On the Abhorrence of Willful Ignorance: A Rant

August 29th, probably about 6:53 AM to ???. A good shower spoiled. A rant, pure and simple. I will leave it as I wrote it, ugly but necessary.

I am tired of being told I don't love my country because I support things like Obamacare, don't support trickle-down economics and think it is a bad idea to gut social programs for the sake of maintaining tax cuts that DO NOT create jobs and pay for wars we should not have started or continually feed the maw of the military-industrial death machine just to prove we are The Chosen Country, more badass than any other supposed badasses out there. Manifest Destiny can suck it. Do we need to defend ourselves? Sure. That is a necessity. But so is treating people humanely and doing our best for as many as we can, and that doesn't mean depriving someone of unemployment insurance so we can go bomb the hell out of people whose countries we shouldn't have invaded to begin with.

I'm fed up with the notion that I or anyone else is a horrible person because we believe women should have full rights to control their own bodies, and not have that right taken away by men or any deliberately irrational individuals or groups who choose to believe in a different religion. I am especially sickened when this assumption that "We know better than you what is right for you" is based on fanciful wishes rather than factual information. "Certain secretions" and gradations of rape do not exist in reality. That supposedly well-educated people believe those things at all, and worse, portray them as reality make me want to scream. That they want to be in power to set laws based on their deliberate ignorance is frightening. As my friend Kellie so eloquently said here, 

"It's having knowledge (re: power) being legally denied to me for no other reason than because I AM A WOMAN....It's being viewed as less of a person because I am a woman.

Yeah, it's like that. That anyone, especially aspiring policy makers, is secure enough in their own ignorance to think that just because they believe it, it must be true, is scary enough. That they would think they have a right to inflict their ignorance and delusion on others is horrifying. You can have all the opinions you want, that's allowed. But your belief in something in no way gives you the right to force others to live according to your will. This is especially true when it comes to stupid, privileged males (who cannot get pregnant, whether they are raped or just said yes) telling women (who can, and do, get pregnant under all sorts of circumstances) they have no rights to make decisions about their bodies or their pregnancies. I don't want laws based on delusional beliefs, I want them based on facts.

An aside: Hey, Paul Ryan? Rape is not a "method of conception", it is a crime of violence against someone. Rape is rape, and you don't get to side-step it by making the issue about getting pregnant, when it is really about horrible violence. As an acquaintance of mine said, saying rape is a method of conception is like saying "vandalism is a method of redecorating." Rape is a crime, you jerk, and you shouldn't forget that. Also, quit touting your so-called Christian faith when your self-professed hero is a fascist atheist.

I'm sick of being told this is a Christian nation just because the founding fathers happened to be Christians. Take off the blinders, do a little thinking or at least pay attention (oh, my, what ever will they do? Think? That would be too much work!) and you would realize that Americans aren't all Christians, nor are they required to be, nor do they have believe in a higher power at all (Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion; remember the Bill of Rights?). The concept of "God" is not exclusive to Christianity, and Jesus wasn't quoted in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights*. That the word "Lord" appears in the signature section of the Constitution doesn't count, because to say "In the Year of our Lord" was a common way to express dates in that era, and does not even imply belief in all of the people who signed the document. "God" and "Jesus" ('cause if you want to claim Christianity, then you gotta claim Jesus) do not appear at all in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. The word God appears once in the Declaration of Independence, in a curiously written sentence reading in part:

"...the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..."

Huh? Nature's God? 'Scuse me, but what does that even mean? That doesn't say the God of Christ, or anything about Christianity (actually sounds kind of pagan) other than using the English word 'God'. Know what "Allah" means in English? Huh, do you? Depending on which dialect or branch of Arabic you use, it means among other things "God, Allah, father, the Creator, maker."  How about Krishna? Or Yahweh? Translate those into English and what do you get? You get God!** Also, news flash: none of those documents belong to any specific ideology or -ism. The United States population is a lot more complicated than a Sunday School kindergarten classroom. So shut up about God making us a Christian nation based on three documents that say nothing about Christianity and the Christian God being the foundation of our society.

I am infuriated by the notion that there are those who want to deny basic rights and humanity to some of their fellow citizens by codifying discrimination against them, based on whom they choose to love. Being lesbian, gay, bi or transgender does not render someone a non-citizen or (more importantly) nonhuman. You have no right, morally or legally, to deny rights to someone just because you don't like the idea of men loving men, or women loving women or any human loving another human. As Anne Hathaway so eloquently said, "Love is a human experience, not a political statement." Also, your personal disapproval of same-sex marriages in no way gives you the right or moral authority to deny civil rights to someone. Don't like gay marriage? Then don't marry a gay person! Marriage isn't mandatory, anyway. Remember the Constitution and that Bill of Rights thingie? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness and all that? Well, your ignorance and bigotry have no right to take away those from anyone else. So shut up.

