The Legality of Polygamy, and why it really doesn't matter

Confused? Read this first!

The problem isn’t polygamy. The problem is abusive religious institutions - a problem which our laws are currently ill equipped to face.

Which is why we need new laws. BC judges and political leaders, it’s time to step up to the plate.

Going after religious organizations isn’t an act which will win many friends - most people are opposed to the concept of judges and politicians telling them how to practice their individual faith. If we go after fundamentalist sects of polygamous Mormons, who’s next? Pentecostals and Catholics? Amish people, and Hasidic Jews?

However, even the strongest dissidents can agree that, in extremist religious sects like the polygamous community of Bountiful, BC, something is very wrong. Girls are groomed for sexual contact by elders from an early age. Boys are driven out. Women are told - and believe - that opposing the will of church elders is tantamount to opposing the will of God. And if young girls and women refuse to marry, or decide to leave, they lose absolutely everything - their entire community, family, and their chance at religious salvation - which they’ve been taught to believe is the most valuable thing a person can possess.

So we have to ask...in such a context, can anyone give informed consent to marry? And in doing so, does it really matter if you’re becoming a person’s one-and-only, or their sixteenth wife?

Polygamy is a problematic practice, because it is often coupled with abusive communities and scary religious practices. But it in itself is not the problem. Consenting and competent adults can, and likely do, make up their own minds whether they want to share their lives and beds with however many people they choose. One wife? Two? One husband, or six? One wife, one husband, and a transgendered person named Phil? I really don’t care, nor do I want to know the details.

We can’t really know if polygamous marriage is ever a good thing, because the practice is currently outlawed. Functional and competent polygamous couples (er, threesomes? sextuples?), and other non-traditional marriages, are likely to shy away from the limelight, with good reason...the current court cases are proof that the government is not opposed to prosecuting polygamists using existing archaic laws.

Of course they’re only pressing charges against polygamy in order to address the polygamist community’s religious practices...which are abusive and should be illegal, but have little to do with polygamy.

Teaching children that you are a spokesperson for God, and then using that power to engage in sexual relationships with them (whether they are of a consenting age or not) is an obvious and blatant abuse of power. Teaching children that they will lose their entire family, community and salvation if they refuse to consent to a potentially abusive marriage is wrong. Teaching children that they will burn in the boiling lava of Hades for all of eternity if they refuse to believe a very specific religious doctrine, and then using that religious doctrine to compel them to marry, have sex, have children, or make any decision at all...it’s abusive, and it’s wrong.

That last example doesn’t come from the Mormons, who don’t actually believe in Hell, which is nice.

The point being, someone needs to address these abuses of power, in the same way we’ve addressed other abuses of power in the past. Tackling child abuse wasn’t easy, but it was necessary, and we’re all glad that beating your children unconscious is no longer viewed as acceptable parenting. In fact, it’s illegal. Raping your wife is no longer legal. Whipping your wife, servants, and children...no longer legal. Abusing children, spouses, and elders, or failing to report a suspected case of abuse? Illegal.

All with very good reason.

It’s time for our definition of abuse to include abuses of religious power. It’s time to address such issues with enforceable laws, and using those laws to prosecute the leaders of Bountiful.

And then maybe then we could address other forms of abusive religious doctrinarian....

...Wake up, Ivy. This is the real world, and it’s very likely that no justice will arrive for anyone involved in this case, ever. And also, I’m a very jaded person, and its rainy outside, I’m feeling pretty disenfranchised by the existing politico/legal structure at work and powers-that-be....but even so, it’s not reason enough to stop trying.

Life as a Rock in a Lake

I believe that, in the natural state of the world, human beings are intrinsically selfish. We live our lives as a series of expanding rings and pay the greatest attention to the innermost - ourselves, then our immediate family, then our extended family and friends, our neighbours, our community, our world. In the far reaches lie the people and things with which of which we have little experience or knowledge. It’s not that we don’t care - it’s that we haven’t the energy or interest to look into those things and decide whether we care or not.

In the natural order of things, we feed ourselves so we have energy to feed our young, and once our young are fed, we start to think about the greater world, and whether their young have all been fed. And too often, the inner circles consume so much of our lives that we forget that the wider world exists - and understandably so. It’s a poor parent who neglects their own children to care for an old man they’ve never met in Nepal. And let’s remember our basic airline safety training - apply your own air-mask before applying the air-mask of your dependent child, lest you both pass out from being oxygen deprived in a depressurized cabin and all hope is lost. Even though the bag may not inflate, oxygen is flowing through the mask.

Sadness, despair, and frustration occur when we have a chance to observe the larger world, and the mammoth inequities that exist. So much of the world is given to so little of its people. Abject poverty and neglect abound, everywhere. We have too much, and we save so little - of our resources, thoughts, and energy - for the wider circles far away from ourselves.

