Chuck Norris Is Afraid of the Dark - and You

In an historic development, the Democrats have fully embraced equal rights at this year's convention:




But it's got ol' Chuck quaking in his boots and hinting at some desperate last stand against all the forces of evil . . . which would be me and you, buddies:




So who's on the path of sanity and reality? You be the judge.

Gays Have Destroyed Freedom in Europe, U.S. Next

It's that ol' Radical Homosexual Agenda that's already wiped out religious liberty, parental controls, and fundamental freedoms everywhere in Europe that same-sex "marriages" exist. And now they're coming to crush America!

Listen carefully to what Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline megachurch in Rancho San Diego warns about the advancing threat - Christians will die!



The fundies and rightwing nuts have whipped themselves into such a frenzy, they really do believe we're planning to murder them all in their beds.

How do you resolve a conflict of values when it's completely out of hand and totally irrational?

Biblical Marriage Chart

This has been floating around the blogosphere awhile, but I thought I'd repost it on the Blue Truck, in case any of my truckbuddies run into somebody who mouths about "marriage has always been the same" and "the Bible says . . . ." Well, here are the plain facts of what the Old Testament has to say on the subject, with chapter and verse cited. Throw this on your Christianist neighbor and watch the but-but-buts start bubbling out of his mouth.

Click to enlarge

The point being that the Bible is a collection of books written over a span of ten centuries, containing much that merely reflects the social conditions of the time and the typical attitudes of the straight, male writers who lived back then. Therefore, there's a lot of Biblical material that is simply not true and not a good guide for us now. The Christianists who claim that every word of it is the infallible Word of God are simply, tragically, ignorantly, childishly wrong.

God is bigger than the Bible. God is bigger than the Church. God - the Love that moves the stars, in Dante's lovely phrase - yet closer than hands and feet, nearer than breathing, as Tennyson wrote - cannot be fully contained in any one mind's understanding.

On the other hand, there are many things in the Bible worth knowing, and some that are deeply moving and soul-sustaining, as many millions of quiet Christians and Jews, not raving fanatics, have discovered down through the centuries, all around the globe.

Hey Baa-by

The women of The View discuss Biblical restrictions on marriage:

Rick Perry's Army of God

Oprah Winfrey is the Antichrist - or at least his BFF: you can tell by all the good deeds she does. Japan is cursed because the present Emperor is banging a sun goddess. The Statue of Liberty is a demonic symbol. And only certain Christians have a right to rule America.

And all this is coming soon to a holy nation near you, if Rick Perry has anything to do with it.

Its 14 minutes, but you really should watch this excellent presentation Rachel does on the raving Dominionist preachers who are lined up as the main demagogues for that prayer rally in Houston next month that Butthead Rick Perry, our governor, is heavily promoting:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And the District of Columbia has been renamed the "District of Christ" by this loon, who says, "I have more authority than the Congress does."



And this peckerwood says man-woman marriage is going to be outlawed now that gay marriage is here, and straight from hell:



And forget about Magna Carta and Parliament and a thousand years of British legal history: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States all came straight out of the Bible. Don't you remember from civics class?



It's not just a few isolated wingnuts. Texas and other red states are loaded with them, go read this excellent exposé in the progressive magazine Texas Observer. Excerpt:

On September 28, 2009, at 1:40 p.m., God’s messengers visited Rick Perry. . . . The two Texas pastors . . . told Perry of God’s grand plan for Texas. A chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas was “The Prophet State,” anointed by God to lead the United States into revival and Godly government. And the governor would have a special role. . . .

At the end of their meeting, Perry asked the two pastors to pray over him. As the pastors would later recount, the Lord spoke prophetically as Schlueter laid his hands on Perry, their heads bowed before a painting of the Battle of the Alamo. Schlueter “declared over [Perry] that there was a leadership role beyond Texas and that Texas had a role beyond what people understand,” Long later told his congregation.

So you have to wonder: Is Rick Perry God’s man for president? . . .

The movement’s top prophets and apostles believe they have a direct line to God. Through them, they say, He communicates specific instructions and warnings. When mankind fails to heed the prophecies, the results can be catastrophic: earthquakes in Japan, terrorist attacks in New York, and economic collapse. On the other hand, they believe their God-given decrees have ended mad cow disease in Germany and produced rain in drought-stricken Texas.

Their beliefs can tend toward the bizarre. Some consider Freemasonry a “demonic stronghold” tantamount to witchcraft. The Democratic Party, one prominent member believes, is controlled by Jezebel and three lesser demons. Some prophets even claim to have seen demons at public meetings. They’ve taken biblical literalism to an extreme. In Texas, they engage in elaborate ceremonies involving branding irons, plumb lines and stakes inscribed with biblical passages driven into the earth of every Texas county.

If they simply professed unusual beliefs, movement leaders wouldn’t be remarkable. But what makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government. The new prophets and apostles believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take “dominion” over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the “Seven Mountains” of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world. They believe they’re intended to lord over it all. As a first step, they’re leading an “army of God” to commandeer civilian government.

In Rick Perry, they may have found their vessel. And the interest appears to be mutual.

