Santorum. Call me. I got a million ideas for sale.

are those with deistic persuasions and what have they been stating to the world about these sorts of theological injustices?

As far as I know, no divinity schools, no preachers, not even any prominent members of Christian or Jewish or Muslim faiths have been taking a leadership position against this type of activity.


I may have missed those pronouncements from the Pope, I may have missed them from leaders in the Anglican and Episcopal churches, I hear Unitarians sometimes speaking about equal rights for all people on the planet, but I never seem to hear the majority of leadership from members of other Protestant churches taking a public stand.

If I have missed those momentous moments when key leadership in churches stood up against religiously cloaked intolerance, please give us all some links. Instead, I read headlines about the Pope condemning marriage of same sex couples, seeing that as a "threat to humanity" or some other gibberish.


When will those people of faith begin to speak up against religiously based intolerance? Let me know the date and time.

what is going on everywhere--except in fundamentalist and evangelical camps--about these issues. Thousands of us in seminaries and churches all across the globe take on this sort of thing. The National and World Council of Churches and every progressive denomination speak out.

The fundies have the loudest voices, but they do nor speak for many others. Believe me, we take pubic stands all the time.



[link:http://www.christian century.com| an ecumenical journal

I guess I can't put more than one link on a page--so I'll make three more if you wish, and if you agree to look them up. I tried to list them here, but they don't show..

evidence of your lovely religion fighting against bigotry.

Show us all some!

but others are not?

It's an interesting line that those with privilege draw.

Do I like what those people are doing? Fuck no. But once those of faith try to draw lines where their religion is not open to criticism, it gives a LOT of fuel to the assholes in the OP to say "hey, wait, it's what I believe. Leave me alone."

somewhere beyond where they are standing.

The faiths of those true-believer folks who claim that their god told them that only a man and a woman can be married, and claim that their "marriage" is threatened when two humans of the same gender wish to become a couple and wish to raise children, well, it begins to get a bit cloudy as the just how and why ANY lines are drawn, other than "faith" and "belief" not requiring facts nor "science".

If one can "believe" the moon is made of green cheese, who is to question those that "believe" it is made of yellow cheese?

is pretty common.

This is the common enemy and who we should be fighting against (together).

Speak for yourself. My "common enemy" is superstition and crackpottery...whether it's coming from the believers in the sadistic Gawd of the right-wing Bible-thumpers, or the believers in the cosmic-muffin Gawd of the Lib'rul Xians.

As for the article, I grew up in South Carolina, about 50 miles from "the infamous Bob Jones University." I just spent 2 weeks there in December.

I think Ben Adler was making stuff up for most of that article:

These aren't mega-churches in the feel-good Rick Warren mold, with their Christian rock bands and squishy environmentalism.

List of mega-churches in SC, with average weekly attendance from 1800-8500: http://www.wyff4.com/news/15968127/detail.html

These are typically small plain white buildings, not much larger than the trailers and ranch houses that surround them, with modest signs advertising their Baptist or Methodist faith.

Most Baptist and Methodist churches in SC look like regular churches, with steeples and everything. They tend to be part of very large regional orgs, like the Southern Baptist Convention.

Those "small plain white" churches are more likely to be evangelical spookeries, belonging to denominations like the Fire-Baptized Pentecostal Holiness and their uncountable splinter sects.

A Web search by this reporter could not ascertain what the penalty is for getting caught swearing in a convenience store parking lot.

5 years in prison and a $5,000 fine, if S.C. Senate Bill S0056 passes (it hasn't yet):

http://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess118_2009-2010/bills/56.htm

Also, "South Carolina Considers Law That Would Criminalize Profanity in Public Forums:" http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090114/2140283416.shtml

And yes, I'm nitpicking, but this cracked me up:

If you drive west on Route 378 from Myrtle Beach, S.C. to the state capitol in Columbia, you'll pass more churches than businesses.

Huh? First, you'll be driving a long time - Columbia is about 150 miles from Myrtle Beach. Next, if you drive due west on 378 from Conway (where it starts) - you'll probably end up in Georgia (where 378 ends).

Irrelvant note to potential tourists - going south from Columbia, 378 is about the worst route to Myrtle Beach. It goes thru a buttload of little speed-trap towns. Along with the local law, the S.C. Highway Patrol aggressively covers that highway.

If you have out-of-state plates, you might as well keep your wallet handy. On one of my trips to SC, the sadistic jokers at Hertz rented me "the only car we have left" - the one with New York plates.

I read this article and I'm like "wait, wut? 378 to Columbia from MB?" He laughed and said only some idjit that had never driven from MB to Cola would go that route ha ha. I don't even think 378 hooks up with MB, does it?

I remember, though, being a little girl from Charleston, going up "to the country" (anywhere north of Moncks Corner, basically) and seeing the little churches and there was one that had this old, beaten , hand painted sign with a cartoonish devil on it and it read "You Better Be Good! (devil cartoon) OR THE DEVIL'S GONNA GIT 'CHA" ha ha. Probably got blown down in Hugo or paved over when they turned it into a walmart or something. But it always cracked me up. DEVILS GONNA GIT 'CHA ha ha

I don't believe 378 does go all the way to MB. I'll have to ask my Mom - her and my aunt still go to MB every summer. My aunt is retired from the SC Highway Dept., so she knows every short-cut in the state.

...going up "to the country" (anywhere north of Moncks Corner, basically)...

Now you're making me ROFL! I'm from way north - the Upstate. Not far from the c-word...Clemson.



As a kid, "north" to me was like Asheville. Or Gatlinburg. My neighborhood always had a lot of bootleggers, since they could get across 3 state lines pretty quickly (GA, NC, TN).

Nowadays they're more likely to be running meth than moonshine, though.

that's where the band and cheerleading groups would go for some tournament or another, sometimes in the summer, sometimes in the winter. I only drove through once with my family when we went on a back-roads tour of SC, GA, TN. it was a hoot. we stopped at dollywood, and Underground Sea! (oooh!), and little antique stores propped up in people's garages.

WHen I was a wee lass, we'd go gem mining in Franklin, NC. Great fun!

I haven't been back to SC in a couple of years, and not out to the country in at least 15...hmm...16 or 17 if I"m counting right.

Jeezum Crow I'm old

I wonder how many people who currently see Santorum as the religious/Christian Great White Hope ... have stopped to consider how many of his specific, Conservative Catholic religious beliefs conflict with their own Protestant faith.

If this was publicized, it might well prevent any attempt by Santorum, to successfully garner the "Christian" vote.

In fact, Protestantism and Catholicism often conflict, violently. Remember the early days of Protestantism? Which declared the Pope to be the biblical "anti-Christ." Then recall the 400 years of literal wars between Catholics and Protestants, say; including the Thirty Years War, 1618-48. Or the time that the Spanish armada sailed against England ... in part with the aim of ending Protestantism and religious freedom in the British Isles.

This History lesson though, might not be as useful as simply noting that Santorum's EWTN-style opposition to contraception, conflicts with Protestant beliefs; which allow such things.