Two same-sex couples (so far) have been issued marriage licenses in Rowan County, Kentucky, US America, after the martyr for Jesus clerk was thrown in the hoosegow yesterday. Here’s a taste of the welcome they got:
When the couple got inside the office Friday, a man harassed them, saying “More sodomites getting married?”
[…] In a heated exchange, Davis’ supporters yelled, “I’m telling you the truth because I love you,” while opponents yelled back, “Jesus loves everyone.”
Since I was raised Catholic and therefore know nothing of the Bible, I’ll leave it to the real Christians in the audience to find the verse where Jesus said, “I show how much I love you by telling you the truth about how much I hate you”.
The highlight of this whole shitshow, for me at least, was this “you know who else jailed county clerks who failed to do their job?” quote from our martyr’s lawyer:
“Does that mean that if you’re Christian, don’t apply here; if you’re a Jew, you gotta get — what happened in Nazi Germany, what happened there first, they removed the Jews from government public employment, then they stopped patronizing them in their private businesses, then they continued to stigmatize them, then they were the ‘problems,’ then they killed them,” Staver said. “The fact of the matter is, she has a right to this employment and you don’t lose your constitutional liberties just because you are employed by the government.”
If I were philosopher-king, the first first thing I would do is ban all WWII analogies, including all “Munich” and “Chamberlain” references. They’re like songs by Air Supply or “screw in a lightbulb” jokes — everyone has heard enough of them for this lifetime. The second first thing I would do is fire all the “Christians” who won’t do their fucking jobs because they think Jesus is whispering in their ear.
schrodinger's cat
Yesterday on Snooze Hour there was a Jewish retired head of the National Cancer Institute, who was comparing Obama to Chamberlain. That meme has certainly outlived whatever usefulness it had in the first place.
Cacti
Kim Davis is the George Wallace/Orval Faubus of the marriage equality era.
In the coming decades, Kentuckians will look back on this moment and cringe.
Big ole hound
Instead of banning all references to WWII, why not ban all quotes and film from Kentucky for a few days so just to give us all an “wingnut rest”.
debbie
@schrodinger’s cat:
It was never useful, which is why the lazy and ignorant resort to it at every opportunity.
Tom Levenson
“She has a right to this employment” — not if she doesn’t do the f**king job. That’s For-Cause in any of the known universes.
Next up on Penetrating Glimpses of the Obvious: “Water is Wet, Sources Say.”
The Thin Black Duke
These motherfuckers are hateful, hateful people.
boatboy_srq
@Tom Levenson: Religiousistic Liberty is to fulfilling the obligations of an elected office as Prosperity Gospel is to taxation.
trollhattan
TBogg
penstypes an ode to Kim Davis.boatboy_srq
@Cacti: “In the coming decades”? I have Kentuckian friends and coworkers who are cringing about this now.
Cacti
@Tom Levenson:
It’s much worse than just a refusal to do a job.
She’s an elected official, who took an oath to faithfully and impartially execute the duties of her office. If her personal beliefs made that impossible, she should have resigned at once.
Offices of public trust exist for the benefit of the public, not the office holder.
Bill D.
My wife pointed out that along the same line of logic, a Catholic official could refuse to issue marriage licenses to the divorced. That category would include our dear martyr Kim Davis, btw. Sauce for the goose…
Elizabelle
@Tom Levenson:
I recall the wingnuts lining up to thank Sgt Bergdahl for his service. He was literally putting his life on the line for us, every day, until he went AWOL.
@ mistermix:
Too true. We were given our beautiful bible by an elder Protestant friend alarmed there was none in the house.
mtiffany
and the punishment for violating that decree would be internal deportation to an internment camp.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Brachiator
Your priorities are reversed, but I understand the sentiment.
Wake me when the evil United States makes Christians wear yellow crosses on their clothes.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Cancer Institute? Why was this person even on the TV?
scav
This song gets less and less unrealistic as the years roll past.
MattF
@Cacti:
Swore an oath to the Deity of her choice. Bible has a few words about how one should not break an oath of that sort.
Digger O'Dell
If I were philosopher-king, the first first thing I would do is ban all WWII analogies, including all “Munich” and “Chamberlain” references
A lot of lefties aren’t going to be happy with this. They could do without Munich and Chamberlain, but what about calling right-wingers Nazis?
Elizabelle
@Cacti:
True.
That’s why it’s so important to teach the liberal arts, history, literature, and not just engineering and other useful tracks.
And why Fox News and the rightwing wurlitzer is out in full throat, if not accurately, on issues they deem important.
boatboy_srq
@trollhattan: That’s brilliant.
So sadly true.
#DoYourJob
Brachiator
The original B-side to Elvis’ “Jail House Rock”
scuffletuffle
I would rather listen to Air Supply than most Christians.
boatboy_srq
@Cacti: Can we call them the Oathbreakers? Because that’s pretty much their stance.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: This.
dedc79
It pales in comparison to the actual crimes or the holocaust, of course, but the seemingly endless parade of holocaust analogies is, in my view, akin to spitting on the actual victims’ graves. Not that these people care.
Hal
This guy is a lawyer?
I tend to find most fundies think like this. Somehow couching your hatred in nice language makes you a “real” christian.
