The world is becoming polarized at a rate unlike anything we’ve seen before.  It used to be that extremist views, which are very often black and white, tended to be contained in rather small, localized groups. It was difficult to explain one’s views to large numbers of people and get them to listen when you can’t get large numbers of people together at one time.

Then came television and it didn’t take extremists long to realize that they had a new weapon: the airwaves. Pat Robertson bought his first television station in 1960 and by October, 1961 Pat had the Christian Broadcast Network on the air, preaching his special brand of Christianity. And by the mid 70s it was reaching millions of people every day through programs like the 700 Club. James Dobson’s voice reaches about 200 million people every day through his radio and television shows.

Then came the internet and extremist points of view exploded online. Now, not just religious extremists but military, political, ecological, GLBT, women’s rights, men’s rights….you name it, there’s someone out there with a website pushing it and saying that everyone who believes otherwise is wrong.

Then Bush-Cheney took over the nation. On a virtually daily basis, they repeated the “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” mantra (a theme common in extremist thinking) in their unwinnable “war on terror”. Those who dared to think differently were labeled as “them” and not part of “us” and the flames of fear were fanned by the media and by the Bush-Cheney regime until this country was almost torn apart.

The latest “Nightline” “Face Off” debate is just another example of this polarization. “Does God have a future?” Listening to the debate, the one side says “No. Man created God to explain what man didn’t understand and science can now explain what God used to get credit for, so there’s no longer any need for God.” Of course, the other side says, “Yes, of course there’s a future for God” and goes on to use science to “prove” their point.

Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can’t it be both? Why do we have to stay in the black and white instead of moving into the grey zone?

Let’s get some definitions clear here. When I say “objective proof”, I’m talking about proof that anyone can provide and does not depend on any single person’s point of view. If I say “The sun rises in the east”, it doesn’t matter what I believe about where the sun rises or how the sun rises: the sun will rise in the east. Every day. That’s objective proof. If I say “subjective proof”, I mean “proof” that is based on what the person offering the proof believes. The classic “subjective proof” statement is “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I may say something/someone is beautiful and you may think that something/someone is ugly beyond description.  “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is another example of “subjective proof”. OK, let’s move on.

By definition, faith means belief in that which is beyond proof and or belief in spite of evidence to the contrary. So if someone’s faith tells them that the Bible is the literal word of God and that the earth is only 6000 years old, and you tell them that the fossil you found was carbon dated to 60 million years ago (which most of society would consider objective proof), you are NOT going to shake their faith. Their faith tells them that God created the world with the appearance of age down to the finest detail to fool those lacking faith. And quite frankly, you cannot “prove” that they are wrong. Because if God exists as they say he does (omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent), then it would certainly be within such a being’s ability to create a world that appears older than it really is.

Conversely, someone who doesn’t believe in God doesn’t want your subjective proof: your personal stories. He wants objective proof that doesn’t require believing what you’re attempting to prove before you prove it! He’s not going to be swayed by the stories of how God healed your heart after your child was killed or your wife died or your town was flooded. He’s not going to accept as “proof” anything from the Bible because, objectively, the Bible is a book whose composition was determined by a panel of men at the Council of Nicea in roughly 325 CE. You can believe it’s the inspired word of God all you want, but that’s not going to convince him.

It seems both sides are trying to convert the other to their way of thinking and there is no middle ground. No grey zone.

But I tend to live in the grey zone. We have free will. We have a choice in virtually everything we do. It is my belief that there is a higher power and I call that higher power God/dess most of the time. And I believe that God/dess wants us to believe in him/her because we CHOOSE to, not because we HAVE to. (Do you want your kids to love you because they choose to or because they somehow feel obligated to since you are their parent?) Now, if you believe in God/dess, God/dess will give you all the proof you need to “keep the faith”. But if you don’t believe in God/dess, you’re not gonna find that proof because if you did, then you’d have to believe. To not believe in God/dess if there was objective proof of his/her existence would be like not believing in gravity. It’s not a matter of faith anymore if you have proof. It’s not a belief anymore: it’s a fact.

I call it my faith, but it’s not really faith. It IS, for me, because I have my personal, subjective proof many times over. There’s really no room for doubt because I have seen proof that what I believe is true. FOR ME. And that’s the important part that debates like this overlook. It’s a totally personal issue and there is no one answer that will fit all because each of us has already answered that question for ourselves, even if our answer was “I don’t know.”

