Democrats’ naïve view of Islamists: “They’re just like me! They hate America!”

Democrats have gone full Islam. On the surface, that’s a bit peculiar. When you dig deeper, it’s downright weird. But as always, there’s a cause for this particular effect.

Let’s start with the peculiar part. Islamists tend to be religious, much as Christians, Buddhists and Hindus (and, for that matter, atheists, who often disbelieve with a blind religious fervor). 

In contrast, Democrats tend not to be religious. They’re simple vanilla agnostics. Go down to Starbucks. Ask one whether he believes in God. His response would be along the lines of, “Umm, I’m kinda in-between . . . it all depends . . . what I do know is I don’t believe in America . . .” And then he’d drift back to his double latte sprinkled with fresh pumpkin seeds.

Now, try to imagine that wishy-washy but unwashed and wish-less agnosticating procrastinating prognosticator with the man-bun sipping a double latte sprinkled with pumpkin seeds . . . embracing Islam.

Well, not exactly embracing Islam, with which there’s not necessarily anything wrong, but embracing Islamists, with whom there is.

You see, I distinguish between Islam and Islamists. About Islam, I know very little. I do know that, like most religions, it was invented by barbarians and so there’s undoubtedly some rough spots in its scriptures. I’m sure there’s eye-for-an-eye stuff, animal sacrifice rituals, and cruel tests of torment.

In most religions, the barbaric stuff got watered down over time. As people advanced, the believers shifted their focus toward the kinder, gentler aspects of their religion. They shifted toward loving thy neighbor, and away from goat sacrifices.

That could have been the path of Islam, if only we’d had different Islamists. The Islamists we do have seem stuck in the 9th century – which was not a particularly enlightened time.

That brings us to the weird part. The beliefs of these Islamists stuck in the 9th century are, by today’s mostly-civilized standards, downright weird.

They believe shoplifters should have their hands cut off. They believe adulterous women should be stoned to death. They believe gays should be thrown off rooftops. They believe infidels (meaning non-Muslims) should be beheaded, raped, tortured, burned alive, murdered and taken hostage to use as currency to free terrorists.  

They believe it is right, joyful and heroic to fly airplanes into tall buildings.

I know Democrats have fallen far in the last generation but they still didn’t have those things in their party platform, even in 2024 when they ran a half-baked, half-assed, half-wit.

That’s why it’s downright weird that the Democrats have embraced not Islam, about which they know nothing, but Islamists, about which they know quite a lot – and none of it is good.

But it all makes sense. Despite the peculiarity and weirdness of this outcome, it all makes sense in a perverted sort of way.

Democrats perceive, correctly, that Islamists see America as their enemy. Indeed, Islamists see all of Western culture as their enemy.

And so do Democrats.

If America is the enemy of Islamists, and is also the enemy of Democrats, that makes Islamists the friends of Democrats – or at least the allies.

Of course, Islamists and Democrats hate America for entirely different reasons. Islamists hate America because it’s not an Islamist theocracy, while Democrats hate America because it’s not a communist dictatorship.

But that’s just a detail, say the Democrats. They’ll figure out how to share the spoils of this war against America once they win it.

That’s the part where Democrats might not have thought things through. Islamists will be in no mood for sharing.

This is a heckuva way to run a Church, but on the other hand . . .

Nero’s Bathtub at the Vatican

Why do Catholics still worship an old king in a palace?

I understand why they did in the old days. Everybody did. (Well, except Christ didn’t.) There was Henry VIII, Louis XIV, Charlemagne and, in folklore, King Arthur. There were also king-like rulers called emperors, such as Julius Caesar, Peter the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte.

It was way back in the olden days that Catholics set up the papacy, their kingship. Their first Pope was said to be the Apostle named Peter, who used to be called Simon.

By the way, the names of the Apostles always have confused me. There was Paul, who was really Saul. There was Mark, who sometimes went by John. There was John, who always went by John even though Mark sometimes did, too. There was the aforementioned Simon whom Jesus called Peter even though that wasn’t his name and there was another Simon whom Jesus called Simon even though that was his name.

