"Christian Values"

Why is it that any value held by people who happen to be -- or call themselves -- Christian suddenly gets to be a "Christian Value?"

Why do we let them get away with hitching whatever their personal wagons to Jesus' star?

The anti-gay bigotry that so frequently gets held up as a Christian value certainly isn't. You can find no support for it in the words of Christ. In the Old testament we have Leviticus, but that's not Christian, that's pre-Christian. The whole point of Christianity is that Christ trumps Leviticus, and whatever else came before him. Without that, we're in an off-shoot of Judaism. In the new testament, we have -- as Sean Kelly pointed out for us back in the "Bible & Gays" thread -- Paul's letter to the Romans. So, that's not a Christian value, it's a "Paulist" value.

Obviously this bigotry is a value held quite dearly by many Christians, and especially Christian clergymen... But so what? Listen, my late father was the last Episcopalian Arch-Deacon of the Diocese of New Bedford, and whil he was, he smoked a pipe. That doesn't make pipe-smoking an Episcopalian value.

I wrote yesterday about the need to go after the Republicans and start defining them, and this is one of the key areas. We have to make a concerted effort to make every public reference to this kind of crap as "Un-Christian Values."

Lies I'm Tired Of....

"File Sharing is costing the entertainment industry huge amounts of money."

No. File sharing has cost no one a siingle red cent. Businessmen will tell you that something which causes them not to make as much as they expected to "costs" them the difference between the reality and expectation. It doesn't. Not a penny, not a farthing, not a glotnik gets removed from their pockets. If you make money, you make money. If you make less than you want to, join the crowd. But calling a smaller-than-expected gain a loss is a big, fat, three-wheeled lie, and it's time it got pointed out.

"America is safer with Saddam Hussein removed from power."

No. he was contained, he was impoverished. Removing him from power is good. It doesn't make us safer, and it should have been done in a way that increased our standing in the world. David Brin has written a great piece on this:

http://www.davidbrin.com/neocons.html

"Republicans are more fiscally responsible than democrats."

Not lately. Bush loves to point at Kerry and chant "Tax and Spend." His own plan, though, is "Don't Tax, but Spend Anyway." Where do the Republicans think that money is coming from?

"Republicans want to get the government off of peoples' backs."

No. Republicans want to get the government onto that small piece of peoples' backs not covered by the huge corporations that are being allowed on our backs by the government, which should be reigning them in, getting off their backs.

"Liberal Media Bias"

Don't even get me started. The news media is owned by gigantic mega-corporations, each and every one of which stands to profit from the neoconservative agenda.

There are more, but save them for another day. They depress me.