...And Misery for All

Link: http://tinyurl.com/yf9gs5u

An amusing trial is going to occur in California early next year. In it, the constitutionality of the state's recent Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, will be assessed. Unfortunately for the backers of the porposition, they are in Judge Vaughn Walker's court. There was today a preliminary hearing with the attorneys, as highlighted in the link at the top. Judge Walker indicated that he was not amused by the position of the group and would take the opportunity in court to examine some of the rhetoric often spouted in the defense for such a ban.

I laughed several times reading this article, mostly at the simple questioning offered that garnered highly-polished I-don't-knows from Charles Cooper, attorney for the backers. After the hearing, the Mr. Cooper said that he would be ready with material to support his case.

Allow me to help you, the people who support this ban: you won't and never will for one simple reason: your position is wholly indefensible from a legal standpoint. The only thing you can say if that this is your belief or opinion. It will save a lot of time if you simply come out and say that it is the faith of your clients. Then the case can be thrown out for being patently stupid, bigoted, and faith-based.

One of Judge Walker's questions was regarding how same-sex marriage causes harm to mixed-sex marriages. Again, Mr. Cooper did not know. There is no harm to mixed-sex marriage except for that which is caused and perceived by the individual. After all, if same-sex marriage is allowed...where will it end? Mixed-species? Mixed-matter-states? Whom does it harm? No one. You may not like it, but that does not make it wrong or bad.

What business is it of yours, anyway? You do not want the government involved in an issue like this because, inevitably, it will decree something that you do not like. Then what? You gave them the power and now you are the victim. I would offer the same advise to you then as I do now: suck it up, jackass.

But marriage is a sacred institution. Bullshit. Humans were forming community-acknowledged pair bonds long before some asshole priest/shaman/witchdoctor decided to create a lucrative line of work for himself—and a few bucks—by pretending to solicit blessings from the Sky Daddy over the union. Humans form pair bonds. Even alligators form pair bonds, and they are hundreds of millions of years old—or 5000 in young-Earth years. That's all you need. Probably, after a few centuries of study, you might find that pair bond couples have greater success because of the nature of the pair bond. Maybe not much more, but its more.

Do pair bonded couples marry? Of course, and that's fine because at no time will I say that anyone cannot marry if they want. Marriage is not a sacred institution, unless you really want those blessings on the union. What are the typical blessings: children (have more sex, use the rhythm method, have sex every day - works for atheists and everyone else), a prosperous home (work harder or at least do work that rewards you in other ways beside money - works for atheists and everyone else); love and respect (don't be an asshole, plus love and respect your partner - works for atheists and everyone else). Hmm. I'm not seeing anything special here. Sounds more like magic and talismans and spells and potions are needed - you know, pagan stuff. Of course, if blessings are not part of the equation then make an appointment with your local Justice of the Peace.

I'm curious about these supposed blessings on the union: do you have to be a member of the cult to receive them or does the Sky Daddy dole them out to anyone? What about a couple who are not married, who have several healthy children, whose lives are rich, and who love each other to the end of their days? Did Sky Daddy secretly bless them? What if they are Buddhist? Atheist? Deist? Zoroastrian? Pastafarian? Stop me when this starts to sound really silly. Too late.

I'm sure that the big item that will be presented is the harm to children of same-sex parents. They are the same arguments used to prevent same-sex couples from adoption. Harm? What harm? Again, the only harm is that which is perceived by these bigots. They're not raising them like I do my children! Thank The Great Noodle! Maybe they won't be bigots.

Children of gay (from here the term "gay" shall encompass the full gamut of GLBT) couples may be brought up with different values than yours. Values are an individual's own pursuit. So what? Who is to say that such an upbringing is bad? The bigot? That person is biased. The same-sex couple? They're biased, too. Why don't you ask the kids once they are adults? Track them. Collect data. Analyze it. Collect more data. Compare those results with the first. Have other people conduct the same experiment with a different population and compare those results. Then, and only then, can you make a pronouncement about harm or benefit.

Aw, crap. That's the scientific method and this is a religious matter.

In any case, it's none of your fucking business any more than it is the government's. Those people are individuals. They have the freedom to change their own minds, express their own opinions, form new opinions and pursue their lives however they want. Just like you. The latitude you enjoy is available to everyone. It's starting to sound like you are opposed to people having values different from yours. Values are not part of a package deal when you reach adulthood. You build them over time. They change as a person experiences life. A person with fixed values is unable to grow.

