This isn’t particularly unusual. The Graham family has a long-held antipathy toward Atheists and other minorities. Son Franklin Graham entertains rather birther-like suspicions that maybe Barack Obama isn’t a Christian.

NO WISDOM FOR THE AGES - And thus the angel Camael spoke, "You are among God's most miserable creatures for thou hath no wisdom. You will be cast out of politics for your transgressions."

“You have to ask him,” Graham said in a February interview. “I cannot answer that question for anybody. You have to ask every person. He has said he’s a Christian, so I just have to assume that he is.”

Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich: Holy Men?

However, he gave Rick Santorum more benefit of any doubt. “Do you believe Rick Santorum is a Christian,” Frank was asked.  “I think so,” responded Graham. Why? “Well, because his values are so clear on moral issues. No question about it. I just appreciate the moral stances he takes on things. He comes from a Catholic faith… I think he’s a man of faith,” he said.

Ditto for serial thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wifer Newt Gingrich. “I think Newt Gingrich is a Christian, at least he told me he is.” Newt’s decidedly unchristian behavior to the contrary.

Frank isn’t so open to other faiths either. On Mitt Romney and the Mormons, “Most Christians would not recognize Mormons as part of the Christian faith,” Graham said. On Muslims and Obama? “Under President Obama…the Muslims of the world, [sic] he seems to be more concerned, than Christians who are being murdered in Muslim countries,” said Graham.

Even Big Daddy Graham had a Romney-like semi-commitment to racial equality and antisemitism in the closet. He kept his “eye on public opinion, and the shifting winds of American culture”  before finally settling down and denouncing his previous, less tolerant, positions. Plus, Billy tried to sue me once, but that was another story.

But back to Anne.

Her comments seem less than tolerant for a woman whose religion preaches loving one another. “I would not vote for a man who was an Atheist because I believe you need to have an acknowledgment or a reverence or a fear for almighty God,” Lotz said. ”I believe that’s where wisdom comes from.”

This isn’t so much troubling from a personal perspective. She can, of course, vote for whoever she likes and say whatever she likes about those she wouldn’t vote for. However, she and others of her ilk seem to be quite non-plussed when those they insult rankle at their statements. These CINO (Christians in Name Only)  almost never see they are defacto disenfranchising the few with the tyranny of the many.

Not Even If Atheists Had the Wisdom of Solomon?

The real danger of her statements is the strife her intolerance brings to society. In essence, Graham is saying that no matter how good an Atheist is on the issues or whether they have a long history of making decisions and solving real problems, or are as wise as Solomon, they will always be inferior. Inferior in the same way that many Christians feel Jews, Muslims, Atheists, or a host of other religions and minorities are.

It is unconscionable for a religious leader to condone this type of thinking. Atheists and other minorities are becoming less than full citizens because of their choice not to believe in God. That is exactly the type of situation, albeight with different players, that led to the American revolution. Her unfair and uninformed opinions help foment a Boston Bible Party mentality among the non-believers while pushing the believers to become unbending Torries to the death.

There would be need no need for an imaginary War on Christianity if the cheap rhetoric were scaled back. There would be no need for tit-for-tat politicization. We could all live in the relative peace and harmony Jesus preached if Christians made some room in their hearts and minds for the rest of us. Unfortunately, things seem headed for worse before, or if, anything ever gets better.

If there is real evil walking among us thy name is Graham.

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• Anne Graham Lotz: I Would Never Vote For An Atheist (inquisitr.com)
• Billy Graham’s Daughter: I Would Not Vote for an Atheist to be President (patheos.com)
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• Glad That’s Over: Listening to Men on Easter (themoderatevoice.com)
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The latest skirmish is the one aledgedly waged by evil secular humanists  – or future candidates for hell as some would say – over compelling Christian hospitals to offer abortion services against their beliefs.

In this particular war, however, Christians have a point. It’s obvious that if a religion were compelled to offer the offending services it would violate the freedom of religion clause whether the majority of followers – for instance, Catholics – follow church teachings or not. But, that’s a narrow view. It excludes the beliefs of others to benefit to narrow, but powerful, Christian beliefs. The First Amendment applies to them too.

But, there is a compromise.

Many secular people don’t argue so much about religion as they do imposing religious beliefs on others. They object to the government giving religious enterprises special rights by exempting them from taxes and providing funding for some of their enterprises.

The compromise here is easily evident. If religions want to offer services to the public, but not offend their own beliefs, forsaking government funding for religion-owned businesses should be on the table. If a religion wants to operate secular businesses – like schools or hospitals – they have two choices. Stop asking the rest of the nation to pay your businesses in support of your specific religious teachings. Or,  stop providing services to those who do not share your beliefs.

