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One Year Later: How Many Pastors Have Been Forced to Marry Same-Sex Couples?

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments
jerry falwell jr and donald trump
Fundamentalist Baptist Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Christian Donald Trump

A year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, invalidating federal and state laws that defined marriage solely as the union of a man and a woman. Evangelical, Catholic, and Mormon culture warriors warned that the Supreme Court’s ruling would pave the way for forcing pastors, priests, and elders to marry same-sex couples. Warning that pastors would soon be jailed for refusing to perform such marriages, these defenders of heterosexual marriage began working at the state level to pass laws that would exempt pastors, priests, and elders from marrying gay couples. These hysterical laws were/are little more than lame attempts by conservative (Republican) legislators to show Evangelical voters that they are still battling the secularists and atheists who want to outlaw Christianity.

Remember Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, saying:

That [refusing to perform same-sex marriages] may mean we experience jail time, loss of tax exempt status, but as the scripture says, we ought to obey God rather than man, and that’s our choice.

Or Baptist pastor Rick Scarborough telling a radio audience:

…[the clergy must] resist all government efforts to require them to accept gay marriage, and they will accept any fine and jail time to protect their religious freedom and the freedom of others.

And former Presidential candidate and Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee warning pastors:

If the courts rule that people have a civil right – not only to be a homosexual but a civil right to have a homosexual marriage – then a homosexual couple coming to a pastor, who believes in Biblical marriage, who says, ‘I can’t perform that wedding,’ will now be breaking the law.

Ominous, indeed. Surely, a year later scores of pastors have been arrested and jailed for refusing to perform same-sex marriages, right?

Just today, Americans United For Separation of Church and State — a group I proudly support — posted a list of those pastors arrested and jailed for refusing to marry same-sex couples. Are you ready to see the list? Here it is:

number of pastors arrested

That’s right, not one pastor has been arrested or jailed for refusing to marry a same-sex couple. Why? Because it has NEVER been against the law to do so. Pastors, priests, and elders have always been free to refuse to perform the marriage ceremonies of couples who do not meet their personal or ecclesiastical marriage standards. Sects, churches, and pastors are free to marry whomever they wish. As long as the U.S. Constitution remains in its current form, conservative Christian churches will have the legal right to not only refuse to marry same-sex couples, but also to bar gays from being members of their congregations. Evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons — along with every other religious sect — are free to discriminate at will.

Evangelical blowhards such as Robert Jeffress, Rick Scarborough, and Mike Huckabee are shameless liars for Jesus. These culture warriors only care about one thing, political power. This is why these very same men spent yesterday on their knees — not praying — but performing fellatio on Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. These warriors are so shameless that they have convinced themselves that Trump is a Christian. Several months ago, Jerry Falwell, Jr. stated unequivocally  that Trump is a member of Team Jesus®:

I’ve seen his generosity to strangers, to his employees, his warm relationship with his children. I’m convinced he’s a Christian. I believe he has faith in Jesus Christ. I’ve had conversations with him just within the past few weeks about his faith, and I have no doubts he is a man of faith and he’s a Christian.

Evangelicals are busy now with plans to put “Christian” Trump in the Oval Office. Once their candidate is thoroughly trounced by Hillary Clinton, these liars for Jesus will return to the culture battlefield, once again trying to capitalize on the fears of their constituents. War on Christmas! Transgender Bathroom Use! Homosexuals Preying on Children! Prayer in the Public Schools! Creationism! President Clinton Taking Away Religious Freedom!

As in past years, pastors and church leaders will indeed be arrested, but not for marrying same-sex couples. These men of God will make the front pages of their local newspapers, arrested for crimes such as child abuse, sexual abuse, rape, sexual misconduct, and sundry other crimes. These issues will be shoved under the rug, replaced by fake outrages and boycotts. These liars for Jesus will continue to reveal that at the heart of conservative Christianity lies hatred, bigotry, homophobia, and racism.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Sacrilegious Humor: Bart Simpson Goes to Hell

Bruce Gerencser 0 Comments

baby jesus bart simpson

This is the thirty-fourth installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.

Today’s bit is a clip from The Simpsons.

Warning, many of the comedy bits in this series will contain profanity. You have been warned.