Marriage is the cornerstone of the family. You might be on to something there...um, nope, that's bullshit, too. Maybe to you, marriage is required to have a proper family but have you looked at that position from outside your little bubble? How pathetic is that? You have to have this artificial construct imposed onto your life in order to be a good parent—I do not say couple because marriage is about children, you know, the traditional reason? You really believe that unless you are married, you will be a horrible parent and unable to love your spouse? Does that not sound incredibly wrong?

Marriage is about commitment. Again, I ask, are you completely unable to do this without the construct of marriage? Have you ever interacted with any of the other seven billion people on the face of the earth in your life? You have?!?! Were you civil to them? Were you polite? You weren't standing in front of a mirror, were you? So how is that any different from the way you would treat your domestic or life partner? If you are a civilized human, the answer is none. Incidentally, commitment to whom? Your spouse or your Sky Daddy? Who or what is more important? That sounds more like a three-way, and not the kind of three-way I was wanting.

Are you worried that those kids will not be brought up in a household of religious faith? Guess what, gays have faith, even if you think your faith ignores them. It is faith, after all. It is what you make of it.

Are you worried that the children of same-sex couples will become gay? There is no proof of that. If you want proof, I already told you how to measure that. It should only take a few hundred years to have a good data sample so that you can postulate a theory. It will never be any more than a theory because it involved humans, and humans are infinitely complex. Well, some are. To further clarify, so long as there is one variant, it remains a theory, never a law.

Whatever the results of the case, frankly, I do not care because, as the comedian is so fond of saying: everyone deserves the same opportunity to be miserable. If Judge Walker cock-punches these crackpots (please!), it will not matter to them because they will wrap themselves in their faith and know that they were right. That's fine. That's faith: a psychological mechanism to tell yourself that everything will be okay, despite the situation.

For my final swing of the bat, I have to ask: is this really that important? Is this more important than poverty? Is this more important that hunger? Is this more important than education? Is this more important than life where basic human dignity is oppressed? Stupid question, I know. Without suffering and ignorance, you cannot have faith.

I can only shake my head in incredulity. For the record, I don't think that marriage is completely bad, just unnecessary for civilized humans. If it helps some people behave themselves and/or be happy, more power to them? When the marriage fails, that okay, too. They're only human.

Since it's on topic: An opinion piece

Regarding Dr. Tillman

I told myself that I was not going to comment on the vicious, hypocritical murder of Dr. Tillman, the late-term abortion doctor in some flat part of the country.

Considering how much gawd-lovers scream about abortion and children, do they not realize that children and reproduction technically are their gawd's curse to women and punishment to both men and women? Of course it is. To be funny, one could say that it was paradise because you could walk around the house naked all day. However, there is nothing to indicate that A&E were copulating prior to acquiring knowledge, prior to which they were as dumb as the moss on a stone. They did not have offspring in the garden. Ah! Maybe they could not because they were not sexually mature. That would be interesting in light of religious figures and children.

One thing that does bother me about religious justice is that a mundane instrument is required at all. There were a number of jerk-offs who said that their gawd would not want this murder victim to live. Obvious IT did because IT had not killed it before then. After all, IT is omniscient and omnipotent, but more importantly, IT is obviously lazy. Maybe IT decided to test IT's cultists with the existence of the murder victim. By committing the murder, the cultists are telling IT that they do not like that test. Well, isn't that convenient. If you tell your teacher that you don't want to take their stupid test, they say No problem. Here's your F. This shit does not jive with love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek, probably because it's inconvenient and isn't compatible with their burning intolerance. I wish they would follow the turn the other cheek line. More children from the insane cultists need to be aborted, as late-term as possible. Gas it right after the live birth.

There have also been a number of cultists who have publicly endorsed this murder. They should be rounded up and executed, young and old, rich and poor, cultists and cult leaders. They are all criminally insane. Now, we will not give them lethal injection, or electrocute them, or decapitate them, or shoot them, or hang them. Let's use their own favorite: burn them alive. All the others kill more quickly than burning but that is not the real reason to use it. We use it for the blood-curdling screams one hears coming from the flames. Real, protracted pain and suffering. They deserve only the best.

Not the joyful bondage for which I hoped.

There have been many times that I was ready to knock this one out and would not. Finally, it takes a death close to home to help one find the strength to take keyboard under hand and let it all out.

Overview: Marriage is a redundant, antiquated, superfluous, unnecessary, bogus institution that has no place in an intelligent, modern society.

Much is made of the institution of marriage by people with a vested interest in its perpetuation: theo-factional group leaders. You hear volumes of rhetoric about marriage is a sacred institution and marriage is between a man and a woman. Those two bites, right there, are the worst. If you examine the language used – matrimony, (joyful) bonds of matrimony, wedlock, conjugal – much of it has roots which are demeaning to a free-thinking, free-willed individual. I will come to that momentarily.

