By now you’ve probably heard about the nine year old Brazilian girl who was sexually abused and raped by her step-father.  She became pregnant with twins. Her mother arranged an abortion to save her life.  Doctors were found to do the procedure and the little girl’s life was saved.

The danger to a little nine year old girl’s life under those circumstances isn’t something you’d think a rational person would even question, let alone condemn the adults who took the measures they had to in order to save her life. 

You’d think.

Vatican backs abortion row bishop

A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication in Brazil of the mother and doctors of a young girl who had an abortion with their help.

The nine-year-old had conceived twins after alleged abuse by her stepfather.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re told Italian paper La Stampa that the twins "had the right to live" and attacks on Brazil’s Catholic Church were unfair.

…

The girl, who lives in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, was allegedly sexually assaulted over a number of years by her stepfather, possibly since she was six.

The fact that she was four months pregnant with twins was only discovered after she was taken to hospital in Pernambuco complaining of stomach pains.

…

Brazil only permits abortions in cases of rape or health risks to the mother.

Doctors said the girl’s case met both these conditions, but the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho said the law of God was above any human law.

He said the excommunication would apply to the child’s mother and the doctors, but not to the girl because of her age.

Guess who else the excommunication doesn’t apply to…

Upon learning of the abortion, the regional archbishop excommunicated the doctors, as well as the girl’s mother. He did not excommunicate the step-father, saying the crime he is alleged to have committed, although deplorable, was not as bad as ending a fetus’s life.

Emphasis mine.  As Andrew Sullivan said today, "I guess the Vatican is used to finding ways to see the lesser evil of raping and molesting children." 

Sullivan also notes today that Rod Dreher is shocked, shocked to learn that there are bisexual teenagers in East Texas.  Here’s the Dallas News story that fairly curdled poor Dreher’s blood…

Demons in the house: E. Texas man details escape from attack

Terry Caffey awoke to gunshots and his wife’s guttural screams.Instinctively, he threw his right arm over her body – taking three bullets in the forearm and three in the shoulder – before a seventh round caught him in the right cheek and exploded through his ear.

That one blew him out of bed, face down.

Moments later, someone shot Caffey three more times in the back.

"He came up and kicked my foot to make sure I was dead," he said. "There was heavy breathing, and I could hear them reloading. I was basically just waiting for them to shoot me in the back of the head. But it got very quiet, and he walked off."

Caffey passed out.

When he regained consciousness, furniture crashed, glass shattered and footsteps marched upstairs toward his children’s bedroom.

His right arm hung limp because a bullet had severed a nerve. He scrambled to his knees.

Then he heard his 13-year-old son Bubba cry out – "No, Charlie! No! Why? Why are you doing this?"

Caffey collapsed again…

No, No…wait just a moment…  That’s not the part of the story that shocked Rod Dreher.  This is:

Penny home-schooled the children soon after the family moved from Celeste, population 800, to Emory, population 1,200, about three years ago.

The transition to a larger school district was bumpy.

"I guess you’d call it culture shock," Caffey said. "Emory has a lot of bisexual kids; it’s like it was almost cool to be bisexual. One of the first things that happened was some girl wanted to be Erin’s little girlfriend. And I was like, ‘That ain’t happenin’.’ "

But after three years of home schooling and much discussion, the children re-enrolled in public schools in 2008. The boys seemed to thrive, but Caffey and his wife were concerned about Erin. 

Emphasis mine.  No, really, Dreher wrote an entire post off of this news story about a man surviving the home invasion massacre that killed his entire family, about how shocked he was to discover "a bisexual culture" in East Texas.  If you think I’m exaggerating that, let Rod tell you all about it himself…

…the killings aren’t what shocked me about this story. What got me was this: This is a tiny East Texas town — and there’s a bisexual culture in one of them, among the teenagers? WTF? What do I not get about teenage life these days? What do I not get about the cultural air kids breathe?

And now of course, he’s getting all pissy because people are questioning his sanity in the post’s comments…

UPDATE: To clarify: I’m not saying that the teenage culture of bisexuality is worse morally than murder, for heaven’s sake. Obviously murder — and murder of one’s own family — is about the worst thing imaginable.. I’m simply saying that I was more shocked by this tidbit about the decadent teenage culture in a tiny Texas town than I was by the foul crime itself. Big difference.

UPDATE.2: Reading the comments, what on earth is wrong with some of you? I’m not saying bisexuals killed that family.Good grief. It’s obvious that the murderers include the daughter and her boyfriend. The bisexuality thing was a mere aside that I found more startling than the murders, given the small-town culture where this crime took place. I freely admit that I am out of touch with teenage culture today. If you’re bound and determined to conclude that I think bisexuality is worse than murder, you’re completely wrong, and you’re willfully misreading my post for whatever reason. At least understand what you’re doing, and the bad faith in which you’re doing it.

A pastor was shot dead in his pulpit today in Illinois. That appalls me. It doesn’t shock me. This kind of thing happens these days. Sad but true. You don’t hear every day about a tiny Texas town whose teenagers are engaged in a culture of bisexuality. At least I don’t.

UPDATE.3 Ah, so now I get where the unusual traffic has been coming from.

Andrew Sullivan linked to this post, calling my point of view "clinical." So it must be to someone with his values. I think I have said five times here that murder is incomparable to bisexuality in terms of moral meaning, but why let that clarification get in the way of a good snit? The point of my post was not that one thing is worse than the other, but that I personally found one thing more shocking than the other. Shocking, in the sense of being surprised by something.

Well that sure clears things up doesn’t it.  Rod…you’re done.  Whatever humanity you may have once had within you…it’s gone now.  Don’t even bother trying to figure out why your readers are appalled.  You will never know.

You can wonder whether the culture war has utterly corrupted what might have otherwise been decent human beings, or whether they never actually took that belly flop into the gutter because they were there to begin with.  But if nothing else the culture war has made it pretty plain that there is a difference between spirituality and religious dogma, and the two are not compatible.  Dogma destroys the human spirit as surely as rust, because it demands we give it our conscience, our integrity, and eventually everything we are, and everything we might have become.  Dogma fashions out of our living bodies and empty shell for it and it alone to fill, and we stop being the person we are, and we become dogma. 

Jacob Bronowski put it perfectly in his series, The Ascent of Man…

There are two parts to the human dilemma.  One is the belief that the end justifies the means.  That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine.  The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts – obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts.

