March 2, 2004 by s.z.

Honey, I Crucified the Kids [I lost a better, longer version of this post (two hours of effort, gone just like that!), so maybe God is telling me to stop mocking Mel Gibson's movie.  Or not.  I haven't been hit by lightning yet, so I'll try again.] Our friend Doug Giles (see below) not only alerted us to the plight of those Christians being fed to lions for saying grace, but he also answered critics who claimed that The Passion of the Christ was too violent. This is too funny.  First of all the film is about a crucifixion, it’s not about a Wal-Mart Assistant Manager’s Day sale.  It’s supposed to be bloody, Captain Not-so-Obvious.  You know, bloody and focused on gore, like how the Bible spends two hours telling you about the gobs of flesh being pulled away by the scourging, includes slo-mo effects when each lash lands, and how the crow pecks out the thief's eye.   But you know, I think I did see some of that kind of thing at the last Walmart Assitant Manager's Day Sale I attended. Doug says that the same people who object to the violence in Mel's movie have no problem with the gore in films like Screamor Dracula.  And these morons who laugh and eat popcorn while watching meaningless death are now offended at Gibson’s meaningful, historically accurate portrayal of Jesus’ scourging and crucifixion? Well, that's one of the points those film critic morons make -- that the violence in most of movies Doug cites is cartoonish and fakey, while the violence in The Passion is realistic and unremitting.  But even though the liberal jerks whom Doug is chastising with his column are probably spree killers themselves when they aren't knocking religious films, they don't suggest taking children to Kill Bill.  OrThe Passion (which Roger Ebert called "the most violent film I have ever seen," and suggested that "if it had been anyone other than Jesus up on that cross, I have a feeling that NC-17 would have been automatic.") Even religious leaders (every single one I read about) indicated that the violence would obscure any religious message that children under 14 or so could take from this movie.  Mel Gibson said: "I think we've gotten too used to seeing pretty crosses on the wall, and we forget what really happened. We know Jesus suffered and died, but we don't really think about what it all means. Hey, I didn't realize it either when I was growing up. The full horror of what Jesus suffered for our redemption didn't really strike me.  While this would seem to indicate that he believes that kids should see his film so they can realize that full horror of Jesus's suffering, he has recommended not bringing pre-teens to it. Fine, you say -- but the Rapture is approaching, your kids are brats, and you want them scared Christian.  What are you going to do? Reader David has a brilliant suggestion: Mel could make some child appropriate sequels!  (Well, prequels really, because there's not much further you can take the Jesus story, if you rely on the gospels.) We'll get back to that idea in a minute, but first let's explain the precedent for such a Christian kiddy series. As you know, the Left Behind book series is about how Buck, a decent but unbelieving journalist, is not raptured with everybody else on his airplane (the others just disappear, leaving their apparel and jewelry behind, because aparently heaven is clothing optional). And then Buck spends the next 25 books or so reading the Bible and fighting the antiChrist, who turns out to be a really snotty U.N official. Anyway, these books, while full of eschatology, scriptural citations, and improving sentiment, are too intensive and complex for children.  So, Lahaye/Jenkins/et al. have brought us Left Behind: The Kids (which is currently up to  volume 36), which makes the anti-Christ accessible to younger readers. With over 10 million copies sold in the series, Left Behind: The Kids is a favorite of readers ages 10-14. Each book follows a group of teens who were "left behind" when other friends and family members were taken to heaven by God in the Rapture. All they have left is their friendship and their growing faith in Jesus Christ. Yes, these are the bad teens, the ones who talked back to their Sunday School teacher and refused to believe that the earth was created in six days.  So, Jesus left them home alone.  (I wonder if he was relaxing in heaven, hanging out with the Flanderses, when he suddenly realized with horror, "Oh, no, I forgot Judd "The Runaway", Vicki "The Rebel", Lionel "The Liar", and Ryan "The Skeptic"!) In any case, since Left Behind: The Kids seems to be a popular way to evangelize kids while also entertaining them with scary apocalyptic themes and mythology, I think that David's idea for a series of kids movies using The Passion trademark is both timely and potentially lucrative. David suggests for the first one: Baby Jesus's Day OutI think the poster should feature a baby crawling on water, with a shark fin or some other potential danger in the background. Joe Pesci needs work, people! I love it!  My ideas for the series: Three Wise Men and a BabyMary and Joseph have to flee to Egypt, and they leave the young Christ child with the magi -- who aren't used to warming bottles, changing diapers, or dealing with the other hilarious aspects of baby care.  Heartwarming wackiness ensues. The Karate Christ A preteen Jesus visits the temple with his parents, and when they forget to take him home with them, he is taught Judaic law and martial arts by a wise yet inscrutable rabbi.  The film's climax is an all-star scripture chase, where Jesus defeats his archrival, the current champ and big bully, Caiaphas.  Jesus the Teen-Age Messiah The story of a young man who learns that his real father is God, and begins to control his supernatural powers.  You'll laugh in reverential glee when he turns the water into wine at his mother's big bridge club party!  And, for the late teen to twentysomething crowd, David proposes: Jesus's Eleven Jesus and his 11 Apostles try and knock over a Vegas casino owned by Judas.  Jesus spends most of his time kicking out the cashiers (that is, moneychangers) and questioning Siegfried's sexuality. So, with all the money Mel is raking in, we're sure he'll be looking for new projects.  We ask him to consider ours.  Thank you.  10:01:17 AM

