Some jackass named James Hartline had a post up on his blog regarding Proposition 8 that I attempted to comment on. However, he’s too much of flaming gay bigot to let my comments through, so I figured I would post on my own unread blog what I was trying to say on his.

He is a bible thumping bible bigot that’s never read the bible. Also, he contends that Prop 8 in California is returning to “traditional marriage”. Well guess what boys and girls, a return to “traditional marriage” would break up my heterosexual marriage.

Traditional marriage, until recently, was pretty much marriage arranged by and paid for by the parents. The people getting married had no say in who they were going to marry. For the last few hundred years, land owners have been able to marry who they want, as long as they were the same race.

I am married to an Asian woman, which makes my marriage interracial. Interracial marriage was not allowed in every state in the United States until 1967 due to a Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia. The first state to allow interracial marriage was Ohio, according to a source I’ll link to in a moment.

In some countries, they still use “Honor Killing” as a method of discouraging interracial, or even inter-tribal(!) marriage! WTF is wrong with these idiots? I just don’t understand why they have so much hate, and why they let themselves be so fooled by a compilation of a few fictional books gathered by different groups of people and finally decided upon by non-believers several hundred years after their copy of Horus savior was supposedly taken to heaven. It’s even more astounding that they have to push the envelope on interpretation to even make it say that gays are bad! It’s actually in favor of gays treating each other right! See here:

Leviticus 18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Do you know what that is saying? The bible is a very misogynistic book. It is saying that if you are a man and you intend on getting it on with another man, you can’t treat him like a woman. He has value, but she is just property.

Here’s a page on when the bigots began to relent with respect to interracial marriage/miscegenation. It notes the propensity of racists to also be intolerant of gays.

Here is an LA Times story on Prop 8 that mentions the obvious. Eventually the bigots will be struck down. They will, however, cause as much grief as possible before that happens because that’s just what those worthless sub-people are here to do.

I understand that the bible bigots want to make the United States as intolerant of all as possible, which would make us a Christian version of Iran. Wouldn’t it just be easier if they went to Iran instead?

It is sad that I appear to be nearly alone in my particular set of beliefs. My beliefs can sort of be split between differing kinds of freedom, and for some reason people generally only adhere to 0 or 1 of my categories of freedom. I feel like what I believe in is Libertarian, but I have a lot of problems with many that call themselves by that name.

First, there is social freedom, which I say means people can do what they want as long as they don’t hurt you. Most Republican, neo-con, or Christian types will vehemently deny much of that kind of freedom. The Dems tend to be ok on this issue, but in actuality, gun ownership should fall in this category, so that takes away half of this plus. Republicans haven’t repealed any real restrictions on gun ownership, though they did allow the cosmetics ban to expire. I don’t feel that is enough to earn them a half point. Dems .5, Repubs 0.

There is freedom from financial and tax tyranny. The Democrats don’t hide that they want to take your money and give it someone else. However, the Republicans are even bigger spenders, they just lie and say they are not. Republicans have managed to reduce taxes while reducing spending power more than the tax breaks helped. Dems 0, Repubs 0.

The third form of freedom is freedom of intellect. If you say “It’s only a theory” when talking about evolution, then you are an intellectual theocrat, and are against that freedom. This is basically the freedom to be correct in scientific assertions. Democrats are good on this one. Republicans actually try to lie and change what is taught in order to fit their retarded religious beliefs. That’s 0 points for Repubs and 1 point for Dems. Dems 1, Repubs 0.

Well, I am a pro-gun, low taxes, socially progressive atheist, and most of the danger of the current administration is given power through the ease of misleading the gullible and credulous Christians in the US. The faithful tend to be the pro-gun people, but they give rise to a large part of the problem by giving power to the very tyrants they say they needs their guns to fight against.

There is a presidential election this year. I need to vote. Unfortunately, there are not any good candidates. If you advocate for Ron Paul, you advocate for Theocracy, so let’s go ahead and end that train of thought now. The other possibles such as Gravel are gone, though I’m fairly sure he would be wrong on guns. The Dems are 1.5 of 3 on my freedom scale, and the Repubs are 0 of 3 on that scale, so I must vote for a Democrat. I think that I hope Obama is the winner. At least if he wins there may be some optimism flowing about. He is also significantly smarter than Bush. The best things I’ve heard so far from him are the law he got passed in Illinois that required video taping of police interrogations and a news article I saw with him supporting religious freedom.

