USA: We’re so religious, even our atheists believe in God

An article in the Washington Post today discusses the results of a recent poll on Americans’ religious beliefs.

Apparently, the poll indicates the following brain boggler:

More than 90 percent of Americans — including one in five people who say they are atheists — believe in God or a universal power.

Emphasis emphatically mine.

The Post says this poll exposes the “depth and complexity” of our “deeply religious” nation:

For example, along with 21 percent of the people who describe themselves as atheists but express a belief in God or a universal spirit, more than half of those who say they are agnostic express a similar conviction.

How about the oxymorons of a deeply confused nation?

Technorati Tags: stupidity, religion

Almighty God: 1, Adopted Babies: Zero

Any fucktard can be a judge, but only believers can be adoptive parents.

In an extraordinary decision, Judge Camarata denied the Burkes’ right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being. Despite the Burkes’ “high moral and ethical standards,” he said, the New Jersey state constitution declares that “no person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience.”

Bitch, please.

Technorati Tags: adoption, theocracy as government, poor New Jersey

In ur calendar, pimpin ur missionaries

I must confess, “sexual double standard” wasn’t the first that came to mind when I saw the Mormons Exposed calendar.

More like visions of hot guys in suits showing up at my front door. To think all this time I’ve been slamming the door in their faces, when all they wanted to do was share a very special eight-inch message with me?!

Then the hormone fog receded and I realized these sweet young things almost certainly play for the other team. Reality once again intrudes. Sigh.

Gotta love the irony, though.

Technorati Tags: Mormons Exposed

The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.

This is one of my favorite maxims, because it’s so very, utterly, infallibly true.

And in heavy rotation these days, as well, what with moral-majority public servants Larry Craig and Bob Allen getting caught cruising public men’s restrooms for sex, and David Vitter exposed as a long-time patron of prostitutes.

The holier one proclaims their morality, the deeper their hole of denial.

Is it a coincidence that the recent best examples of such holey people are prominent members of a political party famous for its avowed mission to make us all good God-fearing constituents, come hell or high water?

I think not.

In fact, a careful analysis of the data indicates that the number of faith-based initiatives introduced by Congress increases in tandem with the number of closeted kinksters and homos elected to office.

Then just when it seems Republican WMO’s* have a corner on secret lives, the dark side of Mother Theresa puts them in a whole new, er, light.

The recent publication of Mother Theresa’s letters reveals a very different person than the one we all assumed we knew. The venerable nun who for so long epitomized the ideal of living in the light of God was in fact tormented by a “spiritual darkness,” a major crisis of faith, the entire time she worked in the Calcutta slum.

Yet another light-seeker living in shadow.

The difference is that Mother Theresa did not repress her pain and blame it on someone else. If, as some theorize, Mother Theresa figured out in her heart of hearts that there is no God, she did not preach fire and brimstone whilst secretly trysting with atheists in public bathrooms.

And so I say to Larry, Bob, David, and all people blindly flinging their emotional shit around in pathetic seizures of denial: Learn from the tiny woman from Macedonia. If you must feel that God has forsaken you, fine, but don’t make the rest of us unwilling actors in your passion play.

Pray to your God. Start a kick-me-I’m-gay support group. Go on a spiritual quest to the Island of Misfit Boys. Do whatever you need to do to learn to accept yourself, or at least to tolerate yourself quietly until you finally die and go to hell.

Just stop trying to find absolution by persecuting others who are just like you.

As the less-pious-than-we-thought-but-probably-more-practical Mother Theresa might have said: Deal Second stall from the wall.

*White Male Oppressors

————————-————————————————–————————–

UPDATE: It’s been brought to my attention by some Readers, and supported by credible sources, that Mother Theresa may, in fact, have flung a little shit in her time. While I’ve never been under the delusion that MT was perfect, upon pondering this further, I’ve concluded she’s perhaps less of a role model for dealing than previously stated. Thus I have made a minor edit to my original post.

Technorati Tags: Mother Theresa, religion, Larry Craig, Bob Allen, David Vitter, hypocrisy

Get your Jesus out of my uterus…in about 10 minutes.

Verily I say unto thee… Jesus H. Christ on a pogostick! Or maybe a Harley. How about a surf board? Oh hell, I’ll take the whole set.