It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false.  Look for yourself.  This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz.  This is where people were turned into numbers.  Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people.  And that was not done by gas.  It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma.  it was done by ignorance.  When people believe they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge.  We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped.  Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal.  Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.  In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken".

…We have to cure ourselves of the itch of absolute knowledge and power.  We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act.  We have to touch people.

But this is precisely what dogma demands we do not do. We cannot touch people, lest the scarecrow that dogma insists to us they must be, comes undone, and we see a human being not that much different from ourselves.

The state of mind, the state of society, is of a piece.   When we discard the test of fact in what a star is, we discard in it what a man is.

Likewise, when we discard the test of fact in what a homosexual is, we also discard in it the human being that they, and we are.  Integrity.  Dogma will not share power with it.  And that is the lesson people are learning…

Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

"More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ " says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

Among the key findings in the 2008 survey:

• So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, "the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion," the report concludes.

• Catholic strongholds in New England and the Midwest have faded as immigrants, retirees and young job-seekers have moved to the Sun Belt. While bishops from the Midwest to Massachusetts close down or consolidate historic parishes, those in the South are scrambling to serve increasing numbers of worshipers.

• Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.

…

The ARIS research also led in quantifying and planting a label on the "Nones" — people who said "None" when asked the survey’s basic question: "What is your religious identity?"

The USA Today article goes on to postulate a number of causes, from increased mobility to sex abuse scandals in the clergy.  But it doesn’t take on the most obvious one: culture war weariness.  People are sick of it.  They are sick of being told over and over again to hate their neighbor.  Sick all the more, for being told to hate their neighbor in the name of love.   And sick still more, for having that message of hate preached to them by the likes of this…

He did not excommunicate the step-father, saying the crime he is alleged to have committed, although deplorable, was not as bad as ending a fetus’s life.

I’m simply saying that I was more shocked by this tidbit about the decadent teenage culture in a tiny Texas town than I was by the foul crime itself. 

Religion isn’t on the decline in America.  People are just getting sick of being lectured by moral degenerates.  Life is good.  This good earth is a wonderful place to be living it.  Our families and friends give it sweetness.  Love and sex bring it joy and contentment.  To ask questions, to search for knowledge is not only a good thing, it is a great adventure.  Life is good.  The gutter is no place to be living it.

This is why I read SLOG.  I’m going to steal this entire post from Dan Savage, because it perked me up when I really needed it.  But you should read SLOG from time to time.

Sitting in the fake Irish pub, eating my fake Irish chow ("Irish white cheddar" makes a burger Irish—who knew?), drinking my real Irish beer. Two women at the next table are talking up Jesus. They’re trying to save a man’s soul from the dark and sinister clutches of… I think he said "lapsed Catholicism" but I’m not sure. This fake Irish pub is located in the actual American south, and overhearing conversations like this is known risk of venturing outside your hotel room. I go back to my book.

But my ears perk up when the man cites the gays as one reason he can’t quite see himself converting to… whatever strain of Christianity the two women were pushing. Knowing what we know now about sex and what science tells us about what makes people gay—he’s referring back to an earlier point he made concerning what we know about the age of the planet and the evolution of the species ("God gave us brains and reason for a reason, so we could figure these things out based on the science and evidence, right?")—it seems to him that putting people to death for being gay, per the bible, is, "a little cruel."

No, no: the bible is without error. And if our nation were more Godly, if bible-believing people would only stand up for what’s right… well, we might not be putting gay people to death, say the girls, we wouldn’t be stoning them and stuff, but we would ban gay sex and gay marriage and gay adoption and gay/straight student alliances and repeal all gay rights laws and keep gay characters off the TV. Not out of Old-Testament style vengefulness, but out of New-Testament style love and compassion and concern. Because if persecuting homosexuals—a.k.a. "fighting back against the gay agenda"—convinces even one gay person to leave their lifestyle and come back to God, "it would save a soul."

I set my burger down. "Hello, I’m a fag," I say. I assure them that I’m not angry or upset or hurt by anything that they’ve said. I just wanted them to know that I was sitting there, a big fag, eating my Irish burger within earshot. "And you’re free to think I’m going to hell and say so while I’m forced to listen. But I’m free to think you’re ridiculous and that your God is a delusion and say so while you’re forced to listen."

One of the young women assured me that they didn’t mean anything they’d said, you know, personally. "And I’ll be praying hard for you," the other one of said, giving me a wink.

"And I’ll be fucking butt for you," I replied, winking back.

Via Pam’s House Blend…  The next time you hear someone in the Catholic Church complaining that proposition 8 supporters are being targeted, laugh in their face…

Catholic church strongarms org from hiring anti-Prop 8 priest

Father Geoffrey Farrow, the Fresno priest who came out against Prop 8 during Mass and was suspended for following his conscience by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is still being hounded by the church.

Since he was out of a job, you’d think the church would be satisfied that Farrow would seek employment elsewhere and fade from its PR radar. Think again. Father Geoff applied for a position with the Los Angeles branch of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) and look at the thuggery of the Church in action. Father Tony at The Bilerico Project and at his pad:

CLUE derives a significant part of its funding from the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Today I spoke with a member of CLUE’s board of directors, Rev. James Conn, a Methodist minister and Director of New Ministries for the California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church. Reverend Conn had been directly involved in the recruitment and interview process involving Father Geoff.

I asked him if CLUE had denied Father Geoff a second interview specifically because the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles threatened to cut off all its significant funding for CLUE should Father Geoff ever be offered the position in question.

As incredible as it may seem, Reverend Conn confirmed the truth of this and expressed his heartfelt disappointment over the fact that CLUE had to choose between continuing the interview process with an extremely promising and qualified candidate or risk losing the financial support of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles that is critical to CLUE’s work.

…I am writing this because I’ve learned over the years that the Roman Catholic Church gets away with this kind of despicable and inhumane treatment of men who choose to follow their conscience only when its bad deeds are not held up to a strong light. Father Geoff does not wish CLUE to lose its funding and therefore has remained silent about this, but his friends have brought this situation to my attention, and I want Catholics in California and beyond to understand clearly the level of unchristian behavior and deliberate malice of which their bishops and cardinals are capable.

More from the Bilerico Project blog…

It is important to note that at the age of 51, after having devoted 23 years of his life to the Roman Catholic Church plus an earlier 7 years in the seminary, Father Geoff has had his medical benefits discontinued and is without income and assistance from his bishop. While it is disgusting that his bishop has turned his back on Father Geoff, it is infuriating to think that his bishop would conspire with the Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles to block gainful and appropriate employment.

