394 Comments

Okay, I'm going to reprint something I wrote back in 2019, with a couple variations:

***

I don't care whether you're Christian, Jew, Muslim, Mormon, whatever. The second you step into a courtroom as an officer of the court, or put on a badge and a gun and go out on patrol or enter a house of government to represent your constituents, while you are in that role, Your ๐—ข๐—ก๐—Ÿ๐—ฌ ๐—ข๐—ฏ๐—น๐—ถ๐—ด๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป ๐—œ๐˜€ ๐—ง๐—ผ ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—Ÿ๐—”๐—ช. What your Bible or Quran or Bhagavad Gita or Book of Mormon says ๐—›๐—”๐—ฆ ๐—ก๐—ข ๐—ฃ๐—Ÿ๐—”๐—–๐—˜ ... because you will be dealing with people whose beliefs may differ from yours or may have no belief in any god at all. Because that is the case, it is incumbent upon you to remain ๐—ก๐—˜๐—จ๐—ง๐—ฅ๐—”๐—Ÿ.

If you can't do that ... you should not take on that responsibility. PERIOD.

***

Yeah, yeah, I know, people like Kern can no more separate their faith from their position than they could fly to the moon. Still, that circle-jerk they participated in was an insult to the concept of secular government, never mind to those of their constituents who may NOT believe as they do.

It's not just that they haven't copped a clue. ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ๐˜† ๐——๐—ผ๐—ป'๐˜ ๐—ช๐—”๐—ก๐—ง ๐—ง๐—ผ.

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It's creepy, superstitious, nonsense, it also suggests mental illness, with apologies to any organic, or chemical disorder sufferers, but I don't know what else to compare their mania to.

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Ummm ... Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

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Seriously, I wish they would all be โ€œrapturedโ€ to an alternate dimension where they are free to implement all of their insane โ€œrulesโ€ with full consequences that wonโ€™t affect the rest of us sane people.

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Given what spending eternity in heaven entails, Christians should be careful what they wish for. They'd find themselves trapped in a Twilight Zone nightmare with no escape.

It'd serve them right.

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๐˜ˆ ๐˜•๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ฆ ๐˜—๐˜ญ๐˜ข๐˜ค๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜๐˜ช๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ต

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nice_Place_to_Visit#Plot

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Just to correct the record, I don't hate any gods... okay, Zeus is a dickhead... Ares too. But that's beside the point.

I just despise you and people like you who use faith as an excuse to let their inner asshole loose upon others to dominate, hurt, demean, abuse, and torture them. You're cruel, small, impotent little losers and cowards who hide behind the idea of god to justify your abusive power fantasies who long to use the State's monopoly on violence to kill and silence anyone who objects to your mad reign of terror.

Go fuck yourself.

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Well put.

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๐ŸŽฏ๐ŸŽฏ๐ŸŽฏ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘

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I can't bear to listen to sanctimonious blasphemy. Even before I converted, it seemed repulsive, or maybe it's just the disgust for charlatans leading naive and thoughtless people to do foolish things at their behest.

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Your last sentence is what really cinched it......

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As often as not, when a man gets religion one of the first things he does is claim a right to control women. Mixing religion and government is the same terrible idea it has always been, and by trying to use the force of law to impose their religion on others the evangelicals sow the seeds of their own destruction. It can't come too soon. State laws banning atheists from holding public office should have never been enforceable as they are a direct violation of section three, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution that bans religious tests for holding public office in this country.

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Odd that their prayer wasn't for god to make certain that all children would have a caring, loving home, and simply wouldn't be conceived otherwise.

...except that's not odd, now that I think about it.

It would be odd, if these people genuinely cared about children.

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They care about children to the extent kids can be used to manipulate women.

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There was some surgeon general and some liberals administration that summed it up with, โ€œThey care about babies as long as they are embryos in other womenโ€™s bodiesโ€

I remember the religious rights had exploded. โ€ฆBecause it was so accurate.

