“These children have faces, they have names, they have moms and dads, and they were all under five years old.” “Wait for it. … Wait for it. … Tee-hee!” “It’s not about your right as a gay person to dignity. It’s about our right to declare that you aren’t worthy of it.” “Here’s someone whose career was derailed for being blasphemous. Well, as it turns out, she was right.” “An elderly lifelong bachelor who lives with hundreds of other old,... Read more
For the past five years, I’ve been part of a big Catholic family, even before I married into it. Due to lease logistics, I moved in with my future father-in-law for the five months before my wedding. Three of us lived in that house: me, Pop and my wife’s Uncle Joe, a retired priest. We joked that it was our bachelor pad — the widower, the celibate and the fiancé. I stayed in a room that had once belonged to... Read more
If this be a method, there’s madness in it. I don’t get up early enough or stay up late enough to keep track of every strange, foolish, insultingly ludicrous, blasphemous or fantastical thing my former senator, Rick Santorum, has been saying lately. The Republican presidential candidate has produced such an astonishing string of wild accusations, pure hokum, and fringe lunacy that it all sort of bleeds together at this point. And he’s produced so much of it that no one... Read more
How can Mitt Romney recall childhood memories of Detroit’s Golden Jubilee? That event, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the American automobile, took place June 1, 1946 — “fully nine months before Romney was born.” David Barton offers one explanation. “Biblically,” the fraudulent non-historian says, “life begins before conception.” This may also explain why Barton himself is able to “remember” things like what a devout, prayerful Christian Thomas Paine was. Speaking of Romney, Buzzfeed speculates that his “trees are... Read more
Burning kittens is wrong. It is cruel, it is illegal and it is, quite simply, evil. No one should burn kittens. I am, unambiguously and without qualification, opposed to burning kittens. I am also confident that you are opposed to this too. And that latter point is why I cannot join the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition. The AKBC, again, is on the correct side of this issue. Its members, quite rightly, are vehemently opposed to something to which they ought to... Read more
Jesse Curtis: “A lot of Christians don’t care about poor people“ What I hear from evangelicals a lot is that it is the church’s job, not the government’s, to care for the poor. I would dispute the either/or proposition contained in that argument (after all, the laws God gave Israel included government mandated redistribution of wealth) but for our purposes, let’s accept the premise. It is the church’s job, period. But here’s the thing … many of our evangelical churches... Read more
1 John 2:7-11 Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever... Read more
“If Jesus is about anything, it’s that love trumps rules.” “Time will tell whether these evangelical colleges are on the right side of history. But I can’t help thinking that 50 years from now they will look back and wonder what the fuss was about.” “Even though we imposed our religious views on others when we pushed through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting sale and manufacture of alcohol nearly 100 years ago, we did not insist our religious... Read more
Left Behind II: Tribulation Force, Part 7 We’ve arrived at the fork in the road. Up until now we’ve been watching an adaptation of Tribulation Force, the novel. The characters on the screen are taken from that book, and what we’ve seen thus far has mostly been a re-enactment of scenes originally written there by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. As in any adaptation, those scenes have been tweaked and streamlined, with a few minor departures — Chris Smith is... Read more
“Someday, by God, I want to throw a wedding for that kid.” “You can either be on the right side of history or the wrong side of history. Your choice. But if you’re on the wrong side, be ready to look like an asshole to your grandchildren, no matter how many savings bonds you give them.” “They pitched a fit and wouldn’t leave until something happened.” (That’s biblical.) “That is not legal argument or empirical evidence. It is the death... Read more
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