I am well familiar with the jargon of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. They will say that they feel compassion for Father Geoff and that they pray for him, but their actions speak too strongly and demonstrate deliberate malice. They do not wish him well. And, God forbid that they should have ever proactively attempted some sort of out-placement effort on his behalf. Some bishops privately do that on behalf of priests who leave, but not the hard-hearted bishop who cut off Father Geoffrey Farrow nor the malicious Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles.

I am writing this because I’ve learned over the years that the Roman Catholic Church gets away with this kind of despicable and inhumane treatment of men who choose to follow their conscience only when its bad deeds are not held up to a strong light. Father Geoff does not wish CLUE to lose its funding and therefore has remained silent about this, but his friends have brought this situation to my attention, and I want Catholics in California and beyond to understand clearly the level of unchristian behavior and deliberate malice of which their bishops and cardinals are capable.

I hope you will consider going to CLUE’s website and leaving them a message about your feelings (please keep in mind that CLUE wanted to continue its interview with Father Geoff so don’t paint them as the "bad guy". If you want to leave a message for the real "bad guy", you may contact the office of Cardinal Roger Mahony.

Archdiocese of Los Angeles
3424 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90010-2202
213 637 7000
info@la-archdiocese.org

Ask them why they hate Father Geoff. When they assure you that they do not hate him, ask them to prove it and soon. Right now, more than their insincere prayers, he needs a job.

I hope nobody is surprised. When you hear the Proposition 8 supporters talk of civility and mutual respect, laugh in their face. 

Via Sullivan…  Pope Ratzinger welcomes into his fold, a bishop who claims the Holocaust never happened…

Pope lifts excommunications of 4 bishops

Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunications of four bishops consecrated without papal consent 20 years ago by the late French ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Vatican announced Saturday.

One of the four bishops was shown this week in an interview saying that the Nazi gas chambers probably didn’t exist. The report prompted Rome’s chief rabbi to ask the Vatican to halt plans to rehabilitate him.

Lefebvre rebelled against the Vatican’s modernizing reforms of the 1960s, including replacing Latin with local languages at Mass.

Benedict has already reached out to the rebels in the hopes of bringing them back into the Church by making it the old Mass more readily available.

"The Holy Father in this decision was inspired by the wish that full reconciliation and full communion can be achieved soon," the Vatican said.

Richard Williamson said in a Swedish state TV interview that historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed." The Vatican had no comment on the report.

More Here …

Traditionalist bishop: ‘There were no gas chambers’

Bishop Richard Williamson is a hardline ultra-conservative bishop of the Society of St Pius X. He is excommunicated from the RC church, along with his three brother SSPX bishops but as we report, and also according to reports coming out of Rome, the excommunications could be lifted soon by the Pope. It could even be lifted by Sunday, according to the usually reliable Rorate Caeli. And that while he faces possible prosecution for Holocaust denial in Germany after an interview with a reporter from Swedish TV in which he claimed that six million Jews did not die in the Holocaust, merely a few thousand, and that the gas chambers did not exist. CathCon has the translation of the Der Spiegel report and more on the likely lifting of those excommunications. Could the clock really be turned back this far on Nostra Aetate and the teachings of Vatican II?

In an earlier story in the Catholic Herald,  Bishop Williamson was exposed as endorsing the forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion…

…

If he brings them back in with Williamson on board, then truly it will be a disaster. Vatican II might as well never have happened and it won’t just  be the Jewish community that would be justifiably disgusted. For many thousands of lay Catholics the world over, this could be the final proof that what the atheist bus campaign suggested was true: ‘There probably is no God.’ At least not the God that Williamson and his like believe in. Who could blame them, then, if they put traditionalist Catholic guilt aside, and get on and enjoy their lives.

I hope people don’t get it into their heads that this is merely Ratzinger’s German heritage coming to the fore because this sort of thing horrifies a lot of Germans.  It’s his fascist soul that’s peeking out now.  They say men don’t change, they just reveal themselves.  Well…this is Ratzinger. 

…and he’s eminently representative of that vein of fascism in the Catholic church that was not only on Hitler’s side once upon a time, and the Spanish dictator Franco, but actively helped many of his henchmen escape justice after the war.  The reason strongly Catholic Spain can have same-sex marriage regardless of what the church thinks of it is because so many Spaniards remember how cozy the Catholic church was with Franco while Spain suffered under his thumb, and they care more about the church keeping its fingers the hell out of their government then what the Pope thinks about anything.

American protestants shouldn’t be feeling too smug about all this either because while there are folks in the Henry Ford heartland who think the Catholic church is the whore of Babylon, they also think Protocols is as literally true as the King James bible.  The only reason the kook pews give a good goddamn about Israel is their nutty end times theology.  They could care less about the fate of the Jews…they need Israel to exist so the world can end.  Then American right wing Jesus will come back to earth and cast them all into the lake of fire along with the other non-believers.  And…presumably Catholics.  And Mormons for sure.  And Unitarians.  And Quakers.  And the heathens in the church across the street.  Especially them.

Hell’s a big place all right.  As big as the human capacity to hate each other.  As big as our ability to excuse ourselves for killing each other.  And heaven is so very small.  So very, very small.  Just big enough for me…but probably not big enough for you too.  And remember…there can be no morality without religion…

The Catholic church’s list of sins and their ranking is made public for the first time.  Ever wonder why the church has a hard time fessing up to its role in the Holocaust?  They’re not being obtuse.  Genocide isn’t that big a deal compared with, say spitting out the Eucharist…

Vatican reveals secrets of worst sins

The Apostolic Penitentiary, or "tribunal of conscience", has been shrouded in secrecy ever since it was established by Pope Alexander III in 1179 and until now has never provided details of the cases it scrutinizes.

They are considered so heinous by the Catholic Church that only the Pope can grant absolution to those who perpetrate them.

Blah…blah…blah…

While priests and bishops can deal with confessions of sins as grave as murder or even genocide, the tribunal is reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious.

They include attempting to assassinate the Pope, a priest abusing the confidentiality of the confessional by revealing the nature of the sin and the person who admitted to it, or a priest who has sex with someone and then offers forgiveness for the act.

…

Defiling the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ, is also considered a sin of extreme gravity and one which is on the increase, the high-ranking members of the tribunal said.

Cardinal Stafford said there had been a rise in incidents in which people would receive Communion and then spit it out or otherwise desecrate it, sometimes in Satanic rituals. 