But really, what I want to see, is a pro-gun, intellectual, social progressive that wants to lower taxes and spending. Where are they?

I have, for a while, been thinking about what I consider to be the American way, and that is why I am putting this out there.

First, let’s define the Republican ideal as socially and fiscally conservative.
Second, let’s use a simple definition of what it means when something is American: free, tolerant, and winning. That is what I feel to be the American attitude.

I think that most people, even people that are willing to vote for someone like George Bush, would tend to agree with those statements. However, if they are willing to agree with those statements, or even only parts of those statements, how can they justify voting for recent Republicans?

Free:
After the George Bush reign, we are much less free than we were prior to his appointment. We now have to deal with the Department of Homeland Security (even the name seems to denote fascism). We have to deal with unwarranted eavesdropping of our communications. We have to deal with possibly never being given a trial, or being held for years without even being charged with a crime.

Tolerant:
The United States has never completely been a country of tolerance, though there have always been strong proponents of civil rights. Originally, slave owning was common, but now it is not allowed. Even after the abolishment of slavery, woman and slaves could not vote. Now they can, though gerrymandering from all sides has somewhat damaged things. Apartheid followed slavery. That was ended, and now it is less common to find real discrimination based on gender and race. But what about sexual orientation? Gay or lesbian people are still discriminated against by law.

Winning:
Nationalists (people that would call themselves patriots who basically parrot party lines, and are not really patriots) pride themselves on saying that the US is the best at everything. They say we’ve never lost a war, that we’re the freest country in the world. That our system of government is the best. That we’re the most tolerant. That we have the best technology. Pretty much they claim that whatever we do is the best. Why do they think or believe those things? We are losing the war in Iraq, we are losing our freedoms, and we are spending so much money that younger generations and their children may be unable to repay it. Social conservatives seem to deny the validity of all science. (Denial of the facts and theories of evolution makes you a delusional science denier, not unlike a Holocaust denier.)

So, why be socially conservative? What good does it do for anyone, anywhere? Social conservatism is basically forcing your religion down the throat of someone else. That is absolutely not an American thing to do, though it is something Americans do. Social conservatives have been behind women’s suffrage denials, behind apartheid, behind gay marriage bans, and generally against equal protection under the law based on race, gender, or sexuality. So, let’s say that you are a social conservative. How have any of those denials of equality been beneficial to anyone? I guess that is my problem. I can not see how any of those bigoted stances help anyone, anywhere. (definition: A bigot is a prejudiced person who is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles, or identities differing from his or her own.) If you want to discriminate in that way in your personal life at home, that is up to you, but how is legally enforcing bigoted stances beneficial to you or anyone else?

Also, if you are a social conservative, why would you vote for someone that is a liar, or someone that has used cocaine and gone AWOL from his national guard post? How many Republicans have been in gay sex scandals? If you let people just live their lives while you lived yours, wouldn’t everyone be better off?

Getting away from ideology, let’s look at the conservative spending and taxing idea. If you are for that, why would you vote republican? Republicans have run significantly larger deficits than Democrats. While part of the reason may be that they lowered taxes, basically they borrowed money and ran up debt that will need to be repaid. I guess that the only fiscal conservatives that can still theoretically benefit from Republicanism are retired people that will live less than 20 more years. Lifespans longer than that will be dealt significant suffering by the out of control spending of the Republicans, and some of those financial indiscretions are already hitting us, with results like the housing bust and our current recession. Those things are partially caused by indiscriminate deregulation of industries that need regulation to survive. Indiscriminate deregulation is another fun Republican attribute.

Republicans seem to use the idea that gay marriage somehow violates the sanctity of marriage, or some nebulous traditional marriage. Everyone else’s marriage violates those traditions too, unless you mean traditions going back about 30 years. Marriage has not traditionally been about love or even choice. Marriage with people under the age of 16 was common. Arranged marriage was common, and still is in some parts of the world, mostly due to religious influence on government. Some historical societies encouraged adult males to have sexual relationships with prepubescent boys, and the Catholic church still does. I guess if the religious right had their way, my marriage would also be invalid. I am married to a woman of Asian descent, and I am a white male. I guess what they really mean by traditional marriage is that only white people should be allowed to marry.