There were two James’s. One was James the Greater about whom we know a great deal of apocrypha and the other was James the Lesser about whom we know much less. James the Lesser went by Jim. (OK, that part is made up.)

Jesus must have had the patience of Job, considering how many times he had to say “No, the other one.”

As if Apostles are not complicated enough, let’s get back to popes. In case you encounter a pope, the proper form of address is not “Your Majesty.” That’s for kings and queens. Popes get addressed instead as “Your Holiness.” You see, kings and queens may be majestic, but popes are holy.

In fact, papal pronouncements on matters of Church doctrine are said to be “infallible.” Never mind that Church doctrine changes from time to time. The old doctrine was infallible when it was in effect, and the new, different one is infallible when it’s in effect.

As for all things, for infallibility there’s a season.

So, popes are holy. But there’s a bit of majesty in them, too. For a long time, infallible popes were also effectively the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, an area that stretched from Rome to the Baltic Sea.

Wars and intrigue gradually chipped away at the Empire. The establishment of the nation of Italy in the 1800s cost the Vatican almost all of the little land they still held. The earthly territory of the Holy Roman Empire now comprises 0.2 square miles within the city limits of downtown Rome.

But that 0.2 square miles holds some good stuff, such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, priceless art works, and St Peter’s Basilica.

And Nero’s Bathtub. Nero’s Bathtub is a massive bathtub about 25’ long made of stone quarried in Egypt and brought to Rome for Emperor Nero. What better place to fiddle through a fire than in a bathtub? The value of Nero’s Bathtub is estimated at around two billion dollars. That’s $2,000,000,000. (I’m not making this part up.)

Altogether, the Vatican is the most valuable 0.2 square miles this side of Heaven. Don’t ask how they acquired all this treasure, and don’t ask how to reconcile such material acquisitiveness with their incorporeal mission. We’re talking infallible, remember?

These material riches of the Vatican’s balance sheet are oddly juxtaposed with the sorry condition of its income statement. They’re rich but they spend far more than they make. In fact, their finances have been in bad shape for many years. They have fallible finances.

In their defense, back in those olden days they had a lot of expenses such as wars to fight and bribes to pay. But now they don’t fight earthly wars, and bribes have not been reported for years. Even so, well into modern times they’ve still had sloppy finances, money-laundering allegations, and what might be called, um, corruption.

During the tenure of newly departed Pope Francis, the Vatican’s operating deficit tripled. Maybe ballooning budgets come with the territory from which he originated – Argentina.

Whatever the reason, finance types warn that this Latin American spendathon cannot continue unless the Vatican sells off assets, which will fix finances only for a while, or resumes selling indulgences – to a flock that is no longer accustomed to having to pay for them.

In contrast to the papacy, the aforementioned kingships and empires of Europe have evolved. They’ve been replaced by indirectly elected technocrat parliamentarians in such countries as Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and most everywhere else. Only the throne of Peter the Great is still occupied by a despot.

So, what’s with the black smoke/white smoke ritual (“smoke-filled room” takes on a new meaning here) by a politburo of old men that are attired in plush red robes and lamp shade hats (let’s trust they’re not chomping cigars) to choose a new, infallible, male, old, dear leader in the richest corner of the globe even as that corner – and the globe – drift inexorably toward bankruptcy?

This is a heckuva way to save souls.

On the other hand . . .

The Catholic Church has probably been the greatest force for good in the history of the world. It has brought Good News to billions of people to enrich their lives if not save their souls.

The lucre and treasures the Church acquired along the way were from a different era, when that’s what powerful people did. It’s difficult for them to give it all away now, just because some Protestant blogger mocks Nero’s Bathtub.

And to whom would they give it? Secularist governments?

Sheesh, after the Notre Dame burned, the secular government of France proposed replacing it with a temple that would not offend (i.e., would pander to) the burgeoning Muslim population that seeks control of Europe. They backed down only when the remaining Catholic population of Paris (and France and the world) made a fuss.

