Graven Images.

The very deep did rot, O Christ, 
That ever this should be
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea!
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Wow, I have to say I'm impressed.

No, really. American Evangelicals have finally made God in their own image. Surprisingly enough, it's not Donald Trump.

They don't get any points for that, since they basically just imagined God as a dudebro much like their own (diminishing) younger set.

Like, fucking really?

I'm sorry, yeah maybe I'm old. I grew up in the 1970's and 1980's and I remember being taught about a God, hearing Bible stories as a kid and maybe reading a book of the same here and there, that sort of depicted God as this old Middle-Eastern dude in desert robes with a long white beard of the kind that is a badge of rank in lots of more traditional cultures, most especially those spanning the space from Morocco to...roughly...the Chinese border. Maybe it's just I grew up in a different, less self-centered part of the timeline but I can't imagine ever thinking up a God that looked like me...or at least, I can't imagine calling such a thing God.

That's Okay, I guess, given that the quality of Christian theological education...official or otherwise...apparently isn't what I remember it being. I did a few years in Catholic school, I've been in Catholic men's groups when I sporadically attended Catholic churches years later. Fuck, my AA group back in the day met in some meeting facilities attached to the local Catholic church in my hometown. I'm not sure what this shit going on here with this Twitter account is...but it ain't that. It ain't even close.

(It appears to be some sort of Catholic-themed fake sword-fighting group.)

But there's something else I'd like to call attention to, specifically. Do you notice the words "Spiritual Warfare" in the bio? Spiritual Warfare (meaning praying against things, invoking or warding against "spirits" and the like) is not a Catholic concept. It's not even a Protestant one in mainstream terms, having arisen out of syncretism with African traditional faiths at first among African slaves in the Americas, a stream that gave birth to such faiths as Santeria, Voodoo in its various forms, and good-old-fashioned Holy Roller type Pentecostalism.

These people are Catholic about like I'm a goddamned toaster oven.

And I'm sure they're just amazingly fun to be around on an interpersonal basis as well. Oh, wait, did I say that with a straight face?

"Chastity is the real taking control of your body." I would say that almost sounds Islamic, except a majority of the Muslims I've ever met screw around that way just as much as everybody else I've ever met does, and neither those who do nor those who don't really make a big deal out of it in my experience (at least between men and women) not least because when he first heard of the phrase "Shotgun wedding" my friend Ikram did not have to have it explained to him what that meant. Although I'm sure in Pakistan the concept likely involves different weapons. Situational bisexuality is not uncommon in those kind of cultures for that exact reason.

Why do I bring this up?

Apparently a bunch of Catholic priests have been losing their shit on Twitter the last couple days over the issue of...women having bare shoulders in church..?

TAKBIR!

Allahu Akbar!

Oh, wait, I digress.

No, seriously, when the fuck did these people become the Taliban?

No. Don't look away, no hand-waving and if you try to move the goal-posts here I'm a break your fucking legs.

When did these sons of bitches turn into the Taliban?

Louisiana's House of Representatives just killed a bill that would set a minimum age for marriage in the state.

I quite honestly would not think such a bill would need to be considered simply because I would think any non-age-appropriate sexual activity or the same involving more than a year or two of age difference would be better handled under laws concerning murder or at least serious aggravated assault. Just sayin.'

Listen up, yo. Has it crossed no Republican minds here that this shit is just plain WRONG?!

I don't give a damn what some son of a bitch can get a judge to agree to or not. A grown-ass man has no God-Damned business "marrying" a teenage girl (or worse, younger. What, you think that's not going to come up?) So yeah, as far as I'm concerned, this just ain't right. Apparently, the God-people have forgotten that Man isn't the only judge they will ever have to face.

There's a sick element of irony to this garbage, too.

All the way back in 2006 a pregnant 12-year-old was pretty much the undoing of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints cult. That motherfucker is still locked up...in Texas. The current governor was the Attorney General who basically masterminded the prosecution of FLDS members in that state. Such is the state of the idea of "Religious Freedom" today that those who risked life and limb and put considerable time and effort and their very lives into bringing Warren Jeffs and many of his cronies to justice for their crimes would likely have a much harder time of it, were somebody to be in the same position now...with Republicans like Greg Abbott, who was that AG, to thank for it.

At the rate they're going, before this is over, Republicans are going to have to apologize to every gimcrack sick-fuck of a cult leader all the way back to Joseph Smith, just sayin.'