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: From Faubus to liberal arts, next step Charles Mingus’ Fables of Faubus. Why we need music in the schools, folks.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: I have no idea, I switched on the Snooze Hour when I got home and Margaret Warner was interviewing two prominent Jewish people on the opposite sides of the deal. One guy was pro-deal but thought Obama was weak while the other one thought that he was Chamberlain.
Frankensteinbeck
Conservatism is a protest movement. One by one, their rights to shit on other people are being stripped away.
Bex
And down the road in Tennessee a judge has denied a divorce to a (straight) couple because Supreme Court. He said the Supreme Court must clarify “when a marriage is no longer a marriage” otherwise he contended, “state courts are impaired from addressing marriage and divorce litigation altogether.” He also said “The conclusion reached by this Court is that Tennesseans have been deemed by the Supreme Court to be incompetent to define and address such keynote/cultural institutions such as marriage, and, thereby, at minimum, contested divorces.”
Sorry I can’t link, but the story is in the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The legal document is available there for all the lawyers here.
? Martin
I thought Dan Savage’s analogy was a pretty good one. Would the GOP back a Quaker county clerk denying issuing gun licenses citing their religious beliefs on pacifism?
? Martin
@Hal:
It’s not hard to become a lawyer.
Grung_e_Gene
I don’t understand how right-wingers can be so mendacious. If Kim Davis was named “Fatima” and she was a Clerk who said because of my strong Islamic faith I refuse to provide any certificates to the unbelieving christians, Faux News and the incestuous Right-Wing Internet bubble would be exploding and demanding her deportation to GITMO.
Mike in NC
This horrible Kim Davis person resembles Dick Cheney in drag.
schrodinger's cat
@Frankensteinbeck: True, and not just in this country.
trollhattan
@Bex:
Saw that. A judge like that can only be found in a bag of pretzels. Just wow.
Schlemazel
@scav: LOVE THAT, thanks for sharing!
I was raised to study the bible, went to weekly study classes as well as Sunday school. Ended up reading the thing front to back twice, once as a believer & once as a skeptic but at no time have I read much of what so many “good Christians” claim they know to be in there.
I can tell you that in Luke Jesus says something like: Anyone who does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters cannot be my disciple. While Matt tells us that He said children who curse their parents should die “the death”.
Eventually I took all of that to mean either the omnipotent supreme creator of all things was deeply schizophrenic or the whole book was pasted together rantings of people with their own agenda to make God say the things they believed a God would want them to hear.
Peter
I’m okay with some Hitler analogies, provided they are framed in a very specific way and mathematically accurate.
mikej
As to who Jesus said he hated, he was very, very clear. Rich people. People who put piety before people. That was about it.
SatanicPanic
lol, me too. I seem to remember some part about throwing the first stone, but I must be imagining that.
Elizabelle
@Gin & Tonic: Listening to it now! Never heard of it before.
Will put up links once song finishes (8+ minutes).
Ta.
constitutional mistermix
@? Martin:
Someone on Twitter asked Mike Huckleberry if he would be OK with a Muslim county clerk refusing to issue a drivers’ license to his wife.
benw
Kudos to the brave couples who are forcing the issue now. They could have just bailed to the next county over. But they volunteered to fight, so they have to face the hatred and fear at some risk to themselves. Although I’ve heard their names about 1/1000x for each mention of Kim Davis, they are fighting not just for gay rights, but for all our civil rights, and the separation of the church from the state. Thank you!
low-tech cyclist
Since mistermix has disparaged lightbulb jokes, here’s my favorite:
Q. How many midgets does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. Two.
scav
@? Martin: Well, there is a lot of memorization of all the nooks and crannies of the edifice to know how to best use them to your cliants advantage, but an adherence to truth or justice is not commonly found in the breed. They’re bred and/or winnowed for an allegience to winning, with a wide varience as to whether or not they obey the local rules of Calvinball faithfully. So long as it sounds plausible, they figure it’s billable hours. (They probably don’t quite read Frankfort’s On Bullshit the way many others do).
srv
Not Jesus, but close enough. Jim Jones.
Schlemazel
@trollhattan:
OMG! this was more than worth the read just for the G&S ode at the end. I wish it were not an image so I could post it here. That gem needs wider broadcasting!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
“[Y]ou don’t lose your constitutional liberties just because you are employed by the government.”
I see that somebody has never heard of the Hatch Act.
(Yes, that applies specifically to federal employees of the executive branch, but it has *never* been the case that government employees have unfettered First Amendment rights.)
FlipYrWhig
I’m not sure when people got so deeply confused about what a religious belief is, to the point where they would think that this ridiculous person Kim Davis is being persecuted for her beliefs. I can believe a lot of things. The things I believe have no bearing on what other people get to do under the law. Do Jain clerks get to deny hunting licenses now? Most faith traditions have this thing where what THEY believe applies to, you know, THEM, not to EVERY FUCKING OTHER PERSON. And it ain’t like Kim Davis hasn’t solemnized all kinds of hinky shit, being a county clerk in rural Kentucky.
Schlemazel
I looked it up so I could quote Luke 14:26 correctly:
The New American Standard version.
If you prefer the KJV:
Cacti
@boatboy_srq:
Absolutely.
Ms. Davis and all of her deputies have taken the following statutory oath under the laws and constitution of Kentucky:
She swore falsely to her God that she would faithfully execute the duties of her office “without favor, affection or partiality”.
