It’s been a good run, but it’s time to retire this blog and move onto bigger and better things–Namely, The Gaytheists.

I have an amazing lineup of LGBTQ Atheists ready to roll on this new project, and even though the page is only a few hours old and is still in need of some construction work, I’m more excited than a chihuahua on crystal meth.

I recently riffed an hour-long version of The Aristocrats with some of my friends. We played off each other so well that we all died laughing. I’d like to experiment with my blog readers and see if we can’t replicate that experience. I’ve disabled comment moderation and enabled anonymous commenting to allow you to really go all-out without ending your career in politics, journalism, public education or whatever the fuck you want to be.

This blog is already one of the most avoided and controversial blogs in the Atheist blogosphere, so don’t worry about being too over-the-top. That’s the great thing about The Aristocrats, you’re allowed to be too over-the-top. This experiment in anonymity won’t work unless you really let yourself get to the darkest place in your mind and riff off of everyone else’s filth. This blog has no wholesome reputation to call into question.

I’ll finish the joke when it’s gone on long enough.

A young Mormon man walks into a talent agent’s office at the offices of Walt Disney Theatrical in New York. The talent agent says, “Sorry, I’m getting ready to go home and I don’t do walk-in auditions. Go home.”

The man pleads with the man, “Please, sir, my family and I came all the way from Salt Lake City. Please, sir, give us a chance.”

“I’m sorry,” said the talent agent, “I don’t book family acts. After that whole Jonas Brothers incest fiasco, we try to avoid the whole genre. I hope you understand.”

“I’m sure if you just watch the act, you’ll love it. Please, sir, just give us a few minutes. Our bus heads back to Utah in two hours if we can’t book this act now.  You’re our last hope.  Please.”

The talent agent sighs and slumps back into his desk chair. “Fine. You’ve got five minutes. You better still have those return bus tickets. Hurry hurry hurry!”

The young man shuts out the lights for three seconds. When he turns the lights back on, his entire family is lined up in the centre of the floor. They are, from left to right:

• the young man, in a tuxedo, which, somehow, he was able to put on in the three seconds of darkness;
• his wife holding their newborn infant son;
• their 19-year-old apostate daughter in black pants with chains and goth make-up;
• their twin sons, both 7-years-old with blonde floppy hair and dressed identically;
• the man’s parents, both in their eighties, wearing traditional Mormon church clothes and temple garments;
• the couple’s daughter, 4-years-old in a little white dress with pigtails in her sandy blonde hair;
• an Arabic janitor they found in the building, converted to Mormonism and incorporated into their act;
• and the family pet, Jake, a golden retriever puppy with a red bandanna tied around his neck.

The wife walked over to the desk and put a cassette tape into the talent agent’s boombox and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for strings began to play. The family immediately sprung into action.

And now you finish the joke, line by line.

If ever I get a precious few hours of spare time, I sit down and carefully craft epic mix CDs and the occasional mix tape.  In case you’re wondering what a certified Homosecular Gaytheist listens to, here’s the track list for my latest 3-CD 80s mix.  Revel in its glory:

CD 1

1. Anyway You Want It – Journey
2. Jump – Van Halen
3. Eye of the Tiger – Survivor
4. Love Shack – B-52s
5. Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go – Soft Cell
6. Whip It – Devo
7. Call Me – Blondie
8. 867-5309/Jenny – Tommy Tutone
9. Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These) – Eurythmics
10. Jack and Diane – John Mellencamp
11. Mr. Roboto – Styx
12. Walk Like an Egyptian – Bangles
13. Hit Me With Your Best Shot – Pat Benatar
14. Footloose – Kenny Loggins
15. Purple Rain – Prince
16. Open Arms – Journey
17. The Heart of Rock & Roll – Huey Lewis & the News
18. Super Freak – Rick James
19. We’re Not Gonna Take It – Twisted Sister

CD 2

1. Beat It – Michael Jackson
2. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper
3. Kids In America – Kim Wilde
4. Rock Me Amadeus – Falco
5. You Spin Me Round – Dead Or Alive
6. Pump Up The Volume – Marrs
7. The Time Warp – Damian
8. Hit The Road Jack – Buster Poindexter
9. Take On Me – A-Ha
10. Every Breath You Take – The Police
11. Why Do Fools Fall In Love? – Diana Ross
12. The Lion Sleeps Tonight – Tight Fit
13. I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) – The Proclaimers
14. I Love Rock’n'Roll – Joan Jett
15. 99 Luftballons – Nena
16. Need You Tonight – INXS
17. Venus – Bananarama
18. Ghostbusters – Ray Parker, Jr.
19. Sweet Child O’ Mine – Guns’n'Roses

CD 3

1. Back To Life – Soul II Soul
2. I Think We’re Alone Now – Tiffany
3. Maniac – Michael Sembello
4. Safety Dance – Men Without Hats
5. Heart And Soul – Huey Lewis & the News
6. Help – Bananarama
7. It’s My Party – Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin
8. I Just Died In Your Arms – Cutting Crew
9. Ebony And Ivory – Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder
10. Pump Up The Jam – Technotronic
11. Mickey – Toni Basil
12. Pour Some Sugar On Me – Def Leppard
13. Sharp Dressed Man – ZZ Top
14. Uh All Night – Kiss
15. Never Gonna Give You Up – Rick Astley
16. Kokomo – The Beach Boys
17. Everybody Wants To Rule The World – Tears for Fears
18. Time After Time – Cyndi Lauper
19. We Built This City – Starship

Today is a uniquely American holiday where all Americans can look down the big hole created eight years ago by terrorists and somehow still maintain a misplaced rabid nationalism while acknowledging that after eight years, it’s still just a big hole.

So grab your picnic blankets, people, and head on down to the Big Amerihole!  Jesus and Rudy Giuliani will be waiting for you there!

Once again, I have to disagree with my friend Hemant Mehta, The Friendly Atheist.

In his latest post, Hemant cites billboards from a pro-gay Christian group and says, “But if change can happen within the church, it has to start from within.”  Sorry, Hemant, but I respectfully disagree.  And I think the methods that these gay Christians are using are both foolish and transparently dishonest.

According to Christians, the Bible is the inerrant word of God and the Bible says clearly, throughout both the Old and New Testament, that being gay is unnatural and a sin.  The only change that can happen here is when the mindset of individual Christians becomes more accepting of homosexuality and, after trying to reconcile the strict anti-gay verses of the Bible with real life, those Christians dump the Bible and dump their faith.

These billboards show the immense amount of strain that pro-gay Christians must put on their faith to try to rationalise their Bible with reality.

Two of the billboards claim that there are gay relationships in the Bible, Naomi and Ruth and David and Jonathan.  Neither of these relationships are explicitly said to be gay.

The way most Christians interpret the relationship between David and Jonathan is that they were very close friends, like brothers.  At no point in the Bible is there a mention of a romantic or sexual relationship between the two of them and the story is definitely a story of incredible friendship.  This is nothing more than an ancient Jewish “bromance”.

And who says that a bromantic love can’t be stronger than one’s love for sex?  If an unmarried man who isn’t a horndog has a very close male friend and loves him like a brother, it’s very plausible that he could love his friend more than women and still be straight.  In fact, no written interpretation of their relationship even comes close to calling their relationship intimate until the European Renaissance.  The explicitly homoerotic interpretations are all even more modern than that.

This is one of my favourite stories in the Bible to tell Christians to research, but I don’t believe that the original story is one of a gay relationship, and the text of First and Second Samuel supports that conclusion.  It’s a fun story to make Christians think twice about where they draw boundary lines with friendship and intimacy, but it’s not a gay fairy tale.

The second billboard says that, “Ruth loved Naomi as Adam loved Eve,” and cites Ruth 1:14.  According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the King James Bible, nowhere in the book of Ruth are the names Adam and Eve even mentioned.  That biblical-sounding phrase was purely fabricated to give the billboard more credibility among lazy Christians who don’t have their iPhone Bible app at the ready at all times.

Ruth 1 tells the story of how Naomi’s husband died during a long famine, and her two sons married two women, Orpah and Ruth.  Naomi’s sons and their wives spent ten years in Naomi’s house before the two sons died.  Naomi led her daughters-in-law up the road a bit and told them that the news from their homeland was that the famine had ended there and there was food.  Then she told them to go back to their homeland and find their families.  Rather than returning to her disappointed family after ten years as a widow, Ruth decided to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi and take care of her until she died, because neither of them had anyone else in the world to fall back on.  Orpah went to the Americas and founded a multi-billion dollar conglomeration based on her image and went on to give away massive amounts of free cars and bad medical advice.  The rest of the Book of Ruth talks about Ruth falling in love with Boaz and giving birth to his child, Obed.  Boaz was a close male relative of Naomi and a descendant of Perez, another Bible character who made his way to the Americas to fuck up pop culture.

What else would a woman do after spending ten years in the house of a motherly figure, especially in a society as matriarchal as a Jewish household?  Of course she was going to stay and take care of her aging mother-in-law!  There’s nothing gay or “Adam and Evey” about that.  She even had a heterosexual relationship after chapter 1… one of the most famous heterosexual relationships in the Old Testament outside of Genesis!

