Because sodomy came from Sodom… GET IT?
A hot stream of crazy spewed from Pat Robertson’s mouthhole — something about same sex marriage leading to angel rape, and the destruction of American civilization as we know it:
I think we need to remember the term sodomy came from a town known as Sodom and Sodom was destroyed by God Almighty and the thing that they practiced was homosexual activity and even they tried to rape angels who came down there, so that’s the kind of people they were. But beyond that, Jesus when He spoke of Sodom He didn’t say anything about the homosexuality he talked about just the fact that business was as usual until God decided to destroy it. And He sent an angel down there and He said to Lot and his family, ‘get out now because I’m gonna destroy this whole area.’ That’s where sodomy came from, we use the term sodomy and it means Sodom. What’s it like? We’re heading that way as a nation. In history there’s never been a civilization ever in history that has embraced homosexuality and turned away from traditional fidelity, traditional marriage, traditional child-rearing, and has survived. There isn’t one single civilization that has survived that openly embraced homosexuality. So you say, “what’s going to happen to America?” Well if history is any guide, the same thing’s going to happen to us.
…
It’s not a pretty world we live in right now, and we need all of God’s help we can get. And I don’t think we are not exactly setting ourselves up for His favor.
Somebody get this man his pudding. He’s getting agitated.
[via Right Wing Watch]
[cross-posted at ABLC]
Xecky Gilchrist
So if no angels go to New York, we’re OK, right?
Joe Max
And so Lot, the holiest man in Sodom, had a solution! To keep the angels from getting raped, he proposed to send his daughters out into the crowd, and let them get raped instead!
(The same daughters who, later that week, decided it was a good idea to get the old man drunk and have sex with him.)
Family values!
maya
Once again Gomorrah gets no respect.
JGabriel
Xecky Gilchrist:
I’m in New York. Look at my userid.
It’s too late.
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Guster
I would totally gay rape an angel.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Robertson hates us for our freedoms.
mike in dc
All the fundies are going to really crap bricks when members of their congregations come out and start asking for their unions to be consecrated before the Lord. I think that’s the real concern that they’re not being up front about…not that acceptance of homosexuality is changing secular society, but that it’s changing their society.
General Stuck
Somebody go check on why the Rapture is late, and we have to listen to crazy motherfuckers talking about “Angel Rape” coming from gay marriage. Send em out on Jeebus Airlines, to whatever shit hole in space will take em. Can’t even read my internets in peace.
JGabriel
Pat Robertson:
Anyone want to field that question for Pat?
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Linda Featheringill
I think that no culture has endured forever, regardless of the sexual habits of the inhabitants thereof.
Nations come and go. Societies come and go. Cultures come and go. And yes, religions come and go.
Preachers of a certain type come so soon and leave so late, but they, too, come and [eventually] go.
And sexual behavior doesn’t have a damned thing to do with it.
gnomedad
I thought for a moment Pat was getting a clue, but he recovered.
arguingwithsignposts
Ezekiel 16:49-50 – ESV
maybe Pat’s onto something, but not in the way he thinks.
Linda Featheringill
JGabriel #9
Pat Robertson: “That’s where sodomy came from, we use the term sodomy and it means Sodom. What’s it like?”
JGabriel: “Anyone want to field that question for Pat?”
Me: Pat, why are you so curious? Is there something you’re not telling us?
Emerald
Technically speaking, ya know, he’s right. The ancient Greeks and Romans embraced homosexuality (the Greeks more openly than the Romans, but still), and neither one survived.
There it is, right there in History. Both of those civilizations died. Because, like, Zeus didn’t approve. Or maybe Apollo. Or something.
GregB
Does Pat Robertson know where Santorum came from?
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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Fortunately, President Obama is a fast learner, so his position on full human rights for gay people will eventually evolve quickly.
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MAJeff
It’ll be January 2013. So be it. A statement of support for marriage equality will accomplish pretty much nothing in terms of policy. I’d rather have policy than a symbolic statement that carries no weight.
Davis X. Machina
You can’t rape an angel. They don’t have corporeal forms.
Baltimore Catechism fail.