Young Conservatives Lecture Us On Gay Marriage and Stuff There were some great comments to the "Real Victims" item from a couple of days ago (the one discussing the column TownHall column where Doug Giles wrote, "Christians know what Jews go through regarding persecution," and noted how Hollywood, the media and educational "elites", and the secular left all "trash" Christians whenever said martyrs "pray over their lunch at the Olive Garden."  Anyway, I suggest you read all of the comments, some funny, some serious.  The one by glenstonecottage particularly tickled my funny bone because I'd just read the item being parodied a couple of days before at the domain of Young Conservatives; somebody had emailed it to the editor, and he wanted to share it with us all. You might have already read it; it's been around since April of last year.  It's the story about the military wife who tells off the women in the next booth (they are badmouthing President Bush, opining we'll never find any WMDs, and dissing the "professional baby killers we call a military").  You can also read it at Snopes.  Since the horrible women in the next booth use rhetoric similar to that employed by the hippies in the 70's version of Jack Webb's Dragnet, it's no wonder that people wondered if the piece, which now appears all over the internet, was genuine.  Snopes indicates that the item originally appeared at the Washington Dispatch, and the author is Lori Kimble, a real person, but one who never responded to questions about the piece.  The Washington Dispatch removed the article from their archives because "questions have arisen regarding its validity. The author has been contacted on numerous occasions but has refused to provide any material that could resolve the issue."  So, I think it's pretty safe to say that Lori really didn't get that free dessert, so you shouldn't go around eavesdropping on private conversations, and then publicly berating people for holding unpopular views in the hopes of being the hero of the Hamburger Hut. I'd write and tell the Young Conservatives about having been taken in by probable fabricator, but since young Judson Cox's article about the cool dating online dating site he just discovered appears in this week's issue, I don't know if they could cope with learning that nobody is to be trusted. And speaking of the Young Conservatives, one by the name of Amy Gordon made her first contribution to the site in this week's issue.  Since she's probably the most annoying young conservative since Meghan Cox Gordon . . . um, Gurdon, I decided to mock her now, in the hopes she never pundits again.  Amy is going to make it clear, even to idiots like us, exactly why conservatives are against gay marriage (hint: because it's WRONG): Supposing gay marriage became legal and we could rewrite the dictionary to include Loony Leftist definitions of marriage, conservatives would still be against it. And for good reason. Conservatives haven’t been very good at stating that reason lately. We’ve been great at talking about lawbreakers and the declining moral fabric of society. But few of us have actually mentioned the thought process that underlies our revulsion of these fake “marriages.” In a word, gay marriage is WRONG. Let me repeat that. WRONG. And our position isn’t about tolerance. No duh! It isn’t about equal protection or judicial tyrants. It IS about morality. It’s about what is right and wrong. It's about what AMY thinks is right and wrong. Homosexual “marriages” are wrong on three counts. Observe:  Gay marriages are bad for society. We don’t need a million-dollar study to know that, on the whole, a mother and father are better for raising a child than two of either. A mother and father complement each other. A man and a woman each have different things to give their children. A child should be raised by a father and a mother. There’s a reason why it takes a man and a woman to make a child. There’s a reason why the traditional family is, well, traditional. Come closer and let me whisper it. Because—it works!! Geez, and I thought what Amy was going to whisper in our ear was what the man and woman do to make the child.  What a rip-off!  Anyway, assuming that Amy is right when she says, "A child should be raised by a father and a mother," then instead of worrying about gay marriage, she should be telling us that divorce is WRONG, and advocating that it be made illegal.  And doing something about all the single mothers -- I don't know quite what.  Maybe they could each be assigned a mandatory husband -- if there weren't enough good fathers to go around, perhaps polygamy might be the answer.  After all, a shared father for those kids is better than none, right? Now let’s consider the nature side of the equation. Since liberals just LOVE evolutionism, you would think that they would have caught onto this one by now.  OK, think fast—how many children two men can produce? Just two men, together?  