Even if this story was about a lesbian relationship, what would it teach?  It’s okay to leave your dead husband for his mother?  The life of a lesbian is absolute shit?  (And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. – Ruth 1:20)  Two women can’t possibly live together without being lesbians?

No thanks.  This isn’t a story about lesbians, and even if it was, it would a dreadful story about lesbians.

At no point in either of these stories does it say that being gay is okay, much less that any of the characters are actually gay.

The third, and most disturbing, billboard says that Jesus, in Matthew 19:10-12, says that gay people were born that way.

What Matthew 19:10-12 actually says is this:

His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.

But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

A eunuch is a man who has been castrated, usually to prevent him from breeding or to keep him docile while he worked as a slave.  So unless the Christian definition of gay includes, and is exclusive to, people born without testicles, this verse has nothing to do with gay people.

I find it absolutely repugnant that, in searching for pro-gay sayings by Jesus, this group would decide that gay=eunuch.  It’s dishonest and incredibly offensive.  Gay people have testicles, believe it or not, and there are entire NSFW websites devoted to said gay testicles.

I’m sure the group didn’t mean to cause offense and didn’t mean to imply that gays have no balls, but when the closest thing you can find to support for gay people is an admission that some male babies are born hermaphroditic or, for any other reason, without testicles, don’t twist definitions to make the word eunuch mean a gay male.  Jesus said nothing about homosexuality except that the rules of the Old Testament, which include stoning gays, still apply.

So why are Atheists encouraging Christians to lie about their own book to trick other Christians into grudgingly accepting gay people?  We’re setting these Christians up for failure if we’re encouraging them to set up their arguments based on lies.  We can do better than that.  Christian homophobia can only be taken down as we continue to take down Christianity as a whole.

Twisting the Bible to make it sound pro-gay is cheap, wrong and ineffective.  Instead of forcing the Bible to conform to reality in ways that such a rigid text was not designed to do, we should instead force Christians to conform to reality.  Maybe then they won’t be Christians anymore.  And how can that be a bad thing?

I was very confused when I watched Obama’s healthcare speech to a joint session of Congress last night.  After President Obama said there would be no funding for health care to illegal immigrants there was no applause (as there had been after every other sentence beforehand), but there was some commotion and then people started booing loudly.

It wasn’t until I checked the webnets today that I found out what really went on.  Representative Douche Wilson of South Carolina yelled, “You lie!” at the President, shattering the rules of decorum and turning one of the most formal events in the US government into a madhouse.

Here’s a short time-line of everything that happened last night:

8:16 PM Obama begins his speech., elected representatives from the Republican party scribble madly on the backs of their itinerary sheets to form makeshift tea party protest signs.

Hey, Congressman. You know the two gigantic white binders that have been sitting on the floor of your office for over a month? The ones that you have been using as a small coffee table? THAT bill.

8:38 PM In a sinister plot by the Senate Committee for John McCain’s Vegetable Friends, Sen. John McCain is shown during the speech smiling more creepily than ever, for almost a full terrifying minute.  Children all around the world feel hopeless and empty without knowing why.

STOP! PLEASE! My body, my mind... they feel so weak. Please, Sen. McCain, I beg of you: Please stop this madness!

8:42 PM President Obama destroys the myth of Sarah Palin’s “death panels” and ends her career violently in front of both houses of Congress.

As President Obama addresses both houses of Congress and the entire nation on the issue of Sarah Palin's "Death Panels" lie, the former Alaska Governor suffers a massive stroke and loses much of her facial coordination.

8:43 PM Rep. Douche Wilson (R – SC) heckles the President during his speech and exits the Capitol Building on foot with a shovel in his hand.  Observers say that he walked to Arlington National Cemetery to dig his own grave.

Republican Representative Douche Wilson from South Carolina wakes up from his nap and suddenly realises he isn't at his whites-only country club any more.

THE PRESIDENT:  There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants.  This, too, is false.  The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  You lie!  (Boos.)

8:43 PM Congress boos Rep. Wilson for being a massive dick.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm sorry, asshole, what did you say to me? What did you fuckin' say to me? -- THE VICE PRESIDENT: You fuckin' wanna play this game? I'll show you how to play this game! I'll show you how to play this game IN HELL! -- THE PRESIDENT: Say it again, motherfucker! Say. It. Again. -- MADAM SPEAKER: Oh SNAP! (Applause.)

9:12 PM The Republican party officially embarrasses itself to death.  Funeral will be held in the Capitol rotunda on Saturday at noon.

Autostraddle, the most vag-tastic website on the Internet, has an exclusive interview with Lissa Young, a 20-year servicewoman who was kicked out of her teaching position at West Point after it was learned that she is a lesbian.

Most of the argument coming from the Right in favour of the discriminatory Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy revolves around gay men not having the masculinity necessary to fight a war, which is sickeningly false in and of itself, but Lissa Young brings up a very good point about lesbians in the military, twisting the Right’s logic in a wonderfully poignant way:

In many ways, I think it is easier to be a lesbian in the military than a gay man; this has to do with gender identity development and prevailing gender norms in the United States. The specific socio-cultural space in which the military is placed brings into focus the ways in which our culture defines, creates and reinvents masculinity and femininity.

I think it’s particularly hard to be perceived as moving from masculine to feminine, which is what the stereotype is for gay men. This move is much more marked and stigmatized in the military. There is a culture of heterosexism; and I think gay men are reminded more of this, reminded that they are not in the “in group.” You certainly cannot be a faggot and be taken seriously as a warrior. However, it’s easier to be a lesbian woman – moving stereotypically from the feminine to the masculine – doing male things…it’s less threatening, and becoming more masculine is in consonance with the concept of being a warrior.

She knows what she’s talking about, she’s edgy and she’s well-spoken… I think I’m in love.  Go read the whole interview.  DO IT NOW!

Everyone’s in a huff about this newly surfaced video an ad campaign pitched to the World Wildlife Fund.  The WWF did not accept the ad and decried the agency for making it, however, some people are still using it to smear the WWF.

Here’s the advert in full.  I won’t waste my time with a warning for sensitive people, so here’s the disclaimer from Gothamist:

DDB Brazil’s efforts to invoke the tsunami by way of the September 11 attacks go much further than the print ad concept—there’s even an extremely disturbed and messed up TV ad. The video is below and we warn you, it may be distressing— it shows a plane flying into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, the Twin Towers on fire, and many planes over lower Manhattan. It’s basically like a nightmare.

EDIT: It seems the ad agency and WWF are so ashamed of the ad that they pulled all of the most-embedded versions of the ad off of YouTube.  If people can’t see it, there can’t be conversation about it and no one gets smeared.  Smart move.  However, here are a trillion more copies of the video.

I understand the outrage.  9/11/2001 was a terrible day and showing the deaths of almost 3,000 people in a television ad isn’t the most tactful thing in the world.

However, in just the first few seconds of the ad, every American over the age of 10 remembered clearly and vividly what it felt like to watch helpless civilians die en masse by no fault of their own.  Americans remember 9/11, and I hate to say it, but it feels like the conservatives who this ad was designed to convince, love 9/11.  They use it in every argument.  They use it to elect people to office.  They use it to make us afraid of progress.  They get off to this stuff.  They worship 9/11.

But who cared about the tsunami in 2005?  What American conservative shed a tear and flew their Indonesian flag at half-mast for over a year when the tsunami took so many brown people?

I know I’m going to get bitched at for this, but I see no problem with this ad—except for the nitpicky detail that fading to black and coming back up at the same film angle is awkward and that choosing several different angles for the three film clips would have had a better effect.  This ad uses the language of conservatives to convince conservatives that natural disasters are truly deadly and terrifying… and that we should do all that we can to prevent them.  I don’t see how that’s wrong.

Controversial is not always bad.

I would like to start by making a full about-face on some of the more namby-pamby bullshit that I spewed preceding and following the Proposition 8 debacle in California.  Gay Christians are not the strongest allies in the gay community.  I must have been fucking stoned when I said (and I can’t find exactly where I said this, but it’s out there somewhere) that gay Christians are the LGBT community’s best allies.  My reasoning for this was that it would take a large group of people inside the the church who were gay or gay allies to change the anti-homosexual tone of the church.  Like I said, fucking stoned.

Nothing is more detrimental to the movement for equal rights and acceptance of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered folk than the insistence of many of queers to stick to their former religion and continue pumping money into the coffers.  Even worse are those queers who cast aside their sexuality to live a lie after being guilted into embedding themselves so deep into the lie of religion.

Even when I was a Christian, I couldn’t rationalise being gay with believing in the infallibility a book that calls gay people dogs and promises that our blood—and our partners’ blood—would be on our own heads.  So what did I do?  I forced myself to, “live the straight and narrow,” and continued studying to become a Christian minister.  Having escaped from that situation, (I now live the gay and girthy) I can’t help but feel terrible for other gay Christian teenagers who force themselves to live in the closet, often not stopping at keeping their sexuality a secret to others, but living in the closet even to themselves, and choose the hateful religion of their parents over the natural feelings in themselves.

It honestly makes me angry at them and even more angry toward their parents and priests.  Their parents refuse to acknowledge the psychological harm they cause their children and the children refuse to acknowledge the harm they are doing to other gay people shackled in the chains of their parents’ religion.