Mike in NC
Why the hell is this old creep still breathing?
Do they call it the “700 Club” because there are actually 700 people in the entire country who’ll watch this crap?
Davis X. Machina
Boy, are you in the wrong neighborhood. Roll up your windows, lock your doors, and drive deliberately, quickly but deliberately, to the other side of town.
The last go-round was at 307 comments and counting when last I summoned the courage to look.
gbear
Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It’s just not really widely reported.
arguingwithsignposts
You know, at some point early today, reading BJ on my mobile phone, I swear I saw a “Reply” button. Maybe it was an angel.
MikeJ
Beer is proof God loves us. Incontrovertible proof denies the existence of faith. Ergo, God must give us equal proof he hates us to extend the opportunity for faith to us.
scav
Figures. There really was a rapture and all that were deemed worthy were the BJ Reply buttons.
gnomedad
Is this going to be the standard wingnut explanation for tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, crop failures … ? Maybe we should just say God hates CO2.
magurakurin
I wonder what President Romney’s position will be. Much more open I’m sure.
Dude, you are truly filled with hate. It must suck to be you. Every morning you wake up, and Obama is still there. In your kitchen. In your living room. In your head. Gnawing and grinding…
Matthew Reid Krell
@10 Linda: Dammit, you totally beat me to “selecting on the dependent variable.”
Xecky Gilchrist
I’m in New York. Look at my userid.
It’s too late.
Drat! Maybe there’s an archangel exception.
WereBear
Robertson will get a surprise pretty soon now. To quote Gore Vidal on the death of William F Buckley: I hope it’s not too hot.
arguingwithsignposts
Angels have been in New York since at least 1993.
Villago Delenda Est
Catechism? Is that some sort of Islamofascist thing? Because Pat has never heard of it.
Winston Smith
Sodom was destroyed because it was a prosperous city that ignored its poor and sick. This is explained by no fewer than four major Biblical prophets.
I hope Satan bundles up the day Robertson talks about THAT.
patroclus
As I remember my biblical etymology classes, the term “sodomy” (in English) was not developed until the 11th century or so and means something today (at least legally) that is not necessarily derivative of the biblical town called “Sodom” in English or something else in the Hebrew or Aramaic texts but rather the Middle Ages’ view of what they thought Sodom might have been because of then-current issues (you know, the whole witch hunts thing against gays that occurred frequently back in the day). But that might be too hermeneutical for Reverend Robertson.
As others have said, the actual texts are condemnatory of other things besides sex; such as haughtiness and the refusal to help the needy. Robertson’s “Christianity,” seems far more sex-obsessed than poverty-obsessed.
Regardless, Robertson hates gays and if he wants to use a word developed on a different continent in a different language many centuries after events purportedly described by the Babylonian-based OT Bible writers who themselves were writing centuries after the purported events, he is certainly free to do so. Not that that’s particularly enlightening to anyone over the age of 12, who can read and discern reason, fact and logic.
scav
@arguingwithsignposts;
yes, but was that Sodom or off-Sodom?
Justin Morton
I am just delighted to know that every time a state legalizes gay marriage, we get to see conservatives freak out.
This is going to be a fun 10-15 years.
arguingwithsignposts
@scav, well, it was New York, not San Francisco, so clearly off-Sodom.
Davis X. Machina
The Baltimore Catechism. In its own way, kind of an interesting thing….
Spaghetti Lee
I’d rather nobody used the term “hot stream” in reference to anything coming out of Pat Robertson’s body.
Culture of Truth
I give him this – Pat Robertson has been letting his freak flag fly for 30 years.
Linda Featheringill
Matthew Krell #27
Yeah, I’m pretty swift on my day off. I’ll start slowing down tomorrow.
:-)
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@26 magurakurin
Probably no more open than the Republican-controlled New York State Senate, true.
No, asshopper. Balloonbaggers hate. I merely analyze. Speaking of which, this thread has turned to a discussion of sodomy, which Ginni and I take an especially keen interest in. I’ll be going now to get the popcorn – or at least the butter.
