Rick F*%^#ing Warren?

I'm on record as giving the President-Elect a chance to at least get into office before we start criticizing his policy decisions. But inauguration decisions, those seem like fair game.

And this... well, this makes me as angry as anything Sarah Palin ever said. I've been annoyed at the overly conciliatory tone the Democrats (and Obama) have taken with their foes in the media and the political arena, but I was willing to swallow my own sense of revenge in the name of moving forward in a positive direction.

But you sit a guy who is so vehemently anti-gay, so vehemently anti-choice, so much the embodiment of making yourself rich and famous off of the faith of others, and turning that faith into a weapon against those who disagree with you... well...

It's just a slap in the face. It is, at the very least, a dick move.

I still believe a President Obama is going to be better than a President McCain or *shudder* President Palin... but this is disappointing. Bordering on crushing.

On most days, I can accept that religion is for some people... I have a close friend who leads a congregation, and most of my family is in church of one kind or another. But there are also days when I wish that organized religion would completely vanish from the planet, never to be seen again. This has become one of those days.

Grant Morrison on religion

This entire 10-part series on All Star Superman has been must-reading, and reminds me why, despite not being all that crazy about Final Crisis or Batman R.I.P., I totally get why a lot of people are into it. Morrison is one of the more thoughtful, unusual writers in comics today, and seeing his thoughts on one of his masterpieces like All Star Superman has been great.

But seeing his take on religion, bravely put out there to an audience (Newsarama) that's not always the most sophisticated in its response, made me happy, especially when his views on organized religion seem to hew pretty close to my own.

And Then A Reminder...

That not everyone in America is a total fuckwit.

Witness, a very sweet, inoffensive and kinda funny comic about the cartoonist getting "gay married" (it's the title of the strip.)

The editor defends the piece and prints some of the ridiculous hate mail, including "the minister of a local church accused the newspaper of promoting "sodomy." If your minister ever writes a letter like that to the paper, you owe it to your faith to change churches, by the way.

OK, so maybe there's still a larger than usual contingent of assholes out there, who would complain about such a politically neutral piece. Using the bullshit language of "I just don't want it pushed in my face" is pretty much admitting homophobia, especially when faced with a mild, universal story of marriage depicted in the cartoon.

But the editor's level-headed defense of the piece, not the angry screed that someone else (OK, me) might write in response to idiots like this, reminds me that there are lots of folks out there fighting the good fight. And if we can just keep from having a total financial collapse, healthcare panic, food riots, environmental disaster or any of the other things the Republicans are helping to cause, maybe eventually reason and intelligence will win out.

Yeah, I don't really believe it right now either. But you gotta have hope, right?

Bible as elective

So I saw this: Bible class guidelines constitutional, AG says

First thought: Well, duh. It's Texas.

Second: Actually, I don't have a *huge* problem with this, even though I have major problems with organized religion in general. They are elective courses, and that's the most important thing... if students are in any way required to take these, even in a "not enough viable elective choices" way, then I'll get upset. But allowing students with faith (or a curiosity about faith?) to learn about the Bible in school? Hey, I guess I'm cool with that. I mean, I'd think most church-goers already know these lessons, and might want to spend their valuable free education time on coursework where they don't already know all the answers, but hey, y'know, whatever.

My biggest concern is that these classes are going to be more of a religious indoctrination, rather than teaching the Bible the way that we teach, say, Greek mythology or Mayan culture. Teaching it as a non-denominational, non-judgmental, examination of the good, the bad and the ugly of The Bible and Christianity and how it has been interpreted and misinterpreted over the years. Cover the Crusades as well as the soup kitchens, the Salem witch trials as well as the power of prayer.

Do I think this is how it will be taught? No, as I said, it's Texas. So while I may not have a *huge* problem with it in theory, I have plenty of concern about it in practice. But I'll be perfectly fine with it up until the point where the class or its teachings interfere with my children and my life.

So Very Angry

I've managed to get myself into a place where I can view the utter corruption of our government by the Bush Administration with a sort of detached cynicism and dark humor. I don't spend every minute of every day angry, frustrated and wishing nothing more than for some kind of exploding deadly ball cancer to befall G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their numerous corporate and neocon overlords.

Only rarely. Like when Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath was going on.

Or when I see pictures like this.

All this young soldier wanted was to see his daughter. Who was born 11 days after he died in a pointless, ill-advisable war in Iraq that we never should have been in in the first place.

Next time you hear McCain say "It doesn't matter when they come home," think about this picture. And think about how many more dead soldiers it represents.

I wish I believed in Hell, so that I could believe the men who created this situation were going to burn there.

This Is Not Christian

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone went undercover at a three-day Christian retreat in Texas (and I *think* it's in San Antonio, which is *way* too close for comfort for me). The megachurch in question is run by McCain endorser John Hagee, a vastly influential pastor who believes that the Rapture is coming any day now, that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment on everyone in New Orleans for an upcoming gay pride parade and various other batshit insane kind of things.

I know that these folks don't represent all religious folk. I have friends who are religious. I have family who are religious. But late at night, when I can't sleep, my fear is that these reasonable religious people that I know are the minority, and the freaks described in Taibbi's story are the majority. How freakish was this experience? Well, they were all asked to describe the "wound" that had shattered their "normal" and Matt lied this up:

"Hello," I said, taking a deep breath. "My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes."

The group twittered noticeably. Morgan's eyes opened to tea-saucer size.

I closed my own eyes and kept going, immediately realizing what a mistake I'd made. There was no way this story was going to fly. But there was no turning back.

"He'd be sitting there in his costume, sucking down a beer and watching television," I heard myself saying. "And then sometimes, even if I just walked in front of the TV, he'd pull off one of those big shoes and just, you know — whap!"

And nobody blinked an eye at this story. And then there's this, from the grand commencement ceremony:

"In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!" Fortenberry continued. "In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of anal fissures!"

It's a great story, an excerpt from an upcoming book by Taibbi, who remains one of my favorite writers at Rolling Stone. Take a look, it's a fascinating, occasionally funny and occasionally horrifying read.

Why I Can't Call Myself A Bleeding Heart Liberal

I am, in many ways, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Free speech, universal healthcare, tolerance of all race, sexual orientation, religion (OK, I get a little squidgy around religion, but I wouldn't *ban* it or anything), a helpful welfare/unemployment system, etc.

I've even come around on capital punishment. I used to be for it, for the most part, and I still believe that some crimes are punishable by death, but our system is so flawed in execution that it's not able to provide such punishments in anything close to a just manner, and too many intelligent people I respect are diehard against capital punishment, and so I find myself having to ignore my own instincts in this one area and decide that yeah, capital punishment is probably a bad idea.

But I've still got just a touch of right-wing, eye for an eye type thing in me. Because when I see something like this:

Death Sentence in Afghanistan for disseminating a report criticizing Islam

And I see that the response from Reporters Without Borders is a statement, and others are organizing a petition to plead with the barbaric, ignorant pig-fuckers that passed the sentence in the first place, all I can think is: "Uh, why don't we take up a collection and hire some mercenaries to bust this kid out and bring him to America? Wouldn't that be better than writing a letter?"

Of course, that also begs the question of why the enormous numbers of troops we have over there aren't doing exactly that. Because if they're not, then it looks like the U.S. Government supports this sentence. And I don't care what kind of diplomatic fuss it might cause, if we're allowing this kind of shit to go on, we might as well not be there.

Thus ends Randy's "thoroughly uninformed and simplistic views on foreign policy."