on this point proves that their religious traditions have been, for too long, injecting themselves into state matters where they don't belong. Marriage is one of the last remaining vestiges of a time when religion used to co-mingle with the state, and it is high time that we insisted on the clearest possible division between the two.

1 man + many women = bible marriage

As the gay marriage issue continues to lose its potency for right-wing evangelicals in the US, and even the Republican New York Senate is within inches of legalizing gay marriage, the rhetoric from Bible-beaters continues to get more shrill and asinine.

A man who resembles that last remark would be Archbishop Dolan, who claims that the definition of marriage is "as old as reason". Clearly his own reason is none to sharp these days, because the bible quite clearly did not limit men to 1 woman. Reason must have started pretty late in the day. After all, King Solomon was reputed to have a thousand wives. Of course, some times they were called "concubines", but if you get to screw them silly, impregnate them whether they want it or not, and treat them as your property then this is pretty much synonymous with the definition of a "wife" in the Old Testament.

As I am having to say all too often about religious extremists these days, Archbishop Dolan cannot possibly be as stupid as he sounds when he makes such pig-ignorant claims. There were many types of marriage throughout the Bible, and throughout the world. Levirate marriage was just one form in which the brother of the deceased husband was obligated to marry his brother's widow, as per Deuteronomy 25:5. Now tell me how this squares with "1 man + 1 woman = God's marriage", especially if the brother is already married.

Similarly, sororate marriage also exists, in which the husband marries (or just has sex with) the wife's sister if the wife dies or proves infertile. While this form is not found in the Bible, it existed in places from ancient to China to Greenland and the Americas.

And then there are the Mormons, who also claim to be Christians, and had no problem with polygamy. They only ended up outlawing it, in theory but not practice, around the turn of the beginning of the 20th century, primarily as a political maneuver to gain admission to the Union.

Another detail about marriage described in the Bible is a restriction upon the mixing of races. In Ezra 9, for example, there is condemnation of the men of Israel having married foreign wives. In the US, well into the 20th century, laws existed, particularly in the South, which prohibited miscegenation, or inter-racial marriage. In fact Bob Jones University, a center for religious extremism, only rescinded bans on inter-racial dating in the year 2000. Humm....how are you going to marry when you can't even date?

I suppose it's possible if you hit her over the head with a club like they show the cavemen doing. That's probably the original definition of "marriage", and I doubt it's one that most people want to keep.

Mormon Ad Campaign...or is it a Presidential Campaign

The Mormon church has been running their "I'm a Mormon" ad campaign since last August, and recently bought a $7 million billboard ad in Times Square, some say to counter the the Tony-award winning _Book of Mormon_ musical put on by the creators of Southpark. Clearly these ad campaigns don't come cheap, and most of the previous ones -- you know the ones where they promise to send you a free copy of the Book of Mormon -- have been dismal failures.

In fact, the word is that church leaders have leaned pretty hard on church members to "give of means and time", which is code for "deplete your life savings or be excommunicated", and this is coming on the heels of similar demands for donations to defeat Prop 8 in California.

All this money is being used to convince us that Mormons are more or less normal, and/or electable to the Whitehouse. That is, many people suspect that Romney and now Huntsman have been preparing the groundwork for the public to accept a Mormon president, which they see as a watershed moment, similar to Catholic John F. Kennedy being elected.

The problem is that it's not easy to convince people that Mormons really are that normal. The billboard in Times Square disingenuously shows three black faces, but if there were truth in advertising there would be a little asterisk that says, "accepted as full members since 1978". It was at that point, and not uncontroversally, that the Mormon Church reversed its policy of excluding people of African descent from the priesthood.

However, the Mormons remain one of the lily whitest people on the planet. Go to Salt Lake City and see how many brothers you can round up. Hint: most statistics say they are less than 1% of the population. The population of black faces on the billboard ad is 18%, which is more than a little exaggeration.

There's also a picture of a guy with a prosthetic leg climbing a mountain. I notice he isn't wearing any magic underwear though, and he better not have a sports drink with caffeine, or want to throw back a cold one at the top of the mountain.

Likewise, you can be a Mormon surfer all you want, as long as you don't smoke any Maui wowie, and you can't bag any babes unless you plan to marry them and have 14 kids with them.

The rest of them only have mug shots. They aren't all sporting crew cuts, white shirts, and back packs, as has become stereotypical. However, I have never seen any Mormons who look like the billboard coming to my door.

So for my part, I'm not sure who they think they're fooling. I guess as many people as possible, including themselves.