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IrishGirl
If a baby can be conceived between the Holy Spirit and a human woman, then surely angels can be raped. I’m just sayin……
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Winston Smith @ 32
Then there’s the modern science and scholarship* that suggests that YHWH only became the God of the Hebrews ex post facto.
*That’s a link to my favorite episode of Nova at Hulu, so watch when you’ve got the time.
ETA: patroclus @ 33 made partial reference to what I’m talkin’ bout.
Villago Delenda Est
Davis X., you know darn well that the Baltimore Catechism has nothing at all to do with Christianity as Pat Robertson understands it.
It might as well be in Aramaic or something.
eemom
Speaking of teh Reply button — WTF??
We were told the problem was being “worked on” — what, like 6 weeks ago?
Since then it’s been **crickets**
Somebody needs to e-mail Cole. He always appreciates a gentle reminder.
trixie larue
Maybe someone has already answered this. But is there any mention of God smoting Georgia for their inhumane immigration policy that allowed the state’s biggest source of income to rot in the fields? I guess they need to be asking some questions about that.
Omnes Omnibus
I would like some pudding.
GregB
So is Robertson saying that sodomy will be renamed New Yorking?
MikeJ
Have you ever seen those short gowns they wear? They’re asking for it.
arguingwithsignposts
Apparently, when the Georgian farmers go all “Deliverance” on some angels, God will get right on that.
wasabi gasp
God’s such a dick, and Pat just keeps on staying with him.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
eemom @ 45
It’s been about a week, and I believe it’s something the FYWP developers are working on, not someone backstage at BJ.
BTW: You seem to be taking on a trait- impatience- of those firebaggers you so loathe. Careful, sister.
Davis X. Machina
Objection, your Honor, the statement assumes facts not in evidence, to wit, that Pat Robertson understands Christianity, in any identifiable shape.
I for one will just sit here and exercise the theological virtue of charity for a bit, thinking nothing but good thoughts for the immortal soul of the benighted old heretic.
For there is, as St. Augustine reminds us, space for a sinner to repent, if thrown from his horse, yea, even between the saddle and the ground.
arguingwithsignposts
@Davis X Machina:
Would I have to repent for rooting for injuries on that one?
Gin & Tonic
Especially from you.
General Stuck
And wingnuts don’t reflect themselves in a mirror. But there they are.
JGabriel
trixie larue:
One could argue that the crops rotting in the fields are God’s acts of smoting Georgia.
One would think that people who believe in that kind of thing should interpret it that way.
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magurakurin
@UCT whatever. It seems like you hate Obama to me, but I guess I’m wrong. Over a year of posts that I can recall, calling him out, regardless of the topic of the thread. Apparently, though, it is just analysis.
I still figure it sucks to be you. Why anyone would get so obsessive, I mean analytic, over one political figure is beyond my limited “asshopper’s” means.
jl
“In history there’s never been a civilization ever in history that has embraced homosexuality and turned away from traditional fidelity, traditional marriage, traditional child-rearing, and has survived.”
I don’t get the ‘never been a civilization’ argument. If he means ‘civilization’ as a political entity, well, then no civilization has survived. That will include the US, sooner or later (as per the wisdom of John Adams, Founding Father who understood that).
As for civilization in terms of culture, that evolves as it will, sometimes as the political entity changes, sometimes not.
It is interesting how simply allowing people to arrange their affairs as they wish is termed an ’embrace’.
Poor Robertson, he is fighting a losing battle. By his definition, more and more people in the US are embracing the lifestyle (that is, not feeling it is the governments job to police personal relationships on an arbitrary basis) and there is nothing he can do about it.
Me, I do NOT embrace the lifestyle, at least by Robertson’s definition. I do NOT support ‘gay marriage’. I am so pissed over the marriage controversy that I do not support heterosexual marriage. Civil unions for everyone! The government grants licenses for civil unions. A couple wants to get married, they can find themselves a church that will do something called marriage.
The nonsense about marriage, for me at least, has polluted the word ‘marriage’ with to much confusion between church and state. So, out it goes from the gummint law books, if I had my way.
