Valar Dohaeris

• “This happens. This is something that happens.” — Stanley Spector

• Cal Thomas has clearly never read the Bible. Or, for that matter, Jane Austen.

Seriously, whenever I hear someone like that bloviating about mid-20th-century American forms of marriage as something “that has been part of human history for thousands of years” I just want to sit them down and force them to read, say, Sense and Sensibility.

• Franklin Graham is gonna need a bigger boycott (via).

Graham says he refuses to do business with any business that uses advertising to “publicly advocate” for marriage equality, but asking him to avoid all of these companies seems a bit much. So how about just picking one?

I see the Twitter logo there. If Franklin Graham decided to extend his anti-gay boycott to include Twitter, I would fully support that decision.

• Theocracy is not the only alternative to non-sectarian — i.e., secular — government. You could also establish an official hegemonic civil religion in which formerly sectarian beliefs are diluted and dissipated into meaningless aphorisms and mere “ceremonial” decoration. It’s distressing that so many Christians seem to favor that approach just so long as the meaningless phrases and ceremonial decorations derive from their preferred sectarian sources.

• Paul Davidson discusses Melchizedek, and offers a semi-convincing theory about this biblical/legendary figure: “Melchizedek: King, Priest, Time Lord.”

And suddenly that story makes a lot more sense.

• I refuse to take the bait on any article that purports to say “What Your Favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer Character Says About You,” because, obviously, the only proper formula for such things would be “What Your Second-favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer Says About You.” (Or, maybe, third-favorite, if we’re counting Willow and Dark Willow as separate characters.)

• “It’s easy to confuse what is from what ought to be, especially when what is has worked in your favor.” — The Imp

(Also: “I think the subtext … is that he’s starting to become Alan King for audiences of a certain age.” Ouch.)