Religious Extremist Tyree would "give up" superbowl catch to block gay marriage

David Tyree, the former NY Giants receiver, whose only real claim to fame was a lucky catch in the 2007 Superbowl, says that he would give up that catch if it would stop gay marriage in New York State from becoming law. Of course, this is an easy claim to make when, lacking a time machine, it is impossible to change this past event. It is simply another empty pledge that Tyree is making in an attempt to force his religious standards upon other people.

One will recall that Tyree did not always live up to the alleged Christian standards that he now claims to profess. He admits that throughout his teen years he was always partying, drinking, and getting high. That ultimately led Tyree to a jail sentence when he was caught with a half pound of marijuana in his car. However, he now claims to be a changed man, and has found religion.

Which means that he has now decided that everyone else needs to believe like he does. He now claims that gay marriage will lead to anarchy. His years as a drug dealer, under-age drinker, etc apparently didn't cause the country to slide toward anarchy, so it's not clear why gay marriage would. At least that is something that people are doing when they're sober.

Tyree embarrasses himself again on CNN

Ex-Giants wide receiver David Tyree went on CNN recently in order to defend his controversial anti-gay statements with respect to same-sex marriage laws under consideration by the New York State Senate. However, he was quickly tackled by interviewer Kyra Phillips, who asked him for evidence for his claims, and he fumbled badly.

Asked to produce evidence for the "negative impact" of gay marriage on traditional marriage, or society in general, all he could muster was "I can’t necessarily get into statistics". Indeed he could not, because, as I already noted, the 2010 Census indicates that 3 in 5 families have no children under 18 living with them. Therefore his belief that same sex marriages could be harmful to children is both unfounded and largely irrelevant.

Of course this did not stop Tyree from claiming that "the original intent of a marriage is to procreate". I'm not sure if all religious fanatics feel entitled to just make s*** up whenever it suits them, but apparently Tyree does. Let's take a look at what the Bible actually says, shall we?

According to Genesis 2:18 God says, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." In other words, God wants a companion for Adam. That is his *ahem* ORIGINAL intent. God then tries to make various animal pets for Adam, but Adam doesn't want a puppy or pony, as God discovers (Gen 2:21). So God induces a coma in Adam, steals a rib and makes Eve, as the bizarre story goes.

So what was Adam's reaction? Did he say, "Oh boy, it's time to procreate?" No, sorry, he does not. Instead Adam finally likes this companion and says, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man", as though Adam new where she came from (Gen 2:23). The point, however, is that Adam does not identify his desire to procreate with her as having anything to with being pleased with Eve. He simply likes the fact that there is a second creature in the world who is like him. Of course, fundies love to point out "Gawd made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve", but from these verses it is clear that Adam would not have cared. He just wanted a friend who was made out of the same bone and flesh that he was. Either Eve or Steve would have fit that bill.

Now, often times religious whackadoodles attempt to fire back with the "be fruitful and multiply" line in Genesis 1:28. For the record I will note two issues with this. Firstly, says absolutely nothing about marriage. It is addressed to both men and women, but clearly men could not be "fruitful" in the sense of becoming pregnant, like women. Secondly, I will note that this same verse says, "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air". Does this mean that God wants us to own a pet fish and bird too? Maybe that's part of God's plan, Mr. Tyree. Why don't you get working on that. I'm sure that petshop owners will love you for it and then you can find something to occupy your time instead of bashing gay people.

"Ominous Threat" from Gay Marriage Says NY Archbishop Dolan

New York's Archbishop Dolan recently claimed in an interview that gay marriage, as is being considered in the New York State Senate, represented an "ominous threat" to society.

Granted, Dolan is not as woefully undereducated and uninformed as some recent gay marriage opponents such as NFL receiver David Tyree and comedian Tracy Morgan. Yet, even with his education, he can't manage to make a case that would convince the average middle school student that gay marriage is any kind of serious threat at all.

Consider that gay marriage is already legal in a handful of US states, and a smattering of European countries. Religious people, including Dolan, all bemoaned such developments, and insisted that the sky would fall if this were permitted. Then it was permitted and basically nothing happened. There were supposed to be all these terrible consequences of gay marriage, according to naysayers, and yet, here is the only dubious harm that Dolan could come up with in his interview. He claims that an anonymous couple in England who wanted to adopt a child was turned down because the interviewer didn't like the fact that they were opposed to gay marriage.

