Were They Chanting "Jesus!" "Jesus!" Or "Kill" "Kill"?

I find it odd that the only one following the teachings of Jesus Christ

 in that crowd is a Muslim.

This is Islamophobia at its worst. It is also Christofascism at its worst. 

While one can say that this kind religious intolerance and harassment shouldn't be allowed to exist, the problem we have is that it DOES. Had the Muslim man not been in front of the White House, had he been in, say, Alabama, parts of Kansas, or even parts of Southern California, who knows what would have happened to him. Had he been near any state senator who wants to "ban Sharia law" on the basis of ignorance and fear, I would not have vouchsafed his life.

Getting THE CALL: How One OpEdNews Writer Plans To Fight The Christian Right … With Their Own Weapons!

 When did I get "The Call"? I don't know. The only call I ever really heeded in my life was the call my mother gave me when I was overdue in drying the dishes. "They aren't gonna dry themselves! And you aren't foolin' me by stayin' in the bathroom like that!" Of course, she didn't know that I was seriously cultivating a love affair with my body as well as avoiding housework.

Getting "The Call" always seemed to me to be the oddest of euphemisms: why did God have to "call" you to do anything? If He needed you to do something and had to tell you to do it, He wasn't very omnipotent. "The Call" is always posited as some kind of awakening akin to a bolt of lightening or a kick in the head. The way I figured it, when you realized that you wanted to help people on both a spiritual and physical level, that's when you got "The Call." So there were no sudden flashes of enlightenment or inspiration, no burst of deep feelings or concern for my neighbor's soul. No. To me, it was just the realization that it was the time I should help someone else, in some way, somewhere. 

 

After writing about the ridiculous tyranny and fascism of today's Christian Right for the better part of seven years, the attendant realization came in the last several months: someone had to to take a stance against the hypocrites, liars, and bigots who were piling up, starting to look like vermin swarming over a piece of human flesh. In those months I saw countless men like "Bishop" Eddie Long abusing their power, righteous lobbyists like Tony Perkins and Bryan Fischer denying religion's role in teen suicides, one power-hungry but otherwise unimportant preacher holding an entire country hostage with threats to burn another religion's scriptures, and the Southern Poverty Law Center adding Christian Right-wing churches and organizations to their list of hate groups. I also saw how  the Christian Right is exporting hate in countries like Uganda and how a semi-literate storefront preacher named Steven Anderson received publicity by flaunting his ministry's "badge-of-honor" listing by the SPLC: "Well, then, if that makes us a hate group, then I guess we're a hate group."

So I decided to become an ordained minister. Oh, not just any minister, but one who could blast away at the Christian Right with an unrestrained passion, with a sense of irony, with a sense of purpose in exposing hypocrites whether clerical or lay, political or Machiavellian. A minister who could help save people from the clutches of obsessive proselytizing and provide a forum for open discussion of the spiritual. 

And I found a vehicle with which to become ordained with the beliefs I hold dear to me and which I hope will pay respect to a higher power.

The vehicle is the online spiritual diploma mill, The Universal Life Church. Along with ordination, I am able to marry, baptize and even bury people in most states. It's legal. With my ordination I am able to command  as much blind respect as all Christian Right-wing ministers (probably more earned respect, once their cloak of hypocrisy is stripped away). The ULC's main precept for it's ordination recipients is "To Live and Help Live." It commands no more than that. It does not command me to bludgeon anyone else over the head with it; in other words, it doesn't demand proselytizing. It doesn't demand automatic respect. It doesn't demand the entertainment of its followers through rituals and homilies. It doesn't demand to be the only precept, dogma, or religion.

"To Live and Help Live."

It seems so right to me: I believe we were put on this earth to survive as best as possible. We should make the most of our humanity, our human-ness, and help everyone else survive. Living up to one's human potential is at the pinnacle of praising man's creator. And lest the reader think that I'm espousing some kumbaya way of life, I think help can just as easily come from activism as it can from linking arms and singing songs of love and world peace.

And activism may be the key to avoiding the dangers of today's sinister proselytism: extreme factions of the Christian Right are pressing hard against humanity, oppressing educators, demonizing societies and politicizing compassion. Today we are bombarded by people who are audacious enough to reconstruct the past in order to redirect our future, taking to heart Rick Warren's motto: "Whatever it takes." In a sense, we could be entering an age in which a new kind of forced conversion would take hold from an opiate blend of nationalism, politics and pseudo-theology.

Oh, as an educated gay man who's lived through America's Age of AIDS, some might scoff and say that I am too biased, too inclined to left-leaning, bleeding-heart liberalism. And their point? "And He so loved the world that He gave over His only begotten Son." Hypocrites. If people expect me to strive for balance and be more objective, I say striving for balance is not the issue, whereas exposing hypocrisy is, because only by exposing hypocrisy can we cut off the head of the beast.

