Posted on 08/20/2005 12:11:11 AM PDT by Lexinom
This is too stupid to take seriously. It'll be overturned en banc.
(my daughter's Sandy).
No, it's not stupid at all. What is questionable is this notion that atheism is non-religon. Non-religion would be unconciousness, since everyone has something that drives them, a set of beliefs based on which they make decisions. Picture a compass, whose needle can face any direction - north, west-southwest, etc. Atheism is a vector, just like Christianity. It is not the absense of a needle, but rather the positive affirmation of a set of beliefs - just like Christianity.
Do you believe that Darwinian evolution is a proven fact?
...Any less than Theists do.
I appreciate your certainty.
But, what causes you to believe with such enthusiastic certainty that the full panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals will rehear the case?
English words with roots in the Latin, (transliterations), do NOT always conform to the original (Latin) term, but were built from them. They often have linking features, (as in your example), but not identical meanings.
For example take the word 'diversity, which means 'variety', or the respects from which things differ. It's root word is, however, divide, frm the Latin = divido = to divide up, separate into parts).
re·li·gion
Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
Idiom:
get religion Informal
To become religious or devout.
To resolve to end one's immoral behavior.
Main Entry: re·li·gion
Etymology: Middle English religioun, from Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain,
Oh my. This has interesting long range implications.
As both of the current dictionary listings show, the broader, original Latin meaning is still valid today, along with the subset that refer to God.
Mainly because it's so incredibly off the mark. The precedents cited don't really support the court's argument and actually *contradict* rather than support in some spots. For example, the court says:
[W]hether atheism is a “religion” for First Amendment purposes is a somewhat different question than whether its adherents believe in a supreme being, or attend regular devotional services, or have a sacred Scripture. The Supreme Court has said that a religion, for purposes of the First Amendment, is distinct from a “way of life,” even if that way of life is inspired by philosophical beliefs or other secular concerns. See Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 215-16 (1972).Well of course religion is distinct from a "way of life" because, as SCOTUS said in the cited case, religion is much more than a way of life:
[W]e must be careful to determine whether the Amish religious faith and their mode of life are, as they claim, inseparable and interdependent. A way of life, however virtuous and admirable, may not be interposed as a barrier to reasonable state regulation of education if it is based on purely secular considerations; to have the protection of the Religion Clauses, the claims must be rooted in religious belief. Although a determination of what is a "religious" belief or practice entitled to constitutional protection may present a most delicate question, the very concept of ordered liberty precludes allowing every person to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests. Thus, if the Amish asserted their claims because of their subjective evaluation and rejection of the contemporary secular values accepted by the majority, much as Thoreau rejected the social values of his time and isolated himself at Walden Pond, their claims would not rest on a religious basis. Thoreau's choice was philosophical and personal rather than religious, and such belief does not rise to the demands of the Religion Clauses.The court's citing of that passage just doesn't make sense. It certainly doesn't support the court's argument. Like Thoreau, this prisoner's purported beliefs aren't based on religion; they're philosophical and personal, at most. More likely he just concocted a bunch of B.S. in an attempt to get some extra prison playtime.
Elsewhere in the opinion, the court makes reference to other irrelevant cases. For example, there's a job discrimination case involving a person who was fired for having no religion. And another case where some public official wasn't allowed to be sworn into office because he wouldn't go along with some religious creed. I mean, this stuff is nowhere close to being relevant to the matter at hand. The entire decision is just grasping at straws. IMHO
This has been bludgeoned into an unofficial state endorsement of secular humanism, a distinct worldview with man as the highest power.
Supposedly secular humanism is neutral, but the believer knows well that this is not true.
Secular humanism is an aggressive world view that tries to dominate all others. It has been allowed by the secular courts to hide out and be given preferential treatment by the law.
Well, it'll be interesting to see if this ruling levels the playing field, i.e., translates into all "belief systems" be they secular, material or spiritual, competing under the same set of rules.
Okay I said it wrong leave out the "peace" and make it Nobel Prize for Science. Better? Now don't tell me that there is not one of them as I just looked it up on the web and in fact Marie Curie one the first one for women in 1903. But then, you already knew that.
I agree that atheism should be treated as a belief system or, basically, as a 'religion', even without a deity. There are atheists who quietly go about their lives without fervor, and then there are atheists (like many in the ACLU) who have made it their lives' prime directive to face down and defeat other belief systems who have deities. Those 'fundamentalist atheists' most definitely should be treated like a religion, and be kept out of national policy as with any other religion which mandates conformity for all.