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Well if the don't get them born, how can they abuse them? They need victims. /s

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The priests need new altar boys. After all, the current ones arenโ€™t getting any younger.

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Apr 11ยทedited Apr 11

To the pro-forced birth dodos in the Grand Canyon State...

Your bible contains not a single prohibition of abortion. Indeed, your biblical deity (in Genesis), its demented armies (in Hosea 13:16) and evil priests (in Numbers 5:11-31) freely practice it. And we learn in Leviticus 27:6 that children less than a month old are deemed worthless. What do you think that makes fetuses?

Kryst, read your own damned bible. You don't have a scriptural leg to stand on. And stop pretending we are an xian theocracy.

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But their god knew Jeremiah in the womb! That proves life starts before birth!

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Their god didn't know other planets existed even when they were visible (and would eventually be visible to later human astronomers) in the night sky, proving the all-knowing god of the bible is an ignoramus.

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And they think that means he actually ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด about life. They really need to read the guy's book.

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For most of them, that would be a first.

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Reading the book?

Or just reading in general?

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Caring about lives others than theirs ?

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You are on fire today, clever one!

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both I suspect!

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It's a mistranslation from French. The original quote was "dieu faisait des jรฉrรฉmiades pour un wombat" ๐Ÿ˜

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Not sure it's what you meant, but Google says that's "god was whining for a wombat".

Which makes about the same level of sense as the Christian Bible, come to think of it.

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Well, obviously itโ€™s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any marsupial.

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Black Hole Mourner is making a dad joke with similarly spelled words.

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Donrox got it right.

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I heard that verse was only about Jeremiah, not everyone. Because Jeremiah was created for a specific purpose.

The religious folks want to be special to god, so they wrap themselves in verses that donโ€™t pertain to them.

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"Because Jeremiah was created for a specific purpose"

He was good friend of mine. I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine.

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Apr 11ยทedited Apr 11

Iโ€™ll help anyone who always has mighty fine wine.

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๐ŸŽตJooooooy to the world๐ŸŽต

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Apr 11ยทedited Apr 11

Red, rosรฉ, white, gris or vinho verde ?

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The American Diabetes Association claims dry red wine or white wine are possibly even beneficial for diabetics. Stay away from Sangria!

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Apr 12ยทedited Apr 12

Most of the above!

rosรฉ not so much. Every few years I try it again, Iโ€™ve tried bottles highly recommended by reviewers. Just not my taste.

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He was a bullfrog

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Were any of the tongue speakers checking their phones because that's how you're supposed to do it.

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OT but relevant to yesterdayโ€™s article:

There is nothing more damning of the Catholic churchโ€™s clerical class, IMO, than the rare lonely example of how it was done right.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2024/04/07/dfp-obituary-bishop-thomas-gumbleton/73219645007/

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What a good man. He'd almost make me go back to my Catholicism - except for all the supernatural stuff.

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On the one hand I have to say I hate this decision on a number of levels because it's going to hurt women and families on an ongoing basis. This law was originally written by white men who had an at best limited understanding of the issue but decided they needed to ban abortion anyway. The whole need these people had to pray while babbling incoherently is, to me, completely secondary if unsurprising considering the sheer number of Mormons in the state.

I'm going to be blunt, though. I'm angry. Really, really angry. I'm honestly unconvinced that the ballot in November will make all that much difference, because as I've mentioned, a disproportionate percentage of the state is Mormon so it's hard to know how that election will work out. It doesn't help that Arizona's government has over the years been entirely too willing to find ways to work around anything the public votes for so I don't have much hope that the election will matter once the Republicans get done with it. Funny how no amount of prayer ever seems to fix that, isn't it?

Something else I'd like to get off my chest, as it were: Considering maternal mortality rates in the US, this country has no business at all trying to ban abortion. Yes, generally, women of color have it worse. It should be noted that when I looked into back in 2019 the rate of maternal mortality was low compared to most other nations in the world, it should be noted that it was very high for a first world nation. In the United States, we do a pathetic job of taking care of women, and it's time to give back to them, not take more from them.

