Postcards from the culture wars

“That’s the really revolutionary act – to dare to believe that people can change their hearts and minds.”

“I don’t hate myself nearly as much as you wish I did.”

“I am so sorry for the loss of your wife, Rev. Garlow, but I what I grieve for more is your loss of a sense of humanity.”

“From the bottom of my heart I wish I could take back my words and actions that caused anger, depression, guilt and hopelessness.”

“The middle spot is unsustainable on this issue. Gravity will win and one side will crash.”

“To suggest in the 21st century that a woman could be prevented from having access to birth control, even as far to the right as I am, that’s going off the cliff.”

“I’m still waiting for someone — anyone — to present an argument against same-sex marriage that doesn’t boil down to, ‘My religion doesn’t approve’ or ‘I think it’s icky.'”

“A state’s right to discriminate should not trump an individual’s right to love.”

“If my happiness somehow demeans or diminishes your marriage, you need to work on your marriage.”

“Surprisingly, there have been no reports of random violence against other Christians in the wake of this news, and no outraged calls for closing Christian churches as potential dens of child molestation, because when Christians do terrible things, they are an anomaly to that religion’s message of peace.”

“They think government should be there to give orders and solve their problems and give them a handout when they need it.”

“I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.”

“Many of our Christians … want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. … As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

“Combine a ‘right to revolution’ with the belief that most people voting for Barack Obama are baby-killing looters who are revolting against God’s very specific plan for America as laid right out there in the Declaration of Independence and the original Constitution, and you could get some unfortunate consequences.”

“It’s going to be interesting to watch religious right groups such as the Family Research Council spin false portents of doom about gays wanting to imprison Christians and how ENDA will lead to this happening. Of course it’s not as if they haven’t done this before.”

“If only men could take a leaf out of women’s book and express hostility to the opposite sex by wearing clothes women find unattractive, instead of insulting us, harassing us, raping us, beating us or killing us.”

“My daughter wasn’t bullied to death, she was disappointed to death. Disappointed in people she thought she could trust, her school, and the police.”

“Apparently the idea of girls being sold off into early marriage and women being pushed into prostitution is fucking hilarious.”

“If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year.”

“Doctors and health advocates testified against HB 693 on Tuesday, pointing out that imposing obstacles to health services could ultimately dissuade youth from seeking the medical care they need.”

“Believe it or not, getting rid of contraception and abortion isn’t going to lead to improved women’s health.”

“The bill, Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services Act (H.R. 2030), would make it Not Okay to advertise come-to-Jesus centers as health care clinics, because they are not actually health care clinics.”

“Conservatives are supposed to stand for truth against relativism. But that seems not to be the play in this case.”

“Alex Jones is a long line of tradition going back to the John Birch Society, people who are always predicting impending doom. And the fact that they’re almost never right doesn’t seem to bother their followers in the least.”

“When you go full antiscience, logic goes out the window.”

“When normal people think of the Enlightenment, they think of Newton, Locke, Voltaire, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Goethe, Paine, Jefferson — and the ideas that helped launch the American Revolution. When crazy right-wing Christians think of the Enlightenment, they apparently think of … Nazis.”

“If this isn’t Nazism, Communism, Marxism and all the ‘ism’s,’ I don’t know what is.”