For A Good Time, Call ...Your Local Church Lady!

"They have long-term relationships. They have better marriages. They make more money. They're happier. All the data is there..."

In order to give credence to Tennessee's walk down the road to the Middle Ages*, abstinence-only advocates are coming out of the woodwork and making outrageous statements:

"All the data is there, and it is time for everybody to recognize it, both in the church and in the public sector that you know what, the church ladies are having the best sex!" - Leslee Unruh, founder of Abstinence Clearinghouse.

"All the data" meaning that something in Christian literature states that abstinence until marriage will reduce unwanted pregnancies much more than sex education combined with birth control. "All the data." Where? To most everyone on the planet, that data is coming out of Unruh's own private place where the sun doesn't shine. 

Last Monday Sermon, we talked about faulty research used to further the goals of the Righteous Right. This example, however, goes beyond those lies because Unruh is citing research that's too twisted for words. 


And twisted research doesn't count. 

The most pertinent study for AO advocates has been, of course, twisted to tout absolute success: the study showed that AO education for 12-year-olds delayed intercourse for only two years - certainly not until marriage. The study group was also held in question as not quite applicable to the question of AO. Of course, if you google "abstinence only studies" this one pops up a lot because of its popularity. 


Earlier in the interview, Unruh stated an even more unbelievable premise: that sex education is "really based on profound ignorance about human nature and what makes for a healthy family." This WTF? moment indicates that Ms. Unruh has been living on Pluto and is as far away from earth's reality as you can get: since the beginning of time, man has always had sex whenever and wherever he wanted. The Church - not man - has set its own limits on sex, creating guilt complexes and suicides.


Oh, and the part about relationships and money, sorry Leslee: you failed to mention that the church ladies also have a higher divorce rate than non-Christians and atheists**, their relationships don't last, and they make less money than their male counterparts, speaking of whom, don't get enough sex. 


At this point, a pertinent paragraph about Unruh - who is now considered the Queen of Abstinence Only - might be in order:

Unruh's obsessions include pedophiles, rape, molestation, pornography, disease, peer pressure to have sex and the idea that having multiple sexual partners automatically makes sex less intimate. She swears her daughter never even kissed her own husband until her wedding day. She thinks that taking birth control pills that limit menstruation is an effort to turn women into men. She also loves to hand out dolls of baby fetuses.

Life with Leslee Unruh must be so much fun!

So the best teen pregnancy prevention program is really not to talk about sex at all, right?


Right. Comparisons of AO programs to no sex education revealed the same results in teen pregnancy. And remember "virginity pledges"? They worked really well! One study over a five-year period showed that not only were virginity-pledged teens having just as much sex, they were having more unprotected sex than teens who didn't take the pledge. 


Tennessee and Utah:  Be Prepared!


It has never occurred in their righteousness just what the consequences of failed abstinence only programs will be, and while it may seem hyperbolic to say that Tennessee and Utah better be prepared for baby booms and playgrounds teeming with misinformation, the grain of truth in the statement is more like a rock. Very much like the rocks in Leslee Unruh's head, for she'll think that abstinence only is working - while she continues to hand out fetus dolls.


NOW ISN'T THAT SPECIAL!

*[JURIST] The Tennessee House of Representatives [official website] has passed a bill[HB 3621, PDF; bill summary] that augments the state's abstinence-only sex education curriculum to allow parents to sue school teachers or organizations that promote "gateway sexual activity."

** Some interesting stats: Born-again Christians 27% Other Christians 24% Atheists, Agnostics 21%

SAVE THE RICH! Garfunkel and Oates Sing For The Beleaguered One Percent!

Sometimes it takes the brilliance of people like Garfunkel and Oates to point out life's absurdities: one of which is FOX News' support of the One Percent and still operating under the slogan "Fair and Balanced". 


Their new video, SAVE THE RICH is done in We-Are-the-World fashion. 

The Monday Sermon: If You Twist Science In The Name Of Family And Morality, You're Still ... Lying.

Lying ... is lying ... is lying ... is lying. False research? Hell, it's only lying on a different level. And in a sense, it's worse, because it is much more premeditated: sometimes we lie on the spur of the moment to cover something up, but false research, twisted research, takes thought. Lots of it.