…

Such sins, which can only be dealt with by the Pope, acting through the tribunal, bring automatic excommunication from the Church. If the Pope decides to grant absolution, the excommunication is lifted.

See…it’s all a matter of proportion.  The punishment has to fit the crime.  Forgiveness isn’t lightly meted out when the sin is grievous.  Himmler could have been dealt with by the local parish priest.  But only the Pope can forgive you for spitting out the Eucharist.  And remember, there is no morality without religion.

This headline scanned across my Google news page this morning:

America’s Everyman Calls Mormons ‘Un-American’

What’s significant about this is that Hanks is seen as the same sort of American Everyman character actor that Jimmy Stewart once was.

“The truth is this takes place in Utah, the truth is these people are some bizarre offshoot of the Mormon Church, and the truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen,” he told Tarts. “There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here’s what happens now. A little bit of light can be shed and people can see who’s responsible and that can motivate the next go around of our self correcting constitution and hopefully we can move forward instead of backwards. So lets have faith in not only the American, but Californian constitutional process.”

This, I can see from the other Google news headlines, has the kook pews up in arms.

The Mormon church responds thusly…

Actor Tom Hanks went after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for their support of California’s Proposition 8 while talking to Fox News. Today, the Church responded.

…

Church spokesman Scott Trotter issued a one-sentence statement today in response to Hanks’ comments. It reads: "Expressing an opinion in a free and democratic society is as American as it gets."

So cutting off your neighbor’s ring finger amounts to expressing an opinion.  See how easy it is to live without a conscience?  You don’t have to give a shit about anything or anyone.  You can rip apart your neighbor’s marriage.  You can brutalize children for profit.  The lives of other people don’t matter.  Only your quest for Godhood matters.  Who cares how many lives you destroy, when at the end of it all you get to be a God?

Via Pam’s House Blend.  Don’t read this if stories about Mormons physically and sexually abusing children might make you want to go out and throttle the first Mormon you see afterward.  Probably some of them don’t even know how depraved their church is.  They just see the Donny and Marie side of it and keep on smiling.

What you need to keep in mind as you are reading this, is that it is happening to a fifteen year old boy.  He has been sent to a Mormon "tough love" camp by his mother, who had recently married a religious fanatic.

I was led down a long hall of doors with nameplates. I had no clue what kind of place this was. I didn’t see any cows or horses…no sign of what I thought a "ranch" would resemble. Paul took me into a small room that was no bigger than a broom closet, which was stacked to the ceiling with three colors of cloth, blue, green and brown. There were green t-shirts, blue t-shirts, and blue jeans.

There were also brown army wool blankets, and I remember thinking that I didn’t want to sleep under such a coarse covering before I was told to "put it on." I was told to wrap a thick, itchy blanket around my waist like a towel and wear it like a dress.

I was then given a "leash" made of climbing rope and what I think was a square knot to tie around my waist.

I had never imagined being tethered and walked like a dog, but here I was, being walked like a dog towards a cluster of about 12 other boys. They were lined up facing a wall while two large men in red sweatshirts watched them from a couple of chairs off to the side.

Some of the boys had camouflage pants on, a few others wore dresses. I wondered how long I was to be in this blanket dress. I was later told that it was so I wouldn’t run away – and they were right – I literally could not run in this humiliating getup. I could barely get a full stride walking.

That’s when I saw Brent – or ‘Captain America,’ as he was called disparagingly – for the first time. My leash was handed off to him, but he told me to wrap it around my waist and go join the group of young men who were standing with their noses touching the wall, all spread out about arms length from each other.

I turned to the boy who was standing to my right and asked him how long he had been here, but before I could get my question all the way out, my forehead careened into the carpeted wall in front of me. A sharp pain stabbed the back of my head, and suddenly bad breath filled my nostrils. "Are you talking on my work crew, boy?" a red-shirted man screamed at me.

My head was ringing. I was still trying to piece together what had just happened when I looked behind me and massaged the pain in my head. Suddenly my legs fell out from underneath me and I was on my back.

He had just slammed my forehead into the wall, and now he had put his foot behind mine and pushed me, sending me to the floor flat on my back.

He stood over me and bawled, "Don’t look at me. Don’t look around. Don’t you MOVE without permission! You don’t do anything without permission! If you talk, I think you are talking about running away, and I will restrain you. Do you understand?" I nodded. I knew then that I had to get out of this place. I wasn’t going to last here.

…

His filthy digit tasted like rust and fish. "I can hurt you without leaving any marks," Brent growled as I writhed in agony on the ground. I struggled for breath as he mounted my back, put his finger in my mouth, and pulled back on my cheek, fish-hooking me. The pain was incredible. I tried to beg him to stop, but the words would not come.

After he finished beating and bludgeoning submissiveness into me, he pulled me up by the rope that was lassoed around my waist. The wool army blanket I had fashioned as a skirt had shifted askew and I stood there in my boxers bleeding from my nose, humiliated.

My green Utah Boys Ranch t-shirt had been ridiculously stretched out and looked more like a low cut blouse. I loosened the noose around my waist and pulled the itchy blanket through the loop and folded it over so it looked like a brown bath towel secured by a belt. He wasn’t satisfied, he wanted more.

Another notorious gulag for children is Tranquility Bay, located in Jamaica to it keep safely away from the reach of American law.  Like Utah Boy’s Ranch it is also operated by Mormons.  If you think the camps operated by Christian fundamentalists are horrific, take a look at what it is Mormons do to children.  The righteous Mormon gentleman running the Utah Boys Ranch?  His name is Chris Buttars.  He is a Utah state senator. 

More information the Mormon Gulag Here.  Think about it the next time you hear someone from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints bellyaching that the gays are hateful.  Think about the TV ads they ran in California, warning voters about how the homosexuals were coming for their kids. 

I can hurt you without leaving any marks…

…via ScienceBlogs – Dispatches From The Culture Wars, which you should read:

A reader sends along this link, which he says is not a parody but is actually a serious statement by a guy named Matthew Stucky. He says that Santa Claus (which he spells Clause, for some reason) is satanic and is "corrupting people all over the world." Oh, and the reindeer are all gay. Seriously.