I am prepared to take a real hit on this one. But I have thought long and hard about it and to take any other stand would make me a hypocrite.

There’s a story about a father whose son, a Marine, was killed in the unwinnable “war on terrorism”. The ever-pleasant Fred Phelps and his gang decided to protest the funeral because ol’ Fred believes that the reason kids are dying over there is because the government of this country is made up of a bunch of “fag-enablers”. He says until we change our ways and get rid of all the “fags”, who will end up in hell (no ifs, ands or buts), we’re going to keep losing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fred first came to national prominence when he protested at Matthew Shepard’s funeral with signs like “God Hates Fags” (which is, ironically, the name of his webiste! Go figure.) Everything Fred believes, every word that comes out of his mouth with respect to his religious beliefs, makes my skin crawl. I find the notions he preaches more repugnant than almost anything I have ever seen, heard or read. It makes my blood boil sometimes to see those people spewing their hatred, and doing it with a smile. My heart breaks to see the young children they’re raising so full of hate at such a young age.

BUT— and here’s where I’m gonna tick off a whole lot of people— he has an unalienable right to believe what he wants and to spew his hatred and to protest in public streets just like any other group. Even at the funerals of our fallen soldiers as long as he’s got the right permits and is following the laws with respect to where he can/cannot protest. (And quite frankly, unless those laws are for public safety, they shouldn’t be allowed to be on the books.)

I completely agree with the court’s ruling that the lawsuit brought by the father of the dead soldier violates Phelps’ first amendment rights. And while I don’t know that I’d award them $16000 in legal fees (virtually every adult in the Phelps’ clan is an attorney, although Fred himself has voluntarily given up his license to practice law), he should NOT have to pay the father of the dead Marine any money for violation of privacy as long as Fred was protesting where he should have been protesting.

I don’t care how repugnant his message is. I don’t care how hateful his message is. Freedom of speech means just that: freedom to speak one’s mind about whatever one wants.

Did you ever watch “The American President” with Michael Douglas and Annette Benning and Michael J. Fox and Martin Sheen? Towards the end of the movie, Michael Douglas’ character, President Andrew Shepherd (ironic, huh? But the movie was made years before Matthew was killed) makes a speech that is one of the best speeches I’ve heard in a movie. You can listen to the whole thing here but here’s the part that I really like.

For the record, yes, I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU, but the more important question is “Why aren’t you, Bob?” Now this is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the question, why would a senator, his party’s most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the constitution? Now if you can answer that question, folks, then you’re smarter than I am, because I didn’t understand it until a few hours ago.

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.” You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms.

Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.

You cannot try to silence someone’s right to freedom of  speech and freedom of religion simply because you don’t like what they say or when they say it. Is it hateful and emotionally painful to see those kinds of protesters outside your son’s funeral? I’m sure it would be. But they have a right to be there. And if you take that right away from them, then you take it away from everyone. Yourself included.

Now I’m gonna go put on my flame retardant suit….

I posted an article on my Hubpages about a company in Michigan who, apparently without the Pentagon finding out, inscribed Bible references onto the scopes and guns they were supplying to the US military over in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’d place a verse number, like “JN8:12″ immediately after what appears to be the model number or serial number of the scope/gun. Now, mind you, it is blatantly against Pentagon policy to preach, proselytize or otherwise attempt to convert someone while on active duty in these places because they don’t want any of the Islamic extremists to say that the US is waging another religious war. Starting a new Crusades, as it were. But this company put these verses on their anyway. Said they’ve been doing it since the company was founded. But the Pentagon didn’t find out about it until ABC News did a story on it about two months ago.

Now, the follow-up story says the Pentagon has allowed for a year to remove all the Bible verses from the scopes and weapons. In the meantime, the troops who are using those scopes/weapons are having a hard time getting the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to trust them because they now know about the Bible verses. And if you read the comments after this story, the vast majority of them are saying how ridiculous this is and why is a problem and that most of the founding fathers were Christians and all the same old stuff that has been spouted off time after time by those who think their faith is better than everyone else’s.

