More slogan co-opting

When I clicked on my Christian Government Newsletter this morning, I was so startled I almost spilled my tequila sunrise. Oh shit! Check out this sexually-charged metaphorical demand, if you dare:

Whoa, settle down there, pally, nobody's forcing anything... don't get excited. So what we have here is "secular humanism" positioned as a religion just as extreme as conservative Christianity. "Secular humanists" worship at the un-church and try to dictate how people live their lives -- by "secular humanist" values, which include forcing everyone to have abortions and be gay, I guess. Unfortunately the argument doesn't quite hold up because "secular humanists" don't "promote" anything other than giving everyone a place at the table -- even religious nuts, as long as they can restrain the urge to stuff their noses in everyone's crotches. (Otherwise, it's out to the yard for them.) But it makes for good copy ("secular fundamentalists! SHRIEEEEK!") and Xtian Government's readers will likely eat it up like a nice hot bowl of stupid on a blustery day.

Of course it's just another example of the lack of original thought that leaves these people no option but to co-opt the ideas of their opponents in the hopes that doing a little coattail-riding will garner them some of that elusive "credibility" stuff. Proponents of Fetal Homicide laws have been doing it for awhile, using the word "choice" to bolster their argument and position the "choice to give birth" on the same footing as the "choice to abort": "Protect a woman's Choice to give birth". "Why" they ask, "is a woman's Choice to have an abortion more worthy of protection than a woman's Choice to give birth?"

One need not be an expert in the science of rockets to detect the lameness of that argument. Neither choice is more "deserving of protection" than the other; but only one of those choices is under assault by a million fetus fanatics who'd ban it in a hot second if they could. That can't be said for the choice to give birth. Nobody's trying to ban it, nobody's out protesting in front of maternity wards, nobody's even trying to regulate it (apart from We At Birth Pangs, in a purely satirical sense). So to position the choice of abortion on the same footing as the choice to give birth is as disingenuous as positioning secularism as a "fundamentalist religion".

But then, that's kind of what we've come to expect of them, isn't it?

I don't think DKos is worried

More drooling stupidity from the religious right popped up in my Google alerts this morning with this blog entry titled "One" [of] "the stupidest headlines ever written". Father Fetus of "What" [the fuck] "Does The Prayer Really Say?" is foaming hard over a Daily Kos diary titled "How the Vatican kills women", that points out the grave reality of how the Vatican's zero tolerance abortion policy is responsible for the deaths of women in Nicaragua:

It's all the usual bleating you'd expect from a fetus fetishizing nitwit, complete with accusations of "anti-Catholic bigotry" as the inevitable persecution high sets in. But the part I really liked was "I'll post the content here so that you don't have to give their site any traffic"?? Ha. Hahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, fuck.

Fire up your printers

You know how religious nuts maintain that religious doctrine is superior to science because scientific theory is always changing, but religious doctrine is Cast In Stone? Well, rather than putting yourself through the frustrating exercise of explaining why Change is good and Cast In Stone is absurd, just hand them a copy of this handy-dandy little graphic CC found.

Beautifully succinct... and much easier on the blood pressure.

Hindus strike back

A couple of weeks ago as the cerebrally-deprived were getting all fired up for the Summer Wingnut Misogyfests, three of the ones from "Operation Asshole" uh, "Rescue" took some time out from intimidating pregnant women to disrupt the Senate. They were protesting a Hindu chaplain who was invited by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to deliver the opening prayer. God-DAMN, what an abomination. The christian cretins were arrested and charged with a misdemeanour for their trouble. Clutch pearls, grope for smelling salts... Oh, the persecution!

Now, Hindu groups are asking the 2008 presidential nominees to denounce the protesters:

"U.S. Hindu organizations are urging presidential candidates to denounce the protesters who disrupted the Senate as the first-ever Hindu opening prayer was being delivered this month." [...]

"Although the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington issued a statement July 17 saying its members were "deeply saddened" by the interruption, no senators present spoke out against it publicly, according to the Hindu American Foundation and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).

Both organizations said they are disappointed with the legislators, and they sent letters this week to presidential candidates and senators, asking them to condemn the incident.

"We call on you to follow the example set by [Reid] and take a stance in defense of religious freedom and equality, in the face of opposition from extremists and fundamentalists," the ISKCON letter said."

This is a little stickier than it sounds, especially for the GOP contenders. Will a wingnut like Sam Brownback denounce members of "Operation Asshole", an organization that includes a good number of his supporters? Does Giuliani want any attention paid to his (arguably shaky) pro-choice credentials? It should be interesting to see how they respond.