Even if this suspicious, urban-legend sounding claim were true, which I seriously doubt, since religious people constantly make up this kind of "evidence" out of thin air, discrimination can happen for any reason. A person could decide that he doesn't like the color of your shirt or the way that your nose looks, and therefore discriminate against you. However, discrimination on the basis of religion still remains illegal, and gay marriage laws would not change that. If these people really existed and could prove discrimination then the law would back them up. In fact, in the US, it might serve as a basis for attempting to overturn gay rights legislation, if similar discrimination could be proven. The problem is that it turns out that these stories usually just turn out to be hot air.

The rest of Dolan's "arguments" basically amount to Vatican sour grapes over the fact that they no longer rule the world and appoint Holy Roman Emperors. He whines darkly about the "the presumptive omnipotence of the state", as though this is a new development. It's been that way since this nation was founded.

Most hilariously and ridiculously of all, he continues the Vatican's boilerplate fulminations against "secularism". With no sense of irony or hypocrisy he laments about a "new religion of secularism that feels it’s going to come to a theocracy and impose its values on society". This man has a lot of nerve to talk about a theocracy, when he is a member of one. He is the one calls himself by a lofty, regal title and wears vestments normally reserved for a medieval monarch. That is just too much for an Archbishop who's word is law in his tiny little bishopric to accuse others of plotting to impose theocracy. I guess he doesn't appreciate the competition from others attempting to horn in on his monopoly.

I wish just one time that religious fanatics had the intellect to understand this point. If you are right that secularism is a religion then it is protected by the very same religious prerogatives that you claim for yourself. See the reality is that religious people can never make up their minds on such things. One minute they declare that non-religion is a religion, like an empty glass being a beverage, and then when we ask them why we don't get a tax break like churches, they decide that secularism shouldn't be considered a religion.

It's also funny that they feel that marriage is the purview of religion, and yet the state has been doing it for centuries without their blessing. Make up your minds whether marriage is religious or not. If it is then religion does have official state sanction, as it stands, and receives special treatment which it is not supposed to get. If it is not religious then they should not feel threatened by legislation about any form of marriage, whether straight or gay.

Of course, most people look at marriage as both. You have a civil agreement, and then you can also have other, optional parts that only church members are interested in doing. It would be like the difference between infants being circumcised at the hospital, versus at a bar mitzvah. Nobody thinks that what the hospital does is a religious ceremony. Nobody demands that Synagogues circumcise non-members and non-Jews just for the heck of it.

I think that the reason that the majority of people now support gay marriage is because they are just tired out by all the nonsense objections coming out of the other side. They just want the incessant, incoherent babbling of religious know-nothings to come to an end, at least on this topic. It's not like they won't have plenty of additional nonsense to obsess and babble about. We just hope that they can go back to their churches and do it there.

UN resolution supports gay rights.

Tracy Morgan and David Tyree are likely seething with rage now that the UN Human Rights council has passed a resolution calling for equal rights for all people, regardless of sexual orientation. Morgan and Tyree have both recently expressed anti-gay rhetoric, though arguably Morgan was at least attempting to be funny.

This council had previously adopted a statement aimed at "Ending Violence Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity", which was widely supported. However, passing this resolution proved more controversial with 23 in favor and 19 opposed and three abstaining. Perhaps if right-wing ideologues had control over the US delegation at the UN, as they did in the days of Bush and Bolton, then the US would have been forced to vote against, rather than for this resolution.

Make no mistake. Fanatic religion is the fuel that fires opposition to gay-rights. Opponents, like Tyree, as discussed yesterday, often attempt to couch objections in other terms. This was true in the early days of the Civil Rights movement in the US as well. States with Jim Crow laws that discriminated against African Americans protested that their sovereign state rights were being violated when they were forced to integrate schools. Of course, as the slogan goes, your rights always stop where the other guy's nose begins, and the "right to deny rights to unpopular minorities" has never been a legitimate right. It has to be forbidden, specious "sovereignty" arguments to one side, or democratic governance cannot long endure. Otherwise the mob prevails and we are divided and conquered by our differences, rather than united by our common humanity.

NFL's Tyree Says Gay Marriage Leads to "anarchy"

New York Giants receiver David Tyree has recently made controversial comments off the football grid about his opposition to gay marriage laws under consideration in the New York State Senate. In an interview with an anti-gay group called the National Organization for Marriage he claims that allowing same sex marriage will result in the United States, "sliding towards, you know, it's a strong word, but 'anarchy'". He went on to claim, probably quoting a Sunday sermon he had heard, since he gave no citations, that this had proven true in other cultures and other countries historically.

