I think I may have seen another one of those religious hypocrites at a wedding.

At a cousin's wedding the other day, the minister was reciting his lines during the ceremony. You can't help noticing the emphasis he put on the phrase that MARRIAGE is between a MAN and a WOMAN.

It wouldn't surprise me if, in a few weeks, we read where the good reverend was busted for sexual crimes against juvenile boys or something like that.

As Rachel Maddow recently pointed out, it seems the louder these representatives of the church denounce the act, the more likely they are guilty of that act.

gave this long speech about how the only proper role for a woman was in the home,subservient to the man, and he went on and on about the obey portion of the vows, LOL. It was really very heavy-handed preaching and I was sickened by it. It's hard for me to understand people who are attracted to that kind of religion. I am just so different in my way of thinking than they are, that I might as well be from another planet.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0513-06.htm

Mercenaries Inc.: How a U.S. Company Props Up the House of Saud

Published in the April, 1996 issue of The Progressive
Mercenaries Inc.: How a U.S. Company Props Up the House of Saud
by William D. Hartung

We were shocked and saddened to hear about the attacks in Saudi Arabia and the deaths of at least 91 people there, including ten Americans.

But the fact that one of the targets was a U.S. private military corporation called Vinnell raises serious questions about the role of "executive mercenaries," and corporations who profit from war and instability. This is the second time in eight years that Vinnell's operations in Saudi Arabia have been the target of a terrorist attack. In 1995 a car bomb blasted through an Army training program Vinnell was involved with. The following year, Bill Hartung, a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute wrote this article for the Progressive magazine.

The sanitized version of American foreign policy asserts that the United States is hard at work promoting democratic values around the world in the face of attacks from totalitarian ideologies ranging from communism during the Cold War to Islamic fundamentalism today. Every once in a while an incident occurs that contradicts this reassuring rhetoric by revealing the secret underside of American policy, which is far more concerned with propping up pliable regimes that serve the interests of U.S. multinational corporations than it is with any meaningful notion of democracy. The November 13, 1995 bombing of the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) headquarters and an adjacent building housing a U.S. military training mission is one such incident.

President Clinton tried to paint the bombing as just another senseless act of terrorism perpetrated by armed Islamic extremists, but the target was chosen much too carefully to support that simple explanation. The Saudi National Guard is a 55,000 man military force whose main job is to protect the Saudi monarchy from its own people, using arms from the United States and training supplied by roughly 750 retired U.S. military and intelligence personnel employed by the Vinnell Corporation of Fairfax, Virginia. A January 1996 article in Jane's Defence Weekly describes the SANG as "a kind of Praetorian Guard for the House of Saud, the royal family's defence of last resort against internal opposition." The November bombing -- which killed five Americans and wounded thirty more -- was certainly brutal, but it was far from senseless. As a retired American military officer familiar with Vinnell's operations put it,

"I don't think it was an accident that it was that office that got bombed. If you wanted to make a political statement about the Saudi regime you'd single out the National Guard, and if you wanted to make a statement about American involvement you'd pick the only American contractor involved in training the guard: Vinnell."

The story of how an obscure American company ended up becoming the Saudi monarchy's personal protection service is a case study in how the United States government has come to rely on unaccountable private companies and unrepresentative foreign governments to do its dirty work on the world stage, short-circuiting democracy at home and abroad in the process. In the wake of the Iran/contra scandal and the end of the Cold War, many observers of U.S. foreign policy have assumed that this penchant for covert policymaking has been put aside, but Vinnell's role in Saudi Arabia puts the lie to that comforting assumption.

Thats what the minister said at my best friends wedding right after college. I almost jumped out of my ugly bridesmaid dress.

Considering that the New Testament says that sin entered the world through "one man" -- Adam -- and there's nothing in Genesis that said Adam told her not to eat the fruit.... and nothing saying that Adam was deceived into eating the fruit by Eve or any other reason to negate his culpability in sin entering the world...

Interesting, the twists and turns that could go from Genesis to that particular interpretation of Genesis (and of the New Testament too)....

Just like children. "The woman tempted me, so I ate." But he said that not because it was true, but because he was trying to pass the buck--just like Eve was when she blamed the serpent. At least that's what you believe if you believe the Bible. The whole point of "The woman tempted me" is not to point out that Woman is more evil than Man, or that she needs to obey him, but that when Man got in trouble for disobeying God, his first inclination was to blame someone else. Just as was hers. First, they disobeyed; then, they blamed others. But the Man actually compounded that by lying.

... of someone playing See What You Made Me Do/You Got Me Into This...

He pretty much says "Hey, you gave her to me, so this is your fault. See What You Made Me Do?"

My disagreements with fundamentalists are so, well, fundamental that it is hard to believe that we share the same reality. In fact, we don't: they have a made-up reality that they obviously prefer to the real reality. I don't think we will ever coax them out from under the house.

What a waste of humanity religion produces.

can't reason/discuss anything with them. They just respond with no rational intellectual thought process involved.

Exactly true, as you say, "What a waste of humanity religion produces." There are endless examples of this throughout history over and over again... yet, mankind, continues to do the same inane things, blind beliefs and actions.

What a really stupid species humans are... I definitely think humans will eventually be on the extinct species list.

Where the first words out of the minister's mouth were "God declared marriage a covenant between a man and a woman." I was rolling my eyes so hard I thought they'd get stuck.

The happy couple may or may not have chosen the minister who officiated at the ceremony. If they chose this guy, then I'd put the onus for any extra-ceremonial preaching on the bride and groom. If they had no say in the matter (e.g., they're members at that particular church and this minister is the person who does the marryin'), then I'd let them off the hook.

Either way, it's entirely possible that our friend in the fabulous robes may just be an authoritarian-type person trying to hang onto what he thinks is an Immutable Truth as a bulwark against a society and a world that's spinning beyond his ability to control or comprehend it.