Many organizations in our country have become extensions of today's pulpit: The American Family Association, The Family Research Council, Focus on the Family spearhead a movement to legitimize hate and promote their form of "morality" through junk science and "research." The Barna Group, for example, touts itself as an unbiased pollster, but it's findings are anything but unbiased: George Barna's profile can be found on the website for Newt Gingrich's campaign, the section titled "Faith Coalition." 

He founded the Barna Research Group in 1984 (now The Barna Group) and helped it become a leading marketing research firm focused on the intersection of faith and culture.

The Family "Research" Council has done it time and time again: presented bad research as the truth. In fact, the use of discredited research such as Paul Cameron's studies about gays is what has prompted the Southern Poverty Law Center to list the FRC as a hate group. Ditto the American Family Association (Bryan Fischer) Ditto Abiding Ministries (Scott Lively). Ditto AFTAH (Americans for Truth About Homosexuality). Ditto NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality). Ditto the late Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship:

Chuck Colson and Prison Fellowship faked the data to make it appear as though taking part in their Christian rehabilitation program had a much higher rate of success in avoiding recidivism than it actually did. 

To the average American, false research has occasionally been exposed when it deals with homosexuality*. The machinations of Tony Perkins (FRC) and Bryan Fischer (AFA) have been questioned for years. But the truth is that false research has been demoralizing other religions and social arenas like Islam, women issues, and global warming for a good time as well.

PFAW:

The prolific use of shoddy research was on display when Rep. King used the dubious contention that over eight out of ten mosques in the U.S. advocate radical Islam as a rationale for holding congressional hearings on the radicalization of Muslim-Americans.The thoroughly debunked claim that extremists dominate over 80% of American mosques was first made by a Muslim cleric who has never been able to document or verify his assertion, but that hasn’t stopped anti-Muslim activists from repeating it ad nauseam. Frank Gaffney, Jr., of the Center for Security Policy, one of the most vociferous anti-Muslim ideologues, cited the phony statistic to defend his campaign to prevent the construction of mosques in America, and Religious Right leader Gary Bauer cited unnamed “experts” to support his allegation that those who disseminate “radical Wahhabist ideology” fund 80% of American mosques.

One typical evangelical response to global warming is given by the website Got Questions.org (The Bible Has Answers!)

The “consensus” claimed by most global warming theorists is not scientific proof; rather, it is a statement of majority opinion. Scientific majorities have been wrongly influenced by politics and other factors in the past. Such agreement is not to be taken lightly, but it is not the same thing as hard proof.

Ah, politics! It's the best defense against true research. Two weeks ago, when researcher Robert Spitzer recanted his findings about the possibility of homosexual "change", the AFA and the FRC cited "politics" and the ferocious machinations of the "homosexual lobby."

"Liar Lair" and Vetting The Research.

The aggressiveness with which today's socially conservative organizations tout these pieces of misinformation is always limited to the people who will never question them, so one solution may be meet aggression with aggression: screaming  "lair, liar pants on fire!" But what about the morality of such aggression? This is probably where morality must be weighed and hate-enabling becomes far too heavy in the balance: make no stake about it, knowingly manipulating numbers and outcomes is intentionally harmful.

In our last Monday Sermon, we wrote about vetting your belief, and just as much as you need to vet your belief, you need to vet the research spouted by organizations that would make you distrust or hate a group, a religion or a science. 

You might say that vetting isn't enough, shouting "liar liar!' isn't enough. On the other hand, letting the lies go unchallenged is...a sin.

*TWO:NEW YORK — In a letter made available to Truth Wins Out, the authors of a book on the health of gay men have accused Focus on the Family of distorting their research. The researchers publicly repudiatedan article written by “ex-gay” activist Jeff Johnston in Focus on the Family’ web magazine, Citizen Link, which falsely linked homosexuality to childhood sexual abuse. This letter marks the tenth researcher in two years who has claimed that Focus on the Family misrepresented their work.

A History Of Degenerative America In One Easy Lesson: A Christian Right Leader's Memories Of Fantasyland!

Carol Brady might have told him to STFU (see below)


The Christian Right'as grip on reality has never been very firm, and now Rick Scarborough of Vision America proves it. In one short diatribe, Scarborough managed to show just how skewed the Christian Right's views of America have been. Read the quote, view the video below. It's worth taking apart point by point - just for the fun (and the reality) of it.