And while I have a great many issues with most of the many religions that abound, a few very nice themes thread through them all. It’s against human nature, so it never will work - just like abstinence based sex-ed, which has failed to teach teenagers what thousands of years of evolution has not - but think, as monks, rabbis, and preachers have before: wouldn’t the world be a beautiful place if we did things backwards - starting on the outside and working our way in, and feeding the neighbour’s children before our own?

Moderate Schmoderate

Moderation may well be the devil’s plaything.

In a world full of examples of extremists gone too far, moderation often seems like the sensible, sophisticated alternative. Rarely does a moderate lifestyle lead to suicide bombings, disowning bicurious children, or any acts which cause rabid foaming at the mouth. It avoids both obesity and anorexia. It’s not an achiever, moderation, but gosh darn it, it lives a good and descent life the best it can, and in the end, it gets the job done.

Or so we like to think.

The issue of moderation came up during a discussion of religion. And let’s be clear - when I say ‘religion,’ I’m mostly talking about Christianity, because that seems to be the only religion I know enough to hate. As a proudly branded “atheist who may or may not still sort of believe in God” (yes, we exist, and we’re very, very confused people), I’ve come to regard religion as kind of a bad thing, akin to recreational narcotics. I wouldn’t fault any individual for finding comfort in their beliefs...it’s a crappy life and sometimes it's nice to think that there’s a maleficent super-powered deity in the sky. I get it. But the fact of the matter is...it’s made up. It’s a bunch of lies. It’s a system invented in order to subjugate citizens and keep them in line while creating unbalanced power structures which have led to countless abuses, most often of women and children, but also entire races and civilizations.

Many of these acts were committed by extremists...it’s true. But so, so many religious atrocities were committed by decent, likeable people - people like me.

Take missionaries, for example, or the residential school system. Had I existed a hundred or two hundred years ago, and through the power of hypotheticals magically retained my own quirks and interests, I wouldn’t be working with homeless Vancouverites in a psychosocially-founded mental health centre. I’d be working with heathen aborigines, or eskimos, or adorable little negro children, whom I would teach the story of Jonah and the Whale. Should they question the scientific merits of a story about a man living inside a whale for several days, I would beat them, and feel good about it, because if I didn’t beat them into submission and subservience, they would inevitably burn in Hell.

Missionaries, colonizers, the staff and directors of residential schools...they were good people, people drawn to social problems, people trying to correct injustices in the world. More importantly, they were moderates. And they committed terrible, terrible evils.

Many to most religious individuals are descent, caring people, too. They love their families and their communities, and they try and do the right thing. But in continuing to ascribe to their religious beliefs, they give power to religious organizations, most of whom are far more extremist than their moderate minions - organizations like the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict, who have no issue denying condoms to HIV positive women whilst picketing abortion clinics and transferring known pedophiles from one devastated parish to the next.

It seems the only people who claim atheism are those that have themselves been dicked around by the church...people who were indoctrinated by tongue-speaking fundamentalists and told that the devil was invading their thoughts. The extremist sects of religion are, in many ways, easier to rebel against, and extremist methods often force the hand and call the bluff of all Christianity. Were it not for experiences in extremist churches, myself and many friends would likely have remained happy, moderate Catholics and Unitarians our entire lives.

And tithing a church that believes in excommunicating members who speak out against pedophiles in their upper ranks, and sending my kids to Sunday school so that they can learn that about how God loves them but, goshdarnit, He will burn them in Hell for all of eternity where no one can hear their screams...I guess we’d be cool with that, too.

We ourselves would probably be happier, more moderate, more well adjusted people. But in doing so, we’d be hurting others, and living a lie. We’d be...wrong. We’d be parents whipping our kids with a willow switch, simply because that’s the way things are done.

So, extremists, for all of your tyranny, condemnation, and burning of crosses on the lawns of nice Jewish people...I thank you. Were it not for your despicable acts of violent extremism, I wouldn’t have learned to question what I was told. I would trust, blindly. You forced me to see.

Why Must We Keep Axing Chickens?

I am sobbing like a baby or, more accurately, like a very sad adult.

I just finished reading, “a complicated kindness,” a book I tried to tackle a year ago, only to putter out on the twentieth page. This time, it was effortless. I picked the book up yesterday, and today, between napping, playing with puppies, and re-watching Dr. Horrible, I finished the entire thing. Three hundred pages. Less than thirty hours. Not bad for the world’s slowest reader.

And the crying? Is it for joy at my overwhelming sense of accomplishment? Um, no.

The book follows an intelligent young woman coming of age in a Mennonite community in Manitoba - the sort of Christian town that puts my own stoic upbringing to shame. It follows the central character, Nomi, doing the sort of things that people do when they’re trying to hold onto contradictory paths - getting headaches, smoking pot, wearing too much eye makeup and listening to loud music on repeat. Her older sister left town, three years prior, following a similarly painful conversion to apostate-hood. Shortly thereafter, their grief-stricken mother was excommunicated and disappeared. The plot continues.