She is a liar.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Heck, there would be no need. This brand of Christians mark themselves. Crosses around their necks, crosses on their clothes, Jesus fish on their cars, “Jesus is the reason for the season!” admonitions to everyone who dares to wish them happy holidays.
If I really wanted to make these people feel persecuted, I’d pass a law ordering them to take off the cross.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I suppose they’ve also never heard of the United States Armed Forces.
Amir Khalid
@constitutional mistermix:
As I’ve said before, quite a few times, this is a Saudi Arabian thing, not a Muslim thing.
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: Then I’m glad to have opened your ears. Read up on the history of that tune.
Another Holocene Human
@Hal:
There is something in the Bible about rebuking and chastising people. It’s either in the epistles or the OT, I can’t fucking remember. Anyway, Evangelicals talk about their religious duty to rebuke people and stuff. Apparently Jesus having dinner parties with the scum of the earth was lost on them.
Man, I got mad earlier today about what some so-called Christian claimed their religious duty was. The funny thing is, the Bible says what will happen on Judgment Day. Jesus is going to ask you Did you clothe the naked? Did you feed the hungry?
Religious duties these freaks don’t walk, they RUN from.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): And I’m not sure what liberty it is that she’s lost.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Sounds like damning with faint praise.
Never much watched the Snooze Hour. Seemed like they were always straining to be serious but inoffensive and always finding a way to be merely forgettable.
Another Holocene Human
@Grung_e_Gene: You see, it’s about Christian supremacy, and enshrining that in law.
That’s where the money for those sleazy lawyers is coming from. GLBT is just a convenient fundraising/culture war angle. Their real agenda is to wipe away CRA protections against discrimination by creed.
benw
@scav:
Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam (Nirvana Unplugged version)?
@Bex:
Yeah, this was linked in an earlier thread. That guy is a serious passive-aggressive whiner.
Bobby Thomson
@mikej: no, he could be kind of a dick, too. At least if you were a fig tree. God hates figs.
Another Holocene Human
@Schlemazel: Christian apologetics that attempt to harmonize the four Gospel accounts do make for some entertaining reading.
Chris
@dedc79:
Yes to these memes being spitting on the victims’ graves. Also, the incessant “fascism was left wing dude,” given who Hitler’s targets in the political arena were, is an especially nauseating form of it. It’s like saying “Nazism was really Jewish.”
Mike in NC
@SatanicPanic: Attended parochial school for several years and can’t recall ever seeing a priest or nun carrying a bible in the classroom.
Comrade Dread
I’d like a Muslim with a sense of humor to get a job at the DMV and then refuse to issue women driver’s licenses based on his interpretation of the Koran and see how long this ‘religious liberty’ argument would last.
LWA
@Tom Levenson:
Given that she inherited this job from her mother, and looks to pass it on to her son, I can see where she imagines in her mind that this position is her property rightfully inherited, and the looters are trespassing.
One more data point in the validation of Corey Robin’s premise- conservatism is about the maintenance of feudal privilege.
Cacti
@Another Holocene Human:
“As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous therefore and repent.” -Revelation 3:19 (KJV)
There isn’t a companion verse though that says “go ye and do likewise”.
Keith G
In a few months, this will be in the rear view mirror. Davis will eventually leave her office to be on a book tour where she will meet her next husband.
Hopefully, the longer-term offshoot of this will be a chance for the gay communities of Kentucky to strengthen and become more assertive.
LWA
@Comrade Dread: Hell, I would love to be a county recorder and let everyone know that Sochalist Jesus considers private property a hateful thing, or an IRS official who considers tax credits to corporations an abomination.
Kropadope
Man, if only I knew that I had a right to employment when not performing job duties. I’ll go tell my boss right away!!!
You don’t get to DENY people their constitutional rights as a government employee. Shit, the government even requires licensed business owners to serve all their customers.
Even my libertarian friend gets this (in the case of the govt. employee)
Another Holocene Human
@benw:
This!
Debbie
@SatanicPanic:
The liberty to discriminate.
RSA
A certain brand of Christian. Similarly, if you’re a member of the KKK, don’t apply to work at the EEOC.
Scorch
Jesus does NOT condemn gays in the Bible. His condemnation was for hypocrites and false prophets and money-changers.
Quiet as it’s kept, the Gospels of Christ are a liberal document. No really.
Why ‘lefties’ or liberals would shy away from Jesus is unclear. Christ’s words convict the right wing pharisees and pretenders. This WAS a Christian nation at one point, which is why it was liberal. That’s the good America we are fighting for.
The Gospels are pretty short, there are ‘red words’ versions that make it a very quick read … and amazingly you will see liberalism and the good America explained by our Savior. That is why the Right is all about owning and shaping media. The fundies don’t read, they follow.
Maybe this is obvious stuff … I just point it out since the tax-exempt clergy don’t.
Also, abortion is not in the Bible at all, though abortifacents (sp?) existed then too. It was liberal thought and the scientific method that revolutionized medicine to find a way to reduce the ~30% infant mortality rate and childbirth deaths of the mother and the diseases and birth defects and premature complications and stillborn infections and the list of miseries from all the ages in which conservative thinking ruled mankind … and incidentally followed in the steps of healing that Jesus showed, in case anyone finds reality a useful path to rightwing argument.
Comrade Misfit
@Hal:
I gather that her lawyer has never been in the Army.
Not original to me, but imagine that Davis got a job at Cracker Barrel and then refused to serve ham and eggs, because pork is an abomination. Or to serve customers who were divorced. She’d be out the door on her ass in a femtosecond.