But my idea won’t happen, and we have to live with this quasi religious concept that is also a state sanctioned institution that should be regulated on grounds of equity, social usefulness, and establishment of legal rights and obligations, and not any religious stuff.
lacp
So this is Pat’s version of It’s A Wonderful Life? Every time a state legislature votes in favor of gay marriage, an angel takes it up the pipe?
Mark S.
I’d say the Greeks had a pretty good run in terms of civilizations. I love when Americans diagnose the fall of civilizations when we’ve only been around for 200 years.
Isn’t there a part in Genesis where Abraham talks God down from killing everybody in Sodom if he can find five good people? And then it’s just dropped as if it didn’t happen? It’s almost as good as the three separate stories of Abraham going to a foreign land, saying Sarah is his sister, getting caught fucking her, and the hijinks that follow. It’s amazing that it took centuries for people to figure out that the Torah was written by several different people and somewhat haphazardly stitched together.
cbear
Oh, the buggery. The buggery.
I blame the Bravo channel.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@58 magurakurin
Not true – please review my posts again. I stay on-topic, or comment on an open thread. BTW, Ginni said skip the popcorn, just bring the butter. Mmm mmm mm.
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Punchy
Perhaps he meant angle rape, the forced sex with a sextant.
jl
@12 arguingwithsignposts
And also too, in terms of what the Bible actually says, the preacherman’s argument is either wrong or incomplete.
Back in the day, I’ve read that the priests thought sexual immorality was part of, or at least an invariable sign, of idolatry, or blasphemy, or disbelief. So there was not a clean split between them.
But it is clear from how the Old Testament chose to describe the sins, what the source of the problem was: luxury, idleness, pride, selfishness. Note that the judgment for these sins was on the city, not individuals. So that takes are of the argument that the government has no role, and the duty to Christian Charity is always always and only individual and voluntary.
These people make not one whit of sense.
Thanks arguing, for getting the passages. I was revving up a Bible search engine, then figures another commenter must have chimed in.
arguingwithsignposts
@MarkS:
he talks God down to 10 righteous people. Apparently, there weren’t 10 righteous people – sort of like a workday at a wingnut think thank.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
arguingwithsignposts & Mark S.
From 100 down to 10…And it was Lot, not Abram/Abraham.
arguingwithsignposts
@Temporarily:
ETA: That’s the wiki version, but includes relevant passages.
ETA2: Best not to question a former fundamentalist seminarian’s bible story knowledge. :)
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
You got me.
That’s the problem with having grown up Catholic- I didn’t get the Old Testament drilled into my head.
ETA: Hey, arguingwithsignposts, have you ever read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael series?
jl
And remember how the judgment of Sodom began. God is pissed at Sodom and tells Abraham that it will be destroyed if there are not 50 righteous people in the city. Abraham argues God down to ten.
So God sends two angles to Lot’s place in Sodom, and the crowd wants Lot to throw them outside so they can rape, beat and steal from the angels.
What does that have to do with consenting relations between two adults?
Anyway, it fits with the other OT passages arguingwithsignposts put up.
It amazes me that this twisted version of Christianity has a hold on so much of the country. It amazes me even more that the apparently totally irreligious people in the media take it seriously.
But maybe it shouldn’t amaze me. If the real religion in question is worship of power, force, might, resentment, fear, vengeance and cruelty, then it all fits.
As James Barr, the Presyterian theologian wrote, if the traditional Christian concept of heresy ever meant anything at all, the modern US Xtianist Dispensationalist Endtimers are heretics.
Edit: darn you arguin’ you beat me again!
arguingwithsignposts
@Temporarily – haven’t heard of it. will check it out.
Dennis SGMM
If NASA was worth a damn they’d be working on a Golgafrincham Ark Fleet. Robertson, et al, are perfect candidates for Ship C.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@ aws Ishmael, The Story of B and My Ishmael, in that order. If you decide to shoot up the Discovery Channel at some point, please don’t blame it on Quinn.
boss bitch
Pat Robertson would change his mind if Obama declared he was for gay marriage.
arguingwithsignposts
@jl – one more before I head off for the evening – your version is much more developed, almost a mini-sermon. I like that.