Present day, I’m crying out of anger, at my own Christian childhood. I’m crying at hellfire and damnation, and the brilliant minds who teach this, every day, to young children who have no concept of metaphor or choice. I’m crying at the slow and agonizing feeling of ripping out my own roots to make life make sense, even if it means I might one day burn forever in Hell. And I’m crying sobs of relief at the simple fact that someone understood what I was feeling, at least enough to write a book about it, even though I’m not a Mennonite, just Pentecostal.

My mother read this book, last year, and I’d asked her about it, and she had made vague comments about the practice of shunning and how it seemed so severe. And now I think of her, reading it, and attributing all the young girl’s problems to shunning, to the specific practices unique to the Mennonite sect, or to her drug use, or to her mother’s adultery. Maybe it was premarital sex. That was the problem. Not Christianity, or brimstone, or obedience by fear.

I think of the options available to good, Christian girls, and the inevitability of teenage marriage, babies, and teaching Sunday school. If you don’t get married, you become a missionary to convert the heathens of foreign locales. This was so close to being my life. The thought makes me physically sick.

Popely

My wrath issues are getting out of control.

Rage of the Day: I hate life. But mostly, I hate slow people, who seem to naturally congregate with other slow people, hand in hand, forming a human blockade five people thick, congesting any hope of me getting to the skytrain within a reasonable three minute timeframe.

Shove over, slow people - my time is just as precious as yours, and I don’t want to spend it staring at your collective asses while you impede my ability to walk at a reasonable pace. I don’t force you to walk fast, don’t force me to walk slow. I have places to go, and I know that you don’t, but...agggggh. MOVE. For the love of my sanity move. HALF THE SIDEWALK - at most! It’s a socially implied rule. Socially implied!


And...the Pope.

The man who lives in a secluded giant temple amidst riches and opulence by which even Heaven cannot compare, while his people starve and are compelled to bear fourteen children each, six of which will be molested by celibate priests, all with the pope's full knowledge and probable complacency. His holiness, indeed.

(It's worth noting here that Catholic Priests, back in the day, were allowed to marry, but then the Church decided it wanted more land, and that it could acquire the land of all its priests when they died if it stopped their ability to have sons....so if you're thinking of yelling "why?" at the sky when you hear one more story of children being abused by sexually confused men in a position of infinite power, the answer is "so the Pope could have more land." Doesn't that make you feel better?)

But my stance on the Pope remains exactly the same as it was last year, when old Popey was making waves by declaring that condoms encouraged the spread of HIV. Remember that? It was such a simpler time, when we thought the Pope was only okay with letting African babies die of AIDS.

Enjoy the repost...

Stop listening to the Pope (we asked him to stop talking, and that didn’t quite work). Responsible consumerism can, and should, be applied to religion. If you’re tithing your local catholic church, you are supporting a pope who thinks condoms cause AIDS and that birth control is always wrong. Why is this man’s impeccable logic worthy of your attention? Stop listening, encourage others to do the same, and he becomes just another opinionated old guy yelling at young people from his porch.

Oy, vey.

Passover certainly isn't "Jewish Easter." It's way more like "Jewish Christmas."

I understand that I - heathen, gentile, goya - don't know the first thing about what it means to be Jewish, and any attempt to try will end up coming off as racist or promoting of stereotypes. I get that it's complicated, what with the whole "my people killing off your people en mass, some two generations back;" that sort of thing, in general, is linked to angst and hard feelings...so, in advance, I'm very sorry. (To be clear, I'm Irish, not German, and my people haven't effectively killed anything, ever, except our own livers...but I digress.)

But I have wondered what it would be like - being Jewish.

Mostly, my curiosity comes from a hunger for belonging - I like the idea of a being part of a large, albeit annoying family, spanning the globe, connected by a common heritage (...a heritage of genocide and persecution). I live on the outskirts of Vancouver's Jewish district so I know where to buy my food kosher, and I already have lots of angst and self-deprecating good humor, without any of the benefits - being part of an ancient culture extending back thousands of years, and part of a community willing to support me and give me things, solely because of my birthright. I like the idea of synagogue, and I'd even be willing to study Hebrew, were it to earn me a large Bat Mitzvah.

I'm also in favour of a culture of talking - about things, questioning things, debating, compromising, and not necessarily even having to believe in God. It's a far cry from what is means to be a Pentecostal Christian, which is a religious experience I'll not soon forget. Jews allow dancing at their weddings, too. Plus, they get to grapple with being God's chosen people, and I've always wondered what it would be like, being Chosen.

The Irish weren't chosen for anything...except by the Vikings, who chose us for raping, and pillaging. And the English, who chose us for raping, and pillaging. Ours is not a happy heritage - and there weren't no manna falling from the sky during the potato famine, either.