Having sinned thusly, I get down on my knees and pray for divine intervention. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of neo-Conservativism, I shall not fear, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.

Specifically, that washable silicone Immaculate Rod you whipped out after our last maintenance session. Oh, and the Jesus Jackhammer ain’t too shabby either.

Thanks to Ardasule and Jo for the links and to Lachlan for the pogostick (you blasphemers, you).

Technorati Tags: Divine Intervention, Jesus action figures, sex toys

Who’s afraid of the big bad pussy? Part 2: Pussy Control

Last time on our program, we learned that it behooves a girl to wear her purity on her sleeve, for in this way she publicly proclaims her obedience to one of the most cherished of religious tenants: that the state of a woman’s twat is everybody else’s business.

There are few things more integral to most religions as female obedience. When half the population has a hundred percent of the pussy, it follows that finding ways to make them do what you want would become rather important.

Thus proving that obsession is the father of invention, the Bible was born, springing forth, Zeus-like, from the heads of six or seven guys who lived with their mothers. According to them, God’s plan really only has two talking points: there’s the pussy, and there’s The Boss of The Pussy. The rest is just details.

If everyone follows the plan, pussy management is as easy as the Whore of Babylon. But every once and a while, one of them is bound to get uppity, and that’s when a guy has to read her the fine print:

“And god said, let there be spanking!”

No really, that’s in the Bible. A footnote in Leviticus, I think, right after the part about not eating meat on Fridays or stoning Jews before noon.

Now heaven knows faith-based domestic violence can be a trial in this law-happy modern age. But if God had wanted the fearing to suffer alone, he wouldn’t have created online support groups.

“Get a cup of coffee and make yourself at home” over at Christian Domestic Discipline: Loving Wife-Spanking in a Christian Marriage.

Though we believe the Bible gives a husband the authority to use spanking as one tool in enforcing his authority in the home with or without his wife’s permission, in today’s world we recognize the legality that mandates that all CDD must be consensual. Therefore we will do not condone nonconsensual CDD as a rule.

This site has a plethora of “articles” and blog posts proclaiming pussy paddling as the path to peace, but they all boil down to the same ol’ thing:

• a man owes it to his wife to hurt her, lest she and her fledgling self-respect leave in the dust what God hath joined in matrimony;
• God gave women a role (doormat? punching-bag?) and it’s their sacred obligation to fulfill it;
• who let the feminists out?

Then just as I was nodding off, my eye fell upon the link for the CDD Store. 100% cotton CDD-logo wife-beaters? I had to know. I clicked.

Crotchless pantaloons.

Though we recognize by its very nature this subject can be erotic, we will keep this website as clean and wholesome as possible. However, we will not seek to deny the erotic nature of some CDD marriages as we believe it is a natural consequence of following God’s plan.

Ohhhh, that kind of plan. What’s God’s Safe Word?

Technorati Tags: Christian Domestic Discipline, spanking, gynophobia

Who’s afraid of the big bad pussy? Part 1: Purity Police

Once upon a time, back when I was young and brave, I lived in Utah. Not on purpose - I had to move there for a job. As you would expect, I worked with many people of the Mormon persuasion, and I’m happy to say that for the most part it was like working with any other folks in any other state.

Normally for Mormons, consorting with heathens in their leisure time results in plagues of locusts and eternal damnation. Luckily a convenient Revelation makes the workplace the exception to the locust/damnation rule, and Mormons may share cube space with the rest of us without jeopardizing their claim on the planet they get to rule when they die.

Thus my office was completely locust-free and we all worked hard to keep it that way. Mormons and heathens alike respected the tidy separation of church and state; we had a superficially pleasant rapport that suited us just fine. No matter how different we may have been in our private lives about religion, politics, or fashion sense, the workplace was Switzerland.

A few times, though, I found myself straying across the border into distinctly non-neutral territory.

In one such instance, a coworker with whom I had become office-chummy brought in a photo, announcing proudly as she handed it to me that it was of her daughter.

The photo showed a young girl standing on a platform in a white wedding dress two sizes too big. She smiled a mouthful of braces into the camera.

I stared at the picture, nonplussed. When my coworker had said it was of her daughter, I expected to see a typical high school head shot or maybe an awkward but sweet nuclear family photo. So an amateur studio portrait of a little girl posing in a used wedding dress kinda caught me off guard.