While he doesn't deny that his opposition to gay marriage is largely fueled by his religious beliefs, he bases his arguments against it primarily on issues involving child rearing. It seems lost upon him that married people are not required to have children, and are not always interested in having children. According to the 2010 US census, 3 out of 5 families have no children under 18 living at home.

However, assuming that we focus upon the minority of couples who do want to have children, Tyree alleges that same-sex couples would be unable to effectively raise children of the opposite gender. "You can't teach something that you don't have, so two men will never be able to show a woman how to be a woman", Tyree comments. Yet, by this logic, the government would need to remove children from single parent households where the parent gender differed from the child.

How far should we take this. What about families where parents and children are from different races, such as a Caucasian couple who adopts an Asian child? According to Tyree's logic that sort of thing shouldn't be allowed either, because the parents don't know how to teach the child the same way that an Asian parent might. Now it may be objected that gender and race are quite different things. Yet both have a physiological basis, when it comes down to it.

Capping things off, Tyree attempts, rather inarticulately, to make an historical argument, if you can call it that, against same sex marriage. In what sounds vaguely like a question he asks, "How can marriage be marriage for thousands of years and now all the sudden because a minority, an influential minority, has a push or agenda ... and totally reshapes something that was not founded in our country". Unfortunately, Tyree seems unaware that many things are changing, in our rapidly advancing modern society, after being unchanged for thousands of years. For thousands of years people rode horses as the best available means of transportation. It is only relatively recently that the horse was eclipsed by trains, cars, and automobiles. Modern digital communications have changed things even faster. Therefore, it's not clear from a historical perspective, why marriage should be any less subject to change.

Given the muddled state of Mr. Tyree's it might be better for anti-gay marriage opponents if they found a better spokesman.

Baptist President Say Atonement "only in Jesus"

Yesterday it was reported that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler told Jewish Congressman Anthony Weiner that he needs to turn to Jesus, because Mohler stated that atonement is "found only in Jesus Christ". Apparently Mohler has never heard of Yom Kippur, or perhaps he thought it was some kind of spicy ethnic food dish. Back in reality, sir, Yom Kippur means "Day of Atonement". Of course, Mohler cannot really be as ignorant as he sounds. I'm sure that he has both heard of Yom Kippur and knows what it actually means. He just denies its theological efficacy. However, it is based upon the same ancient holy writings and traditions from which Christianity is derived . Jesus himself is depicted as fasting and praying in much the same way that Jews still do today on High Holy Days.

There are also a few other things upon which Mohler appears to be confused, and apparently needs some help figuring out. To begin with, I just want to remind him that "Christ" is not the last name of Jesus. He might be Jesus THE Christ, if you ignore the Bible's criteria for Messiahship. However, he was not the only person designated a messiah in the Bible.

More importantly, he might want to check with Jesus before referring Weiner to him. See, I did my own prayer interview with Jesus last night, and if I heard the Lord correctly, as my spiritual mentor Pat Robertson might say, Jesus told me that even He did not want to see Weiner's junk in a towel. He asked me to pass on to Mohler that, while in theory Jesus loves everyone, "I'm just not into Tony that way. Sorry dawg, but DAMN!" He then told me that he was changing his number to prevent Weiner from sexting him. Perhaps if Mohler would check with the guy up stairs before running his mouth then he would produce more accurate public comments.

Baptist President To Anthony Weiner: Turn to Jesus

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler offered some free and unsolicited advice to Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is embroiled in a scandal over the posting of racy pictures of himself. He says that, "There is no effective ‘treatment’ for sin. Only atonement, found only in Jesus Christ." Some considered this statement provocative, since Congressman Weiner is Jewish. However, perhaps they are missing the larger picture of what is wrong with this kind of cheap-shot evangelism.

Like most free advice, Mohler's seems to be worth every penny, and here's why. This man is offering no licensed medical advice on the subject, and it is clear that he has done little research on treatments related to sexual disorders. He claims that "sin" cannot be treated, but clearly Weiner is not trying to treat his previous actions, which cannot be undone. Rather, he is seeking treatment, presumably to understand and therefore avoid some of the irrational, perhaps even obsessive behaviors in which he engaged. Obsessions can be, and frequently are treated quite successful, Mohler's apparent ignorance on the subject notwithstanding. The same goes for irrational ideations, which are frequently addressed in therapy.

Jesus may or may not be able to forgive Weiner for his actions. Some of them, such as the sending of the single x-rated photo, if legitimate, may arguably cross the line into marital infidelity. Weiner's wife, being the injured party, would be the primary from whom atonement should presumably be sought. Given that she is a Muslim, it is unlike that she would want to involve Jesus as a third-party mediator here.