Video Link

Father John Misty: I Was Promised Redemption, Forgiveness, and Salvation

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments

father john misty

I subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine. I love reading the feature articles, interviews, and movie reviews. In the April 21, 2016 issue there as a short interview of Father John Misty (Joshua Tillman) — an American singer and songwriter. Tillman was raised in a strict Evangelical home. When asked, Was there anything valuable about your Evangelical upbringing?, Tillman replied:

I was promised redemption and forgiveness and salvation over and over, but it never manifested in any meaningful way. It was like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football.

As  I read Tillman’s answer, I thought, what a great analogy, one that describes the experiences many of us had with Evangelicalism. For those of us who are now atheists and agnostics, Lucy pulled the football away from us one too many times.

In a 2015 The Guardian story, Tillman had this to say about his religious upbringing:

“I went to a Pentecostal messianic Jewish cult school where I was taught to exorcise demons from my classmates and speak in tongues, and had these insane engineered psychedelic experiences,” he elaborates. “People were lifting my arms up to worship while kids lay convulsing on the floor, talking about seeing their dead grandparents. It was flat-out insanity, and I should have been writing about that.” Why wasn’t he? “I didn’t want anyone to know about my upbringing. It’s still a major source of pain and confusion. I didn’t get to choose my childhood, and I felt doomed. The further I get from those experiences, the more of a sense of humour about it I have. In a broad sense, I mean. I don’t think it’s hilarious or anything.”

In a February 2015 Rolling Stone feature article, Jonah Weiner had this to say about Tillman and his Evangelical upbringing:

It’s pretty intense conversation for midafternoon, but Tillman has always been, by his own account, an intense guy. He grew up in Maryland the eldest son of devout evangelical Christians. “It was the most suburban, bleached-flour kind of scenario you can imagine — aside from the Messianic-Judaism, Pentecostal, speaking-in-tongues, getting-slain-in-the-spirit, having-demons-cast-out-of-you stuff,” he says. “For my parents, heaven and hell were real. It’s bizarre to contemplate eternal damnation as an eight-year-old.” A born skeptic, he never fully bought into his parents’ religion. Instead, he got heavily into comics with skewed perspectives, like The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, and for a time he wanted to be a cartoonist. That dream gave way, when he got wind of Bob Dylan, to a musical fantasy, and at 19 he dropped out of New York’s Nyack College — a Christian school he’d enrolled in mostly to appease his parents — and moved upstate, where a buddy was building a recording studio in a farmhouse. (Tillman’s relationship with his parents, long turbulent, has lately improved — “They’ve recently begun acknowledging that I’m an artist” — but it’s not a subject he enjoys discussing.)

Tillman’s story is yet another illustration of the damage that Fundamentalism — with its strict social codes and rules — can do to impressionable young minds. (See Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists?) While Tillman’s music is certainly influenced by his Evangelical upbringing, I suspect he would advise people to avoid Evangelicalism as they would when coming in contact with a Walking Dead-style, brain-eating zombie. .

Father John Misty cover of Arcade Fire’s song, The Suburbs.

Video Link

Father John Misty cover of Taylor Swift’s song, Blank Spaces

Video Link

Sacrilegious Humor: The Simpsons — Apocalypse in Springfield

Bruce Gerencser 0 Comments

homer simpson

This is the thirty-third installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.

Today’s bit is a clip from The Simpsons.

Warning, many of the comedy bits in this series will contain profanity. You have been warned.

(video removed from YouTube)

Is Game of Thrones Pornographic?

Bruce Gerencser 29 Comments

game of thrones sex scene 2

My wife and I are avid watchers of the HBO hit drama, Game of Thrones (GOT). In the most recent episode, Ramsay Bolton, a psychopath of epic proportions, was eaten alive by his dogs — a just reward for such a vile man. Every GOT episode has moments of violence and sex, as does virtually every TV drama. Viewers watch dramas such as GOT because of its edgy and provocative story lines.

This fact has posed a big problem for Evangelicals who see themselves as the judges and arbiters of what is good TV and what is moral or immoral. This problem arises for these keepers of national morality when their followers ignore their warnings and admonitions and tune in to shows such as GOT. Millions of God-fearing Christians watch each episode of GOT. Evangelical preachers, irritated by the failure of church members to pay attention to them, increase their GOT rhetoric, hoping to finally get through to Christians who love the violence and sex, not only on GOT, but also on numerous other pay-TV dramas.