Or, does it matter?
That would depend on whether you were really a secularist or not, wouldn't it?
Plato’s Euthyphro and Apology are great illustrations. Socrates advances the argument to Euthyphro that, piety to the gods, who all want conflicting devotions and/or actions from humans, is impossible. (Socrates exposed the pagan esoteric sophistry.)
Likewise, morals are such a construction of idols used by the Left as a rationale for them to demand compliance to their wishes in politics, which most often are a skewed mess of fallacies in logic. Morals are a deceptive replacement for the avoidance of sin. If a person believes in God, it is the conviction of the Holy Spirit that guides them, not the idolatrous vanities of conceited morality constructed by others. Such is the same concerning sectarian dogma and misinterpretations of the Scripture as "God's will."
Plato’s Apology is a drama that portrays the current Left wing frustration with talk radio in America. The people of Athens (the Left) are demanding that Socrates (Rush) be silent. Socrates refuses and the elite of Athens demands the execution of Socrates. The modern Left wants a figurative execution of Rush Limbaugh and others like him (although ‘figurative’ would quickly become tangible, if the Left ever had the unchecked power they desire, just as it was with Socrates). In terms of this ‘figurative execution’, the cancellation of the Michael Savage and Dr. Laura Schlessinger television shows are perfect examples!
Radio is the focus of only one of the five senses. A listener has to really tune in to the subject matter and focus on the content of the ideas - - one reason, among others, why so-called "liberal" talk radio has been and is a failure in the free market.
Television is a combination of sensory focus and it is far easier to distract and misdirect viewer attention from essential topics presented.
Considering that 90% of people tend to be more influenced by the visual, television has become a new religion. It is analogous to Plato’s cave allegory and the pagan Oracle of Delphi. Television as a propaganda tool helps create visual phantasms or fantastical images of the brain.
There are three ways people are influenced according to the school of behavioral psychology - - visual (sight), auditory (sound), kinesthetic (emotion). The kinesthetic or ‘feeling’ is also based on olfactory and tactile sense, just like Pavlov’s salivating dogs.
Visual images and sound portrayed can be used to anchor emotional and/or conditioned responses desired by those that present them, which in the case of television, is the Leftist television media, actors who create phantastical images in film, and Leftist politicians who pander to ‘symbolism over substance’ (like Rush Limbaugh always says about them).
The print media somewhat also uses the visual aspects of that phenomenon. Interactive talk radio requires thought; television does not and relies on this as a means to influence viewers. One should also notice the emphasis on interactive talk radio, something "public radio" is careful to avoid; unlike most commercial talk radio programming. Part of this is the promotion of "public radio." The government funded NPR and other "public radio" non-profit Leftist garbage is not making it. While I am not enamoured with some of the canned music formats of much commercial radio, I am no fan of the Leftist non-profit NPR-like stations that play third world, grass skirt, bone-in-the-nose pagan voodoo music either, with the touchy-feely, multi-cultural, anti-USA Leftist commentary of the hosts. These insipid people actually think they are clever with the sedate, monotone presentations (neuro-linguistic programming).
[Observe when in public places, at your workplace or in other community activities (i.e., restaurants, retail stores, gas stations, etc.) the pervasive presence of some exposure to music or television. This is because many people are actually terrified of being alone with their own thoughts or at the prospect of it (neuro-linguistic programming).Try an experiment, turn radios off at work, request as a customer patronizing private businesses that music or television is unplugged so you can have some personal tranquility with your family, friends, associates, etc. You will find a great resistance, even hostility to such a request. Ask yourself why, then consider what thoughts such people have they are so afraid of, if they are capable of or desire to have any of their own.]
Also part of this is the loss of broadcasting licenses by "public radio" stations to a company that is buying licenses to broadcast Christian programming. This is pushing many Leftist public radio stations off the air. There is more to this issue than most people realize and it is not exclusive to the attack on talk radio. The recent moves to prevent more deregulation of FCC broadcasting and ownership rules in the Congress are the latest Leftist attempts to kill free speech. (President Bush has threatened a veto.)
Like the necromancy of the late Senator Paul Wellstone’s funeral rally, or "funerally" (see the Steven Plaut article, The Rise Of Tikkun Olam Paganism, Arutz Sheva: December 27, 2002, http://www.arutzsheva.com/article.php3?id=1760 in reference to the Wellstone brand of Judaism), the use of Martin Luther King Day, or constantly invoking the "spirit of the ‘60’s," the Left attempts to raise spirits of the dead as a totem for worship. This occurred with respect to Diana, Princess of Wales, following her "tragic" death in 1997.