As a consequence, we have to conclude that Mohler could not have been altogether genuine in his suggestion. He had no reasonable expectation that he would convert a Jew or a Muslim to his brand of hard-line Christianity. Instead, he just wanted to exploit the present circumstances as an excuse to proselytize. He was just reminding his own base, as thought they did not already know, that Anthony Weiner is not one of them.

I would like to suggest that Congressman Weiner is not the only person who needs therapy. Mr. Mohler could probably benefit from therapy to treat his own obsessions with evangelical Christianity.

Nostradumbass fails to predict his own stroke

Harold Camping, the octagenarian false prophet of Family Radio fame, who goaded his followers to spend $100 million promoting the incorrect view that the world would end on May 21st, 2011 apparently failed to predict something else today -- his own stroke. Camping, the front-runner for the 2011 Nostradumbass Award from this site, has padded his lead for that accolade by failing to foresee a comparatively easy to predict event in his own immediate future. After all, even a medical examination probably would have given some indication of an impending stroke. You don't need to count up all the jots and tittles in Leviticus and divide by the square root of Bible pi (you know, 3) to figure out that that you're probably going to have a stroke if your blood pressure is through the roof. Of course, it should go without saying, which means that I'll have to say it anyway, but I certainly don't wish any ill health upon Mr. Camping. Some religious types, however, are a bit more judgmental, and will likely see this as God's clear and direct punishment of Camping for his obviously bogus teachings, and his transparent attempts to lie about it afterward, insisting that he was (1) not wrong and (2) not responsible for misleading his followers into spending their life savings on his bogus predictions.

It might be possible that his own guilty conscience is responsible for some of the stress that lead up to this event. However, again, this is hardly impossible to predict. Even I, with no divine powers whatsoever, predicted that Camping would use ridiculous apologetics to explain away the failure of his prediction and I also predicted that he was banking on the possibility that he would not be alive in few months when he has re-predicted the end of the world. He is on track to fulfill that prophecy with this latest incident, which will be too bad, because I would like him to live long enough to see that prophecy fail too and perhaps even to be sued or indicted for the scam that he perpetrated.

By the way, I hope this guy doesn't go to the hospital for treatment, because the Bible teaches that faith-healing is sufficient to fix you right up. This guy should have the courage of his convictions, and show us whether he really believes the swill he's slinging by refusing to use modern medicine. If he is miraculously cured, that might help to rehabilitate his reputation.

Weiner shouldn't throw in the towel

It's hard to tell who is more pathetic, Anthony and his Weiner, or the right-wing holy-warriors who have been ridiculously trying to crucify him over pictures that are mainly PG rated. I mean Republicans like Senator Vitter were caught banging prostitutes while married. Weiner boy takes a picture of himself wrapped in a towel and it's manufactured into a scandal. It's not like there is a sex tape. That's how the rest of our celebrities roll. There is no indication that Anthony stuck the Weiner into anything other than his own wife. It's not like he's Tiger Woods or anything, though he apparently has checked himself into sext-a-holics anonymous, taking a page out of the Tiger playbook. However, at least the media didn't have to wildly exaggerate Tiger's serial philandering. In Weiner's case they seem determined to create the illusion of philandering with the wave of a magic towel. Clearly Anthony has some issues, and probably should talk to a sex therapist about his freak little over-exposure fetish. However, it's hard to believe that this is anything other than intentional weiner roasting by a media who believes that they can embarrass a person into reversing the results of an election.

Gawd doesn't want Weiners to Pull Out

Just to reiterate a point for right-wing theocrats who are determined to see Anthony Weiner pull out of Congress, God may have other ideas. See God got mighty upset with Onan when he hit the road before dumping his load inside of his brother's wife Tamar. Since then the so-called "Sin of Onan" has been that of coitus interruptus, or robbing the booty without doing your duty. Yet now they keep demanding that Weiner pull out. I say he needs to stick with it until the Weiner has done what it came to do. No premature ejections. He needs to take a firm stand on this. He's a Weiner not a pussy-cat. I know he's being dogged by reporters, and he sometimes may feel like he's going to blow his top. But the longer he can last the better. Maybe that's what he's getting therapy for. These kinds of decisions can keep you up all night. But he can't let Pelosi and the DNC shove him around like a piece of meat. They're just trying to play with him and tease hiim and put him back in his cage. Don't fall for it. Don't droop to that level. Slap the table and show them whose in charge.