My brother, a very smart guy with a Ph.D. in Physics, was a convert to Catholicism. I never really talked with him about his faith, but I respected his judgment. In that way, he reminds me of another very smart convert, JD Vance.

I confess that on my two long walks of the Camino de Santiago, there were times when I, too, considered converting to Catholicism. (There have been times when I’ve also thought about converting to Judaism, but that’s another column.) For now, I’m a die-hard Protestant.

So, the Church on balance has been a very good thing over the millennia.

Still, it has its quirks.

Elites rediscover the power of religion – to control you

Pseudo-intellectual elites like to talk about the “arc of history.” Barack Obama loved that phrase almost as much as he loved the word “existential.” Things in Barack’s rhetorical world didn’t just exist. They were in the state of “existential” and forever bending along the “arc of history.”

The elites assured that this “arc of history” will take us inevitably to a world of equity, inclusion and diversity – a utopian world the elites have always imagined. They even have a theme song for the journey:

“Imagine there’s no heaven, above us only sky,
Blah, blah, blah, blahhhh . . .”

Of course, the people in charge of this utopia of the elites will be the ones with the prescience to anticipate it, the skill to guide us to it, and the power to run it – namely, those elites.

Moses brought his people to the Promised Land but never entered it. Modern elites won’t make his mistake again. They’ll lead us there, herd us in, lock the gates, and run the show.

And in a notable exception to the abolition of merit (it’s sooo dystopian that some people get more just because they merit more!) these meritorious elites will be well compensated. Very well. In the precise amount they deem just.

But detours have recently frustrated the elites in their arc-y journey toward their utopianistic place. Moses detoured 40 years in the desert; today’s elites find themselves detoured four years into a similar wasteland – for the second time in the last decade.

And now their people (note the possessive plural pronoun) in this wasteland are sinning again. Golden calves, bitcoins, ungratefulness, orange hair, cutting taxes. You know – all the usual sins.

With alarm, the elites see that their people are getting beyond their command. What’s needed, they figure, is some of that old time religion.

That’s why a utilitarian epiphany of the elites is in the works.

Let me be clear. Religion is not a bad thing; it’s a good thing. Religion tends to discourage socially destructive behaviors. Nearly all religions have rules against murder and theft, for example.

But those rules are not what the elites like about religion. In fact, they’re a little skittish about those particular rules because the penalties for violating them tend to be imposed disproportionately on people they enjoy viewing as oppressed, blameless, and childlike.

Moreover, the elites historically saw religion as competition for power. The allegiance of the people was divided between the secular elites and the Church elites. The secular elites had the power of money, but the Church elites also had money – and God, too.

Eventually, the secular elites won the competition for power by running the table on money. But they remained at odds with religion until recently. They reasoned that a power like religion that inspires people willingly to burn themselves and others at the stake is one always to be wary of.

But it’s been a long time since religion burned anyone at the stake. Religion has dwindled to the status of a sheep in wolves’ clothing. Elites began to think of religion as a simple superstition that bitter, stupid people cling to – that they depend on – as comfort when things goes bump in the night.

Today, the elites still think that, but now they see religious dependency as a feature, not a flaw. On their road to Damascus, and Davos, they’ve envisioned and embraced Karl Marx’s observation that religion is “the opiate of the masses.”

How convenient. The elites have coincidentally decided that the people inhabiting the land recently laid waste, again, who are rebelling against their authority and inattentively and hyperactively sinning against them, need something opium-ish. And they deserve it, good and hard. For that, the elites have concluded, religion is at least as good as Adderall, and cheaper.

Religion no longer threatens the elites, much. Today, the mild threat that religion poses to secular power is more than offset by its usefulness in securing that power by sedating the masses. In particular, the elites like the rules of religion that call for deference to authority – “authority” being them, of course.