But here’s the thing. The company knew it was not allowed. The prohibition is known as “General Order Number One”. Either the verses should not have been put there or the company should have never been awarded the contract for the scopes if the people at the Pentagon knew that this was part of their standard practice. But they did get the contract and they did put the verses on and now it is endangering the lives of our soldiers overseas. So the company who violated the law needs to fix the problem. Free of charge. And they need to do it yesterday, not in a year. If that means sending over new scopes and removing the verses from the old ones, so be it. It will be an expensive lesson but it’s a lesson that needs to be learned.

What gets me is that most of the comments after the story are not blaming the company for violating the military ban, they’re blaming the people who are complaining about it for demanding that the wall of separation between church and state be maintained! And this is a perfect example of why it must be maintained! These people believe that the Christian faith deserves special treatment. You can bet your sweet patootie that if it had been verses from the Qu’ran that were on the scopes, they’d be screaming for the head of the CEO on a platter! What a lot of hypocrites!

I was a trained den leader for my youngest son’s Cub Scout troop. Then one day, I received a letter in the mail from the local council office telling me that I had to cut all ties with the BSA within the next 24 hours because someone had pointed out that on my personal homepage, I reveal that I am bisexual.  And being gay and being “morally straight” are mutually exclusive in the minds of the BSA leadership. Fortunately for me, I had a Scout meeting that night.

I typed up letters to each of the parents of all the boys in my den. I explained why I was being forced out and I also reassured them that never in our den meetings had the issue of my orientation come up. I told the parents it was not my duty or my right to discuss these kinds of issues with their children.  I personally handed each parent the envelope with my letter in it to insure that the children did not have access to the information within it without their parent’s knowledge.

The fact that I had not discussed my orientation at all was manifest in the shock of the pack committee members when I resigned at the meeting held later that night after the den meetings were over.  I was very touched by the support I received from virtually all members of the pack committee. (There was one member who feigned support but who, it was later revealed, was the one who actually “turned me in”.)

According to the BSA, gay leaders are not permitted in their organization because of the safety concerns for the boys. The implication is that gay leaders will sexually abuse the boys because (heavy sarcasm) everyone knows that gay men (and apparently bisexual men and women) can’t keep their hands off of prepubescent boys. ( end sarcasm). Why they don’t let lesbians act as den leaders I don’t know because if anyone was not going to sexually abuse young boys it would be lesbians!

There is the mistaken belief that if a man abuses a boy, he is automatically gay. NOTHING can be further from the truth. Gender has nothing to do with one’s orientation when one is a pedophile. For most adults, gender is the major factor in determining who they are attracted to. But for pedophiles, the most important factor is age. Gender is really irrelevant to a pedophile. So simply because a man abuses a male child does NOT make the man a gay pedophile. The point of this is to demonstrate that the BSA’s reasoning behind their ban on gays is completely unfounded.

Now mind you, I am totally supportive of their right to discriminate against anyone they choose. As long as they’re not receiving government funding in any way, shape or form, that is. So when the SCOTUS declared that the BSA was a private organization (Dale v BSA), it meant that government sponsorship and government funding of the BSA must stop. Otherwise, the government would end up sponsoring and supporting other discriminatory groups like the KKK! That meant that police departments and military bases could no longer be the sponsors of BSA packs and troops. It meant that the BSA could not get special rates on their use of national/state parks,  forests or marinas.

But that’s all just background for this post.

The BSA is being sued in Oregon by a man who was sexually abused by a Scout Master. A scout master who was allowed to remain in the Scouting program despite being convicted three times in 1983-1984 of sexually abusing boys (mostly Scouts). He was arrested again after being pulled over while driving a van full of Scouts to a camping trip.

The trial in Oregon exposes the existence of the “perversion files” (so called by the BSA) which the BSA kept on suspected and known child abusers within their organization. Unfortunately, the BSA never saw fit to let law enforcement or the parents/guardians of the boys know about these suspected/known child abusers. In fact, if a known pedophile completed the BSA “probation period”,  they were allowed to work with the kids!

Yet the BSA can’t allow a non-heterosexual to be a leader because they can’t be “morally straight”.

Karma is taking a big bite out of the BSA’s behind right now. I love karma.

There’s a whole lot of advertising that isn’t worth the time, effort or money put into creating it. The messsages sent out by most advertising is that you, the viewer/listener, are not good enough as you are or that what you’re driving/washing your clothes with/etc. is not good enough. But there’s a new billboard campaign in Rochester, NY that I think is absolutely brilliant.