So I go take a look…

Santa Clause
1. He knows if a person has been naughty or nice. He is omniscient.
2. If a person has been nice then he will give them gifts.
3. If they have been naughty then they get a lump of coal.
4. Most people are good enough to receive gifts & few get a lump of coal.
5. Santa somehow has the ability to give gifts to the entire world in one time although that would be scientifically impossible. He is basically omnipresent and omniscient.
6. The word for Holy in Spanish is Santa. This gives the world the perception that a man can be a really good person & this makes Santa Clause a mock of God. 

Okay…

Santa’s queer reindeer:
Take a look at the names of the 8 reindeer.
Blitzen, Comet, Cupid, Dancer, Dasher, Donder, Prancer and Vixen.

The person who originally came up with these names probably did not have this intent. They probably originally had some of the reindeer as male & some as female. However, the animated movie that was made in 1964 had a different idea. In the movie all 8 of these reindeer were male reindeer. Take a look at those names again. Male reindeer named Dancer, Prancer, Vixen & Cupid?!?!?!

Let’s start with Vixen in the dictionary:
1 : a shrewish ill-tempered woman 2 : a female fox 3 : a sexually attractive woman

So Vixen is a queer. It’s nice to know the creators of this sweet innocent cartoon were so concerned with young kids who would be watching.

Cupid
1: the Roman god of erotic love — compare eros 2 not capitalized : a figure that represents Cupid as a naked usually winged boy often holding a bow and arrow

Dancer & Prancer certainly sound like feminine terms as well.

I think from these names we know Vixen, Dancer, Prancer & Cupid are queer reindeer.

Let’s go back to the story from the animated movie with Rudolph. Rudolph gets shy around girls & his nose turns red. As a result, the other reindeer won’t let him play any reindeer games. That sounds sick, perverted & homosexual. Basically Rudolph like girls because he is straight & as a result they don’t let him participate in their homosexual games.

People are going to read this & say I’m crazy but hasn’t Hollywood always been trying to pump in homosexual themes into kids movies & cartoons. One of the teletubbies is gay. Bert & Ernie are gay. In Scooby Doo Greg is gay. Hollywood has always had agendas they are trying to push and one of those major agendas is homosexuality is ok. It’s no big deal. Another one they are trying to push is "It’s ok for women to work."

The truth is Santa Clause is being used by Satan to corrupt kids at a very young age. This is much like in the Disney movies which are littered with sexual content, homosexuality, etc… A woman falling in love with an animal(Beauty & the Beast). A grown man who wants to hang around little boys all day(Peter Pan). Peter Pan is also always played by women in plays because he is a long haired looking faggot in the movie.

We as Christians need to separate ourselves from this kind of garbage. You can say I’m crazy but Satan Clause is corrupting kids & we ought to have nothing to do with it. We ought to keep our kids away from these fun little animated shows that came from Hollywood. It came from the world so it’s not of God. 1 John 2:15-16 "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."

Leviticus 20:13 "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

According to the Bible homosexuality should be punishable by death. I would be overjoyed if every single queer in the entire world died today. The Bible makes it clear they are reprobates who are past the point of salvation. The Bible also makes it clear they are rapists & very wicked people. They have no chance to get saved and no saved person could ever become a queer. Therefore, I would be overjoyed if they all died tonight & our government would actually follow what the Bible states. The death penalty should be enacted for the queers.

Matthew Stucky 

Just one screwy little blogger boy you say?  Yes.  Of course.  But there’s your grass roots.  Right there.  The fertile soil decades of pulpit thumping against the Homosexual Threat was meant to take root in.  Check out his goals for the new year…

Personal Physical Goals
1. Get my mile time under 5 minutes & keep it there for the entire year.
2. Run a marathon.
3. Bench 250 lbs.
4. Leg Press 900 lbs.
5. Get my 6 pack abs back before the end of January & keep it for the entire year.
6. Dunk a basketball.
7. Maintain my side to side split but be able to do one front to back both with left leg forward & right leg forward.
8. Learn how to do a front flip.
9. Learn how to do a back flip.
10. Be able to flat jump on the pulpit by the end of the year. 

Nice.  He also wants to "Personally lead 1000 people to the Lord" this year.  No word on how many homosexuals he intends to kill.  I suppose we’ll find that out eventually.

Good thing I’m not a Mormon though.  Then I’d have to endure angry threats and rhetoric.

The more people look at what happened in California, the more the vast scope of Mormon involvement in anti-gay politics, both in terms of money and organizational prowess, becomes known.  In this article in Today’s New York Times, the bottom line is made perfectly clear: without the vigorous support of the Mormon church, Proposition 8 would have failed.  The Mormon church wrote its will into the constitution of the state of California though lies and stealth, and lots and lots of money that its members were ordered to contribute…

Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage

As proponents of same-sex marriage across the country planned protests on Saturday against the ban, interviews with the main forces behind the ballot measure showed how close its backers believe it came to defeat — and the extraordinary role Mormons played in helping to pass it with money, institutional support and dedicated volunteers.

“We’ve spoken out on other issues, we’ve spoken out on abortion, we’ve spoken out on those other kinds of things,” said Michael R. Otterson, the managing director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons are formally called, in Salt Lake City. “But we don’t get involved to the degree we did on this.”

…

Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that Mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts.

The canvass work could be exacting and highly detailed. Many Mormon wards in California, not unlike Roman Catholic parishes, were assigned two ZIP codes to cover. Volunteers in one ward, according to training documents written by a Protect Marriage volunteer, obtained by people opposed to Proposition 8 and shown to The New York Times, had tasks ranging from “walkers,” assigned to knock on doors; to “sellers,” who would work with undecided voters later on; and to “closers,” who would get people to the polls on Election Day.

Suggested talking points were equally precise. If initial contact indicated a prospective voter believed God created marriage, the church volunteers were instructed to emphasize that Proposition 8 would restore the definition of marriage God intended.

But if a voter indicated human beings created marriage, Script B would roll instead…

…

…the “Yes” side also initially faced apathy from middle-of-the-road California voters who were largely unconcerned about same-sex marriage. The overall sense of the voters in the beginning of the campaign, Mr. Schubert said, was “Who cares? I’m not gay.”

To counter that, advertisements for the “Yes” campaign also used hypothetical consequences of same-sex marriage, painting the specter of churches’ losing tax exempt status or people “sued for personal beliefs” or objections to same-sex marriage, claims that were made with little further explanation.

Another of the advertisements used video of an elementary school field trip to a teacher’s same-sex wedding in San Francisco to reinforce the idea that same-sex marriage would be taught to young children.

“We bet the campaign on education,” Mr. Schubert said.