? Martin
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
You don’t need to go nearly so far as the Hatch Act.
You have no freedom of speech or of religion as a condition of employment. The cashier at McDonalds can’t claim a first amendment defense for calling a customer a pigfucker. The cashier also cannot demand to work the register with a slung AR-15.
The only thing the constitution grants you is that the government will not act preventing you as a private citizen from doing something. Davis is not a private citizen in this case. She is a government official, and all bets are off, just as they are for that McDonalds worker.
Redshift
@Amir Khalid: Good point. It would be more apt to point out that the people vocally demanding that this clerk be allowed to put her personal religious beliefs above the law are the same ones who are hysterical about the (nonexistent) use of sharia law in America.
Of course, there’s no actual conflict there, because as with many things conservatives support, they start with the assumption that it will only ever be done by people like them, and used against those people.
Alan in SF
It’s true. Hitler killed the Jews because some guy in the Chancellery cafeteria refused to make him a ham sandwich.
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic:
Her liberty to oppress you.
beergoggles
Why would you ban Nazi references when you know with these people it’s all about projection and it’s convenient that they self-identify so readily?
Another Holocene Human
@Bobby Thomson: At least mustard met with his approval.
low-tech cyclist
@Another Holocene Human:
Well, of course – that would generally involve giving a handout to Those People. Can’t have that!
? Martin
@scav: My point being is that the following can be vastly different things:
1) A licensed lawyer
2) An effective lawyer
3) A principled lawyer
In the venn diagram, the latter two are within the first, but the overlap of the three is probably quite small.
Zinsky
“People will not truly be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
Kropadope
@Debbie:
Well, she has also since lost her liberty, full stop.
mai naem mobile
How come nobody mentions that Chamberlain was a Conservative? The assumption seems to.be that he was Labour but he was a freaking Tory.
rikyrah
The usual trick is to blame the students, their families, and their communities for the crisis in urban school systems. And, now, the curtain has been pulled back a bit so we can see the absolute power and injustice in having ignorance rule from the very top. Failure would be the only option under these circumstances.
All aboard! Claypool transfers CTA pals to CPS
Rahm’s schools CEO is putting a new spin on an old Chicago budget trick.
It’s budget season at the Board of Education, which means we’ve entered that twilight zone of misdirection where the bosses say one thing and do something else.
In this case, Forrest Claypool, Mayor Emanuel’s latest schools CEO, is making a big public to-do about how he’s cut central office spending to the bone. All so that teachers, facing a 7 percent pay cut, and principals, worried about millions in budget cuts, will not feel so alone. Or as Claypool, who the mayor brought in from the CTA, recently put it during a press conference: “Everybody’s got to pitch in.”
Meanwhile, very quietly—with nary a press conference—Claypool’s padding the payroll with various rubber stamps, most of whom have no experience in public education. (If you think you’ve seen this trick before, you’re right: Ron Huberman, Mayor Daley’s last schools CEO, tried much the same thing.) As exasperating as this practice sounds to anyone who has to teach or attend a public school, it’s sort of a field day for reporters looking for examples of double standards in Chicago.
Just a few days ago, George Schmidt, the ageless writer for Substance News, broke the story that Claypool had hired a former CTA staffer named Ronald DeNard as his $225,000-a-year senior vice president of finance. (He’s at least the third former CTA official Claypool has brought on. If you hear of any more, let me know.) Basically, DeNard is now the guy in charge of the budget. CPS already had a high-ranking guy in charge of the budget, Tim Cawley, so now we have two. Lucky us.
Then Lauren FitzPatrick, ace education reporter for the Sun-Times, revealed that DeNard lives in Flossmoor. So the board needed to give him a waiver on the requirement that school employees live in Chicago.
Curiously, Cawley also needed a waiver to take the job, because he lived in Winnetka. Apparently the mayor can’t find any decent accountants who live in the city.
I now feel compelled to follow up on Schmidt’s and FitzPatrick’s pieces with a schools-CEO-budget-game-column. (It’s been five years since I wrote the last one, which was about Huberman. I guess annual columns—unlike central office budget cuts—aren’t what they used to be.)
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/forrest-claypool-board-of-education-chicago-public-schools/Content?oid=18943081
Jeffro
.
Another Holocene Human
@Cacti: Well, Catholicism holds that God and Man are not equals.
Fundagelical Christianity is a whole other ball of wax.
note: I am an atheist. but still bearing a grudge from being considered “not a christian” not by, say orthodox christians who could at least point to our heresy, but by ignorant, ah kin interprit tha bay-bull fer mahself sorts who spread around mendacious anti-Catholic pamphlets.
benw
@Alan in SF:
Ha ha, joke’s on you Alan in SF! Hitler was a vegetarian!
@Another Holocene Human:
In my experience, most evangelical Christians don’t give a flying fuck what Jesus Christ actually taught. On the other hand, they go all in to cherry-pick the Old Testament texts that let them get their Smiting and Judging on. In Jesus’ name, amen!
tybee
@Digger O’Dell:
it’s been a long time since “Digger O’dell” was said in these parts. :)
burnspbesq
The only thing that could make Talibangelical Kentuckians any more angry would be if Christian Laettner were signing the marriage licenses.
What a splendid idea …
workworkwork
@? Martin: My father (a lawyer) used to say “It’s those 98% that make the rest of us look bad.”
