Periodically, I put up a reminder of what I consider a Jesusistani to be. This seems like a good time to do it again.

If you believe in the redemption offered by Jesus Christ, I have no problem with what you believe, as long as you are actually living it. Now you know what I mean by living it; you actually have compassion for the poor, and you don’t hate people because they look or think differently from you, and you despair of wars and violence in the same way that the New Testament says that Christ, himself, did.  I have found that most people who actually “walk the walk” are secure enough in their faith to not try to jam it down your throat, but are ready to talk to you about it if you wish. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had were respectful dialogues with Christians. I have laid out my wonderment at a lot of what the true Christian believes, and they’ve laid out their position on what they believe, and I have actually learned some things in the process. One of the people who taught me the most about a quiet and proud faith was Brother Tim, who lived his faith in Christ every day. I hate, hate, hate that I will not be able to visit him when I swing through Missouri in a couple of weeks.

Now, Jesusistanis….. they don’t live it. They just yell about it. A LOT. As a matter of fact, they’ve made it clear that they want to impose a law based on the Ten Commandments on everybody but THEMSELVES, as they consider themselves to be “special” and above the laws of man. They also want to do to people who don’t believe as they do what the Romans did to Jesus Christ, although the Jesusistani seems to prefer methodologies like gassing, stoning, and the gurney to the cross. Jesusistanis love to talk about their love for Jesus, but don’t seem to have ever heard even one word of the New Testament. No, the Jesusistanis are well-versed in only the OLD Testament chapters that allow them to hate gays, lower-income people, minorities, and people of other faiths. A Jesusistani can point out the Old Testament verse that allows him to despise them damn darkies in a hurry. And them fags? Why them’s an ABOMINATION, man! And don’t get the Jesusistani started on the poor-God has forsaken them! It’s all right there, in the good book!

I’m quite certain. therefore, that the notable Elder of Jesusistan Pat Robertson can go right to the page in the Bible that allows him to try to persecute people of the Muslim faith. In doing so, of course, he is so much like the Wahhabis that spawned Osama that it’s scary. But that’s never bothered Pat. After all, Jesus is on HIS side!

Another voice has joined the outcry over plans to build a mosque and Islamic Center just outside the Rutherford County seat.

Televangelist Pat Robertson said on his 700 Club program Thursday that Muslims could bribe local officials to gain influence.

“It’s entirely possible,” Robertson said after a report on his show about the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s plans to build a 52,960-square-foot mosque and community center on Veals Road off Bradyville Pike southeast of the city.

Rutherford County Mayor Ernest Burgess and others scoffed at those comments, with Burgess saying they “were so ridiculous they do not deserve a response.”

The cable TV program included an interview with Burgess, who said afterward that he was not impressed by Robertson’s statement.

During his recorded interview, Burgess said Rutherford County treats every religion the same way when it comes to development. He noted that the county has Buddhist and Hindu temples.

The Islamic Center will start with 10,000 square feet for worship services and receptions and later add offices, classrooms for religious study, a gym and an indoor pool.

Plans call for the 15-acre site to eventually include a sports field, basketball/tennis court, playground, pavilion and cemetery.

Islamic Center officials have said they are building the center in stages because they are using only local funds to pay for it, and they have not accepted contributions from elsewhere.

But Robertson claimed money from wealthy Muslims in Saudi Arabia could be used to pay for construction of the mosque. That Middle East country, he said, practices a more extreme form of Islam.

“This isn’t just religion,” the televangelist said.

He went on to say that Muslims could end up taking over the city council to pass ordinances that require public prayer and foot washing. The new Islamic Center is outside the Murfreesboro city limits. An existing center is much smaller and has been in the city for years.

And this lying, stupid son of a bitch knows that no such laws would ever pass muster. If it were actually possible to make such laws stand up in America, Robertson and those like him would have imposed a Puritan Sharia on large areas of the country a long time ago. Witch hangings would be as routine in some parts of the country as dope busts are.