They're stalking us

Alright, you guys: Dave, Mike (especially Mike), CC and Eternal Gaijin. Looks like we are on the Xtian radar again.The article that ran in the Christian government newsletter a few weeks ago, "Secular Humanists Have Discovered Christian Government.ca!!!", is running again this week as an opinion piece on something called the "Christian Civic League Record", another chock-fulla-nuts fundie site (I perused it a little and probably lost about 10 IQ points in the process). Our offensive blogs are linked, with appropriately dire warnings about profanity and blasphemy. No doubt lured by the promise of evil, wicked, bad craziness, a couple of these folks have dropped in here already. *waves* They like us, they really really like us...

So, in deference to the visitors, let's keep the fucking profanity to a minimum, eh? Hahahaha!

Fundie Indignance Alert!

"Oh... oh... oh... oh oh oh ohohohohohohAHHHH!!!" go the fundies, as they writhe in the throes of (yet another) pants-wetting, pearl-clutching indignation high! And what might have brought this one on? Just watch this commercial for Fusion Gum:


Heaven help us, it's bisexual gum! The Apocalypse must surely be at hand. According to "The American Decency Association" ("American Decency Association"? You can't make this shit up!), we're running, not walking, to hell in a handbasket, and furiously chomping on bisexual gum all the way. After smelling salts were applied, the ADA came to and thundered:

"Eclipse Fusion Gum, a Wrigley product, advertises with a strong allusion to lesbianism on television.
Wrigley is more concerned about appealing to the homosexual/lesbian consumer than it is about offending millions of Bible believing Christians.

We have occasionally enjoyed Eclipse gum. No longer. A company that goes so strongly against the standard of God sends the clear message to me that my business is no longer desired."

Give 'er, slick! You tell 'em! Meanwhile, if we check out the comments with this report on the story, a tell-tale pattern emerges: of 27 comments, 21 are from females (all negative), 6 from males (5 negative). The question is: where are the rest of the outraged christian guys? Surely they're outraged? Maybe in order to build up enough outrage for a proper indignation high, they need to watch the commercial a few more times. Yeah, that must be it. Mmkay guys, 20 or 30 times should do it, eh? After that you've crossed the Rubicon from Indignance Island to the Masturbation mainland.

(via Princess Sparkle Pony)

Creationism Museum to open

...in Canada!? Oh no... please, not in Canada... NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

"The Big Valley Creation Science Museum, which opens next week, was built for C$300,000 ($278,000) in the village Big Valley, Alberta, population 308, a two-hour drive northeast of Calgary.

The Canadian museum features displays on how men once walked among dinosaurs, a giant model of Noah's Ark, a set of English scrolls tracing the family of King Henry VI back to the Garden of Eden, and an interactive bacterial flagellum."

Just what we need: a celebration of the good old days when men and dinosaurs roamed the earth together. (I had a lot of trouble even typing that sentence.) When you hear about something like this happening in Canada, you just have to know it would be in Alberta. (My apologies to reality-based Albertans, but you must know you're in the minority there.) The Big Valley Creation "Science" [gag] "Museum" [heave] isn't as big a dealio as the $27million waste-of-money Creationism "museum" [barf] that just opened in Kentucky this past weekend. But that $300grand could almost certainly have been spent on something more useful, maybe a Royal Commission Study to investigate what the fuck is in the water in Alberta. Because there sure as hell is something.

From the Old Hippie's mailbag

And the WTF? prize goes to Victor, who emailed me to say... something.

The email appears to have been prompted by my post on the resignation of the Miracle Channel's Dick Dewert. Although Victor's "red [sic] next to nothing of what" I write, this post somehow compelled him to email and warn me against "tossing the baby out with the bath water". (Or in my case, the biohazard waste. Haha, just kidding!)

He links to a site that appears to be Christian Zionist ("support Israel -- we need it for the End Times"), a religious flavour I'd characterize as "bugfuck whacko". But scanning the site, I see that this particular branch of the wingnut tree even holds other religions in nothing but contempt. Catholicism, Mormonism, Islam (oh man, do these guys hate Muslims -- even more than the Children Of The Corn over at SDA) and even Buddhism are roundly thrashed and denounced as diabolical. (What then must they think of my reality-based Atheism?)

My guess is that this guy has No Idea how stubbornly irreligious I am; if he did, he wouldn't have wasted 5 minutes of his life emailing me. (Five minutes is a lot when the End Times are so near.) Oh well, thanks for the input, Victor... and the reminder to put a "Deity-Free" button in my sidebar!