I tend to regard religion in the same way that others regard illicit drugs...recreationally benign, but prone to spiralling out of control and into life-consuming addiction. I'm also in favour of Karl Marx's "opiate of the masses" decree, though it's often misquoted - in the time of Marx, opium was one of the few effective painkillers, which Marx had himself used to ease suffering. Marx referred to religion as a painkiller for the poor - but, like codeine tablets, one should be careful, lest they end up in a back-alley, shooting heroin into their eyeballs. (That end part's my interpretation, not Marx's...I have a feeling Marx was much less judgemental.)

But sometimes, life gets lonely, and on such nights, when I'm out walking my puppies, and it's cold and wet and windy and I'm feeling terribly small and alone, the homes of my neighbours look especially lovely - crowded with well-dressed family members, gathered from far and wide to come home, to eat, to talk. I'll remember - Passover started tonight, at sunset, and its a time to be with family...if you're Jewish. It feels warm and wholesome, and though I know I don't belong and never will, I wish for a moment I could come inside.

Have a holly-jolly Passover, friends.

An Ancient San Fransisco

Preamble: The Bible is host to a great many stories which have been told again and again throughout the ages, informing and forming our culture and guiding the doctrine of our lives. The best stories, found in the Old Testament, feature a wholesome slathering of sex, betrayal, bets with Satan, and random characters being smote. Sometimes, we can interpret stories to derive moral lessons which can form the foundation of a spiritual life and three major religions. And sometimes, they’re just good, smitey fun. Thus I present:

The Tale of Sodom and Gomorrah: An Ancient San Fransisco

Generations has passed since the time of Noah, who, good Sunday school students recall, had built an ark and gathered two of every animal (save the tardy and ill-fated unicorn). God had drowned all those not aboard the arc and, after the waters receded, He felt kind of bad about the whole thing. To make amends, He sent Noah a sign: a rainbow, as a promise of a brighter future in which the entire population of the Earth is not drowned en masse.

God’s sign to Noah can still be seen in skies today, though global warming and polar ice cap naysayers remain unconvinced that we won't all drown, and a few have postulated that the rainbow is simply an optical illusion born of water and light, or an attempt by God to frown at gay people.

Back in Genesis, however, God’s message was never questioned.

There lived the aging Abraham and Sarah.

Abraham and Sarah’s marriage had not been without its struggles. Sarah, while attractive, had been unable to bare a male heir, making her essentially useless as a wife, and as good as dead. Abraham did not say this out loud, but both spouses knew it to be true, and the ensuing stress had been the source of constant arguments and a few destroyed lives.

As the couple aged, their grief remained, but it eventually grew to be familiar and then faded to the background of an otherwise tolerable existence. Abraham’s sheep farm prospered, and they fell into a familiar pattern. Abraham would see to his sheep while Sarah tended to the house, cooking, cleaning, beating servants, and generally worshipping God in the way that good, righteous people do.

When three men appeared on Abraham’s doorstep, the couple took them in warmly and without question. Sarah served them tea and crumpets, as was only proper, and the men proved to be gracious and kind. They admired the house, and the donkey, and the accumulated jewels from a century of plunder. One turned to the aging Sarah and said:

“I see you’re pregnant, mazal tov! I sincerely hope it’s a boy!”

Sarah blushed dark red and examined herself in the mirror, noting with sadness her expanding waistline and generous belly. She wished for the days of ore, when she was known as a great beauty and was hot enough to be kidnapped as a captive bride for an Egyptian prince. Such days seemed long ago.

When their guests had left, Sarah tidied the table and began to wash the dishes, while Abraham retreated to his study and had a long conversation God.

God was in a wrathful mood that evening, engulfed in flaming rage over a certain city, known for debauchery. The city’s reputation was well-known and damning, and worse still, the people there played loud music at all hours of the night:

“I must destroy them!”

Abraham cautioned God against this, noting that surely righteous men lived in the city, too. It would be wrong to kill them along side their sinning brothers, since they were entirely innocent.

God took this in, sighing. He remembered the Great Flood of Noah’s time, and the tides of anger that had poured out of him then, the satisfaction of watching the last heathen baby drown, then the discomforting guilt that had followed. He remembered his promise to Noah. And still He was uneasy, for it had been so long since He had felt the simple pleasure of blotting out human life-

“What sort of ratio are we talking about here?” He asked, looking to Abraham intently. “I mean, if there are five hundred sinning men and only one good one, it hardly seems worth it to spare an entire city. How many innocent victims would there have to be?”

“Some people might argue that human life can’t be quantified that way.” Abraham said this quietly, hoping not the incur the wrath of his Lord.

“People are so stupid. What nonsense!” God laughed aloud at the thought. “Look, Abraham, if you expect me to not destroy this city, then there had better be at least fifty good men living there.”

“If you’ll spare the city for fifty men, then you should probably spare it for forty-five.”

