Remember how in October, the state of Oklahoma was forced by the courts to remove its Ten Commandments monument from the state capital grounds? Before it did so, Satanists had threatened to place a statue of Baphomet and a Hindu group had also proposed plans to place a statue of their god Hanuman.
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I recently heard that an old college friend of mine’s husband had died in Sri Lanka so I called her twice, once just after the funeral and then again a few weeks later. My friend is a lovely, gentle, generous person who is also a very religious evangelical Christian. When I reached her soon after the funeral, I learned that her husband had been in excellent health and had gone in for routine bypass surgery and, from what she described to me, seemed to have been the victim of a surgical misadventure.
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Marco Rubio thinks that the events of 9/11 and the Paris massacre were all part of god’s plan.
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio spoke about seeking God’s guidance, arguing that the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris last month and in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, were both part of God’s mysterious plan for the universe.
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The idea of screening refugees by religion and allowing only Christians into the US has been suggested by Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz and supported by others, based on the notion that these people would be unlikely to be terrorists. Cruz has been quite explicit on this topic, saying, “There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror. If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they, we would have a different national security situation”.
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Whatever one might think of the politics of Donald Trump, there is no question that he seems to have an unerring knack for gauging the visceral feelings of the small group of Republican supporters who play a disproportionately large role in the Republican primary process. He seems to know exactly what buttons to push so while the pundit class takes each outrageous statement of his as the sign that this time he really has gone too far and that people will now abandon him, in reality his popularity remains undiminished or even increases.
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The Westboro Baptist Church is notorious for its anti-gay focus and activities and its claims that god is going to destroy America because of its accommodation of homosexuality. The primary slogan of the church and the most prominent sign displayed at their pickets is “God Hates Fags” and even the church’s website URL is godhatesfags.com.
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There are those in the US who want to privilege Christianity in American public life by demanding the right to have prayers and Bible readings in schools and at public governmental functions, and by erecting Christian religious symbols and monuments such as the Ten Commandments tablets and crosses and paintings in public spaces.
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Without fail, every year as Christmas approaches, something will happen that gets some people in a snit over some absurdly trivial matter. I always fear whether anything can top the previous year’s silliness and luckily, I am never disappointed. Larry Wilmore looks at this year’s big issue and that is the Starbucks cup controversy.
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Have you been wondering whatever happened to evangelist Ray ‘Banana Man’ Comfort? Me neither. At one time he, along with his aging trusty sidekick the Boy Wonder Kirk ‘Crocoduck’ Cameron, went around making the most wondrously idiotic arguments against evolution that had to be seen to be believed.
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A meeting of the Omaha Public Schools board drew about 1,000 people and ended up in a screaming match that resulted in the meeting ending early. Why? It turned out that the school board was making some minor revisions to its existing sex education course (which is optional) by making it more gender inclusive and word had been spread that this new curriculum was being designed by the latest incarnation of evil, Planned Parenthood (which was a totally false rumor) and was going to be glorifying all manner of sex, and the abstinence-only crowd was up in arms.
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