Marriage is sacred?!! What a load of crap. Pagans had marriage long, long before the psychotic cultist turds of today came along. Going back to pre-xian Roman times, it was partly to ensure legitimacy of offspring. Yes, it worked just as well then as now. If marriage is so awesome, why do couples have paternity tests?

Marriage is between a man and a woman? Here is another bovine with diarrhea. Matrimony is between a man and a woman. The word comes from Latin and is translatable as "to lead or guide into motherhood." You do not hear matrimony used as much now. After all, an elderly couple who marry cannot have matrimony. What about a couple who do not intend or are unable to have children? What about a couple who already have kids from prior situations and need/want absolutely no more? No matrimony there either. That's probably why marriage is heard more today. It covers more of the bases.

With that out of the way, is it really between just a man and a woman? Who cares? Considering how infinitely personal religion is, this is nothing more than an individual's religion – an individual's particular hangups – insinuating itself into someone else's business. What despicable arrogance. Originally, matrimony was not a religious ceremony. It was social. Superstitious peoples involved their gods in the ceremony for good luck. Today, the cultists are forced to adopt (now that is a funny word choice) a new term: marriage. Without asking anyone else, the new term now has to take on the same reverence as the displaced word.

Some people are married to their work. Is their job their partner? Does it complete that person? Too bad if that is the case. One might go so far as to think that this person is a bit deranged. Why this person and not the members of a couple...or the cultists doing the screaming? It's a double standard. As it has been said before: if two people love and care for each other, let them be together.

Something else that comes up when discussing marriage is that it is a sacred contract, a covenant, between two people. This is the part that I loathe the most. Two people do not need a contract—a set of rules and stipulations—to live together, have fun together, produce offspring, and finally grow old together. Two rational, sane, intelligent people do not need it because they will simply do it anyway. Another term that relates to marriage is conjugal. This is another word from Latin that literally mean "yolked together" - as in cattle. Does that sound like something intelligent people do? Intelligent people can easily work together to make a happy life for themselves. Dumb animals have to be tied to one another and have a driver whip them to go in the right direction—okay, just "a direction." Who is that driver? Take your pick: religion, society, tradition, guilt or any other members of the Anti-Progressive Club.

Between having to use a new term and the mainstreaming of the gay culture starting in the Eighties, the cultists have felt pushed into a corner. Many things in society that used to belong to them have been whittled away in the name of equality. There is very little left to them - thank the spaghetti for that! They deserve nothing special in an age of enlightenment. If anything, their behavior only highlights their hatred and bigotry. You cannot really blame them since their guide is a book that is confusing, anachronistic, and self-contradictory. One thing that is somewhat clear is that their supposed deity said "love thy neighbor as thyself." Pretty embarrassing, if you ask me. If they are so full of self-loathing, maybe they should kill themselves and leave the planet to people who do not have hang-ups, who have compassion, who can tolerate others and have it not impact their lives. How can I help them on their way? I know, let's eliminate all marriage-related benefits. That is equality and they hate it.

Die, hypocritical bastards, die, and take your bullshit institution with you.

For Karl.
This post was originally conceived: 2008-Jun-02

Taber-Chuckles: Jan 28, 2009

I definitely need to drive by this place more often. I just happened to go by one morning because I was running late and here was this beauty. I think I gritted my teeth when it click in my head what it said.

In one sentence is the command and the excuse. I can understand the clergy expressing this thought. They better...it's their job. If they don't think this then they need to quit.

To individuals, this surely must rub some of them the wrong way. Don't think. Yield to gawd. It will reward your submission with...an uninspiring life. I suppose if you approach it from a point of thinking that you as an individual is nothing, worthless and empty without a continuous serving of mystical spaghetti, it makes a little sense. You are nothing. You have nothing. Subjugate your remaining flecks of will to some The Pasta and as a reward, you will enjoy the same semi-random events that affect everyone around you. It's magic!

Is His Noodleness really giving his best? I suppose those parents who willfully let their teenage daughter die from easily treated diabetes or another set of parents also mentioned in the same article who let their fifteen-month-old die from a blood disease think that gawd's will was done. They prayed and I am sure they prayed their asses off so that their children would die and the lord provided.

Is gawd's will gawd's best? I suspect that you can find millions of people throughout this perpetual dark ages who would agree with that but their faith prevents them from making such a statement. Instead, they justify their disappointment with pathetic expressions like "It was gawd's will."