Abraham was a cunning haggler, and it was a skill that he would pass on to his generations of offspring until eventually it formed the basis of an unkind racial stereotype. Even God was impressed as Abraham whittled down the necessary number of good men to forty, then thirty, and finally a measly ten.

And God and Abraham agreed:

“If there are ten good men in the city of Sodom, then I will not destroy it. I promise.”

***

True to His word, God did not smite the city of Sodom (which savvy readers may note was the basis of a certain word ending in 'odomy'). Instead He developed a task force to perform a morality census.

He sent two of his best angels directly into the city to investigate. And while we cannot be sure, legend and the ensuing events tell us that angels, while human-like in appearance, glowed with an ethereal light. Their flesh untarnished, their smiles pearly white - this was quite the sight to behold in early Biblical times, still hundreds of years from the invention of soap.

This young Brad Pitt and George Clooney strolled into the city, shirtless (for what use would angels have of shirts?), and there they happened upon Lot, who was Abraham’s righteous nephew. Lot greeted the angels enthusiastically and, showing the same good manners his aunt and uncle had taught him, invited them home for tea and crumpets.

“You’re welcome to stay the night, if you’d like, and be on your way in the morning.”

The angels declined, not wanting to impose, and suggested they sleep in the city square. Lot would have none of this, and escorted the men to his home where, despite their protests, he served them tea and crumpets, followed by an elaborate feast.

The angels were rubbing their satiated, muscular bellies, when a loud knock was heard at Lot’s door.

Going to answer it, he found an assembly of townsmen on his doorstep and peaking anxiously through his windows.

“Lot, who are those men?”

Lot shrugged, for he did not know - they were strangers. This did not impress the mob.

“We saw you talking to them, and we saw them coming here.” The men insisted. “Who are they, and what are they doing here? Can we meet them?”

Lot noted an unsavory look in their eyes.

“We want to know them.” The men of Sodom insisted, and with this vaguely implied lechery, Lot had certainly heard enough.

“Those men are guests of my home!” He shouted to the restless crowd. “As their host, I must protect them. Please, just leave them alone.”

The men would not be appeased.

“Look,” Lot stated, panicking. “Those men are my guests, and I cannot let any harm come to them. That would be wrong. But, why don’t we compromise? I have two beautiful young daughters, and they’re virgins. Why don’t you just gang rape them, instead? Hell, do whatever you want to my virgin daughters! But please,” Lot insisted, gravely “Those strangers are my guests, and what you plan to do to them is sinful.”

The mob was no longer listening, and the men of the city surged forward. Just as they were about to smash in the door, Brad and George grabbed hold of Lot and pulled him inside. In a flash of searing light, the angels struck the mob blind (likely done with laser pointers).

Brad and George, no longer interested in a census, informed Lot of the imminent doom: “Get your sons-in-law, your children, and whoever you have in the city. Don’t look back, and try to make it to higher ground.” Lot paused, confused. “We’re angels, sent by God, and tomorrow at dawn we’re going to blow up your city.”

Lot thought then of his family, cowering together as their city burned. He, like his uncle Abraham, had yet to be blessed with a son. He had only daughters - parasitic and ungrateful daughters. It was at this point he went to his sons-in-law and informed them of the coming apocalypse.

“You told them, right?” His wife asked, insistently, as the family gathered in Lot’s home and prepared to flee. His two virgin, un-raped daughters hung close to his wife, and she was staring anxiously at the door. Their married daughters had yet to arrive.

“Of course I told them.” Lot replied truthfully. He had told his sons-in-law on the imminent doom they were facing, and they had listened. What he did not tell his wife was that he had passed off the warning as a hilarious joke, and then he had laughed heartily and left them to die.

The angels looked on at their host family with deep concern.

“Please, it’s almost dawn, and you need to get out of here.” Brad and George grasped the small family by the hands and led them to the gates of the city, as the distant East sky brightened and the city prepared to burn. Lot, terrified, began to cry.

“I don’t think we can make it to the mountains.” He whispered, leaning against Brad for support. “Thank you for trying to save us, but we’ll never make it out alive. My daughters walk ever so slowly, it’s no use! We’ll only make it to that tiny town over there.” He pointed, sadly, to the small town across the plane.

“Fine, then, we’ll try to spare that city from the fallout.” Brad consented, glancing over his shoulder at the nearing sun. He and George were beginning to feel anxious, eager to make their way to the city square, uncomfortable with the heavy feeling of the explosives strapped to their chests. They were ready to begin things, to destroy, and to end.

Lot and his family ran for the neighboring town, and as the sun rose they could feel the roar of thunder and the thick clouds of ash, spreading and smothering, across the planes of Jordan. God reigned down fire from the heavens, and the heat pressed the family on.

As they neared the town and safety, Lot’s wife looked back at the carnage. And here God saw fit to turn Lot's wife to a pillar of salt, where she remained and provided nutrients to grazing cattle in years to come.