Another Holocene Human
@Kropadope:
And in fact there is no right to employment in the United States.
Which makes the Orwellian-named “Right to Work” law all the more galling.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Careful there. Turns out some Jains are trying to force vegetarianism on everyone in their state.
From one story:
A follow-up to this story turned up on BBC news this week.
Intolerance pops up in the damnedest places. It’s sad to see how many are catching the fever.
rikyrah
See, I gotta get in on grift like this.
………..
For $525, You Can Learn How To Fight Terrorists (Muslims Need Not Apply)
September 04, 2015
“I’m going to try to scoot you guys across the finish line before you suck a bullet,” barks Larry Vickers, addressing his men with disdain. He was once among elite U.S. Army warriors, but today his troop is a ragtag assortment of two dozen male gun enthusiasts, predominantly white and beefy, on a sandy gun range in a rural South New Jersey abyss between Philadelphia and Atlantic City.
The men sport earmuffs and digital camouflage cargo shorts bought on clearance, and their beer bellies hang over gun belts stocked with pistols and extra clips. Lunch was at a diner where every overstuffed sandwich came with a side of soup—plus somebody’s wife made brownies. Yet they soldier through the cheeseburger-and-chicken-noodle fatigue.
At the sound of a beep, they stagger into grunting sprints, turn around and unload hell on paper targets. Next, to simulate the position they might assume in hiding behind a car door during a firefight, they drop to their knees—some go one-kneed but Vickers advises the “double-kneeling Monica Lewinsky” for stability—draw their pistols again and open fire, ejecting spent clips to the dirt and a spray of golden shells everywhere, including on each other. A shooter’s jeans rip down the side.
……
Vickers lives in North Carolina but travels the country teaching classes to a loyal contingent. The students today include, among others, an IT guy, a software engineer, a dog breeder and a cell phone tower installer. They’ve come from all over the Northeast and paid $525 to receive tactical training from one of the best-known instructors in a burgeoning cottage industry that takes itself deadly serious.
dedc79
@? Martin: I think the simplest way to bring this all to a close would’ve been for the court to sanction the law firm, by making them cover all the other side’s legal fees defending/opposing these motions and appeals. Courts do have that discretion, and it would be a perfectly appropriate punishment given how frivolous some of these motions and appeals have been.
And from a practical standpoint – lawyers make far worse martyrs. (I say this is as a lawyer).
Mike G
I look forward to their support of Wahhabi DMV clerks refusing to issue driver’s licenses to women.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Shit, that journalist ripped them but good.
Roger Moore
@dedc79:
It’s especially disgusting in this case because the Nazis were virulently anti-gay. If anyone in this case it acting like Nazis, its the ones who want to deny gays equal rights.
gian
@schrodinger’s cat:
In Munich. Hitler threatened war if not given the Sudetenland and was given the Sudetenland.
What war is Iran threatening if they don’t get a deal?
(In other words analogy fail)
Patrick
Instead of referendums in different states about Sharia law, could we please have referendums about Christian law or whatever these bigots wanna call it? I am so sick of these people forcing their beliefs on the rest of us.
Steve in the ATL
@Scorch:
In my experience liberals shy away from Christianist hypocrites and their interpretation of Jesus’ words. Liberal Christian churches can be hard to find, especially in the South and rural areas, so it often becomes turning away from Christianity and organize religion in general.
Cacti
Senator Cardin of Maryland has announced his opposition to the Iran deal, and will be joining Schumer and Menendez in the Dick Cheney wing of the party.
Patrick
@schrodinger’s cat:
I don’t recall Chamberlain killing our worst enemy like Obama did with Osama bin Laden. If making up crap like this man did makes him feel better, that’s fine. But it doesn’t mean it is reality.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
The liberty to enforce her beliefs on others. There seems to be a whole school of “Christians” who believe that they have the right to push their beliefs on anyone in their power, and they’re being persecuted if they’re ever prevented from doing so. Somehow they never see the irony in demanding the right to enforce their beliefs on people in their power while claiming that nobody has the right to enforce any behavior on them.
schrodinger's cat
@Scorch:
When exactly, was that? Was that before or after Jesus wrote the Declaration of Independence?
Cermet
@Scorch: The bible DOES, in fact, talk about abortion but in a manner that the vast majority of people overlook. In the old testament a couple of woman who are very advanced in their pregnancy’s are executed for various crimes and, while the sentence could be delayed for the birth so the fetus is allowed to develop, be born and then live, god deems otherwise; since god’s word is absolute in this bible thing or so the nutcase believers so often say, then the fetus isn’t a person until its born – by gods very own interpretation of the situation a pregnant woman’s fetus isn’t considered a separate human life at all but has no rights as per god’s statement in this bible thingy – so, god approves of destroying fetus’s no matter how far in term a woman is.
brantl
@SatanicPanic:
To not believe in other people’s right to marry SO THOUROUGHLY, that they can’t marry, anywhere at all. A douchebag with a Xtian-Napolean Complex.