They lied through their teeth and they threw a torrent of hate and Mormon church money into it and they steamrollered over the rights of devoted loving couples so they could become gods in their own universe someday.  And now they’re upset that people are taking the fight back to them.

Mr. Ashton described the protests by same-sex marriage advocates as off-putting. “I think that shows colors,” Mr. Ashton said. “By their fruit, ye shall know them.”

And just what would you do, you gutter crawling bigot, if someone cut your ring finger off?   Laugh it off?  Shake the other guy’s hand?  No you wouldn’t.  But you expect us to roll over and play dead because we’re homosexuals and homosexuals don’t have feelings, and homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.  There is no reason for us to be angry with you, because you didn’t take anything sacred away from us, because we don’t feel love the way you do, because we’re not human like you are.  We’re Satan’s followers, and we don’t have human emotions like you Future Gods In Training do.

Fruit…did you say?  Fuck you Ashton.  I’ve got your fruit right here.  You sow poison in the earth, you get poison back out of it.  Now eat it.  Or as another gay man, James Baldwin once said…

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

Baldwin wouldn’t have been allowed in one of your churches, even if he wasn’t gay, because according to your…prophets…black people were cursed by God and that’s why their skin is black.  Your church has been elevating the cheapshit prejudices of its barstool prophets into holy writ for generations and now and a reckoning is long overdue. This isn’t your private universe, it’s the United States of America and it belongs to all of us, not just you White And Delightsome Gods In Waiting.  The United States of America is not your private universe, and you are not gods, however highly you might think of yourselves.  So fuck off.

And the unsurprises just keep on coming.  You know the old story about how so many right wing anti-gay warriors turn out to have gay children?  Phillys Schlafly?  Alan Keyes?  Charles Socarides, late of NARTH?  Recall how the man who spear headed California Proposition 22, which was the first swing at same-sex marriages back in 2000, Pete Knight, turned out to have had a gay son?  

Isn’t it interesting how so many of the most vitirolic gay haters have gay children of their own?  Like…they’re punishing their kids, by waging war on the entire gay community?  Like…all of us have to bleed, because hating their own flesh and blood just isn’t good enough?  Isn’t it so very…unsurprising…that 67 year old Gary Lawrence, Mormon, California State LDS Grassroots Director, and prominent organizer of the Proposition 8 campaign, has a gay son?  Surprise, surprise, surprise.

It’s worth remembering in the wake of Proposition 8, that Mormon abuse of their own gay children has been well known for some time now.  If you thought it was tough growing up gay in a Southern Baptist household, just listen to the stories of gay Mormon kids.  And…(Via Pam’s House Blend), like all the children of the anti-gay culture war, this particular son has his own heartbreaking story to tell…

Matthew Lawrence, 28, of Santa Ana, California is just one of approximately 500 people who have contacted Signing for Something ( http://www.signingforsomething… )in the last few days to announce his resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because of the Mormon Church’s handling of and involvement in the gay marriage issue.  Matthew is gay and is the son of Gary Lawrence, 67, who is the “State LDS Grassroots Director” for the state of California.  (See http://yesonprop8.blogspot.com… ).

Matthew Lawrence, in an e-mail interview with this diarist, said that although he is “extremely upset and frustrated” with his family and that he has “cut off communication with them,” that “at the end of the day, I do love them.”  The elder Lawrence was also the Mormon Church’s point man for the Prop 22 campaign in 2000.  Matt says, “I love my family so much, but it’s hard to not take this personally.  We had a brief falling-out over Prop. 22, but that got mended.  But two anti-gay initiatives in eight years, it’s impossible not to feel attacked.”

Matthew was particularly hurt when “my father said that opponents of Prop. 8 are akin to Lucifer’s followers in the pre-existence.”  (Printed in Meridian Magazine online, and reported in the Salt Lake Tribune http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_… and other newspapers). Matthew’s plea to his father and others is “We can all agree to disagree and respect each other’s informed opinions and decisions, but don’t put me and Satan in the same sentence please.” 

“This issue isn’t about gay marriage,” writes Matthew. ” This is about certain religious factions that believe homosexuality is disgusting, immoral and wrong and needs to be stamped out. . . .  It’s a problem to be ‘fixed.'” Matthew writes that his family sent him to multiple counselors during his youth, and even sent him to live with relatives in Utah which he writes was an attempt to “straighten me out” by living with what he describes as “homophobic cousins.”  He said while in Utah it wasn’t unusual for his cousin to call him a “faggot” at school and that his “aunt and uncle did nothing to discourage his behavior.” 

…don’t put me and Satan in the same sentence please.  Is this too much to ask?  Never mind the gay stranger down the street who wears horns every time you set eyes on them.  Never mind that same-sex couple you can casually condemn to eternal hellfire because they’re not part of your own family, but someone else’s, and it’s always easy to toss someone else’s children, someone else’s loved ones, into the fiery lake for all eternity.  Is it too much to ask you to stop demonizing your own children?  Is it too much to ask you to stop putting your righteous knives into their hearts too?  They want your love…they Need your love.  Can you stop putting them side by side with Satan in your eyes?  In your hearts?  At long last, is this too much to ask?

Oh…you want a civil discussion now do you…?

California’s Prop 8: LDS leader calls for healing the gay-marriage rift

Now that California voters have outlawed same-sex marriage, an LDS Church leader called Wednesday for members to heal rifts caused by the emotional campaign by treating each other with "civility, with respect and with love."

"We hope that everyone would treat [each other] that way no matter which side of this issue they were on," said Elder L. Whitney Clayton, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Presidency of the Seventy. 

…

In a statement, the LDS Church said it does not object to domestic partnership or civil union legislation "as long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family or the constitutional rights of churches."

Which same sex marriage does not.  But…you know that…

As for Proposition 8, "we consider this to be a moral issue," Clayton said. "We’re not anti-gay, we’re pro marriage between a man and a woman."

Right.  Like you weren’t racist when you were denying black people a seat in your church…just pro white.  You don’t have to be racist to be pro-white.

You gutter crawling scum have been lurking in the background of this battle for over a decade now, and all that is over.  You fought to make your gay and lesbian neighbors second class citizens in their own country.  Own it.  Trust me…you will have to.  Nobody is forgetting this.  You want civility?  Get The Fuck Off Our Backs.

Via Pam’s House Blend…  Janet Porter says if you don’t vote for McCain God is going to cast you into hell for all eternity.  Can we just stop pretending now that the religious right wants anything to do with democracy…?