Actually….. the stupidity of these claims makes me wonder what kind of prescriptions old Pat is getting, and from how many different doctors. Er, maybe not. What he’s saying now is basically what he said about “if we end segregation, them damn darkies will do this” years ago. Just change a few words here and there; the theme is exactly the same.

Is it any wonder, really, that I have a jaundiced eye towards all forms of organized religion?

This ignorant toad will pull out any stop that keeps him in the headlines. Yes, we knew that, but….. this is slightly surprising even for this racist, misogynist, bigoted piece of shit.

As anyone who has bothered to check into the “mosque” panty-twister knows, (1.) the mosque will not be built on the grounds where the WTC once stood, and (2.) the people who want to build it have been active in the community for a long time, and wish to put things there for the benefit of the community. For this son of a bitch to compare them to Nazis makes me ashamed to hold the same citizenship as he does.

Nah, Newt-we’re all aware of who it is that talks, and acts, like a Nazi. You might not wear your armband literally, but you’ve been wearing it rhetorically for a long time now.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) appeared this morning on Fox & Friends, and further laid out his opposition to the building of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York City. Indeed, Gingrich said that the center’s organizers have a radical Islamist agenda of proclaiming their triumph and superiority over America, and he compared them to Nazis putting up a sign near the Holocaust Museum.

“Look this is not about the right – first of all, there are over a hundred mosques in New York City. So people have the right to free religion, if they want it. I’ve said it openly, if they want to build this mosque in the South Bronx, I’m all for it,” said Gingrich. “Gov. Paterson has offered them state land — which, interestingly, I don’t know of any state that has offered a church or a synagogue free land — but he’s tried to solve the problem by getting them away from the site.”

“The folks who want to build this mosque — who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists — those folks don’t have any interest in reaching out to the community. They’re trying to make a case about supremacy. That’s why they won’t go anywhere else, that’s why they won’t accept any other offer.

“And I think we ought to be honest about the fact that we have a right — and this happens all the time in America. You know, Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.”

Except…. they aren’t building it “next to” the WTC site, and the only “Islamist” thing about the WTC hijackers was the name they chose to call themselves. The hijackers were MURDERERS, and the people who want to build the mosque had as much to do with the WTC attacks as the newly-minted Catholic Gingrich had to do with “Catholic” Hitler’s extermination of millions of Jewish, Slavic, Roma, and gay Europeans.

Of course, I should have expected shit like this from a guy who would divorce his cancer-stricken wife (and try to cut off paying the electric bill on her house while she recovered.) Not to mention his little speech in New Orleans where he said them 9th Ward residents drowned ‘cuz they was too STOOPID to listen to all the warnings. Damn ignorant dark inferiors.

Rushpubliscums, if this is what you think of as “leader” material, by all means-embrace the son of a bitch, and goose-step PROUDLY behind him.

The one thing that seems to be constant among wrong-wingers is the willful misinterpretation of something you said in order to make it fit a pre-packaged talking point.

An excellent example of this is an exchange I had with a wrong-winger recently. I am reposting that exchange neither as a criticism or an endorsement, but merely as I stated-an example. I won’t link directly to the exchange; instead I’ll advise you to have a look at the excellent Parsley’s Pics, where the exchange can be found.

In the course of a discussion about the proposed mosque near the WTC site, and the hysterical reactions of some of our Jesusistani bigots to the proposal, I had this to say:

I have to admit to a certain amount of ambivalence here. I see all organized forms of religion as dangerous, and incapable of sufficient rehabilitation, so I would have to say that I’m somewhat bigoted myself. It is not without reason, of course, and I don’t think I’m wrong, so I won’t be apologizing.