Kyle
@Cacti:
Senator Cardin of Maryland has announced his opposition to the Iran deal, and will be joining
Schumer and Menendez in the Dick Cheney wing of the party.Hezbollah and Iranian hardline clerics who also oppose it.Mike J
@Cermet: Don’t forget having the priest perform a chemically induced abortion if the wife was sleeping with someone other than her husband.
dedc79
@Roger Moore: That’s a great point. I will admit to hate reading National Review’s The Corner from time to time, and the writers/commenters over there love nothing more than to equate advocates for gay rights with the very fascists movements (e.g. the Nazis) that persecuted gays. I think, sadly, that they know exactly what they’re doing when they make those comparisons.
Kay
I have to say, in my experience she just has a horrible attitude for a county clerk. The people who are good at that are discreet and blandly professional and efficient. This kind of over-the-top emoting she’s doing is just not compatible with that job. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable, not for her religious issues but just that even commenting on what business people are transacting when they go into that office would be considered a real breach of what I can only describe as “norms” here. The “we don’t weigh in on the merits, ever” custom is really strong among our clerks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Scorch:
Actually, if one reads the works of the founders, it explicitly was not.
Roger Moore
@Cermet:
[Citation Needed]
SiubhanDuinne
@scav:
This puts me in mind of a favorite passage from Clouds of Witness (Dorothy L. Sayers):
Cermet
@Mike J: What? I missed this one reading the bible thingy – where is that, says the true believer in reality
Mike G
@Kay:
She “inherited” the job from her mother and has come to think of it as her possession, and to withhold service from people on her personal whims and emotions. You find a similar attitude among cops in small towns, who have operated with no professional accountability for so long they start to become little dictators.
Cermet
@Roger Moore: What? You haven’t read the bible and are christian? Google that subject and read it yourself; I understand lazy relative to really reading that bible thing (most christians are and I too get the lazies) but you can’t google that yourself? It will be an eye opener …lol
Calouste
@Scorch: Why read that meandering, in places self-contradictory story, when you could read a proper scientific analysis by Marx on the same topic instead?
Roger Moore
@Cermet:
I am an atheist, but I have read the Bible cover to cover. That’s why I want a citation, because I can’t remember the incident you describe.
Ruckus
they think Jesus is whispering in their ear
Listening to the imaginary voices in your head can be a sign of mental illness.
Especially when you misinterpret what those imaginary voices actually are supposed to have said.
Ridnik Chrome
@rikyrah:
Right there’s your problem. A public school is not a business, and should not be run like one.
ETA: CPS alum here…
A Ghost To Most
@Scorch:
You mean other than the fact that all religions are based on fantasy?
Kay
@Mike G:
I haven’t even read about it because it would be so outside the norm here that as I said, it makes me uncomfortable. It comes from an idea that they know all this stuff about people that they would not know if they weren’t in that position so it’s just much better to treat all issues the same- whether it’s something public and positive like a marriage or something private and negative like a juvenile issue.
It’s a good standard for behavior, because this opining on the lives of other people in the course of her work is a slippery slope that she went hurtling down with nary a care.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: their religion is the true religion. Like Charlton Heston said, Our god IS God. They don’t see any irony.
realbtl
Ya know I think there is a very simple explanation for this whole situation. Here is someone who all of a sudden is getting attention beyond her wildest dreams. Don’t underestimate the power of this for certain types of people.
piratedan
@Steve in the ATL: well when you get a dose of those “God-fearing” southern baptists and how they interpret the messages of love, tolerance, and forgiveness that are found therein, it’s easy to see why people turn away, i.e. “I love Lenore’s fried chicken and I think I can tolerate another can of beer and I will forgive you for being a ‘Bama fan despite marrying into my family”.
They use the words, but are shaky on the concepts….
Sherparick
The fundamentalist churches, as they evolved more and more into Christianist Reconstructionism, is teaching its members that “Religious Liberty” means taking over the State and converting it to its “Christian Roots.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Reconstructionism Religious “Liberty” means that to practice their religion they have the right to force it on others and ignore the law.
Like most mass movements in their revolutionary stage, they become more and more extreme, just before (and sometimes simultaneously) becoming a racket.
boatboy_srq
@Ruckus: Deliberately misconstrued: because their beautiful minds can’t handle what He actually tells them.
scav
Note also that I’ve seen no evidence that black church-going wipes clean the sort of Davisean marital and child-getting history from interactions with the law and media. Those AA churches seemed to be admitted under the tent when they were targets of violence (and so fed into the how oppress-sed are we meme-set) but their magical ability to sanitize all past actions of individual believers from scrutiny just doesn’t work in the same fashion.
debbie
@Kay:
Here’s a different kind of county clerk:
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/04/437443464/in-1975-colo-clerk-says-same-sex-marriage-license-generated-hate
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
For some people, their religion is (maybe even unconsciously) privileged: it’s the ordinary background in front of which all life happens. It’s taken for granted that they and everyone else must (appear to) pay obeisance.
For those people, it’s only other people’s religions that are an imposition, never their own.
Ruckus
@SatanicPanic:
The puritans didn’t come here because they were being persecuted, they came here to persecute, Fundamentalists are exactly the same people. Their role in life is not to follow crazy religious practices, it is to make you follow them.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: Well, it does seem to immunize against charges of hypocrisy, but you’ve got to play that uber Christian thing in public, whereas it seems like a lot of Black Christians leave that church thing at church (and just as many won’t shut up about it at work, but I digress). My point is that Dr. Carson seemingly got pantsed about the fetal tissue thing but the anti-abortion nuts don’t give a shit!
trollhattan
@Scorch:
Pope Francis–conservative or liberal? Discuss.