The gay Christians who are open about their sexuality don’t help either.  In insisting that one can be gay and still be a Christian, how many people do they torment with trying to reconcile the discographies of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand with the Epistle to the Romans?  How many people are driven to hate themselves because they believe that there’s some other meaning to, “Thou shalt not lie with a man as one does a woman,” and set off on a miserable search to discover it?

Gay Christians can’t change Christianity.  Christianity will not change.  Christianity changes gay people.  It forces its gay adherents to stay in the closet and not act on their sexual needs, causing large amounts of sexual abuse in Christian denominations across the board.  It forces its gay adherents to live heterosexual lives, causing unhappy marriages and abandonment of children.  It forces gay teenagers who know that the Bible is 100% true and who know that they are 100% gay to deny themselves their sexuality and causes many of these people to lead down the road to depression and suicide.

Gay Christians do nothing to help the gay community.  Giving credence to the idea that the Bible, in all its fag-bashing glory, is infallible does nothing but damage the gay community.  And yet my hometown of Roanoke, Virginia has an annual gay pride event hosted and sponsored by the Metropolitan Community Church.  It’s disgusting.

What sparked this tirade, I hear you ask.  Two of my ex boyfriends have announced this month that they are straight, thanks to Jesus, and that they have girlfriends.  I guess it’s just easier to blame it on Jesus than accept the fact that I’m so lackluster in bed that I turn gay men straight.  (That was a lie.  I’m a pretty goddamn good lay and their hideous “conversions” are all Jesus’ fault.)

An old man on one of my friend’s Facebook walls started an argument about socialised health care and government scholarships for college students.  He was vehemently against all sort of government spending and frequently derided my younger friends as naïve and stupid because they were younger than him.

One of my friends, a young woman, was told to shut up after he ignored everything she said, making it clear that not only did he not want to discuss anything with anyone younger than himself but he especially didn’t want to discuss anything with a woman younger than himself.

Unfortunately, he deleted all of his comments after I eviscerated him the second time, so all I have are my two contributions to the argument.

Okay, dear. You’re an idiot.

What is good for the country is good for its people. Period. It does no good for a person to acquire wealth and have the best health insurance if everyone around him is poor and sick. If the uninsured of the US die from the next big pandemic (say, N1H1), how much of the work force will be obliterated? And if it’s just the poor and uninsured who die, how will the rich people mow their lawns, flip their burgers, park their Porsches, walk their dogs? It is most definitely in the nation’s best interest to insure all of its citizens’ health, and any intelligent person with wealth will concede that. Jon Stewart made a good point of this [2:10 in Part 2]. Paying for the wellbeing of those around you secures your own wellbeing.

As for other areas of government funding, like in education, it is absolutely ludicrous to say that you should pay for your education and your children’s education and no one else’s. How many brilliant people from poor backgrounds should be denied a decent college education because some millionaire’s drool-factory children are filling the desks at Harvard and Brown? Should all bright children with poor backgrounds be resigned to fix auto radiators while the deluded alcoholic children of former Presidents get shuffled through both Yale and Harvard Business on their father’s oil money?

This argument goes back to well before 1821 when President Thomas Jefferson penned his autobiography. Jefferson speaks in it about how, “One provision of the bill [a bill to revise to the constitution of the College of W^m & Mary] was, that the expenses of these schools should be borne by the inhabitants of the county, every one in proportion to his general tax rate,” and how the public elementary school system was founded. He speaks of the opposition to this bill by wealthy landowners and says, “I shall recur again to this subject, towards the close of my story, if I should have life and resolution enough to reach that term; for I am already tired of talking about it myself.”

The argument that wealthy people should take care of their family alone and that tax dollars should not contribute to putting underprivileged children in schools of higher education, the argument you are trying to make now, was already old and tired in the early 1800s!

The United States military is one of the best and most efficient military systems ever developed. It would take a fool to argue against that. The military is a “socialist” system, to use Conservative lingo. It is entirely funded by your and my taxes and I feel so much safer at night knowing that our military branches watch over our nation as we peacefully sleep. I would not trust that task to Blackwater (now known as Xi) or any other private company. The government does it best. Are any conservatives out there gutsy enough to call a Marine a Commie pawn to his face? Our brave firefighters and police officers are also part of a “socialist” system. Where is Glenn Beck to point out the “evil communist plot” of safety and law enforcement? One of the funniest pieces of mail that the “socialist” US Postal Service has ever sent me was a recent handbill from VA Gov. candidate Bob McDonnell that decried, “government-run health-care.” It was delivered promptly by, “government-run courier service.”

Honestly, the government–your and my taxes–are the best and most efficient way to insure the health and education of its people. The government has greatly maintained hundreds of millions of miles of roadways, power lines, sewer pipes and railways. The government has secured the safety and order of every American and its property expertly. Even with the highest percentage of handgun owners of any other developed nation, the US has managed to keep its murder and violent crime levels surprisingly low, with some admitted room for improvement. The government has protected the security of America and its allies and interests with deadly efficiency in such a way that no government in its right mind would cross us.

Now why can’t the government use that same efficiency to ensure our health and education? Sir, it seems to me that you have a psychological disorder. You gladly fork over money for shooting brown people and jailing black people, but why not for keeping all people healthy and educated? What do you have against humanity at large?

Later…

Sir, I assume by your political views and the country of your residence that you are a Christian. I would ask you what you think about Jesus in Matthew 19:21-24. “21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. 22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. 23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Or Mark 12:28-31: “28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? 29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”

Matthew 25:31-46 has some good stuff too. “31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 For I was hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in; 36 Naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 For I was hungred, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.”

Or, I guess, Jesus was talking to people, “of that time,” because, “things are different now.” Or maybe it was, “a metaphor for blah blah yadda hmmph.” That’s what I usually hear in response to that argument, but honestly, it’s a weak argument to begin with. The argument from authority is weak, especially when said “authority” is a figment of our imagination… but I would imagine that people who believe in that crap would at least try to follow it. Nowhere in the Bible does it advise its followers to horde their cash.

These have never worked for me.  Let’s see if they work for you!

• I want to ride you like Shadowfax into the Battle of Helm’s Deep.
• I want to ride you like a Saturn V to the Moon.
• I want to ride you like a black stallion into the dawn-grey misty woodland in search for the missing princess.
• I want to ride you like a James Bond villain rides the top of a train:  Dangerously, recklessly and on camera.
• I want to ride you like an overly enthusiastic heavyset person rides a really fast rollercoaster that goes on forever.
• I want to mount you like a valiant white knight mounts his steed on top of a hill, silhouetted by by the setting sun over the misty moors of Renaissance England in a film starring Sir Laurence Olivier.
• I want to lick you repeatedly like a slow child trapped in a doorknob factory.
• I want to lick you like a gratuitously large menstruating female standing in front of a conveyor belt in the world’s largest chocolate-frosted cupcake factory.
• I want to take you inside me like Tupac took bullets:  Hard, fast and over and over again.
• I want to blow you like Katrina blew New Orleans and then fuck you like George Bush fucked all of the poor black people who lived there.
• I want you to ride my cock like it was a nuclear submarine:  It’s big, wet and full of seamen.
• I want you to ride my cock like it was a trolley in San Francisco:  It’s big, red and full of violations of the book of Leviticus.
• Hi.  I’m Reed Braden.

Let’s see if you have better luck with those than I did.

Yay hypocrisy!

Rush Limbaugh still wants the government to regulate what women can do with their genitals, but the moment that the government even suggests that men should get circumcised, OH MY FUCKING GAWD, OSbAMA, KEEP YER BLACK COMMIE KENYAN HANDS OFFA MAH CAWCK!!!

(Gabriel Winant via Hanna Rosin)

Here’s a video from Media Matters of Glenn Beck’s fuckwittiness.

After a minute into the video, I couldn’t stop twitching.  Some guy from some anti-capitalist organisation influenced the stimulus bill.  We don’t have complete records of everyone who has visited the White House.  Therefore, Obama is being secretly advised by commies.

I can do the same thing.  Osama bin Laden greatly influenced George W. Bush’s foreign policy.  We don’t have complete records of everyone Bush met with.  Therefore, George W. Bush performed oral favours on Osama bin Laden every Thursday evening and Glenn Beck sat in the Oval Office and fapped to the scene.  YOU CAN’T DISPROVE IT!  BUSH WAS GAY!  OMG!

About two minutes into the video, Beck found vague connections between President Obama two Weather Underground founders.  Therefore, Obama is a terrorist.

Big deal!  Under George Bush, Sarah Jane Moore, who tried to kill President Ford, was paroled and released from prison.  Recently, a parole board that was in place during the time of George Bush freed Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a Mason Family member who also attempted to shoot Ford, from prison.  Therefore, George Bush endorses the assassination of US Presidents and is a flaming homosexual.

About four minutes in, Glenn Beck flipped over a chalkboard with a diagram that looks like a less-coherent version of a prop from the movie A Beautiful Mind.  It links Obama to a bunch of people that Beck calls “anti-America.”  So Obama hates America!

Pshaw!

Bush is a faggy Mexican who assassinates US Presidents!