One thing I did learn from the days in the seminary is when you’re going to quote chapter and verse, you’d better know the context, and the history, and the way the original versions were worded, and the overall viewpoint expressed across the entire text (OT and NT), or you’re just proof-texting.
A lot of fundamentalist Xians – hell, all of them that I’ve ever met (Old Pat included) are just proof-texting their way through life, because that’s the easy way to confirm the things you already believed.
UncertaintyVicePrincipal
In the great novel Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut writes in the intro about going back to Dresden where he had been one of the very few survivors of the firebombing of Dresden as a POW in WWII, and of taking out the Gideon Bible in the hotel in Dresden to see what other stories of great destruction it might contain, and he finds the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and then he writes this:
And that’s just the intro, then the novel starts.
Hal
Argh, argh, argh. How many Republicans actually voted for Marriage in NY? 4. All but one Dem. Can we please stop with the “even Republicans, Dick Cheney…etc” are better than Obama on gay rights bullshit. Give props to the four Republicans who crossed party lines, not to 28 assholes who did not. Give props to the 29 Dems who made this possible, period.
It doesn’t matter if the Senate is controlled by pubs when it was the all but one Dem, and 4 Republicans who made this possible.
JWL
Just Who Is Who:
“The newly minted officers aboard the U.S.S. Breckinridge didn’t know whether to take the affable young marine seriously or not. It was January 1951, and they were on their way to the fighting in Korea. In the ship’s wardroom, 20-year-old Marion G. “Pat” Robertson, a second lieutenant straight out of officer’s training at Quantico, Va., was telling them that his father, A. Willis Robertson, was a U.S. Senator from Virginia and that he was going to have Pat reassigned. Sure enough, when the First Marine Division docked in Kobe, Japan, Robertson, his college buddy Edwin Gaines and four other young officers were taken off the ship and detailed to Otsu—ostensibly to train soldiers coming off the front lines.
Such, at least, is the recollection of Paul “Pete” McCloskey, a former seven-term Republican Congressman from Northern California who was one of the young marines on the Breckinridge. “The most distinct memory I have of all this,” says McCloskey, 60, “is Pat standing on the dock at Kobe with this big grin on his face, saying, ‘So long, you guys—good luck.’ ” That memory was vividly revived years later when Robertson, by then a well-known TV evangelist, began making public reference to being a combat veteran. Says McCloskey, a decorated Marine officer who was wounded in action in Korea, “I don’t condemn Robertson for what he did 37 years ago, but I sure as hell don’t like him lying about it now.”
Mark S.
Here is an article about the wife-sister narrative, and here’s the leading theory on the composition of the Torah.
Tim Connor
No one of Importance
I nominate Allan. Especially if he mentions who suggested it. That ought to fix it.
Ruckus
A hot stream of crazy spewed from Pat Robertson’s mouthhole
I come here to read and learn new things. Don’t always get new but this is not only not new, it’s not any different than any other time. This is normal for him. His intestines are reversed. He opens his mouth and shit comes out. Call me when anything he says is of any importance to any living organism.
Mnemosyne
Psst. Dude. That’s the system we have right now. You go to the state, the state gives you a marriage license, and you choose how you want to make it official. You can have a clerk marry you on the spot if you want. You can have a judge do a secular ceremony. You can have your friend get “ordained” online and do it for you.
Churches do not grant marriage licenses. The state does. That’s why the whole “civil unions” dodge is so transparent — every hetero marriage in the entire United States is already a civil union, because marriage is a legally binding contract between two people that can only be dissolved by a court of law, not by your church’s minister.
RadioOne
The 700 club has been crazy and totally lame for at least 20 or 30 years. They always frame current political events as lame analogues to biblical events that they perceive to be disastrous from whatever version or translation of the Bible they wish to cite. Move on.
Villago Delenda Est
Which is why there should only be ONE contract. You can call it a “civil union” or a “marriage”, but it needs to be the same, identical in every way, in the eyes of the state, regardless of the sexual equipment of the two contracting parties.