Honk to Right Wing Watch.

Was Ex-Gay, Now Ex-Mormon

You have to watch this terrific video by Steve, who tells it like it is:




And this one by Chad, who was excommunicated for publishing the Men on a Mission calendar. Then a week after graduation, Brigham Young University actually revoked his college degree.

Straight White Male God Demands Human Sacrifices

Preferably sexually active females, please - yum. 

Oh, and pay no attention to that little man behind the curtain.  Merely an assistant, don't bother him.

My truckbuddy Heretic Tom will tell ya all about it, check it out if you dare.

OMG: It's Him!

According to a new Harris Poll:

Majorities of Republicans believe that President Obama:

--Is a socialist (67%)

--Wants to take away Americans' right to own guns (61%)

--Is a Muslim (57%)

--Wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government (51%); and

--Has done many things that are unconstitutional (55%).

Also, large numbers of Republicans also believe that President Obama:

--Resents America's heritage (47%)

--Does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do (40%)

--Was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president (45%)

--Is the "domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitution speaks of" (45%)

--Is a racist (42%)

--Want to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers (41%)

--Is doing many of the things that Hitler did (38%).

Even more remarkable perhaps, fully 24% of Republicans believe that "he may be the Anti-Christ" and 22% believe "he wants the terrorists to win."

While few Democrats believe any of these things, the proportions of Independents who do so are close to the national averages.

Did you get that, guys?  One out of four of your Republican neighbors thinks Obama might be the Antichrist.  How utterly, ludicrously, ignorantly absurd.

Everyone knows it's Oprah.

Today's Quote: Is Masturbation Natural?

Sullivan:

I speak only for males here but Shaw was certainly right in saying that 99 percent of men masturbate and 1 percent are liars. . . .

Nature is an elastic concept. The Church's grasp of it remains umbilically linked to the biology of the thirteenth century. And its allegedly celibate clerisy is the only group allowed to examine it. Hence what most adult, intelligent human beings regard as the hilarity of the hierarchy's claptrap. And hence too the impossibility of actually changing it.

So we continue to live in the late Soviet period of Catholicism. They pretend to make sense; we pretend to believe them.

Image from Wikimedia Commons:  1903 patent drawing of a male chastity device that used spikes, alarm bells, and electric shocks to prevent masturbation and nocturnal emissions.

Dayyum . . . sounds like fun, don't it?

Different Strokes for Different Folks

I used to have a certain admiration for the late Pope John Paul II as an indefatigable supporter of human rights in general, notwithstanding his also obvious support for the Catholic moral position on matters of sexuality.

But I can never forget the cold and cutting pronouncement he made in his last book, Memory and Identity, reported in the news media just a week or two after my husband's death, that same-sex marriage was an "ideology of evil."  Yes, two men and a little dog living quietly and peacefully in a little town far out on the prairie, working their jobs, serving the community, paying their taxes, attending church, buying groceries, doing all the very same things their neighbors did, day in and day out, were "objectively disordered" and "intrinsically evil," points he had already made in a letter to American bishops twenty years earlier. 

But now with my husband barely cold in the ground, I felt His Holiness's nasty, coldhearted, evil-minded words more acutely than ever before.  This was a man, it must be recalled, in a position of ultimate moral authority over more than a billion people; and for all his great intellect and wide experience, the best he could say about Cody and me is that we were evil, and promoting evil.  Really. 

Well now come to find out, as Sullivan and others have reported, the late Pontiff

whipped himself with a belt, even on vacation, and slept on the floor as acts of penitence and to bring him closer to Christian perfection, according to a new book by the Polish prelate spearheading his sainthood case...

"It's an instrument of Christian perfection," Oder said, responding to questions about how such a practice could be condoned considering Catholic teaching holds that the human body is a gift from God.

"As some members of his close entourage in Poland and in the Vatican were able to hear with their own ears, John Paul flagellated himself. In his armoire, amid all the vestments and hanging on a hanger, was a belt which he used as a whip and which he always brought to Castel Gandolfo," the papal retreat where John Paul vacationed each summer.

Sullivan, a devout Catholic, approves, saying

I have every respect for the practice of self-mortification and self-denial. . . .  I see the last Pope's embrace of these things as affecting signs of his deep and genuine closeness to God.

Yet despite his loyal support for self-flagellation - a practice which Jesus never indulged in, and never, ever recommended - that brilliant mind also has the independence to ask the pertinent question here:

So why is self-abuse inherently wrong when it is done by hand and yet saintly when it is done by whip?

Masturbation, of course, is also an "intrinsically and gravely disordered action," the Church says.

So - if you jack yourself off, or you get off with your committed partner, you are committing outrageous evil.  And destroying civilization while you're at it.  Don't even think about asking for the law to protect your love and marriage, you filthy, twisted, disordered creep, you.

But - if you whip yourself bloody in your bedroom every night, why, God smiles - and loves you even more.

Now I ask you, fellas:  Just how fucked up is that?

Christian perfection, my ass. 

And again I refer my truckbuddies to Matthew 25 for clarification.