Eulogy For My Sister-in-Law

My sister-in-law died this week.  I miss her, but for her sake, I'm glad it's over.  Life had nothing left to offer her but suffering.  She was a deeply religious person, even to her own detriment.  Faith in skydaddy to heal her caused her to walk around for years with cancer festering in her, convinced that skydaddy had removed it.  I could go on forever about that, but it only makes me mad and at this point, anger serves no useful purpose. 

I went to visit her one day recently while she was in the hospital.  Her bible was open on her bedside tray, and she had it arranged in a way that anyone who came into the room had to see it.  I make note of this because she had it open to the only passage in the whole book that I find worthwhile.  I knew what she was trying to tell everyone, and for once I didn't want to roll my eyes and thing "there she goes with that 'the bible says' business again."  She had it open to Ecclesiastes 3.  I do want to qualify my position that it's probably the only useful passage in the whole book - only the first eight verses are really of any benefit.  The rest is nattering about why we need skydaddy in our lives.  Here it is for anyone who hasn't read it.  

Ecclesiastes 3

 ¹To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

 ²A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

 ³A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

 ⁴A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

 ⁵A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

 ⁶A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

 ⁷A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

 ⁸A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

I guess I have always found this particular passage worthwhile because it holds true.  All of these things have their proper time and place.  I don't give skydaddy any credit at all for it, however.  It's just the natural order of things. When a loved one has his/her time to die, we have our time to weep.  In that time to weep, we tend to have a time to embrace and love our living loved ones.  We get through that and have our time to laugh and dance again, and somewhere inside all of us, a little part of the one we lost lives on through us - not through some hope of Disney in the Clouds, but through that part of us that the dearly departed touched.

Fundy Implosion

Notice how all but one of the biblical definitions are from Paul?  At least the dude on the card takes issue with the dictionary definition.  I take that to mean he recognizes that christians are NOT decent, civilized or presentable persons.  

Q.  What's more fun that aggravating fundies in debates?

A.  Watching the fundies implode when they can't agree on who is a "true Christian." 

In a recent discussion on a Facebook page, I had the pleasure of watching fundies implode in such a manner.  The original topic of the discussions was politics - liberals vs. conservatives.  The gist of it was that the conservatives were too busy calling the liberals "libtard", but I'll write more about that in another blog.  True to form, someone from the conservative side interjected religion into politics.  From there, it devolved quickly.  A whole lot of who is christian vs. who is not really christian, but the true gem was a christian trying to tell a Jewish guy what is or isn't Judaism.  In fact, he got outright beligerent and insulting about it, name calling and all that stuff. 

While I was very amused with the fundy implosion, particularly the christian telling the Jewish guy he doesn't know anything about Judaism, it brings home why the church and the state should always be separate entities.  Granted, I'd just as soon the church go away, but until it does, it needs to be separate from the state.  The assclown who wanted to argue with the Jewish guy had also argued with me about the "wall of separation" phrase.  Any of us who have argued on behalf of that wall have heard the good ol' "that's not part of the Constitution" or "that's not what the Founding Fathers intended" bullshit, and he was quick to fart out some of it himself.  I posed the question of which church should commingle with the state.  I pose this question everytime a fundy wants to commingle the church and state.  I generally get the "we're a Christian nation" response, or something related to it.  Ok, what branch of Christianity.  Christians cannot agree on who has it right.  Once you ask that question, sit back and watch the fireworks show.  They cannot agree on who has it right and they get downright militant about it.  They're all for the commingling, but they want their brand of christianity to be the one in charge.  Trying to get them to admit to that is like herding cats, though.  Instead of coming right out with it, they instead stick with the generic term christianity and just proclaim all others to not be true christians.  Then they get into the pissing match with what a true christian does and doesn't do.  They must not have read their own instruction manual.  According to their instruction manual, aka the bible, all one has to do is believe.  That's it.  And to think they actually want a hand in running the government. 

The fundies and their screaming about who is really a christian reminds me of the old "I know you are but what am I" bit that we did as children to deflect name-calling.  Only, in this situation, it's adults who should have outgrew it long ago sniping "I know I am but what are you."  Or, in the words of Marguerite Perrin:  THEY'RE NOT CHRISTIAN!

Redefining Marriage?

A right-winger recently advised me that Republicans and conservative christians are against gay marriage not to oppress gays and not for religious reasons, but...wait for it...get this...to keep the government from "redefining marriage." My response?  You gotta be shittin' me?!  So where does all of the "protect marriage" verbiage come from?  Oh, wait, I know.  They are protecting it from government redefinition. Gotcha.  Like a dog turd on my shoe.  You want the government to define marriage to keep the government from defining marriage.  

Arkansas, with all of our knuckle-draggers, amended the state Constitution to have an official government definition of marriage - one man, one woman.  I guess the polygamists are shit outta luck here, also.  The Arkansas legislature - under Hucklebee - enacted the Covenant Marriage.  Pretty much the only way you can get out of a Covenant Marriage is for your spouse to repeatedly beat you to near death.  I exaggerate a bit, but only a bit.  I think you can get out of it after the second beating or possibly the fifth adulterous affair - the spouse's, not yours; you can't fuck around and then claim adultery to get out of the marriage.  Not all marriages are Covenant Marriages.  Some are the good ol' regular get the license, get hitched, and if it doesn't work, get lost variety.  In fact, most are of that sort; but the county clerk is required to ask if you want a Covenant Marriage when you apply for the license.  I also wonder, but have no knowledge one way or the other, if preachers encourage/instruct/demand that their sheep get the Covenant license.  Seems like a bit of duress there to me.  What are you going to do, admit that the marriage might not work and you want an out, or do the whole newlywed la-la we'll be together forever head-in-the-sand and get the Covenant Marriage License only to find out that you married a jackass and now your stuck?  I guess that's one way to stop perpetual wedders - those folks who won't simply shack up for a bit, they have to get married.  Then, six months later when the sex isn't quite as good, they're ready to bail, so they get divorced, find someone else, and do it again.  Or already have your new squeeze lined up before you bail on this one, but I'm wondering off topic.  

Marriage and the definition thereof is a governmental thing.  It goes back to the hunter-gatherer civilizations, and became more so as furthered our civilizations.  The early marriages needed the approval of the tribal elders. Marriage has always been a way to define property rights.  Somewhere along the way, some asshole decided to interject religion into the equation and things haven't been right since.  

Yeah, buddy.  Let's enact laws defining marriage to keep the government from defining/redefining marriage.  I'll give the devil his due, though.  The son of a bitch found a creative way to try to make the argument without blathering skydaddy in the process.