Independence From Religion Day

Christians have apparently forgotten what it is like to be persecuted.

Michigan, Mississippi and a spate of other states already had a similar law in place. Indiana, Virginia and now Arkansas have just passed an anti-gay/pro-discrimination law as well. The

Rallying against hate.

difference, though, is that Indiana and Virginia, for example, doesn’t have any laws that protect LBGT’s as a class. As Addictedinfo.org reports on Virginia (and basically pertains to Indiana also), “The state of Virginia is set to pass a law which would allow anti-LGBT business owners to bar gay people, purely on the basis of their sexuality. The Virginia Bill states that anyone seeking or holding a business license from the state of Virginia in the state can refuse service or entry to gay people, on the grounds it ‘would violate the religious or moral convictions of such person with respect to same-sex marriage or homosexual behavior.’”

Seriously.

It is legalized discrimination meant to protect business owners who are also Judeo-Christian from catering to gays, though we all know that in reality the laws may eventually extend to anyone a business owner doesn’t like (and they will be able to invoke ‘religious objection’ in their defense). To be clear, I do think that a business owner should be able to deny a person service provided there is a good reason, where ‘a good reason’ is one grounded in reality. (That is to say being a religious Jew, Christian, or Muslim is not grounded in reality.) While those of us in the good ol’ U.S. of A. with any semblance of sanity or aren’t insane about inflicting our exclusionary beliefs on others can talk and give lip-service to how terrible these laws are, no one is doing much of anything about it. Sure, there have been street protests and several companies have bailed on planned expansions into Indiana, for example, but I don’t think it is enough. The people creating and passing these laws simply don’t understand how hateful they are being, where being hateful is simply primitive at this point in human history.

It is no longer acceptable. But you cannot reason with the kind of people who support these laws, the kind of people who, say, claim to be Christians but don’t act anything like Jesus. Take the Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for instance, who complained in an interview of, "an avalanche of intolerance that has been poured on our state" but seemed not to understand that what he’s done is allow the government to sanction just that, intolerance. You can only make such people understand by demonstrating what it is they are doing to people when they deny a person basic human rights. You can only hope to make them understand by putting them through the very thing they insist on doing to other people. That being the case, I am calling for a national day of protest, a day in which Christians are denied services by non-Christians based, of course, on ‘moral objections.’ Without getting into the particulars of my system of ethics, let’s just say I find the morality of Judeo-Christians quite disturbing. Why shouldn’t I, or anyone else with a different system of ethics – one based on science since science is apparently a religion to the Christian right-wing – deny Christians service based on a ‘moral objection’?

Unfortunately, Easter is too close to raise awareness of and organize such a protest. My solution is to make July 4, 2015 in the U.S., America’s Independence Day, Independence From Religion Day* by being intolerant of the religiously inclined and invoking a ‘moral objection’ as the reason for denying certain people services. On a day that is only allowed to be celebrated by straight Judeo-Christian patriots – since you’re not a patriot if you’re not a straight Judeo-Christian – I say we hold what is the social equivalent of the Boston Tea Party; the rest of us are going to take the rights straight Judeo-Christians take for granted and throw them overboard. Extremist straight Judeo-Christians need to be shown that freedom from religion in just as important as the freedom of religion.

[Sorry, can’t think of a catchier title at the moment.]

This was a lifetime ago! And today?

I will admit that this seems like a rather extreme measure to take but ‘extreme’ is the only thing extremist straight Judeo-Christians understand. There is only a shred of hope that the people who wish to legally discriminate can come to see that Independence Day really should be called ‘Interdependence Day;’ America has long suffered from a fractured psyche (in no small part due to the Reagan Years) and it is time to re-establish a national identity. These discriminatory laws cannot accomplish that. Making bullies understand what they are doing by showing them how it feels is the only possible hope in putting the U.S. back on the road to unity. Okay, okay, not that the U.S. was ever really unified – some group somewhere was always getting the shaft – but few will argue that the U.S.’s current national identity isn’t like Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde at best. The sane among us cannot stand idly by and let religious lawmakers create laws in their favor. And so the sane among us have no good recourse but to deny their kind service.