***

Abraham saw the dark clouds on the horizon where he knew that town of Sodom to be, and he was sad for his nephew, and for the innocent men who had died there (though they numbered less than ten). And while his sadness was great, it was soon to be lifted, for Abraham had been blessed by God.

A short few months later, his wife, Sarah, bore Abraham a precious son.

And God Said Unto Moses

“Got Jesus?” Asks the sign of my neighborhood Pentecostal church, cleverly lampooning a commercial that aired a mere ten years ago, advertising milk. The sign makes all those warm, fuzzy feelings come flooding back until my throat closes up and I grab for my Epi pen…ahh, Christianity, I missed you so.

Church signage is a careful art, summarizing an entire philosophy on life and death, amusing members, gently reminding the strays of your flock to return, and peaking the interest of non-believers, all with less characters than your average Tweet. My favorite comes from the American Bible belt and sadly was only posted for a week last summer, declaring: “I kissed a girl, and I liked it, and then I went to Hell.”

What the members of the Southern Baptist congregation failed to grasp was a reference to the popular Katy Perry song, in which the reverend’s daughter got too brave drinking and lost her discretion, leading to a make-out session with…a girl! And she doesn't even know her name. For shame, Katy.

The sign was taken down after the posting minister received a flood of calls from a confused congregation, who wondered if he was trying to promote a procreation-only view of sex (where ‘liking’ a kiss is strictly forbidden, as kissing is simply a means to a disdained but dutiful, baby-making end). No, no, no, silly unsavvy American south, that’s not what he was trying to say at all. Sex is great, God-given fun, done within the confines of Holy matrimony. And you know who can’t get married? That's right, them God-forsaken Homosexuals.

Homosexuality, you see, is a one-way ticket to eternal damnation, so be wary of kissing girls (or guys), no matter how good the taste of their cherry chapstick…it won’t taste so good when you’re burning in the fire of Hades. So you should think on that, young teenagers, lest your screams go unheeded for all of eternity within a fiery inferno, because Homosexuality is a Sin, and the Bible tells me so.

This Biblical stance is what has Christians the world over digging in their heals and shaking their head on gay marriage. ‘Civil liberties and equal rights be damned,’ best said when stamping a foot for the emphasis, ‘homosexuals make me feel icky, and besides… It’s in Leviticus.’

Actually, homosexuality is not just in Leviticus - the Bible makes mention of intragendered sex not once, but twice. Raping of men is seen as a bad thing in the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, transcribed above, though the issue is never addressed directly, and is more a commentary on the relative worth of men compared to women that anything to do with sex or love.

Leviticus is the most frequently cited passage because, at least comparatively, its reading is relatively clear:

‘Thou shalt not lie with a man as thou lies with a woman, for this is an abomination.’ (Leviticus, 18:22)

Leviticus was written by Moses in close consultation with God himself, who no one else ever saw or heard because God only talked to Moses when he was far away from other people, in this case on the top of Mount Sinai. It’s the third book of the Old Testament, which should make Christians wary - much of what is said this far back in the Bible is contradicted later on, often by Jesus himself, and therefore null and void (this is why Christians are allowed to eat shellfish and pork). But Jesus never mentions his gay friend, Nathan, and so we must act according to what Moses said, and Moses said it pretty clear: you cannot have sex with a man in an identical manner to the way you would have sex with a woman, for this is pretty bad in the eyes of God, amen.

This message only gets tarnished when you branch out a little and examine what else God decried in Leviticus. Leviticus is a giant book of rules, ranging from the mundane to the absurdly specific: do not have sex with a woman during her period, do not breed any of your of your livestock with a different species, and if you have sex with a slave woman who is promised to another man but who has not yet been set free to be married, then all will be forgiven if you take a ram to the entrance of the meeting hall to be sacrificed by a priest, and the man promised the slave woman may not kill you (Leviticus, 19:20-22).

Some colorful aspects of Judeo-Christian law come up in such rule-laden texts, and these are the parts you rarely hear about in Sunday school. I just spent a frustrating five minutes trying to Google the passage of Leviticus talking about parenting methods for difficult children, but that’s because the elusive passage was written in Deuteronomy, two books later:

“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or mother and, though they chastise him, will not give heed, then his parents shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of the city, and say to the elders ‘This is our stubborn and rebellious son. He will not listen. He is a drunkard and a glutton.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones, and thus you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all of Israel shall hear, and fear.” (Deuteronomy 21:19-21)

[To finish the chapter, “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death, put to death, and his body is hung on a tree (which of course is a natural place to put a body), you must not leave the body hanging overnight and must bury it the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God and defiles the land God gave you.” (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)]

Needless to say, these passages aren’t frequently mentioned, despite a bumper crop of adult children who have yet to leave home. (‘Drunkard’ and ‘glutton,’ please. Moses is lucky he died before kids went to college.) Christians don’t frequently stone their wayward children, and most churches don’t even preach abstinence during a woman’s period…these passages simply aren’t considered relevant in our modern, enlightened times. From the Old Testament, Christians (and even Christian pastors) tend to dabble, taking what they please, and leaving the rest as a relic of the past.