That is a pretty complete statement. I see ORGANIZED RELIGIONS as dangerous. I have a lot of reasons for seeing organized religions as being dangerous. I’m well aware that not all organized religions are full of haters and bigots, but history gives me reason to believe that it doesn’t take a whole lot for an organized religion to morph into something totalitarian and evil. Hell, a great many of what we would consider “mainstream” religions today were BORN bigoted and evil. I’m well aware that they aren’t all menaces (my own grandfather was a Baptist minister who went into bars to talk to derelicts, and served as a constable while refusing to wear a sidearm,) but there is so much wrong in the world that can be traced back to religion that I have a very jaundiced eye towards organized religion of any form. While I would never endeavor to take away anyone’s freedom to believe whatever you want to believe, I don’t see any harm at all in taxing megachurches and strictly regulating what can be said about politics from the pulpit. Jefferson meant for the wall between religion and the state to be a strong one, and he was right.

Now, from my original statement, somehow comes this response.

It’s clear from your sentence that these Christian anti-Muslim bigots aren’t the only ones exhibiting irrational fear of faiths different from their own.

Not what I meant. Not even what I said. Faith isn’t the same thing as religion. Faith is what you hold to be true in your heart. I made no mention of my own faith, or my lack of faith, and I don’t have anything bad to say about one’s faith; faith is how a lot of people gain the courage to get out of bed every day. Nah, I don’t give a damn about who you pray to, or how many you’re praying to. I do, however, give a damn about whether or not you’re trying to force ME to pray as you do.

Later, the same commenter would say this.

Good point to JR above. Let’s compare the faith of Dr. King to the faith of Josef Stalin.

This comment is a mistake. A BIG mistake. Bringing Joseph Stalin into a discussion of religion is always dangerous.

Let’s take a minute to review Stalin’s roots, and you’ll see why.

At ten, he began attending church school where the Georgian children were forced to speak Russian. At sixteen, he received a scholarship to a Georgian Orthodox seminary, where he rebelled against the imperialist and religious order. Though he performed well there, he was expelled in 1899 after missing his final exams. The seminary’s records suggest he was unable to pay his tuition fees.

Stalin, a man who was perhaps the most murderous political leader of all time (though Hitler might deserve that title himself, and Pol Pot is certainly a bigger murderer on a percentage basis,) was a trained Orthodox clergyman. He would go on to rule what was supposed to be an atheistic state with great brutality, but…. I say that Stalin’s USSR was anything but an atheistic state.

Stalin didn’t outgrow his training, nor did he ever abandon it. He showed us this when he had Lenin mummified and put on permanent display, and eulogized Lenin in precisely the way that we can imagine someone might have eulogized Christ himself. Stalin didn’t want to do away with religion at all; he wanted to do away with OTHER religions in the Soviet Union. To that end, Stalin invented a new God (Lenin, who would have exploded in anger at what was done to his remains,) and then set himself up as the messenger of the departed God on Earth. If you really want to get blunt and technical about Stalinism, he came up with something not too far removed from Joseph Smith’s Mormonism, where you can advance to Godhood yourself for living the right dogmas.

Comparing Joseph Stalin to Dr. King is the wrong comparison to make. Dr. King was a tolerant man, after all, and he believed in the brotherhood of man. No, if we’re going to compare the “faith” of Stalin to someone, then we should look for someone who thought a lot like Stalin did. So let’s find some of the overall themes of Stalinist thought, and see if we can find others who think the same way in the contemporary age.

-Stalin criminalized homosexuality, which Lenin had decriminalized.

-Stalin frowned on abortion and divorce, and he made both things nearly impossible to obtain under most circumstances.

-Stalin insisted on adherence to a strict dogma, even if adherence meant that people had to die. Collectivization, relocation, industrialization…. no one knows how many people died because Stalin couldn’t alter his dogmas even a little bit. If something Stalin decreed didn’t work, there’s no way it could be Stalin’s fault, because the dogma was always right. And if you dared question Stalin’s dogmas, he had an earthly version of Hell set up in Siberia for you.

-Oh, and did you know that Stalin was a racist? In spite of his Georgian origins, he always saw Russians as the superior beings, and Stalin’s USSR was always harder on the other Soviet ethnicities-Ukrainians, Poles, Belorussians, Azeris, Armenians, and even Georgians got treated appreciably worse overall that the Russians tended to be treated.