A funeral director has paid to put up five billboards that says, in both English and Spanish, “Stop the guns, drugs and violence, or be our next guest.”

Brilliant! It sends a message that needs to be heard and it also advertises the funeral home’s services and gets their name in the minds of people who may need those services. It also makes it likely that those like myself, who aren’t involved in drugs or violence and don’t own a gun and believe we’re all our brothers’ keepers, will call this funeral home when we have need of its services because of the public service these billboards provide.

Kudos to Mr. Shawn Hemphill, owner of Memories Funeral Home.

Indiana is one of several states seeing a rise in “sovereign citizens”: people who claim they are not bound by the laws of the state in which they live or of the federal government. Many of them refuse to carry state-issued drivers licenses, social security cards, vehicle registrations, etc. They often create their own documents, claiming they are “diplomats” and that there homes are embassies and therefore exempt from property tax. They carry home made licenses that say they have diplomatic immunity.

Needless to say, state and federal law enforcement doesn’t agree with them. Nor do I, for two main reasons. First, they’re using the laws of the country they claim they don’t belong to to justify their claims that they’re diplomats! They cite the Uniform Commercial Code, part of the laws that govern commercial transactions in the state, to “gain” diplomatic status. And second, they want all the benefits of living in this country without paying the price.

So if they want diplomatic immunity, disconnect them from the local electric company, turn off the water at the municipal water company, put up barriers that prevent them from driving on local/state/federally maintained roads, don’t let them buy food that’s been inspected by the USDA, don’t let them buy drugs that have been tested and approved by the FDA, etc. Don’t give them any of the benefits that the local/state/federal government can give them that they just take as their due.¹

What scares me the most about these “sovereign citizens” is that their roots are in the violent and anti-Semetic Posse Comitatus. They also tend to separate themselves from “14th Amendment” citizens: in other words, African Americans. So they have racist tendencies as well. There is a rise in hate groups and militias and this is just another example of the intolerance and prejudice that are being pushed by the radical right.

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¹ There was a great piece posted on Facebook recently that was listed as “author unknown”. I didn’t come up with it, but it gave me some ideas for the above. I’ve attached it here so everyone can see it. I’d love to be able to give a copy of this to everyone who opposes “socialized health care”.

There are those who support the death penalty, saying that once it’s implemented, they know for a fact that the person who was killed will never hurt someone else again. But what if he didn’t hurt someone else to begin with?

The Innocence Project has exonerated more than 250 people serving time in jail for crimes that DNA evidence shows they did not commit. Seventeen of those people were on death row and there is at least one case in which the state of Texas quite possibly executed an innocent man. Cameron Todd Willingham maintained his innocence up to the day he was executed in 1994 and forensics tests performed after his death demonstrated that his version of what happened could have been true but an arson “expert” said it couldn’t have happened that way. And no one questioned the arson “expert”.

Now the case of Hank Skinner is on the front burner. The US Supreme Court granted Skinner an indefinite stay of execution just minutes before he was scheduled to die— again in Texas. (Texas sure does love to execute their prisoners on time!) The Innocence Project is not saying that Skinner is innocent. What they’re saying is that there is a lot of DNA evidence that was never tested— because Skinner’s own attorneys way back when were afraid it would implicate him despite his claims of innocence. Now, even to prevent a miscarriage of justice from being done, the state of Texas is refusing to test the DNA.

The stay of execution by the SCOTUS is no guarantee that they’ll reopen the case and test the DNA. But it is a sizable amount of DNA to test. According to the ABC News story, “Items not tested included Busby’s rape kit, material found under her fingernails, hair and sweat found on the windbreaker, a bloody towel, and knives found at the scene.” The state relied on the fact that Skinner’s DNA was found at the crime scene, but since the crime scene was the house he shared with his live-in girlfriend and her two sons, is it any wonder that his DNA was there?

Like the Innocence Project, I am making no claims as to the innocence of Hank Skinner. But how in God’s name can a state— any state— deny someone the opportunity to test DNA that might prove them innocent? Especially if that denial is based on a technicality like they didn’t file the paperwork in time— which may not be the reason here (I didn’t see one given in this story) but it has been the reason in others I’ve read about.

The State of Texas seems to be a perfect example of the attitude that so many have in this country: someone has to pay, guilty or innocent doesn’t matter. Our legal system is seriously flawed and needs a major overhaul. And cases like those taken on by the Innocence Project are prime examples of what’s wrong and why it has to be fixed.