Ruckus
@Steve in the ATL:
Or it could be that some of us find it to be a whole lot of bullshit, and decided not to play the game any longer.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
Yes, they believe that they are able to determine God’s true meaning by reading the Bible- in translation no less. Anyone who disagrees with them is self-evidently wrong. This sounds an awful lot like one of the seven deadly sins: pride. Someone with even a shred of humility would recognize that even if the Bible is God’s infallible word, and even if the translators of the Bible were divinely inspired to get it 100% correct, that their own fallible human judgment might misunderstand what God was getting at. Somehow, the idea that anyone could read, say, Ezekiel or Revelations and know the true meaning with 100% certainty sounds like delusions of grandeur.
Patrick
@Scorch:
When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6″But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
Matthew 6:5
catclub
speaking of other lost constitutional liberties:
Washington Monthly
Matt McIrvin
@Tom Levenson: She forbade her deputies from issuing same-sex marriage licenses. We know that five out of six of them were perfectly willing to issue them, with her out of the picture. What would have happened to them if they had decided to just ignore her and follow the law?
Paul in KY
@Scorch: Paul has some comments in Romans that the evangelical flock hang their hat on, vis a vis homosexuality.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think you can make a case that the original settlers (including but not only the Pilgrims) came here to set up their own little religious fiefdoms away from the wars in Europe. But as time went on and the different colonies had to work together, they came to realize that organizing things by religion created a lot of conflict between the colonies, so they wisely eliminated the idea of a state religion when we became our own country.
I love to give kids copies of “The Witch of Blackbird Pond” because it’s all about a religious conflict between Pilgrims and a Quaker woman who lives alone. Those early religious conflicts that led to the First Amendment tend to get glossed over in history classes, IMO.
scav
@Another Holocene Human: I was thinking more along the lines of the “They’re no Angels.” or “Broken Culture” justification for getting summarily shot by cops — never seen any investigation of church attendence as wiping all non-angeldom behavior out in those circs. General public use of the official card, especially for use of smaller people. I guess beliefs about the right to walk in public streets with or without Skittles has no biblical basis.
Paul in KY
@benw: Most evangelical ‘christians’ (as opposed to a few who really try) think Jesus was a hippy weenie.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Certainly that case can be made, but those were primarily English colonies. The United States was never a Christian nation.
Paul in KY
@Cermet: There is a passage in Old testament where a man kicked a woman who was well along in pregnancy (say 7 months or more) and she lost fetus. He had to pay some compensation, since the pregnancy was so far advanced.
If he had kicked her 2 months before & she miscarried…bupkis.
catclub
@Paul in KY: I think Will Ferrell in “Talladega Nights” is creepily accurate.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@trollhattan:
I’ve said before that the definition of “conservative” has changed so radically in the past 30 years that it’s almost impossible to use it anymore. By any rational standard, Pope Francis is conservative. It’s only our insane definition of “conservative” that makes perfectly rational acts like reaching out to Muslims or saying that, yes, sometimes divorce is necessary for one’s personal safety, or criticizing unfettered capitalism, look “liberal.”
Paul in KY
@realbtl: She will find out there’s a flip side to that.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: They were being persecuted in England (probably for the practices that led them to persecute in America).
Back then, the only correct denomination was Church of England. If you were any other sect, including Catholicism, there would be not-good ramifications.
Paul in KY
@catclub: Word.
burnspbesq
@A Ghost To Most:
There is a polite way to express that thought, but you chose to be a dick about it, so fuck you right back.
I’d like to believe that “atheist” and “asshole” aren’t synonyms, but evidence to support that theory is pretty scarce around here.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think it’s worth pointing out that we tried running colonial governments based on religion, it was a disaster, so we dropped that and said that governments — including government officials — have to be officially neutral in their duties.
I realize that people like Davis are totally ignorant of American history, but it’s worth spelling it out for the benefit of everyone else.
burnspbesq
@Matt McIrvin:
They would have ended up as successful plaintiffs in a wrongful-termination suit.
Brachiator
@Calouste:
Hah. Meandering, self-contradictory story. Are we talking about the Bible or Marx?
gus
I loled. I’m in the same boat. I’ve often said to my wife that if we decide to give our son some religious training I’m tempted to choose Catholicism because, despite it’s 15th Century attitude toward women, gays and abortion, at least most Catholics don’t take stuff too seriously. Catholics go to Mass, they don’t do Bible study. They might participate in some good community service, but they don’t proselytize. There are no restrictions on drinking or dancing, and though the Church might consider pre-marital sex a sin, my (too be sure limited) experience indicates that the vast majority of Catholics don’t pay too much attention.
Howlin Wolfe
@Tom Levenson: Also, the lawyer is woefully ignorant of the bill of rights vis-a-vis government officials. They are greatly circumscribed in their rights of speech when they speak or act on behalf of the government. If she were simply spouting her bigotry on facebook as a private citizen, then the 1st amendment might apply to any governmental attempt to curb her hate speech. But she’s acting and speaking as an official of the government, and until the law is changed, she has no “conscience” as a minor public official. She is a functionary, not a policy maker; a cog and not a legislator. As a private citizen she can lobby all she wants, but not in her official capacity.
BruceFromOhio
@Scorch:
It’s not Jesus I shy away from, even though I’ve gone pagan I think he was pretty cool and his teachings are worthy. It’s his Gaia-damned followers I want to see boosted into geosynchrous orbit, or simply thrown off roofs.