You cannot be a Christian and vote for Obama

To all those who name the name of Christ who plan to willfully disobey Him by voting for Obama, take warning. Not only is our nation in grave danger, according to the Word of God, so are you.

Insert the usual antiabortion, anti-gay rhetoric here…

Be forewarned: If you willfully disobey God on life and marriage because of race or false hope for the economy, you will usher in the kind of change that brought the Soviet Union to collapse.

But the warning goes far beyond that. To those who think that God’s grace gives them license to willfully disobey Him without consequences – think again:

Not everyone who says to Me, "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?" And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!" (Matthew 7:21-23)

That deals with your eternity. Matthew 7:26-27 says if you don’t obey God, prepare for a crash even sooner that that:

But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash (Matthew 7:26-27).

I just hope you won’t take the rest of the nation with you.

If the word of God matters more to you than your perception of personal gain, Joel 2:12 issues a call to repentance I pray you will heed:

"Now, therefore," says the LORD, ‘Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning’" (Joel 2:12).

Then obey Him in the voting booth and out of it. If not, do us all a favor and quit calling yourself a Christian.

Right.  I get the message…

I get it all right…

The America where everyone has a right to their own life, their own bodies, their own conscience, is something you couldn’t have any less use for.   The American Dream of liberty and justice for all is apostasy as far as you’re concerned.  America belongs to fundamentalist Christians.  The rest of us just live here.  Conditionally.

America’s biggest sin isn’t abortion is it Janet.  It isn’t same sex marriage.  It isn’t pornography.  America’s biggest, most unforgivable sin is this…

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

There’s where it all went wrong, isn’t it Janet?   Justice?  Domestic Tranquility?  Common defense?  General Welfare?  Blessings of Liberty?  Makes you sick to your stomach to read it, doesn’t it Janet?  And this…this must make you positively livid…

The Golden Door.  The Golden Door.  Does that make you want to laugh Janet, or puke?  The people who fled the old world and its state churches and religious wars didn’t found a new nation dedicated to freedom of worship just so babbling Darbyite pre-millenial nutcases like you could build a theocracy over their graves.  Do us all a favor and stop calling yourself an American Janet.  You are a Christian Nationalist, and the United States of America is to you as a cricket is to a digger wasp.  

Submitted for your idle viewing pleasure… A wee taste of what your gay and lesbian neighbors have to endure every single fucking day. To my heterosexual friends and family, those of you who have married…while planning your happy day, did you remember to take into account that one or more total strangers might decide to crash it, so they could hurl insults at you, your beloved spouse to be, and everyone else in the chapel?

Of course you didn’t…

More on the guy trying to piss on the happy couple’s big day Here…

…when my editors at SN&R decided that someone with journalistic sensibilities and a sense of humor ought to look into these folks—with their extreme approach to protesting; their bold, yellow “Sodomy is Sin” banner; and their retro use of language that even many anti-gay groups have abandoned as insensitive—I volunteered. The timing was right. Real anger had been stirred up between parts of the local gay community and some members of the Slavic evangelical churches, who have protested at gay events for a few years. And since Proposition 8, which aims to end marriage equality, is on the ballot for November, the upcoming months promised plenty of discussion of gay rights as well as ample opportunity to see Luke and company in action.

So through the rest of the spring and summer and on into fall, I followed Luke and his small crew of activists to protest after protest. With my notebook and camera, I trailed after them during the first local same-sex weddings at the Sacramento County clerk/recorder’s office, at the Sacramento Pride Festival and while protesting at an area McDonald’s, which they perceived as gay-friendly. I kept an eye on the activities of Luke and his friends Viktor Choban and Yuriy Popko at American River College, where they’ve stirred up quite a fuss over the past couple of semesters. They’ve managed to aggravate an impressive list of people: the GLBTQ club, Latinos Unidos, campus progressives, Muslim students and the Improv Club.

The most important thing I’ve discovered through all this: Luke and company won’t compromise. They believe they’re on God’s side, and as far as they’re concerned, if you’re arguing with God, you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.

Gutter crawling bigots like these are no more representative of most of America then Ed Gein, but I’ve often wondered why more good people don’t speak out about the torrent of hate coming from them. I suppose there are a lot of reasons for that, but one is almost certainly that they don’t experience this sort of relentless hatred themselves, first hand. They don’t get to see how completely disconnected the haters are from anything remotely resembling reality, and how that unreality they live in gives them a kind of schizophrenic permission to attack anyone and everyone they perceive as an enemy, without any sort of moral or ethical restraint. They embody not just virtue, but God’s own righteousness, and so they are immune from the moral considerations the rest of us must live by.

Gay Americans have been living with this adversary for decades. We’ve watched it grow in reach from the political gutter to the summit of American political power. The only thing that surprises many of us, is how surprised, how shocked, the rest of America is whenever it catches a glimpse of its essential moral degeneracy. How easily…how effortlessly…they will look you in the eye, and lie through their teeth. How they cheat, and even when flagrantly caught doing it, will deny everything. How they ignore every moral law they insist everyone else must live by when it suits them. Because fighting for God’s truth excuses them from having to live it themselves. It’s not absolute power that corrupts, it’s absolute certainty.

We gay folk need to document our experience more, so others can better understand what America faces. These people want to take everyone down into their gutter and they are determined. It isn’t just our freedoms that are at stake here. If you think these people are just a bunch of irritating, but basically weak and harmless wackos, if you don’t think they’re dangerous, you aren’t paying attention. Perhaps that’s something your gay and lesbian neighbors can help you with. Look again. That guy in the video who called us ‘sodomites’…if you don’t obey his rules, then as far as he’s concerned, you’re one too, and you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.

Via Salon…  An email now circulating among the kook pews …apparently written by Jim Bramlett, author and former vice president of the Christian Broadcasting Network, who apparently has obtained recordings of angels singing…

Dear friends:
 
Barack Hussein Obama has taken the nation by storm.  From obscurity, with zero executive experience, or much of any kind, he has vaulted into the position of Presidential frontrunner.  It is stunning.  On the surface, it appears attributable only to his eloquent oratory and his race.  But an invisible factor may be a strong spiritual force behind him, causing some people to actually swoon in his presence.
 
I have been very concerned that he has publicly said that he does not believe Jesus is the only way to heaven.  This makes both the Bible and Jesus a liar, and it means that Christ has died in vain.  A person cannot be a true Christian who believes that there are other ways of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life with God.  Only Jesus has paid the price for that.
 