Honor they father, honor thy mother, honor thy priest, honor thy Environmental Protection Agency, honor thy right to choose, honor thy elites, and so on.

Never mind that Scripture doesn’t explicitly spell out every single one of those honor/submission rules. The elites contend that, like abortion, they’re implied in the penumbra.

And so, we have an Episcopal Bishop in gilded robe with bejeweled scepter scolding the man newly elected by the people to lead them, whom she spots worshipping respectfully in her congregation.

She thereupon transfigures the worship service into a public damning of that one man. Complying with his Constitutional duty to enforce the duly enacted Federal immigration laws is sinful, she warns, and honoring the God-created genders is immoral.

She would have the President and us believe that a kid struggling emotionally with sex issues doesn’t need help, he needs surgery. He is the victim of God’s mistake where He accidentally put a female soul into a male body. She proclaims that she’s the one to make that decision, by God, and the President is merely the one to enforce her decision by correcting what she has decided is God’s mistake.

Just don’t get carried away, Mr. President, and start enforcing the immigration laws decided by Congress, too. Who does Congress think they are anyway? Episcopal Bishops?

Elites’ new love for religion has all the passion of an old-style revival meeting. It lacks only one thing: God.

Here’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Don’t believe in religion because it’s a good thing for society – even though it often is, as even the elites are starting to realize.

Rather, believe in it because it’s the truth, and the truth will set you free.

But don’t take my word for it. Really, please don’t. This is a truth that each person must find in, and on, his own way.

God never existed in Barack’s world. But he wants him in yours. He wants you to hallow the elites; he wants you in their kingdom; he wants you to beg forgiveness.

For the Baracks of the world, God is a useful fiction. But they may someday be startled at what they’ve stirred.

Jimmy Carter playing God paved the road for radical Islamists playing Satan

Jimmy Carter informed us back in 1976 that he had “looked on many women with lust” and “committed adultery many times in my heart.”

The fact that a man’s heart or other organs have lusted after many women is not exactly news. The reason men don’t go around broadcasting their lust is because it’s obvious. It would be like saying, I get horny on days that end in a “y.”

But Carter did tell us about his lust – in a formal interview with Playboy, perhaps fittingly. He evidently thought that a man’s lust was newsworthy, if the man was him.

It reminds me of the devil’s temptation of Christ, a story told in three of the four Gospels. The devil failed in his temptation of Christ, but the fact that it happened was Good News-worthy two millennia ago.

Carter was a born-again Christian. (Full disclosure: I am too.) In fact, Carter was a Sunday School teacher. In teaching the temptation of Christ on Sundays and advertising “the temptation of Carter” on Saturdays, he was aware of the parallel he was drawing.

Mind you, I don’t judge a person’s brand of Christianity. That’s beyond my paygrade.

But I do judge their politics. Carter seemed to believe that a New Testament approach could work in international affairs – as in forgiveness and love thy enemy – with the likes of Leonid Brezhnev and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Ah, the Ayatollah Khomeini.

When Carter was elected in 1976, the country of Iran was run by a Shah – roughly the equivalent to a Western monarch. The Shah was hostile to communism and generally friendly to the West. Many Iranian students went to Western universities. Women’s rights and human rights steadily improved over the decades of rule by the Shah and his predecessor father.

Carter’s limited experience as the former governor of Georgia and his black and white view of good and evil left him unprepared for the nuances of international geopolitics. In his simplistic syllogism, democracy was good; monarchs were anti-democratic; the Shah was a monarch; and, therefore, the Shah was bad.

In contrast to pragmatists such as Henry Kissinger (whom he despised), Carter was uncomfortable with the notion of the lesser of evils.

And so, when the Shah was threatened, Carter did little to save him. The resulting revolution led to a bloody theocratic state called The Islamic Republic of Iran. Like the Shah’s regime, it was a monarchy except in name, and this time it was led by a monarch – the Ayatollah – who claimed a hotline to Allah (and actually had one to Brezhnev) together with a divine right to rule.  