Scarborough: We’ve gone from Andy Griffith to Bart Simpson in my lifetime; we’ve gone from Leave it to Beaver to Beavis and Behind Head, from My Three Sons to Two and a Half Men, from the Brady Bunch to the Big Bang Theory, we’ve gone from the Partridge Family to Desperate Housewives, from Happy Days to Jerry Springer, and look at comedians, there used to be comedians like Bob Hope who epitomized class and loved his country, now we have Larry the Cable Guy being gross and crass, and Christians laugh, what used to amaze us now simply amuses us. We’ve gone from commentaries from such cultural icons as Eric Sevareid to Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow. Look at our movies; we’ve gone from True Grit to Brokeback Mountain, from musicals like the Sound of Music to Oklahoma, from showgirls to slasher porn. Our schools were once the envy of the world, now we have dropout rates exceeding fifty percent in some of our major cities, graduating seniors can’t even read the diploma they’re receiving. Prayer and bible study are out, metal directors and drug-sniffing dogs are in, the Ten Commandments are out, murder and mayhem are in, the theory of evolution is taught as fact while the fact of God is taught as theory, sex-education has become nothing more than the facilitation of fornication, complete with home study with the teachers, in many cases.

1. Andy Griffith was television's answer to Will Rogers. Unfortunately, it made buffoons of Southerners through characters portrayed by Don Knotts (Barney Fife), Jim Nabors  (Gomer Pyle) and George Lindsey (Goober Pyle). Even Frances Bavier's character (Aunt Bea) was non too bright at times. As to Bart Simpson, he's waaay more intelligent, dude!

2. Leave It To Beaver was America as it wanted to be, but never was. That is, unless we knew of any housewife who cleaned the house in pearls. Perhaps the only realistic character was the smarmy Eddie Haskell. We knew kids like Eddie, but we never knew any family even approaching the Cleavers. And unfortunately, we all know idiots Like Beavis and Butthead.

3. My Three Sons was an attempt to give credence to fatherhood by making the dad single and his sons mildly contemporary. It managed to cover up the problem of deadbeat dads which was real, but not well known. And while Two and a Half Men doesn't tackle social issues, the characters deal with one of today's most prevalent lifestyles: the surrogate family.

4. Making the comparison of the Big Bang Theory to The Brady Bunch is more apt to the study of our fictional past than Scarborough knows: while the BBT touts science, the Brady Bunch borders on science fiction. The show, with its cutesy-sweet characters living in a sprawling suburban dream house might have been scripted by aliens from Mars. The stars of TBB certainly knew that they were playing out-of-reality characters and, later on, had some fun going totally against type (see Florence Henderson's rendition of "When You're Good To Mama" below).

5. The Partridge Family was a cute, musical attempt to bring the sitcom up-to-date, after the Monkees/Beatles era. It  made Oscar winner Shirley Jones a hip, working mom and spawned a minor rock star in Sean Cassidy. But it never touched upon reality in the slightest. In comparison, Desperate Housewives has highlighted today's war on women: remember, the beginning premise is that the narrator killed herself and the angst generated by the plots was the key to the first riveting episodes.

6. Scarborough's pairing of Happy Days to Jerry Springer is probably the most outlandishly ridiculous comparison, like countering a kumquat with an elephant. Happy Days was a spoof on what the Beach Blanket Bingo crowd looked like at home. Jerry Springer is a spoof on the mores of trailer trash. Springer himself never took any of it too serious. 


7. Bob Hope's class was born of vaudeville's less seamier side, kind of vaudeville lite. Hope's humor was always created to counter the grim realities of life and war. Was it based on reality? Only in allowing the common man hope that he too could get Dorothy Lamour. Larry The Cable Guy was, ironically, born of the humor of Jeff Foxworthy who now hosts The American Bible Challenge. 


8. The most distinguished hallmark of the American society is and always has been change. - Eric Sevareid. 


Scarborough would have hated his Sevareid's guts had he bothered to find out what Sevareid thought - and what he stood for. Sevareid was definitely to the left of center and one of his proudest achievements was in obtaining Adlai Stevenson's last interview. If he were alive today, he'd probably be co-hosting uber-intelligent Rachel Maddow's show. 


9. True Grit's Rooster Cogburn was not exactly a nice man and any love affair with the likes of Katherine Hepburn (in any character) would have been out of character for a misogynistic egotist. Brokeback Mountain  delved into the psyches of "macho" men in the closet. Much closer to reality and Rick Perry (regardless of leather jacket) wouldn't you say?
10. Hollywood's first real "slasher porn - "Psycho" - was made five years before the Sound of Music.