Hmm, with the advent of human cloning, I'll guess 666,666 (because about then, the ice age comes and the clones can't adapt, and they get conquered by the pandas, like Judson taught us a couple of months ago). Stumped? None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Well, that was my second choice. Why? Because they weren’t designed that way. On the purely biological level, men and women are made for each other. If they didn’t mate, the species would die off. This would be (say it with me, now) BAD for the species. Well, bad for OUR species, but the pandas might consider it a good thing. Let’s pretend for just a minute that humans evolved from apes who evolved from turtles who evolved from microbacteria that miraculously came into existence when the universe exploded. Ignore the glaring absurdity of this argument for just one minute. How many other species have “domestic partners?” “Civil unions?” Homosexuality? Whip out your calculators!! Ready? Ready!  Um, mountain apes, penguins, dogs, guinea pigs, orangutans, whales, warthogs, fruit bats, chaffinches, flamingos, geese, and more.  So I'll guess, oh, 50?  NONE. Damn!  Which may be why they’re still around. Which is where the whole definition of marriage comes in. You mean, our definition of marriage is based on the fact that animals have sex?  That doesn't seem like anything worth bragging about. The danger in scrapping that definition is great because of what it bodes for our society AND our species. If a marriage is no longer a contract between one man and one woman, why couldn’t it be a contract between five or six people? I give up -- why couldn't it be?  I mean, what about all those single mothers and the lack of suitable husbands for them? Suppose tomorrow the same liberals that invented “transgender” decide that “trans-species” is also a valid orientation. Today a woman wants to marry another woman. Tomorrow she wants to marry her cocker spaniel. And what if that cocker spaniel is one of those gay animals? Could it get anymore depraved? And the three guys next door. Well, I guess it can.  Especially if one of those guys is a CORPSE! And she can have a meaningful relationship with all of them. That is her undeniable and reliable born-with-it can’t-do-anything-about-it sexual orientation. Does this "only-attracted-to-dogs-and-the-three-neighbors" sexual orientation have a name yet?  If not, I'm going to propose "CockerFoursomeSexuals" Uh-huh. Riiiiiight. After all, why should she be denied the legal privileges that come from being able to cite her dog on her tax return? Anyone? Anyone? (Oh yeah. Because she and her dog weren’t made for each other, no matter which theory you follow, and it doesn’t take a molecular biologist to see that.) Okay, now I'm starting to get confused.  Because if, as Amy told us earlier, the purpose of marriage is procreative sex, why can't the woman marry the three guys next store?  She would probably have more sex this way, thus resulting in more children (because having sex for just for pleasure is wrong, so she wouldn't be using birth control); and, given the divorce rate, it gives her children a better chance at being raised by a mother and at least one father.  And since when have we used the "matching sex organs" theory to formulate our tax codes?  That would make it really creepy for parents to claim their children as deductions. Now for the most important argument against gay marriage, domestic partnerships, civil unions, and homosexuality in general. Ready? We return to—It Is Wrong. Now, conservatives, on the whole, have an unerring tendency to believe in God. Yeah, they have an unerringly tendency to believe in god, but said god has an unerring tendency to be mammon.   With this comes a companion tendency to believe that some things are right, others are wrong, and that the Supreme Being, Creator of worlds without end and Ruler of the Universe, ought to have the final say in this department.  So let’s settle this dispute with an appeal to the Bible. God created Adam and Eve. “Male and female created He them.” (Genesis 1:27) And then—wonder of wonders—the Prime Mover commanded them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth.” (Genesis 1:28) We’ve all been to health class, so I don’t think that I need to remind anyone that He wasn’t talking about arithmetic. We didn't discuss Genesis in my health class, so I'm going to ask Amy to clarify this for me. He was talking about their potential for parenthood. Oh, okay.  Now I get it! Notice—now this is crucial—that He didn’t create two men and command them, “Seek pleasure.” But Armstrong Williams told us that gay sex was "insipid," so how pleasurable could it be? In fact, He specifically condemned such behavior repeatedly. (Leviticus 18:22, Jude 1:7, Romans 1:27, and Deuteronomy 23:17) But liberals don’t like that argument. Well, they accept that you believe that same sex marriages are WRONG because that's what you learned in Bible class, but they don't see why your religious beliefs should determine the laws of this country.  How dare I believe in God? How dare I cite the laws of the Creator of the Universe? How dare I believe in things that are greater than you or me or the Massachusetts Supreme Court, in things that never change? That’s just SO intolerant of me. Why can’t I just accept any sort of behavior they care to thrust upon me? I’ll tell you why. Because it’s WRONG. Go ahead, say it. Say it loud and clear. We get it -- you think same sex marriage is WRONG.  So, here's the deal: if such marriage becomes legal, nobody will make you join in.  Happy now?   6:58:48 AM