The Islamic theocrats naturally hated America. They taunted us by holding 53 hostages in the American Embassy in Tehran for 444 days until the day of the inauguration of the man who defeated Carter’s bid for a second term, Ronald Reagan. (Funny, that coincidence.)

Carter’s sanctimonious forgiveness and love failed to free any hostages. (To his credit, he did attempt a rescue, but it never got off the ground.)

Since the time of the Iranian hostage crisis, Iran has shuffled along in their seventh-century oxcart. They throw gay men off tall buildings, they chop off the hands of shoplifters, and they stone prostitutes to death. They threaten to annihilate Israel, and they are just weeks away from having a nuclear bomb with which to do so.

In this odd world of ours, I sometimes see a bumper sticker reading “What would Jesus do?” I’ve always assumed that the owners of the cars to which those stickers are stuck have no interest in Jesus. They’re instead just trolling Christians. They’re trying to contrast the typically conservative political leanings of Christians with what they regard (unburdened by any actual knowledge) as the liberal leanings of Jesus.

But some Christians are actually guided in their geopolitics by that bumper sticker question – What would Jesus do? Never mind that Jesus spent his entire life in a place without iPhones which could be walked in the long direction in a few weeks and the short direction in a day. These particular Christians believe that Christ taught not just the tools for a relationship with God, but also for a relationship with Taylor Swift, John Maynard Keynes, and the Ayatollahs.

The teachings of Christ are probably harmless in dealing with Taylor Swift. (I know nothing of Swift’s beliefs, and I don’t mean to pick on her.)

However, the teachings of Christ are probably less helpful in dealing with John Maynard Keynes. Can we honestly suppose that Christ had insights into economic questions like how to obtain the greatest good for the greatest number, and what the capital gains tax should be, and that those insights are revealed if only we read between the lines of, say, Corinthians?

As for the Ayatollahs, the teachings of Christ are wholly unhelpful in dealing with them. Or in dealing with their jihadi foot soldiers who seek to conquer, enslave, rape, take hostage, behead and eliminate people they regard as infidels by means of suicide bomb vests, airplanes in skyscrapers, and pickup trucks on sidewalks.

The what-would-Jesus-do Christians seem unaware that we already know the answer to their bumper sticker question, “What would Jesus do?”

What Jesus would do is what he did do. He taught love, forgiveness and pacifism. He surrendered and sacrificed himself. He was excruciatingly tortured – naked and humiliated on the cross – that he might rise again to show us The Way.

The madmen of Islam would very much like us, now, to try doing with them what Jesus did with his enemies two thousand years ago. The last Western leader to try that was Jimmy Carter. And here we are.

The Colorado Christian baker wins again – but his tormenters will be back

The left has hounded artistic Colorado baker Jack Phillips for over a decade. It started back in 2012 when a gay couple demanded that he create a “gay wedding cake” with two figurine husbands on top.

Of course, the gay couple could have gotten their gay cake created by many other bakers. They seem to have chosen Phillips not despite, but because, creating such a object was contrary to his religious beliefs.

Phillips politely said he would happily bake a cake for them, but not a gay cake. That’s an important point. Phillips did not simply refuse to serve the couple on the grounds that they were gay. Rather, he refused to create a special “gay cake” for them.

Phillips thus refused to create an artistic expression that was contrary to his religious beliefs.

The gay couple were something like a couple seeking out a Kosher restaurant, demanding that the Jewish chef cook up an elaborate pork dish, and then contending that they’d been discriminated against when told that pork is not on the menu.

It’s actually worse than that. The gay couple thought Phillips’ beliefs were not just discriminatory, but should be illegal. So, they schemed to establish that as a legal matter.  

First, they brought an action against Phillips before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and won. The case then went to a Colorado appellate court, and they won there too.

Phillips finally filed for review in the Colorado Supreme Court, where all seven Justices are Democrat appointees. Those Colorado Justices refused to even hear the case on the grounds there was zero merit to Phillips’ appeal.