There are positives in this compromise. Religions would no longer be required to provide services against their beliefs. They could provide any service they want to any person they want. The secular community would get relief for their complaints about government policies that are against their beliefs. Both sides get a sturdier wall between church and state to resist the evils of theocracy, which isn’t good for anyone, even the Christians.

However, there are some problems too. People living in areas where religion-affiliated health care is the only practical choice will have to find their care in between different church decisions that conflict with their ability to get dogmatically unfettered care or travel far to find it. However, there are ways to mitigate that issue.

There might also be some degradation of education and charitable services through reduced government funding, but again, there are mitigation solutions for this as well.

Given the religious and political trench warfare of our times, these solutions will never be mentioned, much less adopted. Both sides will agitate for solutions that require total capitulation from their ideological foes. These ideas may make things fairer, but neither side will buy into them.

After all, compromises are “one size fits all” and so, by definition, fit no one perfectly.

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Proving the Poobah’s posts are prescient, it’s seems the threat to smite the Mormons over posthumous baptisms caused them to collapse into mint jelly and quash the practice.

Maybe.

After the recent string of religious recycling, the all-male church elders have put the chastity belt on its database of Jews. It’s nice they’ve taken the pledge to swear off wholesale religious reassignment surgery but the promise has the smell of Rush Limbaugh’s apologies over Slutgate. Still, in a religion famous for resistance to change, it is a big step.

If only they’d not made the same promise in the 1990s, I’d be willing to give them a little more wiggle room. But for the time being, I’ll take the advice of St. Ronny of Reagan and, “Trust, but verify“. However, others aren’t quite so forgiving.

To Jewish genealogist Gary Mokotoff, who was involved in the 1990 negotiations with Jewish leaders, the promise doesn’t mean much.

“By not allowing public access to the records, it creates the illusion they have something to hide,” Mokotoff said.

Apparently, he is not the only one with lingering concerns, genealogical researcher Helen Radkey has been blocked from the database, but is eying how she might continue revealing the ongoing practice.

“I don’t believe for five minutes that they’re going to stop baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims,” Radkey said with good reason”. She claims former Mormon bishop Larry Shaw, who she hadn’t spoken to for more than 20 years, tried “to silence me as a dissenter.”

Radkey says Shaw, “told me, years ago, as a Mormon bishop in Salt Lake City, that God would kill me if I laid a hand on the Mormon church. The first question he asked me tonight was how is my health?” In fact, he played the death card three more times in the same phone call Radkey says.

Creepy.

The Mormons may also be hedging their bets by failing to mention members of other churches and non-Jews like Mahatma Gandhi. The Mormons caught his runaway soul in 1997, after the initial promise to leave other people’s religion to other people. It is a loophole big enough to give a 1 percenter a tax-free exemption hard on.

I’m no expert on the Book of Mormon, but surely there must be a “thou shalt not” clause for telling fibs. If so, they already have two strikes.

It’s time the Mormons stop acting like crapweasels and do the right thing.

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Everybody knows Newt Gingrich loves to pontificate, but now he’s decided to simply elect himself Pope – not that you’d recognize it from his public statements.

Gingrich says he isn’t speaking as a “religious leader” – even though he’s running for world leader and spreading the gospel, sometimes against people’s will, far and wide.

He’s also said he’s not a  a “saint”  and that part’s true enough. The guy is a serial adulterer with woefully weak saintly qualifications, even if he did beg “God’s forgiveness” for trying to convince the exes to agree with an open marriage.

Pissing Off All Christendom

The occasion of his remarks was an address to an Atlanta church where he warned the “secular left” is on a – to borrow a good Christian word – 50-year crusade to piss off all of Christendom.

The far right are great believers in a fundamentalist Constitution as fundamentalist as their faith – and woe be unto the secularist who would dare to disagree. Yet, the Constitution says not one word about the Ten Commandments nor any other religious teachings. The only thing the First Amendment specifically mentions is, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or of prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

There are two things wrong about that. First, religion ain’t free. America offers religious institutions tax-free status and proposed special dispensations, like not “forcing” religious institutions to deny equal access to health services by complaining their beliefs might be violated.

But hey, I’m an Atheist and I’d sure like a tax break too. I’d also like to get health services from any hospital when I need it.

But Newt isn’t the only one offering such “advice” to deny secularists (and in some cases other religions) the same rights he enjoys as a recidivist adulterer.