“She’s how old?” I finally managed.

“Fourteen,” said my friend. Lest I start looking for the shotgun somewhere in the photo, she hurried to explain, “This was taken as part of a church exercise. It’s a retreat that teaches young girls that there is value in chastity. That purity can be fun and glamorous.”

After a few moments, the painful clanging noises in my brain subsided. I handed the photo back to her and said, “I assume you have a similar picture of your son?”

And then the locusts came.

The religious notion of “purity” being crucial to a woman’s worthiness yet insignificant to a man’s is old news, but it’s still weird to me when I encounter it on the fringes of my life.

It’s like being at a stranger’s house looking for the bathroom and stumbling instead upon a dark, stinky closet that hasn’t been opened for a hundred years. I’m glad it’s not in my house, but I still worry that there’s something contagious breeding in there that can sneak out and infect everyone.

Well, get out your HazMat suits, ladies and gents, because full coverage is always in style at Pure Fashion, a faith-based “program” (shudder) for nubile young devotees of the new modesty movement.

Our goal is to show the public that it is possible to be stylish, cute, and MODEST! All styles should flatter your figure, but not draw extreme attention to any certain area.

I’m not even going to get into the bewildering double-message here: I’m supposed to dress to flatter my figure — but not draw attention to it. My ass needs to look good — but not TOO good. Is there a whore-o-meter somewhere I can use? Don’t they have those at Wal-Mart?

As Pure Fashion models…we believe we can be pretty without being provocative.

Ah. So it’s really all about making sure you are pleasing to the male gaze yet not so much that you provoke the uncontrollable lust that turns Pious Pete into Lecherous Larry, thereby dragging him kicking and screaming away from his God.

But Pure Fashion says it’s not about protecting men from their Neanderthal selves, silly, it’s about preserving girls’ hymen “innocence.”

We understand that many young women today are losing their sense of innocence at a very young age, and Pure Fashion aims to reverse this trend…

Purity people, prepare to be hoist by your own petard. I’m pretty sure that teaching young girls that they’d better hide their bodies lest they inflame the gonads of the rapist next door does more damage to their innocence than any pair of stillettos.

In any case, I am going to write to the Pure Fashion people and express my heartfelt concern about the innocence of our young men, and charge them with creating a similar “program” to protect their virtue.

I’m thinking a sort of “Pure Eye for the Christian Guy,” where good boys could learn that hiding that bulbous package within the voluminous folds of a Burqa for Men by Dockers is fun, glamorous, and required if they want to get into heaven.

I’m sure they’ll get right on that.

Coming soon: Who’s afraid of the big bad pussy? Part 2: Spank me!

Technorati Tags: religion, gynophobia, fashion, modesty

“When Big Momma made the world, she didn’t mess around.”

I got the best birthday present this year: Big Momma Makes the World, by Phyllis Root, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury.

Then she looked at the light and she looked at the dark
and she looked at that little baby looking at the light and the dark, smiling and cooing,
and Big Momma said, “That’s good. That’s real good.”

Last night I read Big Momma aloud to Kevin as he made dinner, and in between the lines, I marveled that such a book - a creation myth starring a big momma with a baby on her hip who don’t mess around - hadn’t been published sooner.

Because in a way, the Christian creation story is why, at the tender age of twelve, I became a feminist.

It was my first Catholic Sunday service. I remember the priest up at the pulpit talking, then doing his communion routine. His outfit, his choreography, his attitude set him apart from the rest of us, the rabble in the pews.

I don’t remember the finer details of his sermon, just that it was something about how since God the Father went to all the trouble of creating the world, we should just shut up, give thanks, and do what we’re told. After the service, the priest stood smirking faintly in the doorway as the congregation filed past him.

I’d been to church before, but for some reason this time it seemed strange to me that grown adults would willingly gather to hear some guy they barely know lecture them about how to be “good.” Even stranger was how people treated this guy like he was better than they were, though as far as I could tell, he was just a man in a dress. Folks seemed sheepish around him, deferential, but I couldn’t figure out why.

So I did what I discovered later is quite frowned upon by the church: I went in search of information and found the priest had no clothes.