When my ex-husband and I separated in 1995, his new love interest had a faith so vastly different from mine. And from his for that matter. From shortly after my kids met her, she essentially forced them (with their father’s consent) to attend her church and her church’s youth ministry classes. They’d come back from their weekends with their father talking about the things they learned in these classes or at the church services. Things I strongly disagreed with. Things that confused and even upset them.

During the divorce settlement “negotiations”, I talked to my attorney about preventing my children from being forced to attend these church services. My attorney basically told me I had a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping their father from taking them to church services that violated what they were being taught at home. She said the courts would say that being exposed to different faiths was not harmful to a child. I agree that being exposed is not harmful if  a) one wants to be exposed to different faiths and  b) if one isn’t being told during that exposure that what one has been taught all their lives is wrong and is going to lead them to hell.

While it was this woman’s intent to “lead” my children to salvation, what she really did was turn them both so far off of the very idea of God that both consider themselves agnostic if not atheist. It was very painful for me to see them lose their desire to maintain a relationship with the Divine due to this woman’s actions. Both of them used to have such a close connection to the universal energy: I’ve seen my oldest do some really amazing things with weather. Things he can’t do anymore because he doesn’t recognize that connection anymore.

So when I read about the courts preventing a father from taking his daughter to church because his wife was Jewish and they had agreed to raise their daughter Jewish, I was a bit taken aback. Granted, it was a different state with probably different laws. But as I read the story I saw it was also different circumstances. My ex-husband did it out of love (or at least what he thought was love) for a woman. This man is, in my humble opinion, doing it out of spite.

He claims that he’s doing it out of faith: that he just wants to share his Christian heritage with his daughter. Published accounts say he wasn’t a very devout Catholic before he converted to Judaism. He is now claiming that the conversion wasn’t voluntary. Excuse me, but how is a conversion NOT voluntary? Whether or not one is pressured or feels pressured to make the conversion, it is still voluntary unless someone has a gun to your head or otherwise coerces you. His choice— and it was his choice— was to convert rather than to put up with his in-laws non-acceptance of him. If the non-conversion was putting a strain on his marriage, as he says it was, there are other ways of dealing with that besides converting to another faith. And yet, despite his claims that it was not a voluntary conversion, he also agreed to raise his daughter Jewish.

Here’s why I think this is all based on spite. When he first took her to church, in direct violation of the oral agreement— a legally binding agreement— he had with his wife about what faith to raise their daughter in, he didn’t take her just to share his faith with her, he took her to have her baptized as a Catholic without any consultation with the child’s mother! Now, he could have kept quite about this. If he truly believed he was having her baptized to save her soul, he could have had her baptized and said nothing to the mother. The child is three and probably wouldn’t have said anything about it. But instead, he himself sent his wife an email with pictures that documented what he’d done. Only then did his ex-wife ask for and receive a 30-day restraining order prohibiting him from exposing his daughter to any faith other than the Jewish faith.

What was his response? He took his daughter back to church— and he did so with cameras in tow. And posted video of the event on YouTube. As if to say to his soon-to-be-ex-wife, “Ha! You can’t stop me from doing whatever I want with my kid.”

Now, in my opinion, he’s playing martyr and  turning it into a parental rights case, saying that the courts have infringed on his right to be a parent to his daughter by sharing his faith with her. If this man really cared about his daughter, he wouldn’t be using her as a weapon to hurt his wife. This isn’t about the rights of divorced fathers. This is about not confusing the child by teaching her two totally opposite things at this stage in her life. Christians may see their faith as the natural end of the Jewish faith, but I can assure you that Jews don’t see Christianity as the natural end of the Jewish faith. Unless they happen to be Messianic Jews.

This man, again in my opinion, is just seeking a way to thumb his nose at his wife in spite. I don’t think he has any idea what this kind of contention and  media attention is doing to his daughter. Nor do I think he cares. But that’s just my opinion.

Rage, according to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, is violent and uncontrolled anger. I have experienced rage once in my lifetime. And I can attest to the truth of Merriam-Webster’s definition. Fortunately, I was at home alone at the time and while my sofa, floor and an empty soda can were targets of my rage, in the end, I was the only one left physically injured. (For what it’s worth, it is NOT a good idea to attempt to crush an aluminum soda can with one’s bare foot!)

