The Proletariat Congress

Here lies the daughter,
here lies the father,
here lies the sister,
here lies the brother,
here lie husband and wife,
and yet there are only two bodies in the grave
16th Century French poem

Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims will be the first to tell you that God created man and woman; two people named Adam and Eve. They will tell you that these were the first humans that God created.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. — Genesis 1:26-27

This is a fine starting point for their beliefs. These groups are happy with this. Now, in the same tale, we learn that the firs two humans take God’s advice, hop behind a nearby bush and fuck like bunnies, thus producing Cain then Abel. So far this makes sense. You’ve got the plug and the outlet, thus producing electricity because the wiring is there. Now, here’s where the problem arises… Cain kills Abel, who didn’t have any children. Yet, Cain is able to find a woman and have a son by her and find a city.

Where does this mystery woman come from? There is no name mentioned. One theory says that God didn’t create just Adam and Eve. He created two others; two nameless ones in Genesis 1:1-31 and creates Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:1-25… Yet this is ignored and it is said that the first two people created were indeed Adam and Eve. If this is so, where the hell does Cain find a woman to have raunchy pre-historical caveman sex with?

At this point, you may be inclined to ask, what does this have to do with anything?

If you recall, last year there was a publicised case of two German siblings separated at birth, who met later in life and wound up having two children before the state interfered and took the, away. There is another case now, a British couple had their marriage declared illegal by a justice, who annulled the marriage.

Parted-at-birth twins ‘married’

The former Liberal Democrat MP [Lord Alton] raised the couple’s case during a House of Lords debate on the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill in December.

“They were never told that they were twins,” he told the Lords.

“They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation.”

Two consenting adults had their marriage declared invalid because of their blood relationship.

Followers of religion would say that it is because God wouldn’t want it and that incest is a sin. Yet 2 Peter 2:7-8, Genesis 19:15 and Genesis 19:32-36 do not condemn it and even go as far as to show God’s seemingly silent approval. He didn’t condemn it, yet he damned the folks of the city.

Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven — Genesis 19:24

This happened after Lot fled with his family. After he lay with his two virgin daughters; he knew them he did. Yet no condemnation is noted in this segment of the Bible.

The place where the loudest condemnation is heard from, is Leviticus, the “everything’s a sin” book of the Old Testament. See Leviticus 18:6, 20:11-12, 20:14.

When laying out what relationships are forbidden, no one seems to take into account that Genesis doesn’t have anything condemning incest; it even features it as part of the moral story. Once again, selective learning at work.

Morality interfering with the privacy that people deserve in their lives.

The view we take here is that there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. — Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau

This was the statement given when the late Prime Minister was still the Minister of Justice, who led the movement to remove laws regarding homosexuality from the Criminal Code of Canada. Now if only laws regarding incest were removed. There are laws that prevent people in a position of authority from misusing that authority. There are also rules protecting minors; the same laws that govern the age for consensual sexual relations.

The sky didn’t fall and civilization didn’t fall to its knees when homosexual marriages were legalised.

The sky didn’t fall and civilization didn’t fall to its knees when homosexuals were permitted to adopt.

Popular belief, supported by science says that people with close blood relation are more likely to produce offspring who are born with deformities or some kind of disease. Yet, society permits those who possess hereditary diseases to reproduce because it would be discrimination if we didn’t let them, yet it’s not if we tell others they can’t.

Or those mothers who don’t take care of themselves during their pregnancy and drink or smoke… They’re still allowed to have their children, even if the child is a burden on the system the rest of their natural lives.

If there is a worry about incest, then end anonymous sperm and egg donations; our world is one little cozy global village these days. What difference does it make? We have DNA testing. But then we’ll have people suing others for child support, and there will be fewer donors over all. But at least then you’ll know who your daddy is. Oh and those proponents of “privacy” rights of the mother and the child…

And the list goes on.

Think about it, no less than fifty years ago, it was common to think of interracial marriages as offensive. They were taboo. You didn’t want your little precious white bread daughter marrying some dirty, filthy mud man. This isn’t to say humanity is over this childish stage; there are still people who think like this, but would be laughed out of wherever they went.

When will the double standard end? Probably when people get over the ‘ick’ factor…

John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic to have been elected to the oval office in the USA. When he ran for the presidency in the 60s, he asked that voters judge him as an America and not a Catholic, and that is exactly what the voters did, before Lee Harvey Oswald decided otherwise in Dallas in 1963, when he assassinated JFK. Now, in the 21st century, we have another candidate pushing the same envelope, except now it’s for Mormonism, and not Catholicism. Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints (LDS; Mormons) is borrowing a page from JFK’s campaign book and asking the same thing of American voters.

Too bad for Romney this isn’t the idealistic 60s and he isn’t Kennedy because he managed to blow a perfectly good line by adding in a plethora of ignorance that is designed to make the secularists, humanists, deists, atheists and agnostics feel left out in the cold because we are ‘heathens’, those who are not Christian nor Jew; lacking faith.

I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith, nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

This seems innocent at first glance, and it’s easy to take this at face value, until one takes a closer look at the next parts of his speech, in which he proceeds to alienate part of the voting population.