Throughout the next several weeks of research, I discovered that part of the reason for the deferential treatment was because the priest had a weenie, and according to the Bible, those with weenies are better than those without. It’s God the Father, ya know, and there are lots of stories in his book that explain how women are second-class citizens because he created them that way, although their inherently “sinful” nature helps.

Ah well - a story’s just a story. Right?

Would that that were so. Because although there is not one tiny shred of evidence that the stories in the Bible were written by a divine, supernatural entity - rather than just some guys with parchment, Oedipal tendencies and too much time - at some point somebody told us they were true. And not just true, but God hisself’s actual “Word.”

And we bought it! I realized with amazement. Hook line and sinker.

But what really worked my tits was that it wasn’t just the men who bought it (and why wouldn’t they?) but the women as well. We even gave the thumbs-up to the Father-who-created-the-universe story - the ultimate attempt by men to deny their if not unimportant, essentially side-kick role in the creation of life.

I smacked my youthful forehead. What were we thinking? Something had to be done.

Thus from the womb of religious disillusionment was born that Uppity Rib: terrorizing the patriarchy since roughly 1980.

So now you see why, twenty-seven years later, I am so delighted by my birthday present. This generation of little girls doesn’t have to wait for some stultifying church service to annoy them into feminism. They can be led there gently and easily, from the comfort of their mothers’ arms. Growing up with Big Momma, their own goodness and power will seem as natural as the light and the dark.

And that’s good. That’s real good.

Technorati Tags: creationism, Christianity, mythology, gynophobia

Feminists and homos and Jews, oh my!

The Rev. Jerry Falwell died today. He was 73. (That’s 16 in cat years. Just FYI.)

We say goodbye to the man who founded the Moral Majority in 1979, heralding the rise of Christian conservatism in the United States which has since lead the crusade against the evils of gays, feminists, Jews, and Teletubbies.

Who will protect us now?

Who’s going to shelter us from the terrible pussy cyclone — those out-of-control feminists with their OTC birth control, abortion, and butch haircuts?

Who will keep the homos from ruining the country with their gay marriage, AIDs activism, and fabulous home decor?

Who will help us make sense of catastrophe and sorrow, now that the man who blamed feminists, gays and liberals for bringing on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks is gone?

Who will represent for our kids as well as Falwell, who set the bar pretty high when he accused a make-believe entity, the Teletubby Tinky Winky, of being gay?

Who will try to reign in that insidious “free speech” business like Falwell, who in 1984 sued Hustler magazine for a factually accurate article parody that said he lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse?

Last but not least, who will save our eternal souls from the Antichrist, whom Falwell identified in 1999 as a male Jew who was already alive somewhere, drinking the blood of sacrificial Telletubbies?

So farewell, Falwell. We’ll try to survive Armegeddon without you.

Technorati Tags: Jerry Falwell, religious right, Moral Majority, homophobia, gynophobia

Silly rabbit, Copernicus is for Jews!

So as you know, last Friday didn’t start out well for me, confronted as I was with the fact that over half the population of my country thinks Fred Flintstones really existed.

Still, there was something kinda funny about it - I mean, these are probably the same people who believe scientists have drilled a hole to Hell in Siberia and that calico cats are a sign of the devil.

Unfortunately, my comic relief didn’t last long. I just had to keep surfing until I found this at ACS Blog:

A memo being distributed by conservative Georgia and Texas legislators argues that teaching “evolution science” is unconstitutional because the Theory of Evolution originates in an 2000 year-old but newly-rediscovered Jewish conspiracy.

For two days, I have tried to laugh about this one, too. But it ain’t happenin’.

In case you missed it, these are our elected officials in government disseminating this stuff. As in, the people who run our country. Like, right now. Fucking hell.

Call me sensitive, but the last politician who talked shit about Jews ended up murdering millions of them.

The memo references The Fair Education Foundation, an organization which also says the idea that the earth revolves around the sun is a big fat Kabbalistic lie.

God had a much simpler design, theorizes their site:

“Levitating Globe: An electromagnet and computerized sensor hidden in its display stand cause the Earth to levitate motionlessly in the air.”

Could God have engineered something like that for the real Earth?

OK, maybe this is getting kinda funny.

“Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn’t misuse it”
- Pope John Paul II

Technorati Tags: evolution, creationism, religious fundamentalism in government, antisemitism, Copernicus, American Constitution Society