Rick Santorum is the leader of the lemming wing of the GOP that’s running over the cliff and pulling their party down behind them. Still, he marches to the same hypocritical drum, one whose cadence beats a little something like this:

“I’m for separation of church and state. The state has no business telling the church what do to,” Rum-Drunk Ricky said in a recent Michigan speech. But out of the other side of his mouth came, “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” Santorum said during an ABC interview. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.”

George Carlin said it best...

Who, Who, Who Let the Snake Out”?

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but how is religion having “influence” and “involvement” in secular affairs the separation of church and state he sees in his non-secular, Christian Garden of Eden?

It sounds like someone has been in the snake’s apple barrel to me.

Santorum has other fears too. He thinks colleges and universities are the work of the Devil. He told noted ignorati, Glenn Beck, that academic “indoctrination mills” steal religious faith. “Sixty-two percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it.”

No wonder he called Obama a “snob”  for encouraging, “everybody in America to go to college”. But Rick, aren’t you a “snob” too? You have more degrees than Obama.

The highly educated “non-snob” reads something other than the Bible though. He “almost threw up” after reading a 1960 speech by John F. Kennedy who said he believed, “in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute”. Apparently, Rick has a weak stomach for any opinion suggesting America will not be doomed by the forces of evil secularists, even if many are actually non-lefty Christians.

Newt, how do you square your thinking? How can religion be under a 50-year attack when it gets the perks secularists can only dream of?

Rick, you like to point out that Mittens flips and flops like a flag in a gale, but how can you claim you’re foursquare in favor of the separation principle, but in the next breath say, “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute?”

I remember John F. Kennedy and neither of you is John F. Kennedy. If you get all puke-stained over a 40-year old speech that maintains the same principles you claim to share, something is wrong.

Wrong with you, not him.

If you’re going to draw these iffy analogies, ask yourself in an inside voice what the opposing view may be. Check yourself against talking out of your sanctimonious assholes and, at least, get your story straight.

You can’t have it both ways.

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Mormons baptized slain reporter Daniel Pearl

Can I Get on the Mormon “Do Not Baptize” List?

Theists, I appreciate your prayers for my heathen soul, but there’s no need. Really. I’m an atheist. I’m good. And Mormons, posthumous baptism is even more than one step over the line. That’s even more unneeded, creepy, and unwanted – unless you want to modify that whole 72 Muslim virgins thing to a Mormon Unlimited Virgin Plan.  I’m a big believer in more virgins at lower prices. It’s proof of the value of free markets.

When I’m dead, I’m dead. You can’t baptize me unless you want to bless an unholy ooze of font water, ashes, and genealogical records that artificially boost the number of Mitt’s Minions on the books. Second, even though I’ll be dead, I find it offensive while I’m still here. I own the copyright on myself in perpetuity and will defend it vigorously.

Posthumous baptism is no academic exercise.  Moroni’s Acolytes recently transplanted Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal’s parents from Judaism to Mormonism. It’s not the first time Joseph Smith’s gardeners pulled Jews up by the roots and carried them to the Zion Botanical Garden of Eden either.

The church has been sued several times over their ecumenical necrophilia and each time they’re caught, it’s always the same chapter and verse. They throw one of their own fontheads to the heathenous hordes by explaining he’s just an overzealous mailroom Warren Jeffs with a hankerin’ for more Mormon ghosts milling around with too much time on their hands.  Each time they lay the blame, tithe the damage awards, and seemingly go back to doing what they do best – creating jobs by buying Schwins for the White Shirt/Black Tie Army. But, they always seem to reemerge like a reliable grasshopper plague.

Clearly, the LDS Church isn’t anti-Semitic.  As far as I know, they’ve never picked on anyone other than Jews and Christians who don’t believe New York Native Americans are a lost, wandering tribe of Jews. However, they seem to discriminate against Muslims, Atheists, and other religions apparently under the belief we are too far gone to pull from the burning fires of a hell fueled by untaxed 10% tithes. After all, they wouldn’t want to damage the tires of all those missionary bikes. Inner tubes are expensive and stink when they burn. Being good, non-cultish citizens, they wouldn’t want to stir up the EPA.

This is exactly the sort of thing that causes violence between religions. One would think the Mormons would know something about that after they were chased coast to almost coast to escape a never-ending string of massacres by  and against outsiders.

I’m proud to say there are no records of Atheist-on-Mormon homicide either. There probably weren’t enough of us in the 1800s to pull together a tar and feather brigade.

I think religions are being too soft on these shenanigans by merely accusing Mormons of running a cult. I’m thinking more along the lines of  the swipe of a 2X4 to the head of these poor, misguided geneologists. Something to get their attention if you will.

Say it with me, “I smite thee in the name of common sense you moron(i).”

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