But isn't it rather flippant of me to take on such a serious sobriquet as "Reverend"? Not necessarily. There are some "men of the cloth" whom I can best in a debate about theology and Christianity's history. I may not be a savant in terms of spouting chapter and verse, but my intent may be more honorable than theirs, for I too can use the title as a weapon...for good as well as evil. For example: how could someone like "Rev." Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church air his hatred of homosexuals on national television, while someone who's studied more theology can't be heard to counter his blind stupidity? Answer: I didn't have the all-important "Rev." in front of my name.

Now I do.

The WAR IN WISCONSIN: Can I Be Michael Moore's Chaplain??

Honestly, it's 3:45 AM, people are now beginning to get the word about my ordination. I'm so surprised! And amid all that's going on in my own life, I still can't stop thinking about what bad shape democracy is in  - in Wisconsin of all places. Maybe their trying to emulate old Senator Joe McCarthy. But sending out goons to drag back state senators and congressman?!! WTF? 

Hell On Earth

So, how do you like it, Fred, Bryan, Pat and Tony? How about you, Michele (yeah, talking to you, Malkin - Bachmann looks like she doesn't have a clue, no surprise). THIS is what kind of world you've been making for everyone else for a long time. It's time you should know what it feels like!!

Going Berserk Over the Ten Commandments

 This is what the Lord of  hosts has to say: 'I will punish what Amalek did to Israel when he barred his way as he was coming up from Egypt.  Go, now, attack Amalek, and deal with him and all that he has under the ban.  Do not spare him, but kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.'   (1 Samuel 15:2-3 NAB)

“I’d like to see the Ten Commandments posted in public buildings and school rooms,” Dial said. “If it keeps one person from going berserk or killing folks then it’s worth the effort.”

Alabama State Sen. Gerald Dial is seeking the amendment in order to stop people “from going berserk or killing folks,” which presumably occurs due to the absence of the Ten Commandments from public institutions. According to Dial, “Whether you’re Baptist or Christian or Muslim or anything else the Ten Commandments are rules we ought to live by” and “if we did we’d have a much better world.”


Hmmm...Dial better watch out for angry Baptists since he doesn't seem to think they're Christian! And Judaism rates an "anything else." Clearly this guy is a bad extemporaneous orator. I sure wish we had a commandment, "Thous Shalt Not Give Bad Speeches." Just think how many politicians we wouldn't cote for!

The Overnight Saintliness of Bryan Fischer

Read this. 
It's AMAZING!!!

Justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas are all wrong in their ruling on the reprehensible Westboro Baptist Church protests at military funerals. Alito alone is right. As he says, the First Amendment is "not a license for vicious verbal assault." The gay-haters at Westboro have plenty of free speech avenues open to them - books, articles, video, audio, TV, radio, public forums, internet postings, emails etc. But they do not have a right to "intentionally inflict severe emotional injury on private persons." The Supremes in this 8-1 decision have taken ugliness off its leash, turned it loose, and legitimized the most vile forms of public verbal attack. They have cried havoc and let slip the dogs of vitriol. 

It's truly amazing!! ...

That Bryan Fischer thinks people will believe this crap!! OK, here comes the REAL reason for his rant:

The only upside here is that if the Supreme Court says it’s okay to say “God hates fags” - something that’s not even true, since the truth is the God loves homosexuals enough that he sent his only Son to die for them - then it certainly must be okay for students in a classroom, for public officials, and for radio talk show hosts to express reasoned and rational criticism of homosexual conduct without any kind of penalty whatsoever. We just need to tell heterophobes and Christophobes to get a grip, lighten up, back off, and read the Supreme Court’s Westboro ruling and go away. 

A backhanded move if ever there was one. 

And what exactly are "the dogs of vitriol"? A new group?

The Marquis de Sade Never Had It So Good: Phelps Is Making A Hell On Earth

Get Ready for Four Times The Hate... And Four Times The Pain!

The inmates of that asylum called Westboro Baptist Church have announced that since they have won the battle of  free speech, they will "quadruple" their assault on America and its evil ways. 


The irony about their methods of "love" in trying to save us from damnation is that they've created a hell on earth.

They are not alone, however. Far from it: there exist people and groups who are doing their best to make life hell for the rest of us. Whether we feel the lash of theocracy, are stretched on the rack by their corporate sponsors, or are placed in the embrace of the iron maiden of endless proselytizing, they will enjoy our pain and tell us that they are doing it because they "love" us. 

But perhaps the worst of all tortures is enduring their horrendously righteous arrogance, shutting off the rest of the world's philosophies from our existence, for no one is as virtuously good, as sublimely compassionate, yet as stupendously humble as they. 

In other words, in a hell on earth, the righteously arrogant will enjoy themselves immensely. 

The Marquis De Sade never had it so good.