Worthy Of Death (Trending, Three.)

 If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

I just saw this a bit ago.

Some idiot preacher said "LGBTQ people deserve death" at a school board meeting in Arkansas, a school board meeting in which anti-LGBTQ policies were voted on and passed.

Now, I want you to keep something in mind here; I'm a middle-aged, balding fat straight white guy. I'm a former Republican, I'm a disabled veteran and I live in rural Northern Michigan in a small city a good two hours from the nearest freeway or the nearest large city. I was a conservative Christian for 30 years.

There's like six churches within what's a five-minute walk for my crippled ass, keeping in mind that I have arthritis.

Hell, I have two different Bibles right on the shelf under where my laptop is, now.

And I don't give a shit. This is America, it's the 21st Century, that kind of talk don't have no place here.

You don't like gay people. 

I don't like obnoxious Bible-Thumpers, who has claim, then, to existence? 

What if I just flat out say "You don't" and pick up a gun or a sword, because I don't believe in your shitty religion anymore?

You either believe in civilization or you don't.

The strings that bind our civilization together are starting to fray, because of people like you.

Nobody's going to like what happens when they start to come undone. I've seen with my own eyes how that turns out.

Nobody said you have to like gay people, nobody said they had to like you. But in a society, we have to tolerate all kinds of people. I bet you'd be real mad if they stopped respecting your right to exist, wouldn't you??

 Why does that only go one way? 

Why in the fuck are you incapable of seeing that other people might have an objection to your shitty opinion?

And that's all it is. 

Can you show, to the standards of the modern, or even Enlightenment Era historical and scientific methods that Jesus Christ even actually existed?? There's actual evidence for a lot of other Biblical and religious figures...but not a lot for Jesus.

People, contemporary historians, theologians of then-extant Middle Eastern religions, wrote about John The Baptist, or Herod the Great. Jesus, not so much. And that's Okay. People have a right to believe what they want, within certain limits of Constitutional rights, decency and law...again, all definable things.

But that's why we don't make decisions or laws based on your fucked-in-the-ass stupid interpretation of the Bible...because let's be honest, where does that stop? 

What's to keep some other Bible Thumper from declaring you a heretic worthy of death because something something Calvinball?? 

What's to stop some other culture or civilization from arbitrarily declaring that yours should not exist and saying you worship the Devil and should be killed?? 

Without an empirical, testable baseline of truth and without morality or respect for evidence, what's to stop one of your own, who doesn't like you and has a little power from arbitrarily declaring you a "Secret Homosexual" and saying that you should be killed, too??

What's to stop their infinite goal-post-moving when you say "Hey, wait a minute!" and fight back??

I mean, fuck, Ukraine is basically the Bible Belt of Eastern Europe, and a fairly traditionally-conservative place. Somehow none of that mattered once Vladimir Putin decided he wanted to go for that ethnic cleansing and imperialistic land-grab.

It's not illegal to be an LGBTQ person in Ukraine, but it's not easy either. Still, "Conservatives" and Putin's Neo-Commies have been grabbing onto that lack of official persecution as a rationalization for this war ever since all the other Neo-Soviet lies fell apart and Red Army 2.0 started getting its ass kicked.

And when the goddamned Russians lose, they're going to take it out on some of their own people.

Very likely people who are Christian, nominally-conservative and white their own damn selves. I mean, given the blundering, over-the-top loyalty of the Kadyrovite Chechens, Putin can't really scapegoat them...I don't know how the hell you don't see where this is going.

Hell, does it even matter? Or is the cruelty the point in this, just like it is in every other damn thing?

Fuck you, Reverend.

A whole hell of a lot of humanity has stopped following this often-cruel Bronze Age bullshit for a goddamned reason.

Not least of all, why the hell should we have to?? 

Because you say so? 

Dude, there's arguments to refute that shit going all the way back to Ancient Greece that I can think of right off the top of my head.

What about if Vladimir Putin, in faraway Moscow or his bunker beneath the Ural mountains, declares that you have to convert to Russian Orthodox Christianity?

It's only facts, reality and truth that even give us a floor to stand on to push back against Power in the first place! Reason, Science! We have eyes to see and minds to think. Hell, sound Doctrine and Theology are perfectly valid answers, if that's your thing.

Hate won't do it, though. That just makes you easier to manipulate. There's a reason Wrath is a sin.

And there's nothing wrong with finding that Truth in religion, so long as you don't try to impose your beliefs on other people, who already have Constitutional rights, Human rights, and preexisting beliefs of their own. 

Hell, God-given rights if you prefer to think of it that way.

Without regard for life...irrespective of a person's details...what the hell is it that keeps some other asshole who has a little bit more power than you do from just randomly deciding that you're a "Useless Eater" or some shit because you had some kind of medical problem recently and they figure they can get more profit out of somebody else being in your spot??

Let this kind of crap go on long enough, and what's to stop us from saying "Fuck Civilization" and blasting and killing and murdering each other back into the Stone Age until nobody can read to understand the Word and the height of religiosity is considered to be dancing around a fire shouting "Unga Bunga" while roasting our neighbors on a bent, rusty piece of rebar over a roaring fire?

I was raised Christian, as I remember it, I first got "Saved" when I was like five years old. I was a Christian...granted with varying degrees of devoutness over that time...for most of my life.

The Bible says we are ALL "Worthy Of Death" and hellfire, for that matter. I heard that more times than I can count.

But the whole damned point is that somebody went and paid that price for us. There was no cost attached to this! All have Sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. And it's not supposed to matter worth a damn.

If you can't remember that part, you're in the wrong damned business.

'Cause you know what, dude? Man cannot Save Man. And listening to somebody who says "I have the Truth, now give me $20" only means you're out twenty bucks, in the end.

It's funny how the true heroes of all these right-wing ideologies are always rich political manipulators rather than poor itinerant prophets, isn't it?

Truth is free, and everybody's is a little different.

The Truth is simple. Man makes it complicated because he does not want to Obey.

Some dudes, the Truth as they understand it says they like other dudes. Some ladies, they like other ladies. Some it doesn't matter. Some people figure out their soul is a different gender than their physical personhood.

Some people have different cultures, different languages, whole different understandings of the divine conversation, or of life itself. Can't we all just get along?

I didn't make it that way, one way or another the Creator did. We did.

Are we not all supposedly made in His image??

Unless you can make your own Earth, starting with your own air and, dirt and water, and die and rise again in three days for the Salvation of humanity and come back to judge all of the human race, living and dead, at the End of Days, unless you're Jesus, the Bible says ain't nobody got to listen to you.

While I'm at it, so does Christianity as I was taught it and the interpretation of God that I was raised with.

And minus any religious particulars, so does the Constitution I swore to defend.

If you can't understand that, if you don't believe in civilization, in freedom and human rights? You and me, we ain't on the same side.

Remember that. 

There's going to be a test later.

You really want to decide who's "Worthy of Death?" 'Cause the rest of us get to fight back and decide too.

And it's funny how these sons of bitches never want to follow through with their bullshit once that's on the table, isn't it?

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

~2nd Timothy 4:3

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