So now…. let’s sum it all up, shall we? Racism, strict adherence to dogma, chauvinism, hatred of homosexuals, denial of a woman’s right to choose or to divorce… who is it that Stalin sounds a lot like? I submit to you that Stalin was a fundie clergyman of a new religion, and that the way he thought can be found in fundamentalist religion today, all over the world. Osama bin Laden, John Hagee, Peter LaBarbera…. these men have a whole lot more in common with the “atheist” Stalin than genuine men of faith like Dr. King will ever have.

Stalin, in my opinion, should be a reinforcement of my skepticism when it comes to organized religion. I say that the Georgian priests that trained Stalin had a whole lot to do with what he became. As a brutal religious crackpot, Stalin is far from alone in history; there were brutal Popes, muezzins, and cult leaders aplenty throughout the known history of humanity. The difference in most of them and Stalin is that they used a pre-conceived Deity to justify their brutality, where Stalin invented his own to justify his murderous ways. And Stalin’s self-anointed Deism would itself be held up as an excuse for murderous behavior by imitators like Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, and Pol Pot.

The dark truth of organized religion is that there will always be a measurable number among the religious who aren’t really interested in praising anything but themselves, and their own way of thinking. “Fundamentalist” sects are way too often about a million miles away from the scriptures they claim to be adhering to, or they “cherry pick” the scriptures they’ll hold up. In the holy books of the Middle East can be found justifications for slavery, prostitution, murder, theft, and sexual deviations that I can’t even think long about without getting sick. Fundamentalism, itself, tends to confer a great deal of earthly authority to a single leader, who can find a whole lot of wrong ways to use that authority. Jim Jones may have been ordained by the Disciples of Christ, but he got most of his dogmas from his experiences with the Assemblies of God. Jones wasn’t an accidental happening, or even an anomaly; the fundies spawn little cults all the time, and over-the-top behavior is well known among them. On a grand scale, fundamentalist belief can lead to events like World War II, or the genocides of entire races of people. Go to your history books and see for yourself how often the annihilation of an entire class of people has been justified as the upholding of some kind of a “greater good.”

To sum up my attitude in a nutshell, it would go like this: I won’t tell you how wrong your religion is if you avoid telling me how RIGHT you are. And please, find an example besides Stalin if you want to argue with me about it.

According to the official dogma of the Catholic Church, a woman in the clergy is every bit as repugnant as fiddling with the kiddies. Worse, really. We all know how the Church has worked over the decades to protect their large stable of pedophile priests. But as far as this woman shit goes, oh no…. they don’t fuck around with this at all. Not for a second.

I set foot in no house of worship for any reason, and every time I see something like this, I am more convinced than ever of the correctness of my ways. A lot of people who have trouble with the fundies have no problem at all with “mainstream” religious organizations. I’m telling you right now, it isn’t a particular flavor of organized religion; it IS organized religion that is the problem.

Christ said you could find him in your closet if you wanted to. Believe me, you’re better off going to your closet than you will be going to a church…

The Vatican today made the “attempted ordination” of women one of the gravest crimes under church law, putting it in the same category as clerical sex abuse of minors, heresy and schism.

The new rules, which have been sent to bishops around the world, apply equally to Catholic women who agree to a ceremony of ordination and to the bishop who conducts it. Both would be excommunicated. Since the Vatican does not accept that women can become priests, it does not recognise the outcome of any such ceremony.

The latest move, which appeared to bar and bolt the door to Catholic women priests, came at a time when the Church of England moved in the opposite direction, to a step closer to the ordination of female bishops.

Good old BeneDICK. His Holiness is sure intent on protecting us all from those dirty damned women, isn’t he?

I wish he’d had such enthusiasm for protecting children.

This Judge made a perfectly rational, and Constitutional, ruling. Which happens quite often when you take religion out of the equation. The Framers, of course, would want it exactly that way.

