Humor and the Christian Right, In All Seriousness
 

January 18 2006
Counterbias.com
MEL SEESHOLTZ
  

For years now the Christian Right has been claiming same-sex marriage would destroy America. They usually make lists of their reasons, as James Dobson did in his 2004 book Marriage Under Fire. Dobson’s list contained twelve “reasons.” Aside from those already addressed in a previous CounterBias article, the others were addressed (and negated) in “Out of Focus on the Family: A Response to Arguments about Same-Sex Marriage” that appeared in the scholarly, peer-reviewed journal Popular Culture Review, 16:1 (February 2005), 45-75.

But for present purposes, we’ll exclude Dobson’s reason number ten – “The gospel of Jesus Christ will be severely curtailed” – since Jesus, as recorded in the four gospels, said absolutely nothing about same-sex marriage (or homosexuality, for that matter). And we’ll exclude number twelve – “The culture war will be over, and the world may soon become ‘as it was in the days of Noah’” – because Noah was a fictionalized character modeled on Utnapishtim from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and because the ark would have sunk carrying Mr. and Mrs. Tyrannosaurus rex and all the other dinosaurs biblical literalists (aka “Young Earth Creationists”) claim played with human children in Eden and were passengers on Noah’s boat.

Nevertheless, poignant “variations” of other reasons Dobson and the Christian Right are fond of using have been circulating on the internet. Unfortunately, their author is not known. (I discovered them at 411mania.com, but the link no longer seems active.)

1. Being gay is not natural. And as you know Americans have always rejected unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

 

2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

 

3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because, as you know, a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

 

4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

 

5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed. The sanctity of Britany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

 

6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

 

7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

 

8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

 

9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

 

10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

A serious hoot was provided by Edward F. Blick’s article “Laughing at Evolution” that appeared on the website of “The Christian Underground.” Blick was identified as “Emeritus Professor of Engineering, Univ. of Oklahoma.” Dr. Blick began his treatise with this:

We all love to laugh, it’s good medicine. We laughed at the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”. She “sometimes believed in six impossible things before breakfast.” Similarly, I laugh at Darwinian professors who teach impossible fairy tales to their students. [italics added]

From the comma splice in the first sentence to the misplaced period in the second, the article is filled with grammatical faux pas, not to mention factual ones, and downright silly claims such as “Darwinists know they have to hide their atheist religion.” Any dictionary illustrates that lexicological chicanery. I used the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary:

Atheism: a disbelief in the existence of deity.

Religion: the service and worship of God.

“Atheist religion” is an oxymoron.

The article went on to claim that evolution is “laughable” because there is “no proof of macroevolution.” Apparently the Emeritus Professor is unaware of the fossil record and contemporary DNA studies that clearly demonstrate macroevolution in any number of species, as well as one of the basic mechanisms of evolution: genetic mutation in response to changing environmental conditions. It’s common scientific and medical knowledge that some bacteria and viruses have mutated – that is, evolved – to become resistant to drugs that had previously been used to kill them. Their genetics – and hence the organism those genetics produce – evolved in response to their changing environment, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently noted in relation to this season’s influenza. From the New York Times report:

Doctors should stop prescribing two standard antiviral drugs to treat or prevent this season's influenza because the predominant strain has quickly become resistant to them, federal health officials said Saturday [January 14, 2005]. … Scientists have been alarmed about a rising incidence of drug resistance among influenza viruses isolated from patients around the world over the last decade and their ability to be transmitted from person to person. … Influenza viruses constantly mutate. …

Evolution can occur over long periods of time or very quickly – “punctuated equilibrium.” A report posted on 365gay.com noted that, again in relation to today’s influenza viruses:

The government, for the first time, is urging doctors not to prescribe two antiviral drugs commonly used to fight influenza after discovering that the predominant strain of the virus has built up high levels of resistance to them at alarming speed. A whopping 91 percent of virus samples tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this flu season proved resistant to rimantadine and amantadine, a huge increase since last year, when only 11 percent were.

Professor Blick’s Christian Underground article went on to make preposterous “leaps of faith,” absurdly inaccurate statements in childish language, and to blame all of America’s “ills” on evolution:

In the last half century, evolution hijacked America and its schools and inflicted a great defeat on American culture. Crime has skyrocketed, homosexuality and gay marriage have been mainstreamed, and our morals have submerged into a cesspool. Why? Kids brainwashed with this kooky nonsense are taught that they evolved from apes, there is no God and that morals are relative. … [italics added]

Blick’s “teach impossible fairy tales to their students” and “kooky nonsense” would perfectly describe a course recently approved at Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec, California. As the New York Times reported on January 11, 2005, “A group of parents are suing their small California school district to force it to cancel a four-week high school elective on intelligent design, creationism and evolution that it is offering as a philosophy course.”

Since creationism and intelligent design are definitely not science, a philosophy course might seem an appropriate venue, however, “the parents, represented by lawyers with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, contend that the teacher is advocating intelligent design and ‘young earth creationism’ and is not examining those ideas in a neutral way alongside evolution.”

As previously noted, Young Earth Creationism is an even more “kooky” version of creationism. But here’s the real hoot:

In their suit, the parents said the syllabus originally listed 24 videos to be shown to students, with 23 “produced or distributed by religious organizations and assume a pro-creationist, anti-evolution stance.” They said the syllabus listed two evolution experts who would speak to the class. One was a local parent and scientist who said he had already refused the speaking invitation and was now suing the district; the other was Francis H. C. Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA … [italics added]

Francis H. C. Crick died on July 28, 2004, yet the syllabus for this supposedly “academic” course claimed he would be speaking to a class in 2006. That’s quite a trick.