We should acknowledge the creator as did the founders in ceremony and word. He should remain in our currency, in our pledge, in the teachings of history and in the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places.

The majority Founding Fathers of the United States of America only acknowledged a creator as far as Deism is concerned, with some clocking in as agnostics, atheists and only one or two as practising Christians. In Deism, a god-like figure or entity is rather superior entity is absent in all aspects of life after sparking the initial bust of energy that started life. Deism doesn’t concern itself with ritualistic prayer nor reliance on God for guidance in life.

Too bad Romney flunked American history or he would have known this little fact. The Founding Fathers wouldn’t have wanted ‘God’ to be in the public the way modern evangelical Christians do. They would have opted for a true separation of church and state, and not merely the symbolic one that some Republicans and Christians are opting for in the modern sphere of public life in America.

The pledge; the oath, it never had any mention of God in it before the emergence of the Soviet Union following the end of WWII in an attempt to set Americans apart from the seemingly godless commies who controlled the USSR. Religion wasn’t outlawed as a result of state atheism in the USSR, but rather as a result of the authoritarian nature of Stalinism, the ruling ideology of the nation at the time.

As for the display of religious symbols, sure Judaic ones aren’t forbidden in any of the Judaic scripture, but in Matthew 6:5-6, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus ordered his followers to be humble and to not pray in public, for God could hear prayer even in private; that public expressions of faith lessened the significance.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

If your God is really omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, why does he need to be on the currency, in the pledge and forced down the throats of everyone? If God is everywhere at once, why does he need some little sheep to remind everyone…?

But I digress, moving onward.

Romney has taken a low blow at those who would remove any acknowledgement of God from the public light.� What’s the matter, don’t have the guts to represent the people who opt to have no faith?� It becomes apparent here that he will not defend all faiths.� This is painfully obvious to those of us who opt to be free from any faith.

We are a nation under God, and in God we do indeed trust.

America is not one nation under God just because a gaggle of self-righteous Christians have decided that this is the way things ought to be. America is a nation of many people who hold many faiths that do not embrace a singular god, nor any gods. The polytheistic faiths embrace gods that the monotheistic faiths reject. Christians, Jews and Muslims are one God away from full blown Atheism.

‘I will serve no one religion’ U.S. presidential candidate vows

Romney vows to defend all faiths

Or at least that’s what Mike Huckabee, a Republican candidate, running for the presidential nomination would have you think. If he had his way, he’d have everyone thinking that civilization would somehow keel over if gay marriage existed, never mind that it does and that there are a few nations in the world where it actually does exist and surprisingly, chaos and anarchy hasn’t broken out here. Society hasn’t fallen to shambles.

I don’t think the issue’s about being against gay marriage. It’s about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that’s important. You have to have a basic family structure. There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived. So there is a sense in which, you know, it’s one thing to say if people want to live a different way, that’s their business. But when you want to redefine what family means or what marriage means, then that’s an issue that should require some serious and significant debate in the public square.

You mean, kind of like forcing people from different cultures to accept your definition of ‘family’, sort of like that? This is one case where the attempt to hide the contempt for the rights for a group is obvious. Huckabee is pandering to the religious right and their irrational fear that homosexuals will some how destroy society and the sanctity of marriage by getting married themselves.

If anything has supposedly upset the sanctity of marriage, it would have been the introduction of ‘divorce’ during the reign of King Henry VIII when the Vatican refused to annul his marriage. Of course, it wasn’t such a big deal then because people had greater things to worry about, such as just… surviving.

The 20th century saw the surge in the rate of divorce. This is tied closely to women’s suffrage and the feminist movement, that gave them equal rights, as well as the right to be equal to men. This was a good thing, but it did open up the way for people to get divorced because the woman wasn’t forced to rely on the man who could determine if she was able to leave. She was no longer forced into subservience.

Homosexuals have not done anything to ‘violate’ the sanctity of marriage. Heterosexuals are very capable of doing it on their own and are very professional about it. In fact, they can be so good at it, that they may marry and divorce multiple times, (ie: Rudy Guiliani, another Republican candidate). Heterosexuals have proven they are very able in their destruction of the sacred institution known in some circles as “Holy Matrimony”. Even more, sans divorce, heterosexuals are more than able on their own to destroy it by engaging in extra-marital affairs with others, regardless of gender.

Of course, any good conservative Christian will ignore this because well, it doesn’t count because it’s not homosexuals trying to invade the realm of marriage and pollute the minds of young children, letting them know that homosexuality is not some fearsome boogeyman that will leap out from under your bed at night and consume you whole.

For the same group, the title of ‘civil union’ is not acceptable either…

Because it really is a precursor toward marriage. Once the government says this relationship is in essence similar to or equal to a marriage—we’re not going to call it that, but that’s what it is—and you grant it the same basic rights as marriage, then you’ve effectively done it.