So, back now to modern times, you or a loved one kissed and girl and liked it and are having a crisis of faith. What does the Bible say of such things? Well, in Leviticus it says that you shouldn't have sex with a man in the same way that you have sex with a woman. One chapter over, it says we should not trip the blind, pervert justice, or spread slander. And it mentions not doing anything that may endanger a neighbor’s life and to not harbor hate, and to never bear a grudge, love thy neighbor as thyself…or something like that.

It’s up to modern-day Christians to choose which passages should be highlighted, and preached about, and which messages are worth displaying on roadward signs. So go forth, God speed, and choose wisely.

Sowing the Seeds of Hypocrisy

I try, I really do, to live a Good Life.

I haven’t killed any babies or puppy dogs. I haven’t smote anyone, lately. I speak out against the various atrocities committed in the past, and I vow to do better in my own time. I try to lead an ethically sound life. But sometimes, it’s hard.

Take food, for example.

First, I lost meat, because I like happy, frolicking animals, and I like the Earth, and I don’t know if my life is worth much more than that of your average chicken. Then, I lost dairy (I still cheat if it’s delicious) - because milk doesn’t exist without veal, and scared little veal calves on atrophied legs being hauled out to auction make me cry myself to sleep. Then there was the loss of Nestle Products, which meant no Turtles, or Stoufer’s, or Haagen Daz (now doubly banned). Why did you have to kill all those African babies, Nestle? Your products were delicious. It’s all so unfair.

I eyed bananas suspiciously, waiting for them to declare themselves inedible, wanting to pretend that I didn’t already know about cash crops and gunned down plantation workers. I was losing weight, and bananas were affordable. I needed a better solution.

Thus, I began to grow a vegetable garden.

I cleared the earth myself, ripping back the grass, picking out the grubs, swearing vehemently at the dandelions and their insidious, spindly roots. I learned that vinegar will kill dandelion roots, but only if applied on a warm, dry day. I set traps for slugs, and going back to weed, found myself chanting: worms, you may live, slugs, you must die, and vegetation, you must grow in an orderly, single file of monoculture… Oh dear.

I seem to have become everything that I hate.

I kill the species that I do not like: grubs I throw out into the sunshine to shrivel, while slugs I lure to an early alcoholic grave. Encroaching vegetation must be stopped via mechanical or chemical means, and I rip out indigenous, symbiotic plant systems without a second thought. I inflict my will upon this patch of earth and call it my own and make it bend to my will.

Ladybugs may live. Aphids must die. Spinach may grow in neat rows, and will be killed if it deviates too far into my carrots. I am a cruel and heartless dictator, my colony an authoritarian state, my tiny garden plot a miniature of all the world being colonized and subjugated.

I am a monster. I am a tempestuous deity, killing things I don’t like, molding the Earth according to my wrathful whims. I stab at a dandelion root with a spade, whispering ‘die!’, feeling like I’m fighting a holy war. The dandelion clearly has Darwin on its side - it’s only fair that I have God on mine.

So I fight against the slugs with a rally cry lifted from the Old Testament. It’s genocide on a miniature scale, and because I have to eat, it seems to be the only solution.

My garden has turned me into everything I fear and despise; those vegetables had better be delicious.

Candid, Opinionated, and Otherwise Cynical Advice

1. If you want to stop kids from smoking, then stop kids from smoking. Yes, you can penalize cashiers…or…you could STOP KIDS FROM SMOKING. Slap them with fines, slap their parents with fines, patrol your local high school at break hour, and have kids nark on the adults who are buying them smokes (then fine them, too)…viola. Underage smoking is no longer an issue, and the government just saved about 75 billion dollars in health care costs down the road.

2. Stop listening to the Pope (we asked him to stop talking, and that didn’t quite work). Responsible consumerism can, and should, be applied to religion. If you’re tithing your local catholic church, you are supporting a pope who thinks condoms cause AIDS and that birth control is always wrong. Why is this man’s impeccable logic worthy of your attention? Stop listening, encourage others to do the same, and he becomes just another opinionated old guy yelling at young people from his porch.

3. It is impossible to Save a Life. We can delay death for a finite amount of time, but we can never actually save a life (e.g. if you performed CPR on someone and then they died in the ambulance…not saved. If you save a kid from drowning and he gets hit by a car while walking away…not really saved). It’s okay to want to delay death (for days, months, or even decades). But the medical system is fixated on a pursuit which is largely imaginary, and this concept takes away from the much more achievable goal of Improving Quality of Life during our finite time on this planet. (Apologies if this sounds anything like the excessively awful movie Patch Adams, which both decreased the quality of life of everyone who saw it, and brought us all a full two hours closer to death. Robin Williams should be tried for his crimes against humanity.)