Beck’s guest then blathers on about how this anti-capitalist is bad.  Therefore, Obama is bad.

I can twist the words of experts too!  I have, next to me, my friend Maggie.  She is an expert on things that aren’t nice.

She says that Osama bin Laden, who Bush sucked off many times, is a not-nice person.  Not-nice people often kick puppies.  George W. Bush kicks puppies.

George W. Bush is a cocksucking “wise Latino” who kicks puppies and kills Presidents with his bare hands.

Beck finishes by saying that because Obama has never specifically said that he, “rejects Marxist principles,” he is a Marxist.

Well, I urge you to find an instance of George W. Bush stating explicitly that he, “rejects paedophilic principles.”  You can’t.

George W. Bush is a “wise Latina woman” who puts kittens and puppies into a woodchipper and puts terrorist cocks in his mouth and ass.  He also is a card carrying member of NAMbLA and murdered at least one US President with his mutated bear hands.

It makes just as much sense as Obama being a Marxist, Kenyan, radical Muslim terrorist.

BECK LOGIX!!!

Senator Ted Kennedy has just been reported dead after his long battle with brain cancer.  I know he would have loved to have had the chance to vote of the upcoming healthcare reform bill, and I hope we can get this bill through, intact, as soon as possible.

This guy is going to get arrested.  Fred Phelps is, I’m sad to say, very well-versed in the law and knows exactly how much he can say about a person without being sued for libel or slander.  This retard called Rep. Barney Frank a paedophile.

Orcinus: Gospel of Hate: Arizona pastor Steve Anderson spews bile toward Obama, Frank, and gays

I’m here to preach the Bible. And I’m sick to death — hey, let me tell you something. Our country is run by faggots. You know who wrote this 700-billion-dollar bailout bill? You know who was the man who was the architect of the bailout? His name is Barney Franks, he is a pedophile, he has been arrested for uh, interacting with boys that are in their teenage years when he’s in his 50s, it’s in the news, he’s been arrested for it. He is a pedophile, he is a homosexual, he has stood up in the floor of the sacred halls of justice and said, ‘I am gay, I am a sodomite.’

That’s Barney Frank, that’s who just sold our country into fascism. That’s who just sold our corporations to the government. That’s who sold out our country, a faggot! And I’m here to tell you something! I’m not going to stand for it, and let a faggot run the church! It’s bad enough that we’ve got a bunch of faggots running the government!

I’ll be following this guy more closely in the future and calling him out on his illegal slander.

I uploaded a bunch of my photos to Redbubble.com where they are for sale as matted, laminated, mounted or framed prints and also as greeting cards.  Go check it out and buy something.  If you make a purchase over $50 and email me with the details of your purchase and your mailing address, I will gladly send you a personal note of thanks.

I also have more tee shirts up for sale on Redbubble.

Over the past year, the Republican party has gotten exponentially more stupid with every fake grassroots movement the organise.

It boggles my mind how people can still take them seriously!

First it was Obama’s a Muslim, then he’s a terrorist-sympathiser, then Obama’s a Kenyan, then he’s going to let the evil wizards out of Azkaban dangerous, active terrorist-cell members out of prison and into your living room, now he’s going to kill grandma with “Deathcare^®”… because he’s the black Hitler.

If Republicans get any dumber, they will need illustrated instructions on how to breathe that will be laminated, devoid of sharp corners and safety-pinned to their suit coats.

At least Representative Barney Frank knows how to talk to these idiots:

Why can’t other Democrats see this nonsensical raving for what it is and support the President 100%?  We voted for Congresspersons who would promote Democratic ideals and we voted for President Obama to define what those ideals are.

While we’re all waiting on my life to settle down enough for me to be able to blog more regularly, please fill out this anonymous 10-question survey so I can better know to whom I’m writing and what I should focus on.

It won’t take but a few minutes and it would help me greatly.

Between family visiting, sister’s wedding, boyfriend visiting for a week, helping out an old friend, zeroing in on a new job and basically being an all-around awesome sonofabitch, I’ve been keeping busier than a hungry velociraptor at a convention for body builders covered in barbecue sauce (BBBBQCon).

I haven’t forgotten about you, and I have many more posts and tee shirts ready for you guys as soon as my life settles down a bit.

I’m shocked. My local news ran a teaser saying on of the Charles Manson Family, but not saying which one, has been released from prison. The first words out of my mouth were, “Well, it can’t be Squeaky Fromme. Who was it?”

It was Squeaky Fucking Fromme, member of the Charles Manson Family and attempted assassin of President Gerald Ford.

That’s right! In America, you can attempt to assassinate the President and, one day, earn your freedom back.

I don’t believe any other person in the history of this nation has ever attempted (or succeeded) to assassinate a President and regained their freedom… except Sarah Jane Moore… who also attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford and was released in 2007. Maybe parole boards just hate Gerald Ford…

Do you want a calendar filled with nothing but pictures of me, almost completely in the nude and doing rude and/or sexy things to The God Delusion?

I thought not.

Let’s make a Gaytheists calendar instead!

I got the idea when looking for when the 2010 SkepDude calendar would be available for sale that there should be a gay version of the SkepChick/Dude calendars, one that features only LGBT Atheists and skeptics baring it all (but covering certain bits in entertainingly gay-geeky ways) that can be sold to raise money for The Trevor Project.

If I get 12 amazing, funny, risqué photos by the randomly chosen deadline of 9 November 2009, we can do this thing.  If not, I’m going to create a 365-day picture-a-day calendar of myself, completely nude, and mail it to every single one of your grandparents, addressed to you.

Mua ha ha.

Anyhoo, a list!

• Photos should be fairly high quality–6 or 7 megapixels and up is good.  They should be in landscape format.
• I may have to crop a little off of some of the pictures, but I will not crop a portrait photo into landscape.
• Pictures can be in black and white or colour, but I ask that you please don’t go crazy with Photoshop filters before sending me your submission.  That’s my job.
• People of all shapes and sizes are welcome.  I go by the Mika philosophy of beauty.
  
• Tell me a little about who you are, what you do, how you define your disbelief and your sexuality.
• I’m not looking for uber-famous folks, so yes you do have a shot.
• Don’t put me in an awkward position.  If you’re under 18, don’t send a me a picture of yourself.  Don’t send me pictures of illegal things.  Do illegal things in your apartment with your friends–and invite me to smoke with you when I’m in your town–but DO NOT send me pictures of you with your bong.  I don’t think I can say this enough:  No cock or cooch.
  
• Send your submission to reedbraden@gmail.com.
• PLEASE no vag and peen!

Calendars will be created by and sold through RedBubble.com.  All proceeds from the calendar will be donated at the end of the year to The Trevor Project.

By sending a photograph of yourself to me, you agree to have it featured in the 2010 Gaytheists calendar.

I stumbled across this article on a stupid Catholic blog this morning:

Rosary miracle at Hiroshima

There was a home eight blocks (about 1 kilometer) from where the A-Bomb went off in Hiroshima, Japan. This home had a church attached to it which was completely destroyed, but the home survived, and so did the eight German missionaries who prayed the Rosary in that house faithfully every day. These men were missionaries to the Japanese people, they were non-military, but because Germany and Japan were allies during WWII they were permitted to live and minister within Japan during the war.

Not only did they all survive with (at most) relatively minor injuries, but they all lived well past that awful day with no radiation sickness, no loss of hearing, nor any other visible long term defects or maladies.

Naturally, they were interviewed numerous times (Fr. Schiffer, a survivor, said he was interviewed over 200 times) by scientists and health care people about their remarkable experience. The Jesuits say,“We believe that we survived because we were living the Message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the Rosary daily in that home.”

Of course the secular scientists are speechless and incredulous at this explanation. They are sure there is some “real” explanation. But at the same time over 50 years later the scientists are still absolutely bamboozled when it comes to finding a plausible scenario to explain the missionaries’ unique escape from the hellish power of that bomb.

First thing’s first, I want to establish that the beneficiaries of this incredible miracle were evil, Jew-slaughtering, scum-sucking Nazis.  The article mentions that the governments of Japan and Germany were friendly to each other as a reason for the missionaries being allowed in the country… so it follows logically that the missionaries were friendly with both the Nazis and the Japanese forces.  Japan wouldn’t let an anti-Nazi group into the country if they were buddy-buddy with Hitler’s regime, and in Nazi Germany, one couldn’t take a neutral position.  It was Heil Hitler or GTFO.  And they certainly wouldn’t let in a group of people who would not compromise a small part of their religious beliefs to kiss Hirohito’s hairless god-king ass.

When America nuked Japan, God let the nuke kill all the heathen Japanese, but he spared eight Nazi Catholics.  It’s a fucking miracle!  140,000 people all died in instant flaming agony at the same time, but eight Nazi Catholics survived because they were counting beads and mumbling nonsense under their breath when the bomb went off!  Fucking amazing!

Never mind that the story only comes from the guys whose accounts made themselves famous, with no reliable witnesses and no collaborating evidence.  We don’t know they were praying the Rosary… maybe one was baking a cake and one was taking a poo and one was masturbating.  We don’t know.