In recent weeks, I have noticed that several Christian websites have labeled GOT pornographic. Ben Kayser, a writer for CHARISMA , had this to say about Game of Thrones:

The HBO series Game of Thrones has been quite comfortable with controversy for the six years its [sic] been airing. Beyond the graphic sex scenes frequently included in the show, the series also includes many storylines that include incest, extreme bloody violence and multiple graphic depictions of rape that are clearly gratuitous, even from the perspective of mainstream and liberal critics.

However, somehow the creators manage to convince viewers that what they’re watching isn’t pornography, meant to titillate and shock, but is instead “art.” Even many Christian viewers find ways to excuse the show so they can enjoy some entertainment they find compelling and exciting. That said, recent data from the X-rated site Pornhub, as reported in The Daily Mail, reveals that Game of Thrones not only is linked to pornography usage, but scenes from the show are being used as porn directly.

HBO is in a legal battle with the porn website over the sites use of sexually explicit clips from Game of Thrones, which HBO states breaches their copyright of the content. Additionally, Pornhub revealed that internet porn usage decreased when HBO was airing a new episode of Game of Thrones and only increased back to the average number of users four hours after a new episode had aired. According to The Daily Mail, the data “also found searches for Game of Thrones-related videos and pictures of characters also rocketed by nearly 370 percent on the day of the [episode] premiere.”

….

HBO is a premium subscription channel. Only those who subscribe to the channel can watch its programming. As with all pay TV channels, easily offended Christians are free to NOT subscribe. Don’t like a channel’s content? Don’t watch it. Personally, I am sick and tired of Christians whining and complaining about what’s on TV. Currently, there are a dozen Christian TV channels on DIRECTV. DISH, along with other pay TV providers, also have numerous Christian channels. If offended believers want to watch saved, sanctified programming, why not tune into one of these channels? I am sure there are plenty of Little House on the Prairie reruns for Christians to watch. Why spit and fume over what heathens are watching on channels such as HBO and Showtime?

game of thrones sex scene

Here’s the dirty little secret Christian moralizers don’t want you to know. MOST Christians don’t watch religious channels. That’s right, most Christians know the God-oriented channels have very little good programming. This is why they tune into shows such as GOT. Whatever one might think about GOT violence and sex, it is a superbly written, directed, and acted TV drama. I am of the opinion that we have entered a golden era of TV programming. There are so many good dramas on TV now that it is hard to decide which ones to watch. Channels such as AMC, FX, USA, Syfy, TNT, TBS, and BBC have, in recent years, produced numerous top-notch dramas. Even third tier channels are getting in on the act. This means that TV viewers have a plethora of programs to choose from. Christians and non-Christians alike have dozens of programs they can watch. There’s no need to bitch, moan, and complain about supposedly offensive programs. Viewers are free to change the channel until they find one that meets their personal preferences.

Is GOT pornographic? Of course not. Kayser and his fellow Puritans should spend some time on PORNHUB if they want to see what REAL pornography looks like. Better yet, since most Evangelical pastors have personally viewed porn, why not just ask them if GOT is pornographic. Even better, survey church members and ask them, compared to YOUPORN, REDTUBE, and other porn sites, if GOT is pornographic. If we-never-lie Christians are honest, they will say no, GOT is not pornographic.

Kayser  bases the premise of his post on Sunday PORNHUB viewer data. The Daily Mail reports:

Last month it was revealed online viewing of porn dropped by around four per cent – equating to millions of people – while the first episode of the new series aired.

Data from Pornhub showed the number of active users in the U.S. started decreasing in the hour before the show started and did not return back to average levels until four hours later.

It also found searches for Game of Thrones-related videos and pictures of characters also rocketed by nearly 370 per cent on the day of the premiere.

Emilia Clarke, who plays blonde princess Daenerys Targaryen and who regularly appears naked in the show, was the top search.

She was followed by Natalie Dormer, as Margaery Tyrell, and Sibel Kekilli, who plays Shae.
….

Kayser thinks this data proves that GOT is pornographic. Does it? Of course not. First, GOT is not pornographic, so there is no correlation between GOT viewership and PORNHUB use. Kayser wants readers to think that there is connection between porn use and GOT. In Kayser’s mind, prior to tuning into GOT, viewers are watching internet porn. Once GOT comes on viewers switch from one porn source to another.