11. Drop out rates in inner cities has always been high, especially at a time when segregation dictated a poorer education for African Americans. Besides, you can't drop out of a school you're not allowed to attend. 


12. Christian prayers were "in" because diversity was not an issue (especially in Scarborough's Southern Baptist school). 


 13. Of course, Scarborough saved the most salacious and fallacious for last when he said: "...sex-education has become nothing more than the facilitation of fornication, complete with home study with the teachers, in many cases."


Has Scarborough ever visited the homes of today's youth pastors?

From Mary Magdalene To Mary Haynes: The 2000-Year-Old War On Women And Religion's Role In It.

"A woman's compromised the day's she's born."
- Miriam "Vanities" Aarons, in Clare Booth Luce's The Women


Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, but early Christian men seldom failed to realize it when trying to put women "in their place." It was St. Paul who nailed it in his letter to the Corinthians when he basically told women to shut up in church and to wear head coverings. And even though the early church had women deacons (and brave women who sometimes saved male Christian ass), the ensuing orthodox Christians knew a good thing when they saw it in making women like Mary Magdalene prostitutes and other women child-bearing chattel as meek (and virginal) as Mary the mother of Jesus.


For putting women up on a pedestal or down on a bed in a brothel was the best way to keep them out of the middle - and equal with men.


Of course, there have been matriarchal societies throughout history* and different attitudes towards women: e.g. in ancient Greece, the concept of a wife was quite different since a woman was taken in as the man's "sister" and subsequently became a more integral part of his family. But let's face it, the Western Civilization built upon Judeo-Christian standards has always compromised women.Women as equals to men is a very recent construct.


A construct most people, especially the Christian Right, still cannot countenance. The latest denunciation of Catholic nuns' endeavors in social justice have been denounced by Benedict XVI not only because he is trying to placate America's Christian Right, but also because as the mainstay of patriarchal Roman Catholicism, the pope must keep nuns (women) in their place. They, after all, have not been against certain issues which women should be against:

WASHINGTON (RNS) -- The Vatican has launched a crackdown on the umbrella group that represents most of America's 55,000 Catholic nuns, saying that the group was not speaking out strongly enough against gay marriage, abortion and women's ordination.

COMPROMISE

Mary Magdalene was compromised. Lucretia Borgia was compromised.** Eleanor of Aquitaine was compromised. Even Eleanor Roosevelt was compromised.*** With the exception of a celebratory few in entertainment and politics, American women have always been compromised. Religious organizations like the SBC have always seen to that. 


And sometimes it takes a strong dose of the truth to tell America's women that they are still compromised.



Every time I see The Women (screenplay by Anita Loos), I marvel at the innate intelligence of women: sure, women aren't REALLY that catty, vicious or vain, but the sophistication of the movie is remarkable - simply because women really have had to survive under the cloak of self-made machismo men have imagined. In a sense, The Women is a wake up call to women everywhere: you're compromised, all right, but you've been able to deal with being compromised for two millenium through an intelligence that belies men. Underneath the facade of "Park Avenue Playgirls" lies a will to survive no man can match.  

"This is today. Steven and I are equals. We gave ourselfves to each other of our own free will for life. And to compromise that is wrong. Shockingly wrong! 

That's what Mary Haynes thought. Although God is never mentioned in The Women, the presence of religion and imposed mores is pervasive and substantial: it allowed Mary to think that "morality" included a kind equality. But she comes to a rude awakening later when, in Reno, Miriam tells her the truth. Then the very end of The Women shakes us to the core with the ultimate truth: women are still compromised. When the question of self-respect (in going back to her wayward husband) is brought to the fore, Mary responds:

"Pride is something a woman in love 

can't afford."****

So there's always been, in a sense, a war on women by a society formulated by religion, and maybe when women counterattack the the primal causes of doctrine and the clergy, they can finally receive the one thing that has eluded them for the last two thousand years: respect. 









*The most recent being the matriarchal society of the Filipines.
** Her father, Pope Alexander VI used both her and her brother Cesare as political pawns. The portrait of Lucretia as a poisoning fem fatale was both fictitious and unjustified.
*** Eleanor's lack of beauty compromised her from day one: in a letter to his mother, Sara Delano, FDR actually apologized for it. Unflattering cartoons were used against her, hiding the fact that she was a superb stateswoman. 