Therefore, there is, indeed, another spirit involved.  And this spirit has come into our national life like a flood.  Last week at Obama’s acceptance speech, that spirit exalted itself in front of a Greek temple-like stage, and to a huge audience like in a Roman arena.  Omama was portrayed as god-like.  His voice thundered as a god’s voice.
 
At the end, Democratic sympathizer Pastor Joel Hunter gave the benediction and shockingly invited everyone to close the prayer to their own (false) gods.  This was surely an abomination, but it was compatible with Obama’s expressed theology, and Hunter’s leftist leanings.
 
God was not pleased.
 
And God says, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him" (Isaiah 59:19).
 
Enter Governor Sarah Palin.  With incredible timing, the very next day, Sarah Palin also appeared out of nowhere.  Her shocking selection as John McCain’s running mate stunned the world and suddenly took all the wind out of Obama’s sails.
 
We quickly learned that Sarah is a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian, attends church, and has been a ministry worker.
 
Sarah is that standard God has raised up to stop the flood.  She has the anointing.  You can tell by how the dogs are already viciously attacking her.  But they will not be successful.  She knows the One she serves and will not be intimidated.
 
Back in the 1980s, I sensed that Israel’s little-known Benjamin Netanyahu was chosen by God for an important end-time role.  I still believe that.  I now have that same sense about Sarah Palin.
 
Today I did some checking and discovered that both her first and last names are biblical words, one in Hebrew the other in Greek:
 
Sarah.  Wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac.  In Hebrew, Sarah means "noble woman" (Strong’s 8283).
 
Palin.  In Greek, the word means "renewal." (Strong’s 3825).
 
A friend said he believes that Sarah Palin is a Deborah.  Of Deborah, Smith’s Bible Dictionary says, "A prophetess who judged Israel…. She was not so much a judge as one gifted with prophetic command…. and by virtue of her inspiration ‘a mother in Israel.’"
 
Only God knows the future and how she may be used by Him, but may this noble woman serve to bring renewal in the land, and inspiration.
 
Jim

Unlike President Junior…it’s a safe bet that Palin actually sees herself this way. 

This e-mail isn’t the only instance of Palin being seen this way. Sarah Posner, who has an interesting article about Palin’s time as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, in Salon today, previously wrote about this phenomenon on TAPPED: "Many evangelicals are talking about Palin being like the biblical Queen Esther, who saved the Jews from the genocidal Haman, and believe that Palin has come, like Esther did, ‘for a time such as this.’ (The same narrative built around George W. Bush when he was running.)"

President Palin.

Some people may have forgotten by now, that Rowan Williams became Archbishop of Canterbury bearing a history of progressive thinking on homosexuality…

Rowan Williams: gay relationships ‘comparable to marriage’

Rowan Williams believes that gay sexual relationships can “reflect the love of God” in a way that is comparable to marriage, The Times has learnt.

Gay partnerships pose the same ethical questions as those between men and women, and the key issue for Christians is that they are faithful and lifelong, he believes.

Dr Williams is known to be personally liberal on the issue but the strength of his views, revealed in private correspondence shown to The Times, will astonish his critics.

The news threatens to reopen bitter divisions over ordaining gay priests, which pushed the Anglican Communion towards a split.

But this isn’t new, and that needs to be emphasized.  What is being reported here are Williams’ correspondence on the issue Prior to his becoming Archbishop…

As Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Williams recommitted the Anglican Communion to its orthodox position that homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture at the Lambeth Conference, which closed on Sunday.

However, in an exchange of letters with an evangelical Christian, written eight years ago when he was Archbishop of Wales, he described his belief that biblical passages criticising homosexual sex were not aimed at people who were gay by nature.

He argued that scriptural prohibitions were addressed to heterosexuals looking for sexual variety. He wrote: “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.” Dr Williams described his view as his “definitive conclusion” reached after 20 years of study and prayer. He drew a distinction between his own beliefs as a theologian and his position as a church leader, for which he had to take account of the traditionalist view.

The letters, written in the autumn of 2000 and 2001, were exchanged with Deborah Pitt, a psychiatrist and evangelical Christian living in his former archdiocese in South Wales, who had written challenging him on the issue.

In reply, he described how his view began to change from that of opposing gay relationships in 1980. His mind became “unsettled” by contact as a university teacher with Christian students who believed that the Bible forbade promiscuity rather than gay sex. 

This wasn’t unknown to church reactionaries at the time of his appointment.  They kicked up a fuss over Williams precisely because of what they knew his thinking on same sex relationships was.  The question is, does Williams still think this or did he, upon becoming head of the church, revert back to his previous beliefs.  Because Williams, despite the hysterical protestations of the haters, has been anything but a friend to gay people.  At every juncture on the road to the schism that sure looks inevitable to me, Williams has consistently, Consistently, ratcheted up official hostility toward gay people.  He has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to bring gay people more into the heart of the church.  Everything, absolutely everything that he has actually done, has pushed gay people further away from it.  It’s hard not to conclude that he’s had a profound change of heart regarding the sanctity, the reflection of God, in same sex love.

If the stiff arm he’s giving to gay Anglicans is his way of trying to mollify violent haters like Bishop Akinola enough that they won’t bolt from the church, he’s worse then merely an idiot.  And not simply because Akinola and his kind won’t be satisfied with anything short of a purge of homosexuals from the face of the earth, so they sure as hell aren’t going to accept them in the church pews, let alone in the leadership.  Those who were hopeful when William’s took office need to consider that the man never really had his heart in affirming gay people as his neighbors.  His "definite conclusion" simply melted away when they put the Archbishop’s robes on him, leaving behind only the bedrock that preexisted it. 

Because, if the love between a same sex couple Does reflect the love of God, then isn’t the man who strikes at those lovers for bearing that love within their hearts guilty also of striking at God’s love?  Either Williams still believes what he wrote or he doesn’t, or worse…he thinks the structure of the church is more sacred then the love of God, reflected in the hearts of the faithful. 

It might well be the latter.  And if that’s the case, it’s unsurprising that he’s loosing the battle for the soul of the church to the likes of Akinola.  Take the love of God out of the church, and Akinola is exactly what you have left.

At some point Akinola is going to lead his flock away from the church of England.  If that hasn’t been staringly obvious before now his current argument that the Church of England is a relic of colonialism should I think, decisively settle the question.  He is going to do it.  And at some point after that…soon I would guess…Ratzinger and Akinola are going to publically shake hands.