Certainly there will be practical difficulties. For instance, it is not always immediately clear who is and who isn’t a religious wing-nut. In cases where it is known, servicing a religious person should be politely declined and the reason for denying service given; “I’m sorry Mr. White, but I morally object to the nature of your ethics and therefore cannot in good conscience serve you today.” There is also the matter of whether to deny service to religious people who are not dicks, which in actuality would be most religious people (in my experience). Should those people be denied service? For the sake of consistency, I would have to say ‘yes’ as doing so would result in the situation being recanted to the denied party’s family and friends who are also likely to be religious. While I don’t like the idea of there being ‘collateral damage,’ no good revolution has come about without some innocent ‘blood’ getting spilled.

The year is 2015. Americans are not dirt-snorting, cave-dwelling misogynist towelheads that like to behead people for petty reasons. Some people should stop acting like that’s what they want to be, or if they want to, be that person somewhere else. The U.S. is no longer the place for you.

5 Suggestions for Terrorists

Is the word ‘terrorists’ just another word for ‘freedom fighter,’ a sort of revolutionary who is misguided in their use of force? I don’t know about being a revolutionary and all that, but the use of force by terrorists is indeed misguided. After all, what’s the point of terrorism? The point is to instill fear in the enemy, disrupt the lives of the enemy, and make the enemy take notice of the terrorists’ agenda/rightful place in the world. I guess one-out-of-three isn’t bad, if you’re a baseball player. I mean, sure, terrorists create fear but it isn’t enough to disrupt the lives of their enemies. The targets of terrorism, Joe Q Public, still goes to work, still shops for Christmas on Thanksgiving night, and still drowns themselves daily in a three-pump, two-shot Grande Venti Mocha Frappuccino Latte with whipped cream. Plus, Joe Q Public doesn’t care about a terrorist’s agenda because when terrorists have to blow stuff up to make a point, Joe Q Public cares more that people died than what the terrorists stand for. In this way, terrorists can safely be considered morons, but they are also morons for terrorizing in an oh-so-last-century fashion. If terrorists really want to change the world in their favor, if they really want the Western world to sit up and take notice of their agenda, terrorists need to bring their game into the 21^st century. To that end I offer terrorists some suggestions. And, since terrorists will never consider these suggestions because they go for spectacle over subtlety 99.9% of the time, I’m not really aiding any terrorists. (Did you get that NSA? I know you’re listening. Eric Snowden said so.)

5 – Help pass laws that allows gays to marry. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Why in Allah’s name would I do that?” Hear me out. The fact that gays are being allowed to marry in several U.S. states really, really upsets a great many “patriots” (read: Bible thumpin’ Fox News watching homosexual men who make lots of money pretending to be straight). If you can help gays get married in all 50 U.S. states, imagine the lifelong suffering you would incur among the most primitive members of American society. If no one else, the Southern states will listen to your demands.

4 – Still want to kill, don’t you? Okay, fine, but how about killing only people who actually deserve it, like the people who appear as contestants on American Idol and The Voice? I don’t need to remind you Islamic terrorists in particular that your holy book is meant to be sung when recited…do you really want Taylor Swift to convert to Islam and sing the Koran? I sure as fuck don’t. She’d turn it into a story about some dude breaking up with her and that would be, like, exhausting, and I never ever everrrr want that to happen. Plus, killing all the wannabe singers would spare the world of those really deep insights that are the prerogative of the shows’ judges, especially those ham-fisted analogies about baby seals being clubbed.

3 – Need a little R&R after all that killing? (You did include everyone who showed up at auditions, right?) How about you travel abroad and attack the coffee supply. Ethiopia, South America, wherever; if you really want to demoralize The United States, rob them of their elixir of life – coffee. Slash, burn, poison crops; do whatever you’ve got to do to reduce American consumption of coffee and I assure you the U.S. economy will collapse beyond repair within three months. Nothing will ever get done in America again. (Bonus: A third of America’s workforce – baristas – will be unemployed and unable to pay for their godless liberal college education. Collateral damage is awesome! ) 

2 – Okay, so going after the coffee supply isn’t the immediate payoff y’all have come to love. You still want spectacle and the time-consuming, blood-soaked deaths of warblers didn’t grant immediate satisfaction. Okay, how about blowing up a Budweiser factory or two? Despite the fact that anyone who chooses Budweiser over any other beer is a step below moronic, and there are a LOT of those people, blowing up a macro-brew factory is sure to give even the most die-hard redneck a big, dry lump in their throat. But whatever you do, DO NOT kill the Budweiser Clydesdales. Everyone fucking loves those horses. 