****Gay men like me have always looked to strong or beleaguered women for inspiration and support. At the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, a showing of The Women, Mildred Pierce, or Auntie Mame guarantees a packed house overflowing with notepads at the ready. Even the camp classic Valley of the Dolls exudes a kind of female machismo. What they sense most, however, is the fact that women are compromised - retrained - in their lives by society, an aspect many formerly closeted gays know all too well. 

What War On Women?

Every time I see The Women (screenplay by Anita Loos), I marvel at the innate intelligence of their sex: sure, women aren't REALLY that catty, vicious or vain, but the sophistication of the movie is remarkable - simply because women really have had to survive under the cloak of self-made machismo men have imagined. 


Gay men have always looked to strong or beleaguered women for inspiration and support. At the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, a showing of The Women, Mildred Pierce*, or Auntie Mame guarantees a packed house overflowing with notepads at the ready. Even the camp classic Valley of the Dolls exudes a kind of female machismo.**


Yes, there is a war on women. But it's the same war women have been in for the past 2000 years in what is laughingly called "Western Civilization." In The Women, it's Miriam "Vanities" Arrons (Paulette Goddard) who puts it best: "A woman's compromised from the day she's born." And in movies like The Women, we're made to realize just what good, intelligent, witty warriors they are. 


More power to them.

* Often referred to as "Mildred Fierce".
** Helen Lawson: "They drummed you out of Hollywood so you come crawling back to Broadway, Well, Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope."

The Monday Sermon: What If What You Believe Is Really Just...Crap?

Belief is hallowed in our country.
Maybe a bit too much.


"I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows..." Nice. Inspirational. Not true, but who cares?(1) Statements of belief in any credo, philosophy, experience or person have always been sacrosanct to Americans. When "I believe" is uttered with any amount of intensity, it commands respect. "I believe in Joe Blow" rings with commitment. Sometimes "I believe" challenges the listener: NOT believing is decidedly wrong.


"It's what we BELIEVE!" is probably the most ubiquitous response to any criticism of religion. Visitors to the Creation Museum in Kentucky chimed "This is what we BELIEVE!" in defense of their prideful support. Many people divide the country into "us" and "them: "believers" and "non-believers." Belief has, in effect, become a catchall defense mechanism as well as a rally cry. It is a weapon for both defense and attack. And sometimes it becomes an unassailable fortress in war.(2)


It's no wonder that criticism of any belief system (especially involving blind belief) is almost immediately looked upon with an enormous amount of contempt. And if you can't stand the contempt, well, tough - you made a conscious decision to question the system and it's your fault if you're held in contempt. True believers (and they are all true believers) don't take criticism very well.


So what if some belief is such crapola, such bullshit, such cretinous crud  that its mere existence labels the believer as someone uneducated and out of touch with reality or -worse - an unmitigated moron? Young earth Creationism is perhaps a prime example: the Creation Museum in Kentucky, in its quest to somehow "adjust" science with belief, has a Tyrannosaurus Rex blissfully chomping on vegetation in the Garden of Eden. The idea that Adam and Eve may have romped with Pebbles Flintstone and Bam Bam Rubble has given legitimate scientists cause to call the museum's reasoning "Yabba Dabba Science."


The ensuing guffaws were well deserved, but they weren't enough to stop the Museum's creators from embarking on another piece of WTF: a "lifesize" rendering of Noah's Ark.(3)


Another example of belief that is absolutely ludicrous is snake handling. The practice of snake handling is still observed in rural parts of Appalachia and the South, with handlers believing that survival from snake bites gave evidence of grace and faith. Some handlers have imbibed poisons like strychnine to prove the New Testament's Mark 16: " and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them." Needless to say, there have been some fatalities in snake handler churches.


The belief that satanic forces are at work in everything that the believer does not consider God-sanctioned are, for the most part, irrational and ludicrous:

- Evangelist C. Peter Wagner:
...asserts that Catholic saints bring honor to the spirits of darkness, and promotes the burning of their statues in Argentina. Wagner asserts that the Holy Spirit came to his associate, Cindy Jacobs (a "prophet" in Wagner’s Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders) and "told her that in [the Argentinian city of] Resistencia they must burn the idols, like the magicians did in Ephesus"

- The founder of Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, John Benefiel, has posited that the Statue of Liberty is a demonic idol (see video below)(4)

And the belief in a vengeful God always smacks of medieval superstition:

- Pat Robertson proposed that Orlando's Disney World having a "Gay Day" would result in floods, hurricanes "and possibly a meteor."
- Cindy Japan-is--shaped-like-a-dragon Jacobs said that the unusual occurrence of a mass of birds falling dead in Texas was the result of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Belief and Faith

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. Belief is clinging to a rock in the middle of a stream. Faith is knowing how to swim.

