Posts Tagged ‘politics’

Silly Christian extremists

22.07.2005 02:16

Some of you might’ve noticed these two recent headlines:

CNN.com: Congressman suggests way to retaliate for nuclear terror
CNN.com: Muslims denounce congressman’s statement

Now this is a congressman who’s judgmental and that has no idea about the workings of the real world. Let me just put things in perspective.

If a group of rouge catholics bombed some target within the U.S., like some big landmark building or even an entire city, would that entitle this congressman to green light a bombing mission against the Vatican State? The terrorists in this example were catholic, after all.

In fact, what Tom Tancredo entirely missed out on, is the fact that real muslims are against the terrorist attacks made by so-called other muslims. I say “so-called”, because what they are doing, has nothing to do with the Islamic religion whatsoever. Islam teaches high respect of all life. Even I have caught up that little factoid, and I’m an agnostic. Islam even teaches respect towards other religions, in terms of “we all believe in the same god, even it has a different name or is split up into more than one god”.

Come to think of it, all religions teach some level of respect towards other life and religions, except for the Christian religions. You’d have to look a long way for religions more intolerant towards other religions and ways of life than the Christian religions.

The hate towards homosexuality comes from the Christian religions. The believers say that it says so in The Bible that it’s wrong. You know what? I looked that one up. According to Leviticus 18:22, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” That’s one sentence. That’s ONE FRIGGIN’ SENTENCE. And that’s it. I know of another story that covers things wrong with that book….

Susan Stepney, jokes: an open Letter to Dr. Laura, by J. Kent Ashcraft

Read further down on that page for more crazy quotes from the ol’ book. If you don’t have The Bible at hand, you can look up the passages on site such as Bible on the Web. The passages are for real, and they really do say that.

Now, what if a Christian extremist decides to take upon the role of being the judge of all mankind by using The Bible in a literal context? Bush has already rolled the ball, other Christian conservatives keep pushing that ball through the snow. At some point, some nut is bound to stockpile a bunch of dangerous weapons and is planning to use these as punishment for how people have abandoned the “rules” of that old rag some use for spiritual guidance.

Don’t get me wrong; many things in The Bible contains good ways to behave, parts which have the basic unwritten rules of what we call common sense in writing. It’s just that this old thing is bound for a rewrite to fit the society of today. Keep in mind that not much of the contents has changed in this book for almost 2000 years. That is, if you’re Christian and has the New Testament expansion pack. If you’re working off the basic edition, it’s even older than that.

Returning to the congressman’s statement this week, I think he could use a real slap on the wrist. Or the face. He and a whole bunch of conservative Christians need a real eye-opener before it’s too late. Before the next terrorist attack attributed to a so-called muslim. Before the next mistake of a war comes to life.

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005

28.04.2005 17:07

This week in America, “Dubyasigned a legislation named the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, which is a “movie piracy and filtering bill” (according to GovTrack).

Now, I don’t mind it being illegal to make distribution copies (ie. not backups in case something should go wrong), but that filtering part of it just makes me mad. I mean, when will it stop? So much for the “land of the free and the home of the brave” when the freedom is ripped from you by means of additional legislation, lawsuits or overzealous politicians, and the brave are just sitting around, waiting for someone else to do something about it.

Quoted from the CNN news story:
The bill gives legal protections to the fledgling filtering technology that helps parents automatically skip or mute sections of commercial movie DVDs. Bush signed it privately and without comment, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

There goes the artistic freedom out the window along with the actual parenting responsibility of parents. It’s simply allowing parents to slack off when it comes to being parents to their children. I mean, for crapping out loud, the movie ratings are there for a reason, right? “Not intended for ages below 18”. OK, so don’t let your children under 18 watch it, then.

In other political news from the US this week, Gerald Allen (Alabama) wants to ban all books containing subjects about homosexuality as well as books written by homosexual authors. As librarian Donna Schremser points out, this seems to be the beginning of some sort of “though police”. Now that’s 1984. George Orwell might’ve been right after all, he just missed the year of the events by a few decades.

By the way, from what I can tell, you can read the entire book 1984 by George Orwell online, and for free. Also, I’d recommend watching the movie with the same name, starring John Hurt (“Alien”, “Contact”, “Hellboy”).