1. Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers
2. Honk If Your Religious Beliefs Make You An Asshole
3. Intelligent Design Makes My Monkey Cry
4. Too Stupid to Understand Science? Try Religion.
5. There’s A REASON Why Atheists Don’t Fly Planes Into Buildings
6. “Worship Me or I Will Torture You Forever. Have a Nice Day.”­ God.
7. God Doesn’t Kill People. People Who Believe in God Kill People.
8. If There is No God, Then What Makes the Next Kleenex Pop Up?
9. He’s Dead. It’s Been 2,000 years. He’s Not Coming Back. Get OVER It Already!
10. All religion is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. ~ Edgar Allen Poe.
11. Viva La Evolución!
12. Actually, If You Look It Up, The Winter Solstice Is The Reason For The Season
13. I Wouldn’t Trust Your God Even If He Did Exist
14. Cheeses Is Lard. Argue With THAT If You Can.
15. People Who Don’t Want Their Beliefs Laughed at Shouldn’t Have Such Funny Beliefs
16. Jesus is Coming? Don’t Swallow That.
17. Threatening Children With Hell Is FUN!
18. GOD – APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD!
19. Jesus Told Me Republicans SUCK
20. God + Whacky Tobacky = Platypus
21. God Doesn’t Exist. So, I Guess That Means No One Loves You.
22. When the Rapture Comes, We’ll Get Our Country Back!
23. Q. How Do We Know the Holy Ghost Was Catholic?
    A. He Used the Rhythm Method Instead of a Condom.
24. You Say “Heretic” Like It Was a BAD Thing
25. I Love Christians. They Taste Like Chicken.
26. Science: It Works, Bitches.
27. “Intelligent Design” Helping Stupid People Feel Smart Since 1987
28. I Found God Between The Sheets
29. I Gave Up Superstitious Mumbo Jumbo For Lent
30. My Flying Monkey Can Beat Up Your Guardian Angel
31. Every Time You Play With Yourself, God Kills a Kitten
32. If God Wanted People to Believe in Him, Then Why Did He Invent Logic?
33. Praying Is Politically Correct Schizophrenia
34. ALL Americans Are African Americans
35. I Forget – Which Day Did God Make All The Fossils?
36. I Was An Atheist Until The Hindus Convinced Me That I Was God
37. The Spanish Inquisition: The Original Faith-based Initiative
38. If we were made in his image, when why aren’t humans invisible too?
39. JESUS SAVES….You From Thinking For Yourself
40. How Can You Disbelieve in Evolution If You Can’t Even Define It?
41. Q. How Can You Tell That Your God is Man-made?
    A. If He Hates All the Same People You Do.
42. Every Time You See a Rainbow, God is Having Gay Sex
43. I Went to Public School in Kansas and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt and a Poor Understanding of the Scientific Method.
44. WWJD = We Won. Jesus Died.
45. The Family That Prays Together is Brainwashing the Children
46. Oh, Look, Honey Another Pro-lifer For War
47. Another Godless Atheist for Peace and World Harmony
48. God is Unavailable Right Now. Can I Help You?
49. When Lip Service to Some Mysterious Deity Permits Bestiality on
    Wednesday and Absolution on Sundays, Cash Me Out. ~ Frank Sinatra.
50. No Gods. No Mullets.

For all of our Religious or spiritual readers, please take this list in the light hearted manner it was intended. Or don’t and post tons of scathing replies, that’ll give me something to do on Sunday. lol

~ Summer Ludwig ~ WWJV4.com

• Power. Most of us equate “Republican” with “Christian Right” they do not all fall neatly into that category but many do. That’s quite a combination of power, political influence and God. Since most sex crimes are about power and control and not sexual release, it stands to reason that the sort of people who would commit said crimes would try and place themselves in a position of power, such as Congressman, church elder, etc.

• Sexual hangups stemming from a lifetime of “sex is dirty” lectures at home, at the pulpit, and in our supposedly religion free schools. This one is pretty self explanatory, make something dirty or taboo and it becomes more wanted, yet not openly for the most part. Like Larry Craig in the stall, the desires of our religious Republican leaders are hidden, making them all the more scandalous when they are revealed.

• The Church encourages members to be closed to the outside world, creating a haven for those people who might be pedophiles or other such lowly creatures to select and prey upon their victims. We see the perfect example of this in the Catholic priest scandals. The Church wanted it all handled internally so instead of prosecution, the offenders were shuffled around receiving even more opportunities to hurt children.

• Republicans and the Religious Right do not foster amongst themselves, or anywhere else for that matter, a furtherance of civil rights. Women are subject to their husbands, minorities are not given equal treatment, and if you are gay then you are damned. This automatically leads to secrecy and shame if you are different, a desire to keep things, such as abuse, quiet and not to “rock the boat”. A common family theme from religious, conservative households is that what happens in the home stays in the home. Again this is something that is seen on a larger scale within religious communities themselves. When progress is not being made on personal rights and protections the people who need help the most are ignored and left to fend for themselves. Thus children will be molested and not feel free to say something, a woman (or man) may be pressured into an inappropriate relationship and not feel like they can report it, or a gay Congressperson or clergy member may push their identities so far down that their true selves are revealed through desperate or illegal acts. (Gay hookers and meth)

• The lack of an internal moral compass. I suspect that this will be the most controversial of my opinions on this matter. Please let me explain. Whenever I am debating anything with a zealous religious conservative I am bound to be confronted with “If we didn’t have the Bible we wouldn’t know how to act morally” or “Without God to judge our actions we would have no reason to behave ethically.”