 - Alan Watts

Personally, I do not harbor a belief in God. I have, instead, a faith in God inextricably coupled with humanity: as creations, God is in all of us and faith in humanity is faith in God. One cannot exist without the other. It is the placement of God beside us, or rather, above us, that makes "believers" prone to self-loathing and have an inherent distrust of humanity. (Saint) Augustine of Hippo gave us the vehicle for self-loathing in Original Sin and its transmission through sex. "We're all sinners, born in sin" is the great leveling retort for many Christians who need to dispel any appearance of self-righteousness. 


So perhaps belief in Original Sin is...crap. It certainly is the greatest guilt complex mankind has ever had, the kind that has forced him to compensate with a bravado of wars. 

The Power of Blind Belief

It's time we should qualify the term "belief" by saying that what is meant is really "blind belief", belief where no substantial proof exists, like belief in a myth or belief in a rumor. But that qualification does not lessen its power. Blind belief has erected monuments and created wars.

Perhaps the true power of blind belief lies in the hold it has on the believer: the one who believes that all gay men die in diapers believes (or wants to believe) everything Pastor Patrick Wooden puts forth. The power of blind belief can lead the believer to automatically respect almost anyone with an "Rev." in front of their name.(5)

Blind belief has a kind of "trickle down" effect: the blind belief people have in religion trickles down -with very few filters - to belief of everything their pastors say. And it is because it has few filters that blind belief is strong: education, for example, is a filter that "true" believers distrust and many times avoid. Qualify that: education outside of the system of blind belief. That's why people actually believe Rev. Patrick Wooden.


Blind belief also feeds people's self-righteousness: in order to feel righteous, people need to be enabled by a belief which is more superior, more uplifting, more...righteous than others. That's why organizations like Americans For Truth About Homosexuality have people like Patrick Wooden on their media broadcasts. The sheer righteous arrogance that comes out of men like Patrick Wooden, DL ("Down Low") Foster, Bryan Fischer and Pat Robertson is astounding.


Yet people believe them.


Vetting Your Belief


As we've seen in the Republican party, vetting is not a conservative's strong point (e.g. Sarah Palin). The same could be said for many "social" conservatives: if a candidate says "God" and "Bible" enough times, well, that's enough for them. (6)


And it's the same with some beliefs: "That ole time religion is good enough for me" merely says that the person has never been allowed (or allowed himself) to look behind what today is called his "belief." After all, to question a televangelist like Pat Robertson, a "Prophetess" like Cindy Jacobs or a "Pastor" like Rick Warren is to question what they preach. And they preach THE WORD OF GOD! Looking in the past to believers who promoted slavery, who caused wars, who tortured and killed in the name of God is! The authority of the Bible is never questioned, and neither is the authority of the pulpit. 


It's ironic that more than any other time in history, you (and by extension - we) need to vet your beliefs, simply because purveyors of the "crap" have expanded their horizons to such a degree that some of the beliefs they proselytize are more dangerous than ever: one only need to look to Uganda and Russia, and at home, our own state legislatures. The culture wars are real. And politicians who specially pander to the Christian Right are merely enabling those televangelists and pastors who shepherd their blind believers. 


So you need to vet your beliefs as well as expose the underpinnings of others. And maybe in vetting your beliefs, you shouldn't be afraid to call some of it "crap."





1. If it were true, we'd be drowning in nasturtiums.
2. Europe's 30-years' War pitted Protestants against Catholics and claimed approximately 2 million "believers."
3. The new theme park will cost an estimated $170 million - $55 million basically subsidized by the state of Kentucky. 
4. One response/comment to the video:

ctually, the 'name' of the statue in New York is "The New Colossus" and is symbolic of all things that are great about America. Freemasons had nothing to do with funding or constructing it, the statue was a gift to the United States from French Schoolchildren. This man is either stupid, ill-read, power hungry, or, most likely, all the above.
5.myself included.

6. In the case of Newt Gingrich, it was "God" "bible" and "mea culpas".