I think what bugs me so much about it is its similarity to the Nanny State. No one wants a Nanny State, except for freeloaders. Yet this is what the "Non-thought of the Day" is expressing. Leave it to me. I'll take care of you. Do these people not have a sense of pride in themselves? Do they not think themselves capable of doing anything significant? I guess not. It's the crux of the most contemptible phrase these people mutter: The Lord will provide. No. Your lord will provide you with only one thing: death. Everything else is up to you.


Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. - Albert Einstein

I will agree that the sad individuals who yield their will to a cloud will not do so for every question in their lives. However, that is not the point. It is egregious that they do so at all in the first place. They threw away the greatest and most powerful part of their humanity: the ability to grow beyond what they are. The church does not like that because you are with the boogieman made of you; that should be good enough. It makes me weep to think of the wasted potential of mankind on a singular, selfish desire.

I leave you with a few more thoughts from Albert Einstein, which I feel apply nicely:

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Cut the cord already!

Everyone looks forward to the day that they move out of their parents house and strike out on their own. The sense of independence! The freedom to do what you want, how and when you want, and for as long as you want. You have the power and responsibility for your life and your actions. The feeling is exhilarating!

There are some who never want to leave their parents house. They want the power but none of the responsibility. For them, there is religion. Sure they have real responsibility but they know that they have their sky daddy to run to and hide behind its skirt when they can't cut the mustard.

i listen to my father now and then but it is only for advise or maybe a suggestion...never for a command to action. Even if I do react that way, it was my decision to do so. Others, with the crutch of religion, have that x factor to fill in the blank, to shoulder the burden and the blame for poor decisions, including the lack of a decision.

Leaving home and the influence of your parents is a right of passage to adulthood. So...what is their problem?

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idiots, religion, sky daddy, social evil

Simply ponderous

Newton, NJ stops having a sectarian invocation and members whine. Now they will have secular invocation to open sessions. Why?

I do not normally think about how often a prayer opens up a official government session of whatever. Congress does it. I would expect the Supreme Court does. It has no impact on the proceedings yet they feel compelled to do it, as if without it, the session will be somewhat less. They do not do it for the hell of it, it has a purpose. Functionally, it has no impact.

There may be some members of the session who have to have a prayer before they knuckle down to work. These people are weak and ineffective. Anyone who cannot work for themselves without offering some kind of pagan ritual beforehand should be chastised. For them, it is a prayer to their deity but it really is a pagan ritual. Historic texts that predate the blight of xianity describe a prayer ritual before government works, festivals, and the like. Much like everything else in xianity, they also ripped off the groveling need to beg their sky daddy for guidance because they are too stupid to do it themselves, or, most likely, in an attempt to channel the divine wisdom of a plate of spaghetti into their own dealings.

When these people in New Jersey were told that what they are doing is really not a good idea from a legal perspective, they wisely decided to stop doing it. If only they could have kept their mouths shut. They vomit out the same old shit of If you don't like it, close your ears! The same advice they ignore for the likes of Howard Stern or intelligent, adult material on the radio or tv. Then, that is filth that must be stopped. I am sure that the individual, who brought to their attention this problem, couldn't care less if someone wants to beg the invisible man for common sense to do their job. The objection is foisting it on everyone present. Not everyone is a dolt who needs to be told what to do. Some people can think and make intelligent decisions for themselves.

They have pissed and moaned and changed their ways...or not. Now they are going to try and devise a secular invocation before they start their business. Again, why? It is still a waste of time. The secular wording will only annoy the brain-dead babies who miss their brain-daddy. Every recitation will grate on them and hopefully drive them into apoplexy. With any luck, their heads will explode and then decent, intelligent people can be chosen to work on the council. Unless...that is all that their city has. If they have to perform a pagan ritual to decide when the county faire is, nothing help them if they have to make a real decision.

It is simply ponderous.

Link: Americans United blog

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hypocrisy, idiocy, idiots, ignorance, social evil, thinking, thoughts

Though for the day

St. Francis Xavier, founder of the Jesuits, said "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man," meaning, of course, that if you brainwash small children with any idiot set of beliefs (like, say, the virgin birth, divinity of Christ, necessity for ritual cannibalism, and triune nature of the Godhead), you'll have them by the frontal lobes of the brain for the rest of their lives. They will never escape it.

-- Greg Costikyan

Link to original article about the Candy-Land board game: http://playthisthing.com/candy-land

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cults, religion, social evil, thoughts

Grooming Politicians for Christ

Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/23/nation/na-statesman23

Here comes the vomit. This is why you must always vote. These are our Nazis. Voter turnout in Germany is consistently high to hopefully prevent something like the NDSAP from happening again. We have the same problem. They both think that they are doing good but they are truly the same.

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