Many years ago, we began to hear of “road rage” in which drivers of vehicles, frustrated with traffic and the stupidity of some other drivers, would get violent, sometimes even killing another driver. Road rage is still around and in fact there was a recent case in which 13 shots were allegedly fired by one driver (who had his 2 year old daughter in the car with him!) at another in Virginia.

There’s a related “defense” called “gay panic”, where a (usually) male heterosexual is so “scared” of some gay guy trying to pick him up that he ends up beating the guy up or even killing them. One of Matthew Shepard’s killers attempted to use the “gay panic” defense saying that Matthew made advances on him and it sent him into a rage. While “gay panic” has no basis in law, it has been successfully used to reduce charges against someone as a form of “temporary insanity”.

Now we’re hearing about “text rage“. Apparently, a 15 year old boy from Florida got so angry at something a 15 year old girl texted to him that he knocked her to the ground and repeatedly kicked her in the head with his steel-toed boots. The young woman is still in a medically induced coma due to brain swelling. Doctors are unable to offer a prognosis until the girl can be brought out of the coma. The offending text message was apparently in regards to the boy’s brother, who committed suicide last October. (While I do not condone or excuse this young man from his actions, I do believe that he was probably suffering to some degree from the emotional trauma of his brother’s suicide less than six months ago and therefore was no emotionally stable. And it goes without saying I do not believe he should be tried as an adult.)

There are some forms of rage I can at least understand as the basis for committing a crime. I remember a while back the story of a mother who attacked the killed her son’s murderer during his trial. I can even, to some extent, understand the rage in a crime of passion, like when an individual comes home and finds his/her spouse/partner in bed with someone else. Or a rape victim whose rapist is let off because of lack of evidence.

But going into a rage because someone cuts you off in a line of traffic? Or because a gay guy tries to pick you up? Or because of a text message someone sent you?

Rage is an intense emotion. It’s physically exhausting to remain in a true rage for long periods of time. Additionally, any attempts to do something that requires concentration dampens the rage because rage is about being uncontrolled and anything requiring concentration requires being in control. Yet many of the crimes that attempt to use rage as a defense took place over long periods of time or involved concentration. So that shoots the legs right out from under any value as a defense!

Attempts to use the “rage” defense try to inject a shred of doubt into the minds of jurors that, for just a moment, that person wasn’t in his/her right mind when s/he committed the crime. And if the crime is murder, then that shred of doubt may be the difference between a life sentence or the death penalty (which I’m in complete opposition to as well). So whether or not the suspect was in a rage at the time of the crime, “rage” defenses will continue to be used because they work, like it or not.

A few days ago, I posted an entry about an ad on my Hubpages paid for by the Traditional Values Coalition, a radical religious right organization. This entry is another example of the twisted logic/reasoning of another radical religious right organization.

The American Family Association says that, by Biblical decree, Tillikum, the killer whale at Sea World who killed a trainer last month (February, 2010) must be killed. AFA quotes Exodus, 21:28 that pertains to an ox goring someone to death. But if you read the next line, verse 29, it says that if the owner of that ox knows that his ox is a danger and does nothing and then the ox gores someone to death, the owner must be stoned as well. However, the AFA says they’re not advocating that the owners of Sea World be put to death, only that the family sue the pants off them.

The sad thing is that these people say this with sincerity. They do not see the hypocrisy of their statements. They demand that this animal, who man has taken from his natural habitat and caged in an area far smaller than it would be in in the wild, then train for the entertainment of humans, be put to death because the Bible says it should, but then they say we can ignore the next verse because it involves killing human beings! So they are picking and choosing which verses of the Bible to follow and which to ignore.

But then this comes as no surprise to those who have been involved in the fight for gay equality because it happens all the time. They toss out Leviticus 18:22 and yet they virtually ignore the verse before (which deals with, depending on how one reads it, masturbation or “pulling out” to prevent pregnancy) and don’t protest the one after (dealing with bestiality, which is legal in most US states). When was the last time you saw any protesters making the news because they were advocating for laws that banned bestiality or masturbation?

This is the kind of warped logic that all fundamentalists use, not just Christian fundamentalists. But the Christian fundamentalists do it so well and so often that there’s always examples of it in the news for those who want to find it.