The sooner we normalize the lives of gay American citizens, the sooner we can go on, and try to tackle some actual problems. It sickens me to think of how much money, how much time, and how many damned votes have been expended on nothing but irrational hatred. The kind of hatred that allows a warmongetring, elitist, iuncompetent monkey to get himself a second term in office.

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday found that a law barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, ruling that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same federal benefits as heterosexual couples.

Judge Joseph L. Tauro of United States District Court in Boston sided with the plaintiffs in two separate cases brought by the state attorney general and a gay-rights group.

Although legal experts disagreed over how the rulings would fare on appeal, the judge’s decisions were nonetheless sure to further inflame the nationwide debate over same-sex marriage and gay rights.

Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said that federal officials were reviewing the decision and had no further comment. But lawyers for the plaintiffs said they fully expected the Obama administration to appeal. An appeal would be heard by the First Circuit, which also includes Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire.

In the case brought by Attorney General Martha Coakley, Judge Tauro found that the 1996 law, known as the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, compels Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens in order to receive federal funds for certain programs.

The other case, brought by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, focused more narrowly on equal protection as applied to a handful of federal benefits. In that case, Judge Tauro agreed that the federal law violated the equal protection clause of the constitution by denying benefits to one class of married couples — gays and lesbians — but not others.

BINGO. DOMA is an enforced discrimination that you cannot, and will not, find a Constitutional basis for, whatever your feelings might be personally about the rights of your fellow American citizens to live their lives happily and peacefully. The Constitution has only attempted to restrict, rather than enhance, the freedoms of Americans one time-and we all know how well THAT turned out, don’t we?

I wish there were more Judges willing to stand up for the Constitution, instead of for their political and/or religious tendencies.

Ted Haggard, move over. You’ve got some pretty expensive company in the religious hypocrite ranks.

It amazes me that a parish priest could manage to swipe this much money from a parish before getting caught doing it. What doesn’t amaze me at all is that the Rev. Kevin J. Gray spewed antigay bullshit from the pulpit, but dropped his trousers with rent boys behind the altar.

I swear…. there are so many of these guys that I am just about ready to challenge all of you to find me one of these shit-spewing hatemongers who is STRAIGHT. And good luck with that, by the way.

What could you do with a million dollars? One priest opted to buy lots of gay sex.

The Hartford Courant reports that Roman Catholic priest Kevin J. Gray, 64, was arrested in Connecticut today and charged with first-degree larceny after being accused of skimming $1.3 million from the Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon parish over the past seven years in order to spend it on rentboys and their luxe accoutrement of five-star hotels, expensive meals and whorish designer clothing.

How many times have idiot right wing politicians said over the last few decades that GUBMINT shouldn’t be in the business of helping the poor? Don’t they always claim that the churches are the ones who help the poor the best? Isn’t that why the moronic monkey set up the “faith-based initiative?”

Seems like maybe it’s time for the wingers to find some place besides the church to point to as a good place to send your money. From Jim Bakker’s air-conditioned doghouse to this asshat, the reasons for not giving your money to the preacher just keep piling up.

Photo of perfect family for children is courtesy of The Rainbow Babies. Click the pic for more info.

You may remember that awhile back, I introduced you to a study in the UK that showed that the children who grew up in households with 2 lesbian parents were happier and better adjusted than children growing up in any other kind of household. I remarked at the time that this is no surprise at all, since two women would be twice the nurturing that children from one of those “traditional” families would receive. How could they NOT thrive, really?

Indeed, how could they not? So says Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Society of Pediatrics. They took a look at different kinds of families and reached the exact same conclusions that their counterparts in the UK reached: for well adjusted, happy kids, the lesbian household is the ideal household.

I know, for damned sure, that the household of fire and brimstone Bible-thumping sure as hell isn’t much of a household for children. We’ve all seen what THOSE kids do when they reach their teens, haven’t we?

Data for the current report were gathered through interviews and questionnaires that were completed by 78 index offspring when they were 10 and 17 years old and through interviews and Child Behavior Checklists that were completed by their mothers at corresponding times. The study is ongoing, with a 93% retention rate to date.