And who cares that the house was connected to–and shielded by–a gigantic stone church, and there were dozens of structures in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were spared in a similar manner?  Never mind that almost every photograph of the explosion’s aftermath shows sporadic structures still standing!  It’s a goddamn miracle because we say it is!

And as for the 140,000 that died in that city at that time?  Fuck ‘em!  They were just heathen emperor-worshiping Jappies!  We’re talking about eight racially pure (WHITE!) Aryan Nazis!  God saved his blond-hair blue-eye Jesus look-alikes from the righteous slaughter of Hirohito’s minions.  Someone canonize those Nazis RIGHT NAO!!!

And I know just the man for the job…

Guess what prominent religious figure this Hitler Youth became!

I am currently unemployed and working a number of under-the-table small jobs and two private contractor gigs that I’m rarely called upon to work for.  I’m over 18, I’m not in school and I don’t live with my parents, so I am not covered under my parents’ insurance plan.  The only way I can be insured at this moment, between jobs, is if I buy my own personal insurance plan.

I am not insured.

When I was in high school, I made a stupid decision, and, for a variety of reasons, decided it would be a good idea to end my life.  This happened again, for a completely different variety of reasons, in February of this year.  Both times, I went to the hospital to check into the psychological unit and receive proper care.  I’m still ignoring bills from the February visit after refusing to sign a consent to payment form at the hospital.  The hospital has waived their fees but the group that was privately contracted to staff the hospital wing, Blue Ridge Behavioral Healthcare, still periodically sends me bills, the last one in excess of $500, which is considerably more than a month’s rent for my apartment.

(Completely unrelated:  Anyone who accuses Atheism of being exclusively for those white people with buckets of money and easy lives—“Why are there no Atheist janitors?” goes the ignorant quip—should go back and re-read that paragraph.)

Because I sought help, both of those instances are on my medical record and most insurers will refuse to insure me out of fear that I will again become depressed and cost their company money.  Those who might consider insuring me will only offer me basic coverage plans covered in red ink and exceptions for much more money than an average customer would be quoted.

Many teenagers and parents of teenagers are wise to this now.  When they—or their children—feel suicidal, they don’t seek help.  They instead mutilate their arms and legs—or turn a blind eye to their children doing so—and turn to heavy drugs, both to try and dull the pain of feeling depressed without professional help.  They want help for their depression, and they don’t really want to end their lives.  (Or else why would thought of health insurance be an issue to them?)  They want help and they can’t get help without being penalised for it.

I don’t want to generalise and say that every cutter and drug user is trying to avoid a stain on their medical record, but I can name many of my friends and acquaintances who do these things for that reason.  And THAT is how you know that our nation’s health insurance industry sucks.

Like I said, I am not currently legally employed and, as such, am not offered employer-provided health insurance.  Even if I can find a job in this dismal local economy, it probably won’t be one that will allow me to work enough hours a week or for a long enough period of time so that they would be mandated to provide insurance.  Business owners just can’t afford that right now.  The only job listings I’ve found and qualified for so far are part-time and with no benefits.

Why is my country the only industrialised nation that does not insure its people across the board?  Whatever happened to governments operating to secure the welfare of their people?  My country is in a recession and many of us can’t afford to ensure ourselves and can’t find employers who can afford to either.  The least my country can do for me is to insure my health and keep me safe, so I can find work to do for it.

I hope I could offer some people who may oppose the public option a different viewpoint on the argument.  If that’s not the case, and those people are still going to throw scripted lines at me, then I’ve just wasted both our time.

I signed the “Stop the Australian Vaccination Network Petition” online here.  Unfortunately, I got carried away with my comment and it was too long to post to the petition.  I reproduce it here for your reading pleasure:

With no reasonable evidence, the Australian [anti-]Vaccination Network–along with their international partners and the “not-a-doctors” Jenny McCarthy and Oprah Winfrey–has convinced millions of parents globally to refuse vaccinations for their children on the paranoid grounds that vaccination is a scam.

This is obviously dangerous for those parents’ children and those parents who refuse to vaccinate their children without the recommendation of a qualified doctor for a legitimate reason should be put in jail for child endangerment and have their children taken away and given to a family that will love them enough to put their health over idiotic anti-establishment dogma.

For those children who have weak immune systems due to childhood cancers or poor prenatal health and cannot receive vaccinations against preventable diseases, their lives are put in immediate danger by the parents who refuse to vaccinate their healthy kids.  It’s called herd immunity, and if one of these non-vaccinated children brings mumps or whooping cough to school, the child with the weak immune system is at great risk of catching it and dying.  Even with all of the stories of non-vaccinated children getting over should-be-eradicated illnesses "due to" wheat grass potions or chiropractic or whatever new-age bull faeces the anti-vaccination movement wants to promote next, the unhealthy children will not be so lucky when the next epidemic makes its way through the schools.

Here are some examples of lies directly from http://avn.org.au.

- The dead and deactivated viruses that are in vaccines to provide the body with the required information to fight the living viruses later are, "combining with our own DNA to form new diseases such as HIV, Ebola virus and Hansa virus to name just a few."
- A Hepatitis B vaccine gone awry caused a young boy named Robert to have, “trouble reading, performing basic mathematics and has severe shortterm memory loss.”
- “Almost all” vaccine research has been, “paid for either in whole or in part, by the company producing the vaccine.”
- Several pages prior in the same pamphlet, they claim, “Vaccines have never been tested,” in direct contradiction to the claim that all testing has been paid for by pharmaceutical companies.
- They outrageously claim that prevention of diseases which have bloody histories of killing large portions of child populations a hundred years ago, “may not necessarily be in the best interests of the child.”
- They claim that measles, which has a fatality rates of 30% in people with immune systems not prepared to fight the disease, “can help to mature the immune system, may help prevent auto-immune illnesses such as cancer, asthma and allergies.”
- Rubella, in the UK and US in the early 1960s caused, “11,000 miscarriages or therapeutic abortions and 20,000 cases of congenital rubella syndrome.”  2,100 of those 20,000 affected with CRS died, “12,000 were deaf, 3,580 were blind and 1,800 were mentally retarded.” [Info via Wikipedia, with citation of “J.B. Hanshaw, J.A. Dudgeon, and W.C. Marshall. Viral diseases of the fetus and newborn. W.B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia, 1985”]  The Australian [anti-]Vaccination Network claims that Rubella is, “An extremely mild disease of childhood. If a woman gets rubella as a child, she develops life-long immunity which will protect her unborn child from the adverse effects of congenital rubella syndrome,” which is patently false and extremely dangerous.

And I didn’t have to search far and wide for these damning quotes.  They were all in the same brochure found at http://avn.org.au/library/images/pdfs/iverell_forum.pdf.

I am not an Australian, but I care deeply for the protection of children worldwide.  I’m begging the government of Australia to recognise the threat that the Australian [anti-]Vaccination Network poses to Australian children–and the international community in general–and shut down this illegal and highly dangerous group of compulsive liars.  It is time to get rid of the Australian [anti-]Vaccination Network and punish those parents who refuse, under the AVN’s advice, to vaccinate their children as recklessly dangerous to their own children and any other children their children may come in contact with.

That brochure I mentioned ends with large text covering an entire page:

“Margaret Mead
Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

I’m glad that even the AVN can call themselves a small group of people.  But they are already changing the world by murdering children.  Let’s hope we can stop this madness before the world, and the progress the world is making, is changed further by these lunatics.

Daily Kos reports that the National Rifle Association is threatening Congresspeople that they will put, “a blackmark on their NRA scorecard,” if they don’t completely ignore the hundreds of amazing things Sonia Sotomayor has done in her career to focus on a guy who was denied the “right” to walk around New York twirling Nunchaku and an illegal immigrant who was denied the “right” to carry a pistol while carrying 1.2 kilos of pure fuckin’ bouncing powder.

And Democrats are starting to buy into this shit!

Because Sonia Sotomayor doesn’t want people to twirl Nunchaku, a dangerous martial arts weapon, on the sidewalks and she doesn’t want your friendly neighbourhood Mexican coke dealer to have a handgun, she’s not suitable for the Supreme Court, says the NRA.

It can’t possibly be because she’s… you know… browner than the overwhelming majority of NRA members!  No, it’s because she’s anti-Nunchaku and… there was that one time she took the right to own a handgun from that one guy.  Yeah… the guy with the cocaine on him.  Who was illegally in the country.

It would be insane to allege that the largest advocacy group for gun rights in the US had a racial bias.  That would be absurd!  Surely the most politically powerful lobby of mostly white people who FUCKING LOVE their multiple handguns and assault rifles can’t possibly be racist.

Or maybe that’s why gun violence is so often a racially-motivated crime in the US… … … Nah!  It’s all about the Nunchaku!