Consider the seemingly coincidental circumstance that Diana is also the name of a pagan Greek goddess, and idolatry. The figurative deification of Princess Diana and the massive outpouring of public grief are a form of civil worship. The heaping of flowers at Kensington Palace as if it were a shrine, melodramatic eulogizing and the political expressions of how the world should comply with her posthumous intent concerning certain issues is a modern use of idolatry. Royalty magazine, in a special edition, had a large drop quote spanning across two pages: "She needed no royal title… to generate her particular brand of magic." The whole magazine is about pet Leftist political causes mixed in with the pictures and soliloquy about her sainthood. A Golden Calf.
This idolatry also partly played into the modern conflict of pagan vs. Judaic concerning her billionaire playboy lover, Dodi Al Fayed. Although many consider Islamic belief to be of Judaic origin, it is pagan. The crescent symbolizing Islam was also used to symbolize the pagan goddesses (Diana, Isis, etc.) and used by modern neo-pagan nut cases as an icon. The use of the bedrock at the Dome of the Rock and the meteorite at the Kaaba as an excuse to label it an Islamic holy site, is idolatry. The three goddesses, daughters of Allah, are also contrary to the idea that Muslim faith is monotheistic.
Saddam Hussein and the Socialist Ba'ath Party are cult figures. This is a great part of the reason the Left is so frantic and upset by Western military activities in the Middle East. Hussein and his two deceased sons were not at all Muslim. They were considered to be secular political figures, when actually they were extensions of ancient pagan Chaldean and Babylonian cults. They had more than just a similitude to the Amalekite Pharaohs of ancient Egypt that arose after the fall of the Eighteenth Dynasty in the Hyksos invasion. There is a historical relationship to the book of Exodus in the Judaic Bible, where Moses figures most prominently, and a relationship to the current conflict in Israel. Saddam funded Palestinian terror. The pagan Roman occupation created the mythically perceived state of "Palestine" to begin with, specifically disenfranchising the Jews. A Golden Calf.
The Amalekites were nomadic plunderers who also plagued the Hebrews during the forty years of wandering the wilderness described in the Judaic Bible. They were also the progenitors of modern day "Palestinians." (Also, consider the ancillary fact that Yasser Arafat was actually an Egyptian by birth.) The occupation of Egypt after the Alexandrian invasion by the Ptolemaic Dynasties through the Roman invasion and occupation of Egypt (where the Queen Cleopatra and Marc Antony, subjects of more Shakespearean tragedy, and legend for their affair in the dire displeasure of the Roman Emperor) are all concretely connected to the historical Pagan conflicts with the Judaic (Judaic includes Christians).
As U.S. Senator, and Democrat presidential primary candidate, Joseph Lieberman has pointed out - - if the Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein and his two maniacal sons would still be in power, murdering, raping and plundering. Howard Dean had in effect, run on a platform of having Saddam Hussein as his running mate, and so had that other loser Sen. John Kerry.
As well, the opposition by the Leftists to Western military operations in Afghanistan, something once considered previously a subject of serious inquiry by Left leaning feminist groups because of concern for the treatment of women under the Taliban, has been displaced by the neo-pagan New Age mysticism and the 1960s' psychedelic drug culture permeating the political Left. A great source for lot of opium and hashish coming into the West is and/or was from Afghanistan. A Golden Calf.
Think of the Hashashins, from whom we get the English word ‘assassin.’ Who were they? Wondering bands of robbers stoned on hashish, plundering, raping and murdering their way across the desert. Osama Bin Laden and his groups of thugs are just like them, just in the same way Saddam Hussein and his murderous sons roamed around in Iraq. The Taliban in Afghanistan also fit this model quite neatly. Remember the Luxor, Egypt massacre of Western Tourists by terrorists? Is the recent rash of Islamic beheadings ritual murder? Is Islamic terrorism really a murder cult like the Kali cult of Hindu Thuggees?
There is a clear connection between modern neo-paganism and ancient paganism related to Islamic conflict with the Judaic roots of Christendom. A focus on how this is manifested in a modern sense only requires a look at pop-culture icons in entertainment, sports "heroes," and attempts by the Left to use a pseudo-Christian sense of pagan moralistic idolatry to demonize political opposition. I present to you the attack on U.S. Senator Rick Santorum for his sacriligious comments on sodomy as a useful example. A Sacred Cow.