1 – Look, I know you guys are financed by very wealthy people so I know you’ve got the money to pull this one off: Buy all the toilet paper. ALL OF IT. John Lennon wanted us to imagine there’s no heaven? Imagine Americans without toilet paper! Among very few other things, Americans pride themselves on not smelling like ass. That being the case, toilet paper is one of the MOST essential items of consumption in The U.S. seeing how bidets are too complicated and French to use. Best of all, buying all the toilet paper is perfectly legal. No Gitmo for you lot! The U.S. would cower in the face of this ingenious plan. Now say it with me…ha…ha ha…mwah ha ha…MWAH HA HA HA HA!

This Argument is a Little Bit Gay

Here’s an old salvo making new rounds in the anti-homophobia multi-media campaign…When Did You Choose to be Straight?

 

The point is to get straight people to think about when they chose their sexual orientation. By illustrating that heterosexuals never did choose their sexual orientation, the same must be true of homosexuals. If that’s the case, homosexuals cannot and should not be blamed or ostracized for who they are. (Ironically, the people who think this is an effective argument at the same time feverishly cling to the concept of Free Will. But, whatever.)

While I do not think anyone besides a Scientologist should be blamed for their sexual orientation, I do think this “simple question” that portends to be some kind of panacea for homophobia is not the ingenious argument everyone seems to think it is. This is because it is quite easy to imagine someone who is otherwise heterosexual to choose a long term sexual partner of the same gender. [We’ll disregard solitary instances of homosexual behavior as “experimenting,” especially for women since that’s really hot.] I can easily imagine someone with a long history of physical or mental abuse by an opposite sex partner switching teams, so-to-speak. I can also use myself as an example: Given a do-or-die choice between partnering with another man or a 400lbs Samoan woman, I’m probably going to choose partnering with a man because a 400lbs Samoan women is much less likely to turn me on than another man. (Naturally, this all assumes the man is a good-looking billionaire philanthropist with mommy-issues who flies his own helicopter.) Of course, this might raise the question of whether the person who switches teams is actually a homosexual, but only if one thinks narrow definitions trump real world actions. Such a person may be bisexual, but such definitions obscure the point seeing how bisexuals have been maligned almost as much as homosexuals throughout history. But I digress…Not every heterosexual who may have been abused in some fashion might be tempted to switch teams, but I’m quite sure it’s happened more than one time. I’m not saying it happens more often than people born with an inclination towards their preference in partners, just that it does happen.

I realize my hypothesis can only remain as such because it is too difficult to empirically verify. While scores of homosexuals could be interviewed as to whether they chose homosexuality or homosexuality chose them, we couldn’t be sure – without elaborate brain monitoring – that such interviewees weren’t lying. Besides, any fundamental theist worth their salt will tell you all homosexuals are liars, so what’s the point of conducting a study? (I’m not singling out homosexuals as liars, it’s just that everyone lies, especially fundamental theists.) We cannot verify exactly how many times people are “born” gay. Does it matter, though?

I do believe asking people when they chose to be heterosexuals is a good way of demonstrating that it is possible that homosexuals never had a say in whom they find attractive. Such a demonstration may advance the idea that homosexuality is not a highly unusual anomaly, but to what end? Such a demonstration doesn’t do much to defeat a passionate homophobe since the demonstration doesn’t address the societal or moral implications of a homosexual acting upon their impulses, even if those impulses are natural. It may be shown that homosexuality may be a natural inclination for a certain percentage of the population but that doesn’t mean accepting homosexuals is necessarily good for society. That’s an entirely different argument.

I do understand that by getting people to consider homosexuality as something not completely unnatural is a stepping stone towards discussing the real issue, such as I have just posed it. I do giggle a little bit though like Harvey Fierstein imagining La Cage aux Folles in IMAX 3D when people take this homosexuality-is-normal argument as the killing blow (no pun intended) against homophobia. The argument is just a baby step towards the greater discussion and if one can’t see the argument as only a baby step, they’re in no position to tell you why there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.