Maybe because it is the same thing. If it smells like dung, it looks like dung then it’s probably, dung. You can call it whatever you want and it’ll still be the same in the end. But is that really a reason why it can’t be granted? In fact, can’t ‘civil union’ be applied to heterosexual couples? Especially to those who loath the idea of marriage in front of the clergy? Or for those who just don’t believe in all that meaningless ritualistic hocus-pocus?

Along the same vein, but moving on, I can think of at least one nation where there is homosexual marriage and society hasn’t fallen apart, in fact, there were two notable marriages that occurred under the new law and were publicised when they did happen. I speak of course of Canada. Same sex marriage is legal here and two notable public figures who have on two different occasions tied the same sex knot are Scott Brison and Greg Smitherman.

Other nations that have legalised gay marriage, only to see society tick along as if nothing happened were: Belgium, Netherlands, South Africa and the strongly Catholic nation of Spain. Plenty more have legalised civil unions, the first step toward legalising marriage for homosexuals. These nations include: Andorra, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and Uruguay.

It should be noted that of the nations listed where civil unions are legal, there are a few that are paving the way for same sex marriage, but the issue is being debated at the moment. France, UK, Portugal, Finland and New Zealand are paving the way for the final phase in their nations, yet it has not rained fire and brimstone on those nations for their decision to make that leap forward.

Yet there are still candidates in the US that seem to think that being gay is some how a bad thing; that gay marriage will cause civilization to implode on itself, that we will incur “God’s” wrath for engaging in such sin; as though Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and other “holy” books are actually true despite being riddled with falsehoods and being nothing more than shallow folklore that has no moral bearing on the modern world. That if we did violate the “word” of “God” that we would burn in hell for all eternity…

Here’s my closing thought for this post: anyone else find it amusing that when politicians are outed for being gay in the US, it’s never the Democrats, it’s always the Republicans? And if there are gay Democrats, they don’t bother to hide it in the first place. Some act like Americans would not accept a gay politician. Yet according to a 1999 Gallup poll:

• 95% would vote for a woman
• 94% would vote for a Catholic
• 92% would vote for a Jew
• 92% would vote for a black
• 79% would vote for a Mormon
• 79% would vote for a homosexual
• 49% would vote for an Atheist

Deck the halls with rampant mindless, shallow consumerism…

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la…

‘Tis the season of ad nauseum commercials…

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la…

Don we now our gay garland and tacky carols

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If nothing else, right now at this time, I am grateful for the fact that we have no cable television in our household. My husband and I got rid of it back in October and not a moment too soon. We missed the train wreck that is the ‘holiday season’ barrage of commercials, hocking wares and goods we do not need. We have not seen one commercial yet for anything related to Christmas. What a luxury! I don’t know how anyone else can tolerate it. Now that we’re free from it, we hear only the silence that we need.

Mind you, I have no quarrel with Christmas itself, hell, I don’t give a flying rat’s ass if someone wishes me Merry Christmas. My problem are the carols and the commercials. They are detrimental to everything about the holidays. Yet, the people who should be speaking out against this, the Christians, are the ones who have decided that the “War on Christmas” stems from the fact that a store clerk wishes them a “happy holiday”, or worse yet, to be showered with greetings of “seasons greetings”. But nary a word of the commercials and the hijacked season.

The same group whines if a scene of nativity disappears from public property or if a tree is not decked out with the finest, or someone doesn’t wish them a “Merry Christmas”. Yet, they ignore everything that is actually contrary to Christmas itself; the consumerism, the tree (first used in the 19th century)… the figure of Santa Claus (St. Nick, from the 15th century). Gift giving itself was typically done on New Years Day, which occurred after the Advent, which began on November 11th. The 12 days of Christmas refer to December 26th-January 6th.

Christmas itself was derived from Winter Solstice, Saturnalia, one of many pagan (or heathen if you will; as heath is neither Christian nor Jewish) celebrations, along with Yule. In fact, there is no proof that Jesus was actually born on December 25th; it was an idea that was made popular with the Chronographiai by Sextus Julius Africanus in the 3rd century AD.� There is no mention of the birth date anywhere in the New Testament.� There are theories that the birth happened on January 6th or even in the spring.� The year is also highly disputed.

Also amusing is the fact that Xmas is not at all censoring the word of “Christmas”, which in itself is a contraction of two words, Cristes mæsse, in Old English. The χ (chi), from the Greek character set, is the first letter of Χριστός (Christ), making Xmas in use since the mid-16th century.

Now that I’ve briefly covered the history of it, it’s safe to say that the zealots who believe there is a War on Christmas are the ones aiding and abetting the war because they are participating in many of the elements that they ought to decry if they want to truly celebrate it. But sadly they don’t. They also do not recognise the orthodox day that celebrates the same event, that falls on January 6th (on the Julian Calendar; developed by Julius Caesar), or rather January 19 on the Gregorian Calendar, (the two are 13 days apart).

Meanwhile, I’ll be watching it amused because I don’t have to put up with the commercials and online debates are always more amusing that televised, which always seemed very scripted to me.� There is one other thing I will not be missing and that is the plethora of Christmas specials, which are recycled junked.

Between the commercials and specials, I can say I’m very happy to not have to pay for cable television.