I want a society filled with tolerance, and as long as the Republicans have anything to say about that, it will not come to pass. That is why I encourage everyone I know to vote against Republicans. Specifically for 2008, I think Barack Obama is the best hope we have for improving our society.

I called Ron Paul a theocrat on a political quiz, and someone called my bluff. Let’s see if I am convincing, or if I am mistaken.

There is a missive on house.gov by Ron Paul, entitled “Christmas in Secular America“. There is a choice quote or two here.

“The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.”

Well, hallelujah. First, he says the constitution is “replete with references to God”. Guess he never read it. The closest it comes to a reference to a god is this: “in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven”.

“[O]ur Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs.”

Patently false. There were arguments, but with many of the pre-United States colonizers having come here to avoid religious persecution, they were inclined to desire to keep religion out of their new governments. In fact, the phrase “building a wall of separation between church and state” was coined by Thomas Jefferson in a January 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. When the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and contributor to the constitution has that to say, you start to see how unfounded the opinions wielded by Paul are.

Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view.

That is a seriously stinted view of someone aiming for President, though it is probably shared by GW Bush and Mike Huckabee.
He also apparently does not realize that the Christians stole Christmas from many other religious groups. It is a pagan holiday celebrating the winter solstice. If Christmas is taken from the Christians, then it only serves them right.

note: Thomas Jefferson is also one of my favorite sources of Atheistic quotations.

Apparently I’m not the only one who has noticed that Ron Paul is a theocrat. The Lew Rockwell link on there is a renaming of the Christmas in Secular America article.

Dr. Paul also sponsored or proposed amendments to the constitution that would basically short circuit the first amendment.

Paul sponsored a resolution for a School Prayer Amendment:

H.J.RES.52 (2001), H.J.RES.66 (1999), S.J.RES. 1, H.J.RES.12, H. J. RES. 108, & H. J. RES. 55:

Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions. No person shall be required by the United States or by any State to participate in prayer . Neither the United States nor any State shall compose the words of any prayer to be said in public schools.

H. J. RES. 78 (1997):

To secure the people’s right to acknowledge God according to the dictates of conscience: Neither the United States nor any State shall establish any official religion, but the people’s right to pray and to recognize their religious beliefs, heritage, or traditions on public property, including schools, shall not be infringed. Neither the United States nor any State shall require any person to join in prayer or other religious activity, prescribe school prayers, discriminate against religion, or deny equal access to a benefit on account of religion.

* Proposed Legislation:H.J.RES.52, School Prayer Amendment, 6/13/2001 (Murtha)
* H.J.RES.12, School Prayer Amendment, 2/7/2001 (Emerson)
* S.J.RES.1, School Prayer Amendment, 1/22/2001 (Thurmond)
* H.J.RES.108, Voluntary School Prayer Amendment, 9/21/2000 (Graham)
* H.J.RES.55, Voluntary School Prayer Amendment, 2/13/1997 (Stearnes, Hall, Watts)
* H.J.RES.78, Amendment Restoring Religious Freedom, 5/8/1997 (Istook, et. al.)

Also, Ron Paul is an evolution denier. Check the video. I realize that not everyone that denies the validity of the theory of evolution is a religious nutter, but it seems that the vast majority are. A denial of this theory means that your opinion is that most science is a farce. I don’t want someone like that making decisions.

More fun quotes can be found here.

To the secularists, this was John Paul II’s unforgivable sin– he placed service to God above service to the state. Most politicians view the state, not God, as the supreme ruler on earth. They simply cannot abide a theology that does not comport with their vision of unlimited state power. This is precisely why both conservatives and liberals savaged John Paul II when his theological pronouncements did not fit their goals. But perhaps their goals simply were not godly.

But really, when looking at these things, consider my position. I do not know what you believe, but the Christian faith is easily disproved if the source of proof is the Holy Bible. [Was Jesus born when Herod the Great was king (before 4 BCE) or when Quirinius (also Cyrenius) was governor of Syria (after 6 CE)?] So, for someone like me that does not believe in God, and does not find the pursuit of religion to be noble, but rather as a threat to my way of life, how should I perceive the way he feels mythology and government should intertwine? I’ll tell you: He is a theocrat and would be an enemy.