Where's the line here? Where does the veneration of nothing greater than their own dicks actually stop?

What happened to the kind of basic conservative morality that used to say "If you look at my daughter (or other female relative) that way again, I'm a knock you out." What happened to, ya know, the proverbial Dad waiting up with the shotgun? (Actually, the majority of conservative people I've known who've expressed such sentiments in the last decade or so have tended to be the Moms, but I digress.)

When did conservative men cease to be...well, men...and become this creepy bullshit?

Ya know, as much as I hate Trump and how much of a fool he's busy making of himself and our country over in England right now, this problem didn't start with him. This bullshit started with a million small choices to prioritize single-issue fanaticism over basic morality in all ways...without any care for the consequences.

Apparently, if pregnant 13-year-old girls is the natural result of not teaching proper sex education, not teaching about birth control or the proper use of condoms and making it hard or even impossible to get an abortion, then these idiots are perfectly fine with pregnant 13-year-old girls.

It's not as much of a leap as I thought it was, apparently, to also keeping older boys or adult men away from said teenage girls. Let's be serious here, for a second. Let's play the game these fucking people always played with the rest of us, back when there was some collective idea that this was about decency or life, rather than control over women or trying to arrange some sort of breeding stock for white men. (You notice how in the "Abortion debate" people of Color rarely seem to make an appearance, except for generally being aligned with the Democrats on these issues?) I'm serious: What in the hell kind of perversion will these fucking people be Okay with next?

After all, they've been excusing Catholic Priests diddling boys...basically forever. I'm serious, where's the fucking line, here?

'Cause it sure doesn't exist at basic common sense or decency or self-respect. These fucking people are basically just a cult, by now, no different than Warren Jeffs and his Fundamentalist Mormons were a decade-and-a-half ago. Why is this acceptable now, but it was not then?

What changed? When did these people become the fucking Taliban, with a David Koresh-like cult vibe besides?

Women having bare shoulders in church is literally nothing compared to the perverse shit these people have already done...much less the kind of sick bullshit they're apparently preparing to do if nobody stops them. And no, these fucking people simply cannot be trusted to police their own. If it's shown us nothing else, the Trump era has clearly shown us that.

Whether it's insane religious fanaticism, literal treason committed with the Russians, scamming their own voter base or openly making laws that will enable child molestation, Republicans have shown they cannot be trusted.

The rest of us need to do something about this crap, or it's on us, too.

It's rapidly passing the point where simply voting them out just won't do, because what's to stop them at this point from taking their ball...and maybe a few states...and going home to set up their own little wannabe-Afghanistan right here within the borders of the by-then-former United States?

Call it the "Conservative States of America" and they don't even have to change the acronym.

And with the combination of age and demographic trends leading to basically a Republican Apocalypse, that's going to be exactly their strategy, you watch. Get all the like-"minded" people in one or maybe a few areas. Break off a piece. Protect "Conservatism" at all costs. "Resist" "Socialism" even if it means breaking the United States.

I mean, that's been their strategy all along. What else did you think all those Confederate flags still being around in 2019 were for? I'm not kidding when I say this...they're busy setting up the exact same kind of "legal" system I always thought they would right under our noses, before they even try to leave. In case you haven't noticed, it's not like the President we have now would make a serious effort to stop them if they did. Throw in "President for life" and the motherfucker would probably join them.

So you smack that shit down now, and maybe prevent a lot of people getting blown up or shot later.

We are what we will tolerate, and don't you forget it. We cannot continue to accept this kind of backward religious bullshit because it's already led to horrible things...it's just that before, the shit could be prosecuted.

When the legal system gets that bent out of shape, civilization unravels, and a long night falls. At this point you're either standing against the fall of night and standing against this perverse bullshit or you're not.

Which is it?

Now we've seen what these "Conservatives" are really about...and it looks suspiciously like a Christian version of the "Radical Islam" they claim to hate.

If we stand by and let this sick shit happen, we're just as guilty of it as they are.

It's time to pick a side, and it's time to get off your ass and do something, as much as you are able.

Because no, if they haven't stopped this shit by now there is NO bottom.

Republicans reached the point where I could no longer tolerate the direction in which they were heading in 2008. That's small potatoes compared to this garbage.

So, do you bow down and worship that graven image?

Or do you stand up and do what you know you should...even if you're the only one, like Moses descending from St. Catherine's Mountain in the Sinai with the Ten Commandments?

The choice is yours, and soon it's going to be time where you have to make it.

2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

~Exodus 20:2-5