Another example is Michael Jackson. With the undying support of his "fans" (or fanatics) in the face of his more than questionable activities concerning the abuse of children, they still hold him up as an idol. Jackson, both in his family life as a child and his adult life, is a modern extension of pedagogical pagan pedophilia of previous ages in ancient civilizations. Look at the macabre pagan elements of Jackson's video, Thriller.
Michael Jackson had Nation of Islam thugs as bodyguards escorting him after a court appearance through the throngs of frenzied supporters. Is Jackson their new pharaoh? Nation of Islam is a militant racist cult, that is neither Muslim or based on any traditional religious doctrine. Their leaders, Louis Farrakhan (the numerologist) and Kahlid Abdul Mohammed, are known Jew haters. They also support many illogical and socially subversive Leftist political activities intent on tearing down the structures of Modern Western Civilization and capitalism.
Astrology is another blatant example of primitive pagan idolatry and fantasy with planets of the solar system assigned the names of pagan gods, stars grouped as fantastical images of mythical legend, whereby the fate of a person is purportedly revealed. The astrologers are revered as prophets by psychotic, neurotic adherents in frequent fanatical devotion to any musings these charlatans utter.
Images of distant stars being most often many centuries and millenniums old, are no things corporeal. The actual objects have ceased to exist as perceived and are phantasms, mere ghosts of what once was long ago. (Divination through spirits of the dead is necromancy.)
Attempting divination by optical illusions emanated from long past objects, avoiding your actual self-determined future repeatedly disregarded in favor of musings by a mystical witch doctor is neurotic, idolatrous and fanatical. Astrology is simply an epic lunatic fantasy, and saying so is the ultimate blasphemy for such pagan religionists.
The idea of fate is rooted in the fantasy that some imaginary, ethereal forces determine the course of human events. This is contrary to the ideas that God allows free will to choose or reject Salvation, and that God alone reveals prophecy (a.k.a. Providence). It is also an attempt to counterfeit and replace those ideas, where pantheons of fantasies are the medium of infinitization and not a singular limitless Creator.
Astrology arises from the pagan Chaldean cults of Babylon. We now know Babylon as Iraq. The Tigris-Euphrates Valley is the cradle of human civilization and has never known freedom in all of history. Is it coincidence? Is it coincidence the Neo-Pagan, New Age mystery cults of Leftist politics are so animated in their opposition to bringing freedom and the Judaic principles of justice to Iraq? Is it coincidence that many domestic social issues are being driven by cultic Leftist advocacy of unnatural, phantasmagoric perversity? Is it coincidence that they have such a seething hatred of George W. Bush?
It is no coincidence Islamic pagans hate Israel, Jews, Christians and Western Civilization. The entire basis of Western Civilization is Mosaic Law, something both the Neo-Pagan Left and the pagan Islamic thugs cannot abide and wish to destroy.
The proliferation of psychics, seers, soothsayers, healers, gurus, UFO cults, conspiracy cults, witches, etc., etc., ad nauseum, is a social psychosis, an occulted (or masked) promotion of Leftist propaganda, a social psychosis of Cultural Marxism (that I have identified in the Drama Complex). [See: Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s, http://www.bu.edu/arion/paglia_cults00.htm. Camille Paglia perfectly describes in section 9, the magazine I now call Psychopathy Today...]
A great source of much anecdotal evidence for all of the things I previously mentioned and others I will elaborate on later, can be found in the May/June, 2003 issue of Psychology Today. The publication is strictly a political propaganda rag, not at all applicable to a secular study of psychological science, but filled with esoteric neo-pagan New Age drivel from the psychedelic 1960's, idolatries, advertisements for religious cults and drugs, manic sex perverts, inductive argument, and outright fallacies when either put to the testing of truth tables in prepositional logic or tested by categorical logic - - all of it masked by the assumption it is somehow scientific because of the name on the cover. Pavlov's salivating dogs... Fantasy and phantasms... The social psychosis of the Drama Complex illustrated in almost every detail.
Marxism and the numerous forms of Cultural Marxism are a religion, a collection of cults. In many cases they worship a dead Karl Marx like some (and I stress some) Christians worship a dead Jesus, and not a living God. This is no more apparent than in the practice of enshrinement and regular grooming of Lenin’s corpse in the former Soviet Union, the use of Princess Diana, Martin Luther King Jr. and other dead people. Bovine excrement of Sacred Cows.