Then Phillips filed for an appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s the court of last resort in America, and they accept only a few percent of the appeals lodged there.

To everyone’s surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Phillips’ case was worth hearing. Not only that, but after hearing the case they reversed the Colorado decision. They decided that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had exhibited an unfair antipathy toward Phillips’ religious-based actions.

Let that sink in. The U.S. Supreme Court – the highest court in the land – found that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and state courts had shown six years of unfair antipathy toward Phillips’ ordinary Christian religious beliefs.

At least they didn’t feed him to the lions. But what happened next was almost as bad, as anyone who’s been a defendant in a lawsuit will tell you.

On the very day the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in favor of Phillips, a self-described “devil worshipper” demanded by email that Phillips bake a cake celebrating the devil’s birthday – complete with a dildo on top. (It’s not clear what is bedeviling about dildos.)

As before, Phillips politely explained that he could not bake such a cake because it was contrary to his religious beliefs.

Before then, on the very day that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Phillips’ appeal of the “gay cake” case, someone came into Phillips’ bakery and demanded that he create a “transgender cake” depicting transgender stuff.

You can see the pattern.

As before, Phillips refused to create the “transgender cake.” As before, the transgender person brought an action before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. As before, he/she won. And as before, the case eventually went up to the Colorado Supreme Court.

This time, the Colorado Supreme Court took the case (perhaps feeling stung by the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of the Colorado decisions the earlier time).

But the Colorado Supreme Court dodged a decision on the merits. Instead, they dismissed the case on a technicality.

It was a win for Phillips, but it didn’t establish any precedent for other Christian bakers or anyone else who wants protection for his religious beliefs.

Pity the Colorado Supreme Court. They were faced with either (1) defying the earlier U.S. Supreme Court decision by ruling against Phillips, or (2) defying their woke principles by ruling in his favor.

Ah, they were torn between the law of the land and the law of the woke. They found a clever way to choose neither.

But trust me, they’ll be back. The devil-worshipping transexuals, the kangaroo state courts and “civil rights” commissions stacked with Democrat appointees, and the rest of the totalitarian wokerati – they’ll all be back, lawless as ever.

They want to outlaw religious beliefs that they don’t believe in, and that’s almost all of them.

Does “accepting” gays mean we have to pay them to mock our religion?

Twenty-six years ago, the media reported that a young man named Matthew Shepard was beaten and strung up on a Wyoming barbed wire fence to die. The beating and murder were because Shepard was gay.

The perps were quickly found, tried for murder, convicted, and sentenced to prison. They’re still there.

It was a good news story about bad news and was widely reported. But it wasn’t true.

It has since been shown that Shepard and one of the perps were in the drug business together. Shepard was due to receive a $10,000 shipment of meth. The perp himself was gay and had been in a gay relationship with Shepard. 

So, it wasn’t a hate crime by a straight Wyoming redneck against an innocent 21-year-old gay guy. It was a drug deal gone bad between two gay lovers.

But never mind that. Gay advocates seized on Shepard’s death as evidence of hatred in the heartland toward gays. His death spurred new federal hate crime laws, where criminally attacking someone becomes even more criminal if the someone is gay. (A friend in the law professor business is fond of saying that it’s impossible to commit just one federal crime.)

The flip side of that, of course, is that criminally attacking someone is now a little less criminal if the person is not gay.

Notably, the hate crime law passed in response to Shepard’s murder was, of course, not in effect at the time of his murder. The perps were nonetheless arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced – a sentence they’re still serving – for committing a crime.

It’s called murder, and the penalties are severe. Regardless of whether you hate the victim.

I’m guessing that you remember the Matthew Shepard story, but never saw the debunking of it. The debunking never got much coverage. Gee, I wonder why.

Fast forward four decades. Now we have the quadrennial spectacle called the Olympics. It’s become a little like the Superbowl. It’s infused with media money that wants to juice it up to sell you stuff.