Second, there are other explanations for reduced PORNHUB traffic. The biggest reason for the reduced traffic numbers is the number of prime time dramas that are now scheduled for Sunday nights. As every avid TV watcher knows, there are numerous programs to choose from. Currently, Games of Thrones, Outlander, Hell on Wheels, Preacher, Ray Donovan, Roadies, Murder in the First, and Silicon Valley are scheduled for the 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM Sunday slot. In the Fall, broadcast networks will add eight or ten more programs to the Sunday night mix. And come September, Sunday Night Football will broadcast 17 weeks of NFL games. It seems to me, then, that PORNHUB traffic numbers drop, not because of GOT, but because viewers are switching to their favorite Sunday evening programs.

Kayser went looking for “proof” that GOT is pornographic and he found it in PORNHUB’s raw traffic data. Kayser finds correlations where there are none. Until a proper study is conducted, it is impossible to conclude that PORNHUB’s traffic drop is due to people switching to GOT. At this point, it is just as likely that the traffic reduction is due to Evangelicals attending Sunday evening church services, fellowships, and activities. Scandalous? Perhaps, but then so is the notion that GOT is pornographic.

Instead of blaming the Evangelicals who regularly watch GOT, the Keysers of the world blame programmers, casting them as tools of Satan used to bring down Christian America. These Fundamentalists refuse to understand that most Americans — including some of their fellow Christians —  reject “Biblically” based codes of morality and conduct. Keyser and others like him are free to NOT watch GOT. What others watch is none of their business. If viewers want to watch violence and sex scenes, they should be free to do so. Evangelicals tend to be capitalistic promoters of free markets, yet when it comes to TV programming, Christians demand the government step in and regulate what subscribers can watch.

Christians are free to produce programming that meets their moral standards. That they don’t reveals that Evangelicals are not interested in such programming. Like it or not, many Christians love Game of Thrones. And like it or not, many Christians are going to view pornography. Program viewing is quite personal. Each of us has programs we love and hate. And that’s the beauty of the free market system. We are free to watch whatever we want. Don’t like a program? Consider a program offensive? Change the channel. All Evangelicals have to do to avoid what they deem “pornographic” is to change the channel or not subscribe to HBO.

Sacrilegious Humor: Homer Simpson Gets Baptized

Bruce Gerencser 1 Comment

homer simpson

This is the thirty-second installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.

Today’s bit is a clip from The Simpsons.

Warning, many of the comedy bits in this series will contain profanity. You have been warned.

Video Link

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Evangelical Darth Vader

Bruce Gerencser 1 Comment

darth vader

This is the seventy-second  installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section.  Let’s have some fun!

Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video of a Bible quoting Darth Vader. (link no longer active)

Video Link (link no longer active)

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Jump for Jesus

Bruce Gerencser 0 Comments

jumping jesus

This is the seventy-first  installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section.  Let’s have some fun!

Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a church music video of a group of women dancing to the song Jump for Jesus —  written by Steve Kuban. (link no longer active)

Video Link (link no longer active)

The Bird Still Sings

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments

guest-post

Guest post by Michael D. Speir

I ran across a quote this morning:

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”

Most sources say it came from Maya Angelou; although, oddly, Lou Holtz is often named, and sometimes others. In fact, it came from American poet and children’s book author Joan Walsh Anglund. (Time  Quote Investigator)

I don’t know the context of the quote, so I can’t be sure of the intended point. At face value, though, it’s one of those sayings that could easily become platitudinous. It’s a sword that could be wielded with good effect from both (all?) sides of the line of battle. Some might use it to slash at perceived intellectual elitism. In that capacity it reminds me of a far-less-inspired line thrown about often and sloppily during my Christian upbringing: “They have the arguments, but we have the experience.” Basically, that reduces to approximately, “If it feels good, believe it.” But feelings are notoriously fickle and amorphous, consequently unstable, attesting to little more than the sensations themselves. The reason we live, and live so long, in this modern world is that we’ve finally reached an average level of maturity such that we distrust emotions, doing our best to correct for them when we investigate Important Things. Because Reality can be a harsh environment in which to exist, what makes us feel good often doesn’t accord too well with it. So we find ourselves steering off the path to Truth so we can go out and roll in the more pleasant clover of Feelings.

That said, emotions are fundamental to what it means to be human. We live because we enjoy living. To the degree knowing Truth enhances that enjoyment, Truth is esteemed worth knowing. To the degree it doesn’t — well, delusion feels better. I’m much more sympathetic to that sentiment than my use of the pejorative “delusion” might imply. I mean, if on average life doesn’t feel more good than bad, what’s the point of it? So much the worse for Truth! The bird can’t answer, Why is there something rather than nothing? And still it sings.

