W. Kamau Bell (Totally Biased)

It’s truly appalling, what I’d be willing to give or do, to hear Akin actually answer this question. Seriously.

I also have an add-on question.

If a woman’s body stops her from conceiving from rape, then why did so many men in the bible steal virgins to “take as their wife”, if their raping them repeatedly wasn’t going to beget them children?

John Oliver (NY Stand Up Show)

I LOVE this line. It does, in a nutshell, hone in on what pisses me off about people who thank god for any achievement, particularly when they don’t give just as much thanks to the real people who helped make it happen. I find that level of arrogance astounding, to behave as if your faith should be treated as more important than the contributions of those who got you to where you are.

(via clevertitania)

No. Just no.

I’m not a religious person, but if you ever watch any of his interviews or post game conferences, he does thank God for allowing him, as an individual, to play the game, whether it was good or bad. And he does point out the accomplishments of his other teammates and thanks them as well, something he did at the ESPY Awards this past summer.

To him, his faith is as real as an offensive lineman playing the game with him, so for you to say it’s not as important, that’s something you believe in and it’s your opinion. But it’s not arrogance. If he went around and shunned everyone who didn’t have the same faith as him, then it would be arrogant. But he’s seems to be accepting of everyone, no matter what they think, which is clearly something you struggle with.

(via the-new-york-city-dreamer)

I don’t suppose you noted that this is a quote? I don’t watch sports. But clearly John Oliver does, so if you disagree with his assessment of Tebow’s behavior I suggest you take it up with him. My comment was about the type of behavior he assigned to Tebow, I made no claim that he doesn’t go around thanking god more than his offensive line.

And for your edification, voicing my disapproval about a behavior I abhor, is not shunning someone. Shunning means to persistently avoid, ignore, or reject someone. The only thing I reject is how people use their religion as an excuse to crap on others. And in my entire life I’ve made less than 5 individual comments about Tim Tebow specifically, since my lack of give-a-shit about sports is high, so ‘persistent’ would be the wrong word entirely.

But considering Tebow supports organizations which actively seek to deny gay rights and try to interfere with women’s reproductive rights, like Focus on the Family, I’d say he’s doing plenty of shunning in his life. So I’d suggest you use a little more context next time you try to chastise someone for posting a quote.

(via the-new-york-city-dreamer)

John Oliver (NY Stand Up Show)

I LOVE this line. It does, in a nutshell, hone in on what pisses me off about people who thank god for any achievement, particularly when they don’t give just as much thanks to the real people who helped make it happen. I find that level of arrogance astounding, to behave as if your faith should be treated as more important than the contributions of those who got you to where you are.

Logically I cannot disagree with ANY thing John said during this segment. He’s absolutely right on every point.

But every time I hear Cathy go on about the “arrogance” of this nation, in trying to recreate the definition of marriage, I realize that what I’m pissed about has nothing to do with his position on gay marriage. What I’m pissed about is the arrogance of Cathy thinking his religion invented marriage and gets to define it for everyone. Because that level of hubris is everything that is wrong with modern Christianity.

I’m so tired of this notion that, in order to give someone their right to religion we have to allow that religion to infest the lives of people OUTSIDE the religion. While John has a point about Cathy having a First Amendment right to speak his opinion, Cathy was also speaking in support of bashing of the First Amendment rights of others. He’s advocating a federal policy which supports HIS religion’s views of marriage over the rest of us, and he’s advocating a policy which BOTH contradicts the will of the people (over 50% now support gay marriage) and which creates a second-class citizenry. He’s challenging the First Amendment rights of everyone else in the country by stating that his religion’s position should be the national policy - that his religion should have dominion over the lives of non-believers.

John is right - this whole thing was blown to silly depths. But Cathy’s statement demonstrates a much bigger problem than just one conservative man’s views of the world. In our effort to pander to the religions of others, and give them every right to worship in whatever way they choose (even if it involves molesting women as they visit Planned Parenthood clinics or preventing a class of citizens from having equal rights of marriage and protection), we are trampling on the First Amendment rights of the rest of us.

This is just another part of the same beast that led Congress to hear male religious figures debating a health care bill over whether employers are required to provide preventative health care to women. Talk about fucking arrogant. Their religious rights were treated as more important than the health care rights of more than half this country’s population.

I will scream bloody murder to give anyone in this country the right to worship and believe whatever they want, but I am not going to sit quietly while they scream bloody murder that I don’t have as equal a right to be free of their religion. Cathy didn’t say he doesn’t like gay marriage, he said that we - as a nation - were arrogant for daring to not consider his religion’s views when we choose whether or not to legally recognize those marriages. That should’ve come back to bite him in the ass, and it has. There’s a reason the restaurant says they’re staying out of this conversation from now on - they know that history will show they were on the wrong end of it.

But I don’t like the idea of minimizing this into Cathy just speaking his mind - pathetic an opinion though it may be - just like I don’t like the argument that preventing Westboro Baptists from protesting the funerals of soldiers is taking away their right to government protest. It’s not. Those mourners have a right to grieve in their way, and practice their own religious beliefs at their relative’s funerals, without interference of another person’s religion.

In fact, I say you can give them the right to protest, but only if they are specifically banned from ANY religious references what-so-ever. So as long as their protest in no way involves any religion’s text, speech or imagery, nor any complaints about morality which is primarily from the bible (i.e. anything being called a “sin”), then they can protest to their heart’s content.

But they should NOT be able to say that those soldiers died because the U.S. allows gays to be what they are, and God says that’s bad. They can protest to their heart’s content, but no signs that say “God Bless IEDs.” Because that’s not expressing your own religious beliefs, it’s slapping other people around with them. And the First Amendment is meant to protect us from such behavior.

John’s right - gay marriage will happen. And that is something to take solace in. It doesn’t matter how much they whine and moan, it’s going to happen,and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. But in the mean time, I think it’s time we made some points about just where the line is drawn on believers. Because for years you’ve been drawing the line on non-believers, telling us just how far we’re allowed to go before we being too offensive to them. It’s time what offends the rest of us was taken into consider.