In the Superbowl, that means a half-time show with celebrities who “accidentally” expose themselves and expensive television commercials that compete for edgy obscurity.

In the Olympics, we of course have doping scandals, but they’re not nearly as interesting ever since East Germany joined the Dark Force of capitalism. We do still have the mini-scandal of men winning women’s events on the pretense that they’re feeling feminine, that day, but that will sort itself out as the real women keep losing to them.

Today’s scandal is that the opening ceremonies included a bit where gay men dressed in drag mockingly imitated Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.

For those of you who were raised in the Church of No-religion and went to the College of No-education, the Last Supper is a large mural painted at the end of the fifteenth century on a convent wall in Milan by an Italian who was the quintessential Renaissance Man – a creative genius of art, engineering, science and architecture. It depicts the artist’s imagination of the supper between Jesus and his disciples the night before his crucifixion. It’s considered a masterpiece of art and a treasure of Christianity. It’s worth seeing.

I’m sure the gay Parisian in charge of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics thought the mocking of an icon of Christianity and western culture was very edgy and, therefore, artistic. I’m surprised there wasn’t someone more sophisticated to say “Oh, the mocking of Christianity thing? Hasn’t that been done?”

Because yes, it has. About a thousand times. I suppose it was edgy when an “artist” made a jar of urine with a submerged crucifix and called it “Piss Christ.” But that was nearly forty years ago, for Chrissake. The latest “edginess” is fake nuns in drag at baseball games.

Yawn.

There’s a reason I bring up these stories of Matthew Shepard and this week’s opening ceremonies of the Olympics. (BTW, women’s beach volleyball is more entertaining than most other women’s sports. Superbowl wardrobe malfunctions have nothing on these gals.)

It’s because they raise a question in my mind.

I’ve never had an issue with gays, mind you. A few of my friends and family are gays. I admire the struggle it must have been and the courage it must have entailed.

Anyway, I have enough stuff in my bedroom and my past to avoid judging people for what’s in theirs. (I say these sorts of things just to ensure that I’ll never succumb to pressure to run for political office or even – especially! – to serve on my HOA.)

All that said, there’s something amiss about publicly mocking people’s religion, especially when the mockery is just for publicity, faux edginess, and to sell stuff.

I don’t mock gay people for being gay. Now that would be edgy in today’s culture. Gay people don’t mock Islam or the Prophet. That would be edgy in today’s culture. Nobody mocks transsexuals. That would be edgy.

Why is it OK to dig up the most overused trope of political correctness by mocking Christians and Christianity?

There’s nothing edgy about mocking Christians. It happens all the time now. In fact, it always has. The first mocking of a Christian was of Christ who died a humiliating death after an excruciating torture. Almost all his disciples were later mockingly tortured to death as well.

This mockery of Christianity continued unabated up to the present with fake nuns in drag at baseball games.  

That said, I object to renewed mockery of my Lord and Savior by attention-seeking queers who are being paid to do so with public funds.

I understand that mocking Christians is part of your gig. It apparently gets your rocks off. You insult Christians to the point that they’re angry and hurt, and then you go home (I hope) to get your jollies about it in your bedroom.

I suggest that you masturbate to something else. I remind you that when it comes to mockery, you live in glass houses.

I’m sick and tired of media hatred and censorship of Christians

Sensational rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud appeared for an interview over the weekend immediately after leading his Houston Texans to a playoff win. The exhausted, battered, victorious 22-year-old opened with these words:

“First and foremost, I just want to give all glory to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

The game was carried by NBC. They posted Stroud’s postgame interview but, predictably, edited out his opening statement – the very statement that the player himself said was “first and foremost” to him and his terrific game.

Stroud is Black. It used to be that liberals tolerated Black displays of religion because they thought such displays were cute, as in Black churches with people dancing in the aisle and shouting “Hallelujah!”

Never mind that such displays were profound and spiritual for the Black participants; liberals condescendingly tolerated them only because they saw them as something like a kindergarten Christmas play.

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