  This argument infuriates me on several levels. The first, of course, is that I am a very nice person. I do not murder, torture, rape, pillage, or plunder and I do not have a personal relationship with any deity, I do not follow the teachings of a holy book, indeed I do not believe in the fairy tales of religion. The second reason this argument angers me is that it is not factually based. Just a little bit of research will show that secular societies are much more peaceful than religious ones, for the most part.

  This is not something that is able to be logically argued with a Christian the majority of the time. They really don’t understand how anyone could live a moral life without the bible or a god watching over them in judgment. That leads me to believe that these individuals may not have a moral compass like millions of other people do. The common sense voice inside that tells you it’s not ok to steal, lie, and kill. In fact, I believe that many are actually fairly blood thirsty and hateful people. Nothing gets to me more than the “culture of life” advocating for the death penalty, wanting to stop social services, and promoting discrimination against whatever difference is in style at the moment. These are the people from which spring the likes of the Minutemen at our borders and an administration who is killing thousands of people in the name of their god.

  Because most religious people grow up being indoctrinated into their belief system it is easy to see how this lack of a moral compass can develop. They follow a loosely tied together historical book to the letter (on some things) that was written and compiled by men with definite political, social, and personal agendas of their own. A book that promotes slavery, the oppression of women, rape as a way to celebrate victorious bloody battles, murder, incest, and the list goes on and on. Because I believe that most humans innately possess the feelings and understanding needed to behave in a moral, ethical manner, it makes sense to me that one would recoil from the vile teachings of the bible. This creates a maelstrom of confusion within the believer. They have been taught that this is the holy word of god and yet it goes against our natural feelings of what is right, this begins a struggle in which the natural feelings of revulsion lose out to the promise of eternal life and blessings. For most people this is not a conscious process or choice, they have been told over and over that the Bible is right and unerring so it follows a natural path. This then leads to the reality that these people have effectively squashed their inner voice of right and wrong and thus we see this tragic process played out in the media.

So there you have it, the Top 5 Reasons for Republican Sex Scandals, as I see it. Admittedly this is my own conjecture, I am interested in your take on the numerous sexual (and other) scandals plaguing our religious right as a whole and the Republican party specifically.

WIBW.com ran this Reuters story today detailing the tragic death of Olga Reyes 2 weeks after her wedding. Olga was suffering from an ectopic pregnancy and, out of fear of prosecution, there were no doctors willing to perform the medical procedure needed to save her life in time. She suffered for 4 days before sucumbing. International medical professionals agree that with an ectopic pregnancy the fetus is not viable and immediate surgery is the only route to insure the welfare of the mother.

Women’s rights groups, including physicians, have protested Congress and demanded an immediate repeal of the ban which does not make any allowances fof the life of the mother. Evangelicals and the Catholic church support the ban saying that medical advancements make it so that a mother’s life is never at risk. Not only is this an ignorant argument, it is dangerous. Like Reyes’ situation, there are times that no amount of medical assistance can save the mother and the child, a fact that is not disputed by the medical community.

The Catholic church is so much in favor of this deadly ban that they have organized over 300,000 protesters to refute the women’s rights groups. This story scares me on a number of levels, namely that that the Catholic church can deny facts and support something that is causing the loss of innocent women. Anti-choice activists are so set on assuring that women can’t control their own health, that they ignore and even manipulate the facts in order to support their stance.

Recently Pope Benedict XVI praised Nicaragua for enacting a total ban on abortions. This includes abortions for rape or incest and also abortions necessary to save the life of the mother. Since last November this ban on abortions has cost at least 80 lives according to women’s rights advocacy groups.

These are 80 young women who died because they did not have access to clean and safe abortion facilities when their lives depended on it. Jazmina Bojorge has the unfortunate distinction of being the first. She died due to complications in her pregnancy 36 hours after going to a hospital for fever and abdominal pains.

After her death Rev. Rolando Alvarez, spokesperson for the Managua archdiocese, has stated that the church will push lawmakers to clarify the ban to allow the saving of the mothers life. Since that time around 80 more women have died.

Here in America the ruling finding the “Partial-Birth” Abortion Ban unconstitutional was recently overturned. The Supreme Court ruled that a complete ban on Partial Birth abortions was indeed constitutional. The Act actually states that there is NEVER a time when this is a necessary procedure to save the life of the mother. Read the entire act here.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her dissent that the latest decision “tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists”.

While in itself the ban is a small step compared to the total ban that Nicaragua has, it is still a dangerous step along a very slippery and steep slope. The religious right simply will not rest as long as women are allowed to control their own reproductive rights.

Currently of the top candidates only the 3 Democrats expressed any concern over this bill. Obama, Edwards, and Clinton all came out strongly opposed to any reduction in women’s reproductive freedom. Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani both flip flopped from prior documented pro-abortion stands to more religious-right-friendly anti-choice stands.

I believe that we have come to a time where we can trust women to make their own medical decisions. While we cannot help those poor women in Nicaragua we can remain diligent to prevent their misery and deaths from befalling any more innocent lives.

~ William ~

P.S. If anyone knows of an organization that is helping in Nicaragua please post it in the comments. I would love to throw them some free publicity and any help we can. Women of all countries should have the freedom to control their own bodies.