Results

According to their mothers’ reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach’s normative sample of American youth. Within the lesbian family sample, no Child Behavior Checklist differences were found among adolescent offspring who were conceived by known, as-yet-unknown, and permanently unknown donors or between offspring whose mothers were still together and offspring whose mothers had separated.

Conclusions

Adolescents who have been reared in lesbian-mother families since birth demonstrate healthy psychological adjustment. These findings have implications for the clinical care of adolescents and for pediatricians who are consulted on matters that pertain to same-sex parenting.

These findings should have every “family values” Jesusistani idiot hanging his or her empty head in shame. If you really love the children, why would you not want them in the best possible environment?

By all appearances, being an adulterous piece of white trash is some kind of prerequisite for membership in the Rushpubliscum Party of South Carolina.

Mark Sanford. Roland Corning. Kristin Maguire (all featured here in past stories, if you’re curious.)

And now, Klanbagger golden Queen of Virtue Nikki Haley takes the Rushpublscum hypocrite center stage.

You might not be familiar with Nikki, but that’s all right; Reconstitution has been keeping an eye on her ever since Caribou Barbie gave her a gushing endorsement. At that time, Nikki summed up her “values” like this:

Mark Sanford, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, all men who have cheated on their wives while in power. When faced with opportunities and temptations that come with power, how do you stay true to your family, your faith, and your values?

Haley’s answer:

You know, I think the answer is you keep the Lord, you keep your family and you keep your friends very close. And you always remember that you have to stay as humble as possible, and understand that service is just that — it is service. And you are being held to a higher standard, and so you have much more service that you have to give. And you’re a role model to everybody that follows you.

Of course, having given an answer like that, you almost knew what had to be lurking just underneath the sheets. And sure enough, Nikki Haley’s “family values” disappear the second that opportunity presents itself.

Let’s learn more about the new star of the South Carolina Rushpubliscum Party. And yes, I am aware that she’s denying it all, but you know, they ALWAYS do that to begin with. Given Nikki’s embrace of the Bible, the family, and the Wasilla White Trash Queen, I have no doubt at all about the truth of the allegations against her.

It just fits. Like a glove. Like the kind of glove a guy might wear if he was going to hike the Appalachian Trail. Know what I mean?

South Carolina political blogger and former Gov. Sanford spokesperson Will Folks says he had an affair with Republican candidate for governor Nikki Haley.
Folks wrote on his blog that he had an “inappropriate physical relationship” with Haley several years ago.  Folks says he was not married at the time, but Haley was.
Click Here To Read The Blog:
http://www.fitsnews.com/2010/05/24/will-folks-letting-the-chips-fall/
Folks says he admitted the affair because parts of the story were leaking to the media.  Folks wrote “I can sleep at night knowing I handled this the best way I knew how (the way my wife and I decided together that it needed to be handled), which was to simply tell the truth.“
In a statement from Haley on WMBF’s website Haley denies the relationship.  Haley writes “I have been 100% faithful to my husband throughout our 13 years of marriage. This claim against me is categorically and totally false.“

Haley is a three-term legislator. she is one of four Republicans seeking the party’s gubernatorial nomination.  She’s been endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the state’s former first lady, Jenny Sanford.

I have read Will Folks’s entire statement, and it rings of the truth; it reads very much like the statement of a man who is suddenly confronted with a nasty skeleton from his closet, and decides to get in front of it. Nikki Haley’s statement? Hell, she is issuing, almost word for word, the same statement every other Rushpubliscum politician issues when he or she gets caught.

When they lie, of course, they further dishonor themselves. While IOKIYAR might be the general rule, people like Nikki Haley absolutely destroy any chance that Americans will ever be able to trust the people who run for office. These “family values” types do damage that spreads far beyond their own families.

It’s time for Nikki to reverse that trend, come clean, and take her lumps. She certainly doesn’t seem to have had a problem taking her HUMPS, does she?