FunctionalAmbivalent

Pagan Irony

A woman performing a Wiccan ceremony to celebrate a run of good luck instead brings her run of good luck to an end:

The ceremony involves the use of candles, incense and driving swords into the ground during the full moon.

"It wasn't the first time I performed the ritual, but it was the first time I put a sword through my foot," she said.

The ritual took place in a cemetery in Lebanon, Indiana, a place that just screams "good luck" to me.

Note the Placement of the Lutherans

The correlation between Biblical literalism and intelligence, here. I wouldn't believe this kind of thing, generally, except that the Lutheran data point seems so accurate.

God Moves In Mysterious Ways

A couple in an East Windsor, New Jersey, split-level tract home discovers Jesus in the woodgrain of their bedroom door. Local television demonstrates no story is too small to cover. Here.

Not Coming Soon: Morally Uplifting Brassieres

A Singapore company has withdrawn its line of "Looking Good For Jesus" cosmetics after Catholics complained. Apparently, Catholics think faith is an ugly thing.

They Persist

A federal judge has ruled that the Gideons can't distribute Bibles in an Annapolis, Missouri, high school. Duh. Crackpot right-wing religious troublemakers at The Liberty Counsel promise to appeal the case.

For those of you who are interested, the Liberty Counsel is once again sponsoring a "Day of Purity" on Valentine's Day. Go here for information, including this fun fact:

63% of teenagers who have had sex wish they had waited longer.

Like, for example, until they got out to the car.

Go here to download a credit-card size purity pledge card.

Just Let's Get This Out Up Front and Go On With Our Lives

Here it is almost Halloween. It must be time to focus on Christmas.

I posted yesterday about WorldNetDaily turning the persecution complex of some Christians into a marketing opportunity (they won't be the last, trust me), and regular reader/nutty aunt in the attic Squidly came back with all the predictable arguments:

Regardless of your protestations otherwise, Christianity is very much under attack in the US. Nativity scenes, school Christmas pageants, and even Christmas trees--long a part of our American culture and heritage--are either banned or Orwellianly renamed (just what other holidays in December have "holiday trees"?). Stores instruct their clerks not to wish customers "Merry Christmas," even though Christmas is a legal holiday in the US.

And so on and so forth.

So just to get the holiday season off to an efficient start -- this being October, and my having heard an actual woman yesterday complaining of being "already behind" in her Christmas shopping -- I thought I'd come up out of the comments section for a moment to publicly state what I believe about the annual Christmas culture wars:

• The efforts to prevent government from sponsoring or endorsing Christmas displays are not anti-religious. They're anti-government-meddling-in-religion and do not constitute an attack on religious freedom. I am unaware of any ACLU or other lawsuits to keep people from erecting religious displays on private property, so long as those displays don't conflict with laws governing public hazards and tacky lawn art.
• The effort to put ostentatious Christmas displays on public property have nothing to do with faith and everything to do with the anger some conservatives have because they can't control what other people do and think. For them, erecting a Nativity Scene on the public green is the equivalent of spray-painting an obscenity on an enemy's garage door. It is a perversion of religion based on arguments that are intellectually dishonest and without spiritual meaning. They're self-pitying bullies who are insecure in their faith -- if they have any faith at all.
• Or, if they're not that, they're people who are entirely comfortable with the concept of an American Theocracy.
• The fact that government can't support something doesn't mean that something is oppressed.
• The instruction of store clerks to say "Happy Holidays" is a marketing decision designed to keep people who aren't Christians shopping. Jews, for example. It is not part of a liberal conspiracy, because most top-level marketing executives aren't liberal. And the True Meaning of Christmas has nothing whatsoever to do with any retail function.
• "Happy Holidays" is not an anti-Christian greeting. It is a friendly, inclusive greeting that takes into account the fact that several major religious and secular holidays take place in the same two week period.
• Christians who spend their time bitching about "anti-Christian" liberals on the verge of ruining the holiday are insane.  The True Meaning of Christmas disappeared from the public sphere a long time ago in a frenzy of retailing. The True Meaning of Christmas continues to exist in hundreds of thousands of church pageants where children sing "Silent Night" and around the dinner tables of millions of families who gather to express their gratitude for the coming of Christ. It is quiet and private, in keeping with Christ's admonition to not be like the hypocrites.
• Christians who believe that Christianity is a put-upon religion in the United States are nuts on a par with people who claim that the CIA controls their brainwaves through implants in their teeth. Their belief is so far from any verifiable reality that you can't rationally argue with them.

And, while we're at it:

• The people who whine most about Christmas are people who get paid to complain. Everyone who whines along with them is a sucker.

You may talk amongst yourselves.

More Evidence That It's Liberals, Not Greed To Make a Buck, That Are Ruining Christmas

For those who believe that Christians are persecuted in the United States, insanely opportunistic WorldNet Daily brings you a high-margin Christmas Defense Kit, including a $6 bumper sticker 3-pack.

For information on Christians who are really persecuted, and not just self-dramatizing whiners, go here.

Today's Unlikely Story

Six Catholic nuns in Arkansas are excommunicated for being members of a cult that believes the Virgin Mary has been re-incarnated as a Canadian. Here.

Show of Hands: Anyone Think Republicans Will Stand Up For This Particular Person's Religious Freedom? Anyone? Anyone At All?

Socially conservative Republicans have in the past supported the so-called Pharmacists' Rights movement. That's the movement dedicated to passing laws to protect the "religious freedom" of pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control based on their interpretation of The Bible.

Now this:

A discrimination lawsuit filed by a Muslim Dunkin' Donuts franchisee who was not allowed to renew his contract with the chain because of a refusal to sell pork products can proceed, a U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The decision reversed an Illinois federal court judge's 2004 ruling that rejected Walid Elkhatib's argument that Dunkin' Donuts discriminated against him based on his race by making the sale of breakfast sandwiches with bacon, ham or sausage a mandatory part of his franchise agreement.

From a legal standpoint, the logic in this case is exactly the same as the logic in the Pharmacists' Rights cases. (For previous crabbiness on this subject, read this.) Should a person in a private, contractual agreement with a business be able to violate parts of that agreement purely because he or she doesn't want to comply on religious grounds?

The sensible thing, of course, would be for the law to step aside and let the businesses run the way they want to run. If Dunkin Donuts wants it franchises to carry bacon sandwiches for breakfast, that's Dunkin's business and anyone who doesn't want to live by Dunkin's rules shouldn't be a franchisee. If Walgreens wants to sell birth conrol pills and one of Walgreens' pharmacists doesn't, Walgreens should be free to terminate the employment of that pharmacist.

Republicans have sought to enshrine Christians as a protected class, able to live by their own rules even in entirely voluntary business relations. This has been positioned as an issue of religious freedom. If that's really the case, consistency would require Republicans to support Mr. Elkhatib's right to refuse to sell the menu items Dunkin Donuts advertises and expects its customers to be able to purchase.

I, personally, do not expect the Republican politicians so deferential to Christian pharmacists to step up quite so enthusiastically for Mr. Elkhatib. That's because I, personally, think most of the conservative Republican argument is not in favor of religious freedom so much as it is about the creation of an American theocracy. Religious freedom, to them, is the power of certain sorts of Christians to dictate the behavior of the rest of us.

We'll see.

God Hates Me

It is at this very moment hailing on my new car.

UPDATE: My new car survived. I barely did. When it used to hail on my old car I didn't even care. I miss my old car.

And no, I don't really believe that God hates me.  I assume that God is not concerned with whether my car gets dented or not. I vastly prefer a God who prioritizes better than that.