4. If you want to save the world this Earth Day, try NOT recycling. Your cans and pop bottles are not the cause of the Earth's problems (and neither is that plastic bag you bought them in, though it might smother a sea turtle or two). Rampant consumerism and a societal attitude of convenience and complacency? A much more likely culprit. So throw away your pop bottles, and feel bad about it, and feel bad about the rest of your garbage, too (recycling causes a ton of greenhouse emissions, anyways). Feel bad about the meat you eat, and the bananas you eat, and...whatever else you eat. (I have limited knowledge of food products, as you may have noticed). Feel bad enough to change your lifestyle accordingly, even if it's not socially acceptable and/or easy. Recycling is easy. Saving the planet is not.

5. Play with a puppy under a cherry tree in full blossom. There should be sunshine, and possibly a book of poetry read by a handsome European without a shirt. There's no real reason why you should, but...just do it. It'll be fun.

Why I'm An Athiest (Incurring God's Wrath)

God...well... He and I, we have our differences.

I suppose it all began when I was about sixteen. Up until that point, I was quite the devote. I was told that God was my heavenly father and that he loved me but would burn me in Hell if I strayed from his path, and I believed. I was told that Jesus and angels and demons were real, and that the devil would get you if you strayed from God, or if you loved God he might get you anyways in order to punish you, and that visions, speaking in tongues, and thoughts being placed in your head by both God and the devil were part of the Christian experience. I believed. I was told that homosexuality was a sinful lifestyle choice into which selfish people strayed but often returned, and repented, sort of like drugs, I guess, except a little bit worse, and that any family members who became gay at any point should be excommunicated because they were bad people to be around. And I...well...I guess I believed that, too.

And then...well...I started to lose my way.

I started to learn I had gay friends, and that they were nice regular people. I started to realize that "Christian" and "good person" do not go hand in hand...in fact, I started to learn that in a lot of cases the opposite seemed to be true. I learned about evolution...and that science could easily counter every argument that ill-informed adults had told to me about why evolution couldn't possibly be true - and then I remembered the dinosaurs. Hmm...what about dinosaurs, God?

I started to think about my own definition of right and wrong...and how I wasn't sure that it matched up to God's definition, and this scared the shit out of me. (This is about the time I stumbled upon God advocating for genocide in the old testament - "kill everything that breaths" - and Jesus refusing a woman his healing powers because she was of a different race. Huh.) I still believed, of course, that if I didn't serve God I would burn in Hell for all of eternity where no one could hear my screams. But then I wondered...God...why would you burn me in Hell? I was led to believe God was infinitely good, and infinitely forgiving, and that my own moral standards could never match my own. And then I thought of Hitler, and child molesters, and serial killers, and I wondered if I would want them to burn in Hell. The answer is no. But if I'm capable of being a bigger person than God...then...well, the whole thing falls apart really quickly around here.

I was devastated, and terrified. I still believed I was going to Hell...sometimes, I still believe it. I convinced myself that I was being tested, and prayed to God to lead me back to him, when things were black and white and small and clear. I prayed very hard, for very long. I started investigating other religions, to see if maybe that would coax him into action. And then...God sent me a missionary.

I was eating soup in the UBC cafeteria, alone, when a man approached...may I sit down? I nodded politely. He asked if he could show me something...an informational pamphlet. I did not reply - he did not wait. He began showing be pictures of disorganized dots - my life right now, without Jesus...see, that dot's school, and that's family, and that's money, and that's health, and they're all scattered, see? I wanted to interrupt to let him know that I was already Christian (as I still considered myself to be), but he gestured dismissively...wait, it will all become clear. A second picture showed dots in a circle with a cross in the middle...this is my life if I gave myself to Jesus. You see, only Jesus can organize the dots. If I simply accept Jesus into my life, balancing school and money and health and time will no longer be issues...because Jesus will do it for me. The missionary watched me carefully for a reaction.

I paused. I... Dots? I guess, but...

The missionary continued: It's important not to trust your feelings or thoughts. You must have faith. Trust in Jesus. If you listen for His voice, God will show you the path.

The path, it seemed, led me out of the cafeteria, and down the road to Agnosticism. Thank you, God, for sending your servant to guide my way. As I looked back on the Bible, and the things I had been taught, it was like I had been blind and suddenly could see: how had I been swallowing this crap? And who teaches this stuff to children??

When agnosticism felt too passive in the warfare of human rights (denying condoms to Africans because of American Pentecostal beliefs? Picketing funerals for people who are gay, or portray gay men in cinema? Really?), I stumbled upon Athiesm, and when I realized it pissed of my mom, the title was mine for good. I still think there is more to life that we can perceive or explain...but a thousand years ago, we didn't know where the Sun went at night. That's why we're still learning.

So: Trust your thoughts, and your feelings, and your sense of compassion. Live a good life, and help others where you can. It's not religion...but it's a good thing to do.