If the homophobes can’t stand the idea of a “gay marriage”, then change the name to “civil union” and make it the same for everyone. The legal contract should be identical in every way. Absolutely equivalent.
What is done by some religious figure, be it the Archbishop of New York or some guy who paid $10 to be “ordained” by some guy with a laser printer is utterly irrelevant to the state’s interest in this contract.
Mnemosyne
I don’t disagree. In fact, that’s why I’m pointing out how stupid it is to try and shove gay couples into “civil unions” when every legally married couple in the United States already has a civil union.
And, no, I am not on board with ceding the word “marriage” to the haters. I think we’re much better off pointing out that marriage is already a civil contract administered by the state, so no special changes to accommodate gay couples are necessary.
Either that, or start pointing out to, say, Catholics, that Robertson thinks they’re living in sin because they didn’t get married in the right church. I’m all for reminding the various members of the Christian coalition that they don’t actually believe the same things. Catholics and Mormons may have banded together to get Prop 8 passed, but that still didn’t convince the Pope that Mormons are Christians.
FlipYrWhig
@ aws / 68:
What a record of capitulation and preemptive compromise! God totally doesn’t understand Negotiating 101.
LesGS
@ Temporarily Max McGee etc. etc. Don’t know if you are still on this thread, but thank you very much for the link to Nova’s “The Bible’s Buried Secrets.” Just spent two hours saying, “Yes! Yay, archeology!” and “Okay, that’s stretching those findings way to the outer edge” and “What, everyone doesn’t know that already?” and “OMG, didn’t anyone ever notice that God (if we’re supposed to read his character from the Bible) has no problem with polygamy or slavery, but is vehemently opposed to kings and monarchy?” and likes “judges,” including female judges guiding our communities?
A mixed bag, this YHWH guy…
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
LesGS @88
Yeah, still here.
You’re welcome! And, if you didn’t see my suggestion for aws, Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael series has its points where Quinn discusses the history behind the mythology- in the first book he makes some solid arguments that the story of the fall of man and the following story of Cain and Abel are warnings from a pastoralist culture about a culture based on sedentary agrarian practices, and that the points of these stories were lost on those sedentary agriculturalists as they became more entrenched with that way of life.
Just, uh, sayin’…
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i wonder what elseis on pat robertson’s ipod
Chris
Much as I’m enjoying Pat Robertson’s Ra’s Al Ghul impression,
That’s why marriage is still polygamous, just like in the Bible. That’s why women are still property. And that’s why interracial marriage is still illegal.
Seriously, who makes this shit up? The institution of marriage has been changing since the beginning of time. His fictional “traditional marriage” never happened. Shit, the prophet Abraham had sex with his servant just because his first wife couldn’t give him children.
LittlePig
On the contrary. Being omnicicent as well as omnipotent, He already knew how many righteous people were there, so as long as Abraham didn’t reach that number, He was just humoring His client, knowing He was gonna nuke the place regardless.
More right to say that Abraham was the Democratic negotiator here – “preemptive compromise” indeed.
Tuttle
I don’t get it. What’s odd here? Pat Robertson has been saying this exact same bullshit for 50 years now.
His etymology is absolutely correct though, if anyone fucked up what Sodom really represented it was some Romans in late antiquity since the word (or it’s Latin/French version) has been used this way since at least the 5th century CE when the term peccatum Sodomiticum appeared in a legal case with the explicit meaning of “anal sex”.
His theology is garbage, but it’s standard Fundie boilerplate.
His history is laughably inane. That civilization he speaks of not surviving, is our own. We are all Athenians.
newtons.third
So much for American Exceptionalism.
Cacti
Angel rape is a victimless crime.
David Brooks (not that one) is a dickhead.
Oh no. I often call my wife “my angel”, and she calls me “you daft old sod” on occasion. Are we doomed?
It’s probably OK though, because we’re married, so we don’t have sex.
cyntax
Hey, you know what else the Greeks embraced openly? Democracy.
We’re double screwed.
The Other Chuck
In history, there’s never been a civilization that has survived. That’s why you’re reading about them in the fucking *history* books.
The Ace & Gary Duo
What’s everyone looking at?