The reason that most conservatives are against healthcare reform is that the average conservative family is middle class, 35-60, and are for the most part, employed somewhere that provides health benefits, and have been for so long that they have never even thought about being without insurance. Unfortunately I am one of the millions of Americans without health insurance, and have recently learned that a small injury can be costly without it. I injured my thumb with a sharp hunting knife, I lost enough blood to be weak and pale, and did enough damage that without holding the gauze tightly on my thumb, it would have been twitching uncontrollably. I arrived at the emergency room on a relatively uncrowded Sunday afternoon, around 1:10. I was taken to see a male nurse at 2:15 who asked me a brief questionnaire (including awkward questions like the addenum to “Are you sexually active – what persuasion?” and “Do you feel safe at home and in relationships?”) and sent me to wait on a hospital bed until a doctor saw me, cleaned and dressed me wound, around 2:40, and then left again. During the 25 minute wait for the doctor to return, I was given a tetanus shot and a pamphlet about tetanus that was illegible medical-speak. The doctor returned, and spent 15 minutes preparing her instruments and having a nurse assist holding my hand still, stitched the wound with three stitches, which took all of 10 minutes, and then left for another 20 minutes before returning to find I had already dressed my own wound. I left the hospital at 4:10, and the whole procedure cost $103.00. Now, that may not seem like a lot of money at first, but consider again that I am unemployed, and to me $103 is a tank of gas, and a week’s worth of food.

Now do you see why we need healthcare reform?

-CJ

Bob Goodlatte, the representative from my own VA-6 Congressional district, has yet to give a clear statement on whether or not he believes President Obama is a US citizen or not.  He sponsored the “Birther Bill” (HR 1503) that would require submitting one’s birth certificate (complete with highly personal information) to the public record before one can become the President.*

It appears that Bob Goodlatte doesn’t believe that Barack Obama is a US citizen!

Hey, douchebag!  Here it is!  Here’s Obama’s birth certificate!

You can’t see the raised Seal of the State of Hawaii on the scan—although it is faintly visible in a high-resolution version, available in a million or so places on the Internet, so here is a photograph of the official Hawaii “short-form” birth certificate.

And, in case you were wondering, Bob, I’m not a Kenyan either!  Here’s mine!

Mine is only a copy too, but my original was destroyed in a fire at a storage facility in Germantown, Tennessee.  These “short form” certificates, as Birthers like to call them, are official copies that are valid proof in a US court of law that there is official record of your birth in the United States.

Where’s yours, Bob?  You haven’t submitted your birth certificate to public scrutiny, so obviously you’re a Muslim!

* A physical copy of a birth certificate is a ridiculous and unnecessary demand of a Presidential candidate, especially if you’re calling for the original “long form” copy.  Would I be ineligible for office because my original birth certificate was destroyed in a fire?  A quick background check using one’s Social Security Number is needed for almost every job in the US, and that background check, without a birth certificate, can prove that one was, indeed, born in the USA.  I had that check done when I worked at Kroger, slicing meat!  I’m sure that someone bothered to do a background check before they gave Obama the nuclear launch codes!  So please, Bob… shut the fuck up.

PZ Myers and Ken Ham created a huge scene at the creation museum.

Jen from Blag Hag has the story.

This video called, “THE VIDEO THE GOVT DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE,” was posted on Wonkette today.  I’m surprised Wonkette didn’t turn their trusty snark cannon on the obvious racism here.

Conservative:  OMGZ!  IT’S A BUNCH OF BROWN AND YELLOW PEOPLE WITH FUNNY NAMES!!!  TERRORISTS!!!  TERRORISTS!!!!!  AND THEY’S ALL LIBERALS!!!!!!  THIS IS BECAUSE LIBERALS ARE TERRORISTS!!!!!

Me:  Or maybe it’s because many of the people in this video were raised in countries with decent education systems and are honestly intelligent, so they’re not so dumb that they will willingly join a party that actively spews this sort of racist garbage.

Conservative:  BUT THEY AREN’T WHITE!!!  THEY’S ALL FROM KENYA!!!  WHERE’S THEY BIRTH CERTIFICATES??!

Somehow, in the past year, conservatives have become the stupidest people on the planet, beating out the Mormons, the African “witch” murderers and the Scientologists by far.  If they keep this up, moderate America is ours for the next several elections.  If you think 60 in the Senate is a super-majority, think again.  If this crap continues to lead the GOP, I’m fully expecting a 75-25 Democrat majority  over the next three election cycles.

Don’t get sucked in (or sucked off) by this guy.

“There are few more informed than I am.”
- Dr. Tom Stevens, “Objectivist” and Idiot

Image from stonewalllibertarians.org.

Meet Dr. (of what?) Tom Stevens, executive director of the group Stonewall Libertarians.  (He’s the one who, thankfully, is wearing a shirt.)  He really wants gay people to vote for him, so he awkwardly poses with shirtless gay men and puts the pictures up online.

However, he’s not our friend.  He started a new political party called the Objectivist Party on the heels of the Ron Paul craze with the intention of creating a political organisation that laps lovingly at Ayn Rand’s vagoo harder than the Libertarians.  He also believes our kids should smoke crack.

He speaks fairly well about why we need to do away with DOMA (Defence of Marriage Act) and DADT (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell), but if you push the subject with him, he will reveal that:

• he does not believe that being gay is a biological trait;¹
• he believes that gay people are be “conditioned” to be gay;²
• he believes that some people choose to be gay;³
• he believes it is logically “sick” for gay people to believe that they are normal people;⁴
• he believes the idea that being gay is something determined by genetics, hormone development in-utero and brain wiring is not scientific, rather it is a lie perpetuated by gay rights activists;⁵
• and he believes that because he is a lawyer and an “educator”, he obviously knows everything about homosexuality that there is to know, and anyone who disagrees with him does so because they are ignorant and won’t bow to his vastly superior authority on the issue.⁶

All of these quotes are from Tom Stevens in the comments on a Facebook note by Charles Wentling and from a private conversation between the two, made public here.  They correspond with the above bullets.

1 – “Blindly-stupid, hypocritically minded, etc etc.
All because you think being gay is 100% biological and I disagree.
Testimonials will not help since a person is not fully aware of all the forces, cultural programming, personal experiences and thoughts that were reinforced with the reward of pleasure over the years.”

2 – “each person has little choice because the conditioned responses are so powerful.”   “People who like girls with large breasts or small ankles, or midgets, or men with hairy legs or fur, etc. etc. are not born with those turn-on and sexual attractions. They are conditioned and reinforced by early experiences to develop those likes. One is not BORN bi, straight or gay and no ‘science’ proves that including twin studies and all the other crap science that shows effects and not causes.”

3 – “You make a classic error when you argue that no one would choose to be gay given society’s discrimination”

4 – “You desperately want to be ‘normal’ and so if you were born gay, in your sick logic, it was not your ‘fault’ that you deviated from the norms of society.”

5 – “Had you said there was no moon landing, then you clearly would be a kook but since you think this issue of homosexuality is settled, it shows me you cannot see past the desire to activists who wish to make it an inherent trait in order to promote their agenda.”

6 – “and as for not knowing about the ‘biology’ of homosexuality, you forget that I teach this issue and have for many years. There are few more informed than I am. You are truly the ignorant one here.”

Is it good that he’s fighting for gay rights?  Yes, I think it is.  Should gay people respect him and follow his leadership when he makes no effort to understand what makes a person gay?  Absolutely not.  He is fighting for gay rights because that is what’s “vogue” in social libertarian circles at the moment.  He clearly has no respect for gay people and just wants to secure the gay voting block.

As I wrote to the Mormon, Devin Jessup, president of the Kentucky chapter of Tom Stevens’ Objectivist party,

Devin, it is a great thing when a political party in the United States stands up against the ignorant horde to say, “No, we will not accept the majority view that the minority should be suppressed, no matter whose god demands it of us.”

However, it is a patronizing and disgusting thing when a party promises to say just that in order to secure a voting block because the leaders of that party (You, a member of the unabashedly anti-gay Mormon faith, and Tom, a nimrod with no knowledge, or want of knowledge, about biology and genetics) want to replace the dying Elephant in the room [The Republican Party], and can’t do it without the votes of a politically neglected minority. I don’t want a Mormon and a dipshit fighting for my rights, thank you. I don’t want to owe you cretins anything.

The right of gay men and women to get married will be won by people with a legitimate interest in equality and a true understanding of what it is, and what it is like, to be gay. It will not be won by a party of vote-whores who cling to an unproven and unstable philosophy set down by a mediocre fiction author.

Wake up, children! The struggle that we gays are going through to gain equal protection and equal recognition under the law is not a toy for you to play with, nor is it a flag for you to attract attention to yourselves with. It is my freedom, and I would like to secure it honestly.

On an incredibly bizarre note, the Stonewall Libertarian website is hosted, for some reason, on Randy Langkraehr’s Missouri gubernatorial campaign website.  All of the Stonewall Libertarian pages are hosted in randyforgovernor.com/stonewall/.  When you go back to Randy’s main website, randyforgovernor.com, all of the sidebar buttons (Home, About, Events, etc.) direct to pages hosted under randyforgovernor.com/jcrtl/, the website for the anti-abortion group Johnson County Right to Life.  And this is who Tom Stevens associates with.

I have not been able to post to Homosecular Gaythiest because a man named David George filed a phony Terms of Service violation complaint against me after I published a post about the homophobic comments his step-son Edwin Satre (alias: Edwin the Drummer) made to me on Skype.

In honour of David George’s supreme douchebaggery, his advancements in the field of asshattery and his shining example of dumbassishness, the Homosecular Gaytheist Dumbass of the Week Award will forever be called the David George Homosecular Gaytheist Dumbass of the Week Award.  And the first recipient of the David George Homosecular Gaytheist Dumbass of the Week Award is… DAVID GEORGE!  Congratulations!