Speaking of marriage, shut up about the so-called sanctity of marriage. How many times was Ronald Reagan married? Newt Gingrich (Three's the charm, eh? Classy, too, talking divorce with a recovering cancer patient)? Joe Walsh (the obnoxious Tea Party jerk, not the Eagles guitar player)? By the way, Joe, how is that payment of over $100,000 dollars in unpaid child support going? Oh, that's right you spent $35,000 or so on your political campaign, rather than on your kids. You don't get to talk about sanctity or "Defend Marriage" when you yourself have no respect for it. So until you can get it right, shut up about denying other people to right to find their bliss with a life partner.

To beat the marriage horse bloody, let me ask this question: which of the eight or so Biblical definitions of marriage would you have us codify or "defend"? Hmm? Which one? Here's a handy list*** to help you choose:

1. Man and Woman: Genesis 2:24
2. Man and Women: Genesis 4:19 - Polygamy! The more the merrier!
3. Man and his brother's widow: Genesis 38:6-10 - Impregnate your brother's widow. Awesome, until you get to the part where God killed Onan for masturbation instead of impregnation.
4. Man and wives and concubines: Genesis 20:10 and Judges 19:1-30 - It's good to be the King, not so good to be a wife or a concubine. Yikes.
5. Rapist and victim: Deuteronomy 22:28-29 - Rape a virgin, pay her dad some silver, call it a marriage. Way to be a role model.
6. Man and Woman and the Woman's slaves: Genesis 16:1-6 and Genesis 30:4-5 - Double bonus for the uncaring: if the wife is barren, then just knock up her slaves, er, servants!
7. Male soldier and Captured Woman: Numbers 31:1-18 and Deuteronomy 21:11-14 - Nothing says 'man and wife' like killing all the enemy males and stealing their daughters and wives and making them your own.
8. Male and female slaves: Exodus 21:4 - What, being property isn't bad enough, you gotta force them to marry? Jerks.

The Bible's definitions of marriage involve monogamy...and polygamy, war, rape and slavery. So don't give me that sanctimonious crap about same-sex marriage (which presumably is based on love, just like hetero marriages) being unnatural or an abomination.

Onward to death tools, er, guns! A few words to the Second Amendment freaks about gun ownership: Shut up about having your lethal toys taken away from you. That isn't going to happen. But the Founding Fathers did not have assault weapons. And you are delusional if you think that having everyone armed is going to make crime deterrence easier. Yeah, so you and your bone-headed cowboy friends are going to be tactical sharpshooters based on a pistol course and a license? Even if you take basic safety courses, that in no way is guaranteed to give you the presence of mind to calmly identify a correct target in a chaotic scene and be able to precisely take them out. If you do, you will be lucky, not skilled. And how in the world do you expect to do that in a place like a dark theater or crowded school campus? Do you not understand the concept of "fog of war" and crossfires? Even the police cannot be so self-assured in broad daylight, as the horrific shootings at the Empire State Building confirm. 

Furthermore, until you can read the Bill of Rights and exhibit understanding you have no room to comment on the supposed efforts to take away your penis substitutes. The Second Amendment says:   

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." 

Read it carefully, jugheads. It's all one clause, and has to be taken in its entirety to make sense. It is in the context of a "well Regulated militia". Or do you not understand how that part modifies having a militia? Also, note the use of the words 'regulated' and infringed. that's important. This amendment says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of the state. Hmm...doesn't the military do that now? Oh, and what militia are you a part of? Hmm? Guarding the state of Buttheadistan? The right to bear arms is supported by the Bill of Rights, but it also does not simply say you can have all the guns you want. So stop whining, go home and make love to your avatars of violence.

Time to wrap it up. I'm getting tired. Parting shot: disagreement with your expressed beliefs or religion or politics does not constitute a war on your faith or your religion or your party. It is disagreement, nothing more. As I stated before , opinions are most certainly allowed in our free-speech society. But to paraphrase Monty Python's Dennis The Peasant, ill-informed opinions are, like strange women lying in ponds distributing swords, no basis for a system of government. So grow up, stop whining and remove your heads from your asses. It's easier to understand reality that way.

Here endeth the rant.

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*Conveniently linked for your edification and delight. You're welcome.
**I realize that Krishna and Yahweh and Allah are more complex than are easily explained in a rant, but the fact remains that they are God or a god-analogue. It is the concept of a supreme being that solely belongs to Christians which draws my ire.
***I stumbled across this link, which spurred me into verifying the quoted passages in the Bible I received upon my confirmation. Yes, the website is satire, but the passages confirmed the spoof. And, I learned some new things!