Given that the leaders of the prudish Christian Right and their organizations go bananas whenever nudity (especially public nudity) is mentioned, this item – “Christian nudists are finding they can reconcile their faith with their lifestyle” – from the Philadelphia Inquirer is bound to prompt an sympathetic nod and a giggle:

Jonathan Palmiter was enjoying a recent Sunday morning stroll through a lush yard full of trees and Spanish moss – naked as was Adam in the Garden of Eden.

 

The 59-year-old retiree, a born-again Christian who lives in an RV park for nudists 40 miles north of Tampa, Fla., is one of a growing number of Christians in North America who have reconciled their faith with their lifestyle, and become more vocal about it in the process. …

 

Nathan Powers, a 50-year-old Texan, begins his day praying naked in his backyard. Nakedness intensifies his dialogue with God, he said. “I feel closer to God,” he said. “It’s an act of humility. It is absolutely spiritual. I am how God made me.”

“I am how God made me.” Would that all those self-righteous fundamentalists and Bible-thumping evangelical Christians could understand that when it comes to gays and lesbians instead of damning them and concocting medically and psychologically dangerous “ex-gay therapies” – which have been known to include brainwashing and electric shock treatments – in order to repress (devolve?) the person “God made.” Some religious leaders would go even further, as noted in an Associated Press story carried by 365gay.com under the title “Judge Slaps Pastor Over Anti-Gay Lawsuit.”

Pastor Grant Storms of the Reformer Ministries in Marrero, Louisiana was one of the speakers at the 2003 “International Conference on Homo-Fascism” held in Milwaukee. The title of the conference alone is “laughable,” but the story gets even better:

Action Wisconsin obtained an audio recording of the conference and publicized remarks that the group said incited violence and hatred. In his speech, Storms said gay rights’ opponents should “start taking it to the streets.” He mimicked gunfire: “Boom, boom, boom, boom. There’s twenty! Ca-ching,” according to a transcript. [link added]

Pastor Storms claimed in a lawsuit that Action Wisconsin defamed him by saying remarks he made at the conference advocated the murder of gays. But Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Patricia McMahon strongly disagreed. She ruled that not only were Action Wisconsin’s interpretations of the remarks reasonable, but that the lawsuit itself lacked merit from the time it was filed in February 2004. The judge “blasted Storms’ lawyer, James Donohoo of Milwaukee, saying he should have known the complaint was a waste of time.” Action Wisconsin was awarded $87,000 in attorneys’ fees.

But Pastor Storms wasn’t done making a fool of himself. He said the claim that he was advocating the murder of gays was “ludicrous and ridiculous” and called the judge “liberal” and “insane.” Still ranting and vowing to appeal the decision, Storms proclaimed, “We’ll win this case and we’ll win the cultural war. We have God on our side.”

The pathology of Pastor Storms’ perverted notion of “God” was the subject of a recent BBC series – “The God Delusion,” “The Root of All Evil,” “The Virus of Faith” – by Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and internationally renown biologist.

Dr. Dawkins has repeatedly warned that U.S. evangelicals represent “Christian fascism” and “an American Taliban” that seeks to emulate and enforce “The God of the Old Testament [who] has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous, and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, racist.” Fear of this curmudgeonly “God” is then embedded into children’s psyche: beware the bogeyman who watches everything you do and just looks for ways to punish you in the most horrific ways.

In the New Testament, Dawkins noted that “St Paul’s nasty, sado-masochistic doctrine of atonement for original sin” is, essentially, psychological and emotional child abuse: “Innocent children are being saddled with demonstrable falsehoods. … It’s time to question the abuse of childhood innocence with superstitious ideas of hellfire and damnation.”

Recall the words of evangelical Christian Nathan Powers in defending the spirituality of his nudist lifestyle: “I am how God made me.” Organized religions’ dogma, rites and rituals are filled with man-made perversions of “God’s” creative wishes, as the Right Reverend John Shelby Spong, a leading spokesman for progressive Christianity, noted in relation to circumcision:

Mutilating the baby instead of teaching each child the arts of good hygiene is bad practice, bad ethics, bad theology and a bad idea. I do not understand how any religious system could ever endorse that. Female circumcision – I prefer to call it “female genital mutilation” – is still practiced in parts of Christian Africa. It too is said to have health benefits. I think not. Both of these practices represent control tactics and guilt laden castration rites born out of the superstition and ignorance of the past. I regard circumcision in both sexes as a barbaric act with no redeeming features. I find it almost laughable that the same religious voices that oppose the use of condoms would now support circumcision as a health practice. [link added]

Rev. Spong’s comments are as astute as his reasoning in the many books and articles he’s published. His latest book is appropriately titled The Sins of Scripture. An excerpt from the review by Publishers Weekly makes the case:

Spong (Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism), a retired Episcopal bishop and prominent spokesperson for liberal Christianity, focuses this book on “terrible texts” which have been used to justify such “sins” as overbreeding, degradation of the environment, sexism, child abuse and anti-Semitism. These biblical texts, according to Spong, are not the incontrovertible Word of God, but flawed human responses to perceived threats. … [italics added]

The megalomaniacal political leaders of the evangelical Christian Right – men like James Dobson and Lou Sheldon, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, Don Wildmon and Tony Perkins – control vast multi-media empires in which truth has long since gone extinct. Just about everything they and the anti-gay, pro-discrimination Christian Right have to say in relation to “perceived threats” is “laughable.” It’s also lethal to the concepts of equality, liberty and justice for all.