Our email correspondence is below the fold.

Subject: Edwin Satre is a minor

Hi Reed,

I’m Edwin’s stepfather…I came across the blog that that you have posted about my stepson…I thought you might want to know that he is a minor…Edwin has been disciplined for his inappropriate remarks and has been counseled about sensitivity and understanding towards all people, not just Gays…He does understand not to use these slang words in common everyday language…My point is that we are contacting WordPress about your blog and feel that you are in violation of the terms of service including photos of minors…Considering the level of anguish you have caused our family through your posting I would ask that that you please remove all references to Edwin, his photo and defamatory comments…Your inflammatory blog could also promote possible retaliatory actions by others that could cause more harm than has already occurred…Please take action to remove this blog post…

Thanks,

David

My reply:

Subject: So?

David,

Short answer:  No.
What I wrote was the truth.  I have transcripts and witnesses.  So if you were trying to set up probable cause for libel or defamation with your last line, "Your inflammatory blog could also promote possible retaliatory actions by others," I wish you the best of luck.  It must be proved in court that I made up those quotes from Edwin if you wish to prosecute, and that’s going to be difficult to do.  I keep transcripts and there were witnesses to all of these conversations.

But I’m not heartless.  I feel for your family that Edwin’s public remarks, made even more public by my blog, are causing distress.  And it honestly makes me happy that you care so much.  Many fathers would brush off the writings of a gay Atheist activist and congratulate their child on their homophobia.  So it makes me happy to see that you care.  Edwin is lucky to have you.  However, the post stays.

Two reasons:  1)  The dialogue that Edwin’s friends stirred up in the comment thread lead to some very interesting discussion about modern slang.  2)  I have a policy that once I write something on my blog, it stays.  Unlike many bloggers, I don’t delete posts that could embarrass me later if they are proved to be wrong, nor do I remove posts because of pressure put on me by others.

As for your ridiculous claim about pictures of minors, there is nothing in the ToS about that.  You can read the ToS here: http://en.wordpress.com/tos/  Your son posted that picture elsewhere on the Internet and all I did was grab it from elsewhere to use as an illustration of my post.  The only way this would violate the ToS is if your step-son was nude in the photo, which, thankfully for all of us, he was not.

If you really want to support your step-son through this tough name-calling crisis of his, you may wish to buy this shirt that was inspired by him and his love of death metal music:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/reedbraden/t-shirts/3420838-1-edwin-the-exceedingly-homophobic-drummer

All proceeds from the shirt will go to the GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) which helps kids in public schools set up GSAs (Gay-Straight Alliances) to teach their classmates about the harm anti-gay slurs cause and what constitutes discrimination.

Your welcome,
Reed.

His somewhat-ominous reply:

Reed,

Thanks for your reply…I’ll be back in touch.

David

After this email, he filed the phony complaint and my ability to publish was blocked.

You filed a phony Terms of Service violation charge against my blog.  The post that irritated you was not in violation of the ToS.  If you can quote from the WordPress ToS where I violated it, I will delete your step-son’s name and picture, however, I have read the ToS and I don’t feel I am in violation.

I’m glad to see that you were able to handle this like an adult.  And that was sarcasm, in case it wasn’t clear.

- Reed

And his answer to what in the ToS was violated:

Reed,

No matter what you think my stepson did to you verbally through a private conversation he didn’t deserve the wrath you have inflicted…The fact is that you don’t actually know him…Some if not all the information you have posted is inaccurate according to him and his friends…the way you have built this case from afar makes me wonder what your real motives are…What I’m seeing from you is hatred and a fanatical fixation on retaliation against heterosexual people who can’t keep their ignorant mouths shut…It’s seems that our unsuspecting son is being used as the example in this case by falling in to your trap…The reality is that what you have done at this stage is far more destructive than any poor choice of words he may have used…You are the one who is not acting as an adult in this situation..Therefore since what you really are doing is hateful and intended to be harmful to others I feel you are in violation of your terms of service…I hope my position is more clear…I do apologize to you for what happened…We are not against any groups…We’re just trying to mind our own business and go on with our lives…

David

At least he admitted that Edwin is ignorant.  Even Edwin couldn’t admit that when faced with evidence that 9/11 wasn’t a Bushie job.  As for the hatred of ignorant heterosexuals, such an allegation is only partly true.  I don’t hate ignorant heteros… I hate all ignorant people, no matter their race, creed, colour or orientation.  And hate is a bit too strong of a word.  “Wish cancer upon,” is more apt.

And he is unsure of my motives.  My sole motive:  Continue exposing the lies and homophobia of ignorant prats.

But I saw no answer to my previous question, so I tried again:

That’s all very nice, but none of it explains why you submitted a false report against my blog.  You claim that I violated the ToS and you can’t tell me what in the ToS I violated… and then you’ve held up all publishing on my blog while I sort out the mess your false report caused with WordPress.  You lied to WordPress and submitted a false claim that my blog either a) violates the ToS, b) is spam, or c) is porn.  That is completely unacceptable.  Please tell me exactly what clause of the ToS I violated, and when you can’t produce that, I would like for you to apologize to my readers for holding up communication on my blog for me to publicly post after I get this mess sorted out.

- Reed

I know I’m not going to keep this douche bag from believing that he’s the most correctest man on the planet, but continuing this fruitless debate is good writing practice while I wait for my blog to be reactivated.

I then got an email from WordPress staff.  The best way they could find to make sense of the ToS claim is that the 112×114px image of Edwin was taken from his Steam account page.

Hi,

http://gaytheist.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/edwin-satre-is-a-homophobe/

The image there apparently is owned by someone else and needs to be removed please.

It would be very helpful if that could happen.

Thanks.

I edited the image a bit.  It doesn’t take long to make substantial changes to a 112×114px image.

My reply:

Considering the small size of the image, the free access to it elsewhere on the Internet, and the image’s relevance to the post, I assumed my use of the image would qualify for Fair Use.

However, because you disagree with that rationale, and because I wish to comply with your request, I have further edited the image to make it my own work pursuant to the definition of "derivative work" in § 101 of the US Copyright Act (17 U.S.C.).

Thanks,
J. Reed Braden

So I think this ordeal is over and I would advise David George to stop fucking with me.  It doesn’t look good to the public when an older married man starts obsessively harassing a gay 20-year-old on the Internet.  People might think you’re flirting!

I made a new shirt.

If you buy any of my shirts before Thursday 30 July 23:59 US Pacific Time, you get 15% off!  Woo!

He was born here.

Dear MSNBC,

Why is there nothing on TV tonight that doesn’t make me want to set a crate of adorable kittens on fire?

I’m watching Fox News at the moment.  Specifically, the re-run of 24 July’s  The O’Reilly Factor, hosted tonight by Mike Huckabee, with guest Glen Beck, surely here to tell us about how the scary black guy in the White House wants to kill us all with healthcare.

I just want you and your programming directors to know that whenever they play that stupid fucking overplayed Michael Jackson Neverland interview tripe, I will be watching Fox Noise… because the ignorant, hypocritical, racist tripe I’m watching now is less torturous than seeing a facially mutilated paedophile buy millions of dollars worth of pottery on TV for the 5,000th time since his death from self-medication.  I watch MSNBC for news and political commentary.  The news of Jackson’s untimely but highly predictable death was news weeks ago.  It isn’t news anymore.  Please stop this.

I missed all but the end of Olbermann tonight.  I want to see the repeat of Olbermann, not this garbage over and over again.  Whatever happened to, “A Fuller Spectrum of News,” and, “The Place for Politics,” MSNBC?  Michael Jackson is neither news or politics, and I’m sick of it.

You have failed me.

- J. Reed Braden

Cross-posted on Tumblr:

Good news:  I start my job at a BBQ restaurant tomorrow morning.

Bad news:  I put my life on hold for two months waiting for the restaurant to open so I could start bussing and training on serving/waiting.  Today, after not having been called in a week, I showed up to pick up my W-4 tax form thingy and… oops… the manager, who was just fired, hadn’t been keeping up with my file and I wasn’t told about yesterday’s meeting, and all of the positions in the front of the house are already filled, so I was not actually, you know… given a job.

It’s at this point in the story that I would like to mention that I was the first person to submit an application this April and I was the first interview in May, when I was told that I would be hired to bus and train on waiting/serving.

So the owner, who interviewed and promised to hire me two months ago, was “kind” enough to offer me a position washing dishes for minimum wage.

And… meltdown.

Does she really believe this crap or is she trying to be funny?

Whoopi Goldberg is not the cat’s pajamas.  (I’m sure at least one reader in Little Rock, AR will get that.)

Most of you know that the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City was the site of a “kiss-in,” where a bunch of gay and lesbian couples descended on the Temple to kiss in protest of the Midwestern American cult’s arrest of two gay men who kissed on their property earlier this month.

Well, now, according to The Advocate, the Kiss-In has spread to the Mormon Temple in San Diego.

I love this idea and wish I thought of it first!  A Kiss-In is a fantastic way to protest at anti-gay churches, businesses and bicameral houses of certain federal legislatures.