New Age induces a benevolent relaxation that may be disabling in the face of aggression. In a world of terrorism, New Agers can only take to the hills and leave their scriptures in jars at Esalen.(Camille Paglia, Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s, http://www.bu.edu/arion/paglia_cults00.htm)
The parallel between the ACLU attack on the public display of the Ten Commandments, the removal of the Ten Commandment monument in the Alabama Supreme Court and the Taliban blowing up ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan are most notable comparisons in this respect. It is just like the legal attack on the United States’ Pledge of Allegiance, the demand for removal of a cross on the seal of the city of Los Angeles while ignoring the presence of the pagan goddess depicted next to it.
Contemplate the religious fervor associated with the pro-abortion advocacy. The societal practice of abortion is ritual mass murder upon the altars of conceit dedicated to idolatrous vanities, a collective human sacrifice before pagan idols. It has a similitude to the Teutonic paganism of Adolph Hitler (whose idolatry was the idea of a "master race"). In effect these genocides were/are a mass human sacrifice to those pagan idols. The abortionists, like the National Socialists, incinerate the remains of their victims.
Another source of amazement is the concept of those who hold candlelight vigils (yet another example of religious ceremony) for heinous murderers about to be executed, a large number of whom think it is acceptable to murder an unborn child without the benefit of a trial. Is the "right to life" of one responsible for much murder and mayhem more important than that of a truly innocent unborn child?
Perhaps we should call capital punishment "post-natal abortion" and identify abortion as a "pre-natal death sentence" or "pre-natal summary execution." This idolatry of "reproductive freedom" is my economic, environmental and social tyranny.
But since we are all properly obeying * the modern interpretation * of the First Amendment... Good or bad isn’t the question. Good, bad, right, wrong, evil, moral: all of these are purely religious. Morality and all of its associated concepts are based on the belief that some higher power is defining the correctness of human behavior.
* The First Amendment says that Government must exorcise all traces of religion and theism from itself. * (The "modern interpretation.") Therefore, the Government should never consider issues of morality and of right and wrong. Excuse the sarcasm...
Therefore, it becomes a question of benefits versus costs, not a question of right and wrong. Fetus killing has its benefits to society, especially if you like to sleep late on Saturday. However, it also has its costs as well. Society (by which I mean, whoever manages to seize power) needs to evaluate these costs and decide accordingly.
The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control indicate that while 56 percent of all women who obtained legal abortions were white, the abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 per year) for black women was 2.9 times that of white women. For every thousand black women, 32 have abortions, as compared with 11 for every thousand white women. Likewise with numbers of abortions per 1,000 births: The abortions/births ratio for white women was 184 abortions per 1,000 live births; for black women, it was 543 abortions per 1,000 births. This means that abortion ratios for black women were 2.8 times greater than for white women. Sadly, black women were also more likely to obtain riskier abortions late in their pregnancies, while white women were significantly more likely than black women to obtain abortions before 16 weeks.
While these data most likely reflect inequality in access to health care, data also indicates that the racial disparities in abortion rates have increased steadily since 1989. In some localities, including Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland, and Georgia, more than half of all abortions are performed on black women. Black women in New York City and in the entire state of New Jersey receive more than 47 percent of all abortions performed there. (Racist Hitlerian eugenics?)
Comparisons by race are not allowed in California, because the state – unlike any other state – refuses to comply with requirements to report statistics on abortion.
[Pagan gods of secrecy and silence? Egyptians worshipped Harpocrates, the god of silence; for which reason he is always pictured holding a finger on his mouth. Athenians had a statue of brass, which they bowed to; a figure made without a tongue, to declare secrecy thereby. The Romans had a goddess of silence called Angerona, which is pictured like Harpocrates, holding her finger on her mouth, in token of secrecy.]
California reporting requirements, enacted in 1967, is part of a larger abortion law entitled as the Therapeutic Abortion Act. Yet, even with the threat of losing federal funds, California has consistently refused to report its abortion data. Michael Quinn, once chief of California’s office for health information, recently quoted in a Catholic newspaper account says, "California does not actively collect abortion statistics because they are highly sensitive and highly political." Why the resistance to Ward Connerly's California Racial Privacy Initiative, Proposition 54, which prohibits racial profiling by the state?