Maybe The Ultimate Answer to The Ultimate Question shouldn’t be ultimately important to us, either. And it isn’t. Multiplied billions — down to the very last man, woman, and child — have lived their lives not having that Answer, with most hardly giving it a passing thought. And what better proof of that than the shallow stabs at answers we hear from those most noisily clacking about knowing!

Any creature that doesn’t want to live won’t care enough to do the things necessary to survive. I’d like to avoid anthropomorphizing “want” here. Yes, we humans can reflect on our wants and guess at why we have them in ways no other known creature can. But we would want to live even without the capacity to understand why we do. The amoeba has no clue about why, but let it come under threat and you’ll see how much it “wants” to live. Even the lowly plant, lacking a nervous system, will attempt to repair itself when injured, because it “wants” to live.

But our survival instinct isn’t only an aversion to dying. Overabundantly more, it’s about enjoying living: that joie de vivre, as the French say. If death weren’t about giving up living, we wouldn’t fear it like we do. We like singing that song. We’d rather not stop.

And that song comes naturally, as a biological endowment. I grew up being taught that connection with God is the only path to joy. “Know Jesus, know peace; no Jesus, no peace,” I’d hear a lot. I believed that, because I had been taught nothing else. And yet, over the years, exposure to the windblown grit of reality scoured away at my certainty. Even as I taught others what I had been taught, I doubted it myself — and largely unbeknownst to me! When circumstances at last conspired to thrust my disbelief into my active consciousness, the revelation of it hit me like a thunderbolt: You know, I don’t believe this stuff — and I don’t have to! In a flash I understood how my efforts to convince others had been far more to convince myself. After all, my family and my friends, those with whom I had to get along in life, believed it. I had to believe. And yet, I couldn’t. Oh, the mental tumult I endured in the attempt! It had torn my life to shreds.

The abrupt realization that no one is justly duty bound to do what he can’t do was like the proverbial ten ton weight dropping from my shoulders. No, I didn’t believe, and that was okay. But don’t get the idea that all was sweetness and light, smiley suns and gleaming rainbows thereafter. My life had been founded on the Christian religion. It was the ground on which I had been standing. Though I could now admit I didn’t believe it, I despaired of my footing. At least I had believed it would be good to believe; it had been something to shoot for. I didn’t even have that anymore. Nowadays, when I hear Christians protest that without faith life could have no meaning, no joy, and no peace I understand where they’re coming from. For some time after my “deconversion” it seemed that pronouncement might prove prophetic.

But a funny thing happened. Well, I guess “happened” is too sudden. It stole up on me, over time. Still, it surprised me when one day I woke up to the realization that, little by little, the joy and the peace and the sense of purpose had taken me unawares, as it were. I understood then that these aren’t things given to us by any god. We don’t even need faith, however misplaced, in any god to get them. They’re part of our biological make-up. In the genetic sloshing around of multiplied millennia of reproduction, those who evolved keenest sense of peace, joy, and purpose were the ones who most wanted to live. They were naturally the ones who took the greatest pains to live. They were the ones likeliest to live long enough to pass on their relatively buoyant genes to another generation. Over time, the average levels of peace, joy, and sense of purpose elevated in the general population to where today they’re intrinsic parts of our make-up that will inevitably bubble to the surface unless persistently beaten down by adverse circumstances or the contrary expectations of others.

Now, it’s not equal from person to person. Just like more prominent traits — say, physical features and capacities or intellectual prowess — vary a lot among us, so, too, do our brains’ production of things like dopamine and serotonin. At one end of the bell curve are the perpetually and annoyingly sunny types who can’t give a good excuse for the smiles chiseled into their faces. At the other are the paranoiacs, those for whom a grin might be painfully disfiguring. Most of us lie at some relatively comfortable spot in the middle. I’m probably more on the slope down toward paranoia, myself. I always have been. I was when I most fervently believed and I still am. It’s a fact of life for me. Even so, I’ve found that life brings me lots of joy, and it does now probably as much as it ever has. Nowadays, I can admit I don’t have all the answers to the Big Questions. And yet, somehow, I still want to sing.

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Satan Bite the Dust by Carman

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments

carman

This is the seventieth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section.  Let’s have some fun!

Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a music video by contemporary Christian artist Carman.

Video Link

Bruce Gerencser