It’s fun.

It’s catchy.

It’s easy to arrange.

It’s easy to convince people to come.

It’s a fun way to meet new homos if you’re single.

It can bring you closer to your partner.

It makes a press-worthy statement.

It’s a great statement of love.

It’s clean and wholesome.

It’s easier to clean up after than inexplicably dumping thousands of teabags on public property.

And, best of all, it will fucking infuriate the closeted homosexuals who run these organizations and churches!

Grab your partner or a trusted friend and head to your nearest haven for hate-filled douchebags (preferably Mormon cult temples at this time, as not to confuse the issue being protested) and kiss them passionately for hours!  Send pictures to reedbraden@gmail.com and I’ll make sure they get on the Internet.

Kiss on!

It’s like One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, but with none of the wit and twelve times the hatred!

Carrie Prejean, former Miss California and current blubbering whore, has a book deal.  No doubt, she’ll use it as a platform to attack Donald Trump and the other clowns in charge of the Miss Universe Organization for having fired her because of her idiotic and oddly-worded anti-gay statement at the 2009 Miss USA Pageant–you know… instead of for the real reason; that she missed contractual obligations while on her self-promoting media-slut tour, and that she whipped her titties out in front of a camera, in violation of her contract.

Or maybe the book will be an exploration into why having fake breasts and a spray-on tan give her the proper credentials and the intellectual fortitude to be able to fairly examine the issue of whether gay marriage should be legal and come up with good, original points to support her opinion that faggots are animals. … Nah!  She’s an ignorant slut and this book is going to be a 20-page ghostwritten pamphlet with 15 full-page modeling phots.

An idea that could make the world a better place:  Carrie Prejean should write Sarah Palin’s book and Sarah Palin should write Carrie Prejean’s book.  I would read the fuck out of those trainwrecks!

To mark the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic moon landing, I offer this picture of Astronaut Buzz Aldrin attending to the lunar lander as it sits atop the moon-like surface of Astronaut Michael Collins’ head.

SCIENCE!

[Image sources: Lander, Collins]

I’m not superstitious by any means, but I’ve noticed a pattern that whenever something good happens in my life, something terrible happens soon thereafter to fuck me up the butt.

I went on another date with Tony tonight.  It went very well and he’s now officially my wonderful, fantastic, beautiful boyfriend.

We went up to the Roanoke Star, a massive waste of government money on Mill Mountain overlooking the city, and stood on the overlook for about five minutes until some guy who—like something out of Stephen King—knew my name ran up to the two of us and yelled, “Reed!  Is that your red car?  It’s on fucking fire!”  We ran to the parking lot and, sure enough, Tony’s car was smoking.  We got everyone to move their cars away from it and, following the advice of the ignorant horde, Tony lifted the hood of his car and the fire exploded outward.  It looked from where I was standing like Tony had been caught in the flames, but he was able to get away with nothing but singed hair on his hands.

It scared the fuck out of me.  No less than thirty minutes after Tony became my boyfriend, his car exploded.

Walter Cronkite, the man for whom the term “anchorman” was coined, died today.  He was most known for covering the Nuremburg Trials and, while at CBS, breaking the news about the assassination of President Kennedy.

Today, we lost a giant of journalism and one of the last honest news anchors.

Via DailyKos:

Whether or not you’ve seen video of Catherine Crabill, a Republican nominee for Virginia House of Delegates, saying conservatives will be forced to “the bullet box” if they can’t win at “the ballot box,” hold onto your seat — because there’s more:

Crabill (who believes the U.S. government orchestrated the Oklahoma City bombing) claimed the Obama administration is pursuing legislation that will turn it into “the thought police” and wants to put Americans in “the chains of slavery.”

Crabill’s plan to stop Obama? Follow Texas Governor Rick Perry’s lead and declare Virginia’s sovereignty from the United States of America:

What would I do as a state delegate? … I would like to follow in the footsteps of the great state of Texas and Governor Rick Perry … They were reasserting their tenth amendment right to sovereignty.

And what if Rick Perry’s sovereignty gambit doesn’t work?

We have a chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box.

I am glad for all of us who enjoy the use of firearms for hunting, but make no mistake, that was not the intent of the Founding Fathers. Our second amendment right was to guard against tyranny.

Amazingly, Crabill managed to to take things a step further, saying that the time had arrived for people to decide “here and now” what to live for and what to die for.

What we need to decide here and now is not only what is worth living for, but what is worth dying for. And it is time to make that determination because we may very well be called to pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. In fact, I think, I think that’s what the clarion call is for this day.

Apparently, Crabill’s first choice is to get her way through democratic means, but failing that, she is prepared to fight a civil war.

Now the question is whether or not the Virginia Republican Party will withdraw their support for this nutjob.

Even though it might help Democrats if they do stand by her threat of an armed rebellion, we’ll still all be better off if the Virginia GOP does the right thing and pulls their endorsement, because the last thing America needs right now is more right-wing nutcases infecting the public discourse.

(Deep breath…)

I’m sick and tired of all of this racist secessionist garbage in our fucking government!  A black man is elected President and for the first time since the Civil War, the South is considering secession!  Will they be wanting slavery again too?  Probably.  Only this time, it will be the Mexicans.

But this stupid cunt is trying to get elected to office in my state?

You know what, Cathy?  TREASON! TREASON! TRAITOR!!! Fuck off!  You’re Dumbass of the Week so fucking hard that you brought back the dead gimmick, you Skank Ho Bitch!  GLAHRBLRARBLRARBLRARBLFLOGGARARBL!!!

Anyone who can watch this video all the way through without making the same noise I did (“GLAHRBLRARBLRARBLRARBLFLOGGARARBL!!!”) gets a cupcake.

Sure, maybe Sonia Sotomayor was picked because she is a Latina woman.  Fine.  However, she’s the best Latina woman for the job and she’s more qualified than any other justice of the Supreme Court from first Chief Justice John Jay until today.  I was a bit skeptical about her at first, but I’ve done hours and hours of research on her judicial career and with every new fact I’ve found, my faith in her judgment gets stronger.

Pat Buchanan’s screaming rant against her was disgusting and is, I think, very good grounds for dismissal from thee MSNBC network.  He can’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that maybe–just maybe–the fact that her skin is darker than his has nothing to do with the judiciary.  He never mentioned her history as a lawyer or as a judge, he was fixated entirely on her race.  And then he used an analogy to compare Sonia Sotomayor with the hurtful stereotype that black men are the best athletes, trying to justify his racism with more racism.  MSNBC needs to fire this racist, nationalistic, bigoted trainwreck before he snaps in the head and becomes MSNBC’s Glen Beck.

People who will have been offended at any time during this interview smackdown:

• Latinos
• Women
• Blacks
• Athletes
• Whites
• Judges
• Americans
• People with brains

While we’re on the subject, I still have no information about where she would rule on gay marriage.  That’s a tad worrisome, but I trust that since she has been a shining beacon of rationality thusfar, she will continue to judge with reason and intelligence, something SCOTUS is lacking in currently.

I just posted a new Tee Shirt that gives you the option to buy a share in my continued healthy existence for a measly $35.

I figure there’s also a large market of people out there who want me to have a slow, painful death… so here’s another shirt.

*  J. Reed Braden waives all right to hold buyers of this shirt responsible for any of the effects of cigarette smoking on his health.

I’m sorry… what the fuck!?

I weep for that 40% of a baby.

Not giving them a link.

[C+H]

If 100 people spend just $35 to buy this shirt, I will have enough money in commissions to fill a 6-month prescription for prescription-strength stop-smoking drugs. This is what we do in America where healthcare still costs an arm and a leg (oftentimes literally… WORST DENTIST EVER!): We pull heartstrings to steal money from health nuts.

Commenter R. Jay just brought this to my attention:

Dan is now serving 18 months in prison. He pleaded No Contest to the molestation of his daughter. Here is the Roanoke Times article:
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/211015
He got 7 years, but all but 18 months was suspended. He will then be on 5 years parole and on the Registered Sex Offenders site.
The other Deacon and Minister of Evangelism at Heritage Baptist Church (where Dan was the pastor) got 225 years in prison for molesting some of his own daughters as well…
Story is here: http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/210147

Dan’s All for Freedom blog was brought down.

Dan Silverman was the ex-Christian I talked about here who was accused of molesting his daughter.

I’ve got to say I was a bit skeptical about Dan’s story, although I bought it enough to not join the witch hunt against him… I did avoid meeting him in person after he came off as creepy the first time we met, though. Dude was seriously sketchy. And now, come to find out, he diddled his daughter. Classy.

I know… I know… I fail at blogging.  (Adjusts lapel) I’m a very busy man, you see.

Anyhoo, you should all buy some of my shirts.  (The HG-themed ones suck right now, but some good designs are in the works and will be ready when I get the time to do them.)

I also started a Tumblr blog called Fun Times With Sauerkraut where I’m putting all the crap that’s too personal or too irrelevant for this blog.

I also have a project on the back burner to start a Skepchick-like group blog for LGBTQ Freethinkers like Greta Christina, Jessica Sideways and myself.

And if you aren’t following me on Twitter by now, I’m not pleased with you.