Schlemazel
@Chris:
Get down off your cross, we can use the wood.
Schlemazel
@Jeffro:
Well said!
Haydnseek
@gus: Catholics don’t proselytize???? That’ll be news to millions of people all over the world.
Geeno
@low-tech cyclist: My all time fave ->
How many software engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None – that’s hardware.
boatboy_srq
@dedc79: Especially effective given that Liberty Counsel is a Reichwingnutty outfit: penalizing them would have a bigger impact on Xtian anti-everyone-else efforts than simply jailing one of their
rubesclients.Heliopause
Well, actually, there are quite a few places where you can find Jesus or Paul doing a rough paraphrase of the above, condemning sexual immorality as they perceived it.
Look, it’s a fool’s game to argue this stuff with religionists, whether it’s Kim Davis or a proponent of Hippy Jesus. You can find justification in the Bible for just about any personal belief you may have; for instance, contrary to the Hippy Jesus religion, he was quoted as implying pretty strongly that marriage was meant to be between a man and a woman. See Matthew 19:3-6.
Marriage equality has nothing to do with Jesus and it’s silly to argue it in those terms. There are all sorts of things in the Bible that we no longer bother with for the sake of convenience, this is a decision we’ve made as a civil society that has zero to do with any sacred text or its putative characters.
boatboy_srq
@BruceFromOhio: Xtians boosted to geosynchronous orbit would be ideally placed to rain nuclear hellfire down on the planet, and you can bet some other Reichwingnut would be perfectly happy to equip them with the necessary equipment. Boosting them to heliosynchronous orbit might be somewhat more effective.
Kay
@debbie:
Ours are pleasant and bland and rigidly impersonal. I genuinely think this is a job requirement. You can’t be weighing in! My God, what else does she share her opinion about? I don’t think anyone should have to go in there with her butting in to everything. ONCE AGAIN, I am more conservative than conservatives :)
scav
@boatboy_srq: Heliosynonymous even?
trollhattan
@Schlemazel:
Tom Waits FTW.
A Ghost To Most
@burnspbesq:
And Fuck You right back, you sanctimonious book banger. Xians are just as talented at the asshole part; there are just so many that no one notices.
Question for you; had John Cole made the same remark, would you have responded the same?
Fuck you, dookie,
Alan in SF
@benw: That’s just how cruel he was. He was just messing with the guy when he asked for a ham sandwich, and then he killed all the Jews anyway.
benw
@Alan in SF: That zany Fuehrer!
Brachiator
@Scorch:
The Gospels do not have a unified perspective or point of view. And folks can read the Gospels as liberal or conservative and whatever lies in between.
That the red words represent what Jesus actually said is a convention that is not strongly supported by the evidence. But this does not (or should not) give fundamentalists or anyone else much comfort. As always, people will interpret the Bible based on what they need, not on what the text actually says.
J R in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
In fact, this country was not a christian nation when the constitution was adopted, which is why, in Article VI, paragraph 3, the constitution states that:
J R in WV
@burnspbesq:
If you see someone stating the obviously potentially valid opinion that religions are based upon fantasies as hostile and asshole-like behavior, then there is something bad wrong with your respect for others’ opinions.
I say this as one who has mostly respected your comments here, but finds this one to be way out in right field, lost, dazed and confused.
Have a nice holiday weekend, and think about it… all these religious can’t be revealed by a supreme being, as they not only contradict each other, most of them are internally contradictory when taken as a whole.
So, yeah, fantasies, mostly.
redshirt
Fuck religion.
Ruckus
@burnspbesq:
You didn’t address me directly but I’ll answer anyway.
I stated that some of us think it’s bullshit, the us being those who have no use for religion and why. I didn’t say religion is bullshit or that you are full of bullshit, although I have been tempted in the past or right now for that matter.
So here it is once again.
Religion is, in my opinion bullshit. All of them. As a lawyer you should know better than to mistake an opinion for absolute truth or that your opinion is more valuable than anyone or everyone else. And that trying to subject the rest of us to your mistaken idea that we all should agree with you because you are so worthy of respect. You aren’t.
satby
@Mike in NC: Catholicism considers the Bible allegorical, so no need to quote chapter and verse at people.
A Ghost To Most
@Ruckus:
I’d like to know why this knucklehead hangs around the blog of an avowed, curmudgeonly atheist, then tut-tuts the curmudgeon atheists who infest it. Asshole must be cross-eyed from all that looking down his nose.
fuckin dookie.
redshirt
@A Ghost To Most: He’s a lawyer with a guilty conscience.
Ruckus
@A Ghost To Most:
I commented in one of the idiot clerk posts the other day that I didn’t care about her or her life except for that part where she wasn’t doing the job she is getting paid by her fellow citizens to do.
I have the same opinion about religion. Have at it, it’s none of my business, except when one tries to make me part of their business or tries to impose some of their supposed morality on others. At that point in time they get to hear what I think of their attempt to enlighten me. They won’t like it but then I’m just engaging in a free exchange of ideas so they can kiss my ass.
That’s burnsey, he gets all high and mighty about anyone not having the same concepts and beliefs about religion, especially the one he belongs to. Sounds like some high grade rationalization to me.
john fremont
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): The only publication that espouses opinions anything like this is The American Conservative.
equs_1776
@Ruckus: BINGO!