The idolatry of perversion is another totem of the Left. Pornography is an idolatry of perversion. Much of television, movies, and the literary culture of the Leftist elite in print, are nothing more than a cleverly masked promotion of their Marxist cult (that is to say, masked much like actors of ancient Greek drama). Malakhim Raoth.
Gay advocates of "domestic partnerships" are in effect saying to other homosexuals, that it is only acceptable to be "gay" as long as other homosexuals conform to their hypocritical standard of monogamy. A Golden Calf.
The general public discussion about marriage, homosexuality and "domestic partners" does not address the central issue: monogamy. Monogamy is a sectarian establishment of religion in the law and violates the First Amendment’s prohibition "regarding an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Notice how so many evade any mention of polygamy; it is their undoing!
To mandate an institution of homosexual marriage in a monogamous form requires some moralistic meandering to justify it and prohibit any form of polygamy. Upon what basis, if we are to assume it is discriminatory to disallow homosexuals to "marry," can there be a prohibition of the varying forms of polygamy?
"What gay ideologues, inflated like pink balloons with poststructuralist hot air, can’t admit, of course, is that heterosexuality is nature’s norm, enforced by powerful hormonal cues at puberty. In the past decade, one shoddy book after another, rapturously applauded by p.c. reviewers, has exaggerated the incidence of homosexuality in the animal world and, without due regard for reproductive adaptations caused by environmental changes, toxins or population pressure, reductively interpreted bonding or hierarchical behavior as gay in the human sense."Camille Paglia, professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
It is imperative that a secular, biological basis for marriage is established. This makes the religious, hypocritical and illogical premise of monogamous homosexual marriage null and void. If we are to have ‘Separation of Church and State', as Leftists frequently demand; it should be applied with consistent enforcement and not be selectively based on religious prejudice or the special interest political extortionist fallacies in logic.
It was landmark U.S. Supreme Court precedent Reynolds v. United States in 1878 that made "separation of church and state" a dubiously legitimate point of case law, but more importantly; it confirmed the Constitutionality in statutory regulation of marriage practices. Congress, state legislatures and public referenda have statutorily determined polygamous, pederast, homosexual, and incestuous marriages are unlawful. No Constitutional Amendment restricting marriage is required to regulate "practice" according to the Reynolds decision.
Marriage is a religious "rite," not a civil "right;" a secular standard of human reproductive biology united with the Judaic Adam and Eve model of monogamy in creationist belief. Two homosexuals cannot be "monogamous" because the word denotes a biological procreation they are not capable of together. Human reproductive biology is an obvious secular standard.
"Who is he that is not of woman borne?" (Macbeth)
All adults have privilege to marry one consenting adult of opposite gender; therefore, Fourteenth Amendment "equal protection" argument about "privileges and immunities" for homosexual marriage is invalid. Driving, marriage, legal and medical practices are not enumerated rights; they are privileged practices that require statutory license.
Nothing that requires a license is a right. Force the Left to eat their own "separation of church and state" dung for a change, demand logically consistent standards:
Homosexual monogamy advocates are a cult of perversion seeking ceremonious sanctification of preternatural prurient preferences for voluntary deviancy with anatomical function.
It is not a logical basis to claim societal privileges; it is religiously psychotic. Homosexual monogamy advocates are desperately pursuing some esoteric absolution to justify their guilt-ridden egos through ceremonious sanctification in marriage. (Is Freudian psychoanalytic theory of sexual stages in psychological development more accurate than accredited?) This has no secular standard; it is an idolatrous fetish pursued with religious fervor, a golden calf. Perhaps advocates of homosexual monogamy (civil unions) could conclave to enshrine a new phantasmal state religion and consecrate Michael Jackson as its first pope…
Today, "morals" are defined by a quasi-religious pagan philosophy based on esoteric hobgoblins. A greater number of "atheists" and "pagans" adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a false Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of "sin," but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy. They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of "avoiding sin" with "morals."
Is dissatisfaction with inevitable mortality driving ersatz secularists and religious heretics to seek connection with something Eternal through a Universal Truth by constructing an idol out of their own vanity or conceit they label as morality? Is this a self-deceptive replacement of avoiding sin with a synthetic secular morality?
“Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices...”[Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 8 Otto 145, 24 L. Ed. 244 (1878).]
See also: Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. United States, 136 U.S. 1, 10 S.Ct. 792, 34 L. Ed. 478 (1890). Revised as 140 U.S. 665, 11 S.Ct. 884, 35 L. Ed. 592 (1891).
Now that's what I call IRONY!
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