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TBF, we do a pathetic job of taking care of everyone who isn't a hundred-millionaire, though it hurts cishet, white, Christian males less than others.

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A white man, who was not elected to anything.

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Why do Christians pray to begin with? Doesn't their god have a Plan for everyone? Isn't praying asking YHVH to change his plan for them? What a shallow testament to faith.

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gawd has a "perfect plan" and any deviation wuold make it flawed.

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How else can their god know which sports-team should win, unless they tell him? /s

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Prayer is great if and,only if, itโ€™s accompanied by action.

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The action is the only thing that accomplishes anything. Prayer simply takes the credit for success it has no actual hand in.

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Precisely. Prayer is the only way for someone to make themselves feel like they did something without doing anything.

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I hope Arizona voters remember this in November, but something will come along soon to make them forget. Conservatives always have something new waiting.

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I don't know, women have long memories when it comes to men taking their rights away. Keep hope alive!

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Not NEW stuff perse. But they do tend to recycle old shit. All they need is to find a story about some immigrant that did something (anything) wrong... "Immigrant Caught J-Walking" "AZ Immigrants refuse to kiss bible" "Foreign born babies smell bad"

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Apr 12ยทedited Apr 12

That is what BBQ sauce is for. ๐Ÿคค

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Apr 11ยทedited Apr 11

I do too, but the outlook is mixed.

House: 8 of the 9 Congressional districts are heavily gerrymandered. Only one is competitive. So even if this court case results in a large groundswell turnout who then vote dem, I don't think we can expect much change in House representation. Maybe it goes 4(D), 5(R) instead of the current 3 and 6.

Senate: Arizona is considered competitive, so all else being equal, a groundswell on abortion rights might very well give it to the Dems. However, neither party has held their primary yet, so we don't yet know about specific head-to-head and personality issues, and these can easily matter more than the state scotus abortion issue.

State-level legislature: I have no idea about this, so no idea whether any groundswell would have a big, medium, or small effect on the state legislature elections.

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Apr 11ยทedited Apr 11

OT

She just doesn't get it

"J.K. Rowling Won't 'Forgive' Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe & Emma Watson For Trans Comments"

https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/1654747-j-k-rowling-forgive-harry-potter-daniel-radcliffe-emma-watson

Props to Daniel and Emma for supporting trans people. As for Rowling? How can someone so intelligent be so bloody stupid at the same time?

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Well, after all, she's the one who put Harry in a closet. Not to mention Albus. And I'm still pissed off at the 8th movie trying to straighten the obviously gay Neville.

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She doesn't WANT to get it and it's not a question of age. DM and you are way older and have a better understanding of trans people.

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She's a toxic 'feminist' the kind that use it to be superior to men, not as they claimed in the feminist stuff I saw growing up, supposedly to gain "Equality". I always point that out to TERFS quoting the same debunked pathetic bullsit. They just want to be superior and crap on natural allies which is really ignorant.

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How is Rowling "intelligent?"

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It was an intelligent story.

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With tons of plot holes and nonsensical rules about magic. But entertaining.

And still a better story than Twilight.

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Rules? Magic has rules, nonsensical or otherwise? :)

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Haven't you read the Players Handbook?

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Oddly enough, I'm reading "Wizard's First Rule" right now.

There are some books/realms/whatever that do have a better and more consistent framework for magic than others. HP never really seemed to bother with some of that.

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Are you aware that Goodkind is an Ayn Randian?

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Mein Kampf is a better love story than Twilight.

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A phone book is a better story than Toilette.

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She's obviously a gifted writer with an eye for character and an ear for dialogue. Which makes her transphobia even more dunderheaded.

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Her obsession with the issue is strange.

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It means she is gullible to easily debunked propaganda. The studies they list, have all been debunked by actual respected experts, and are self published by a journal that publishes anything.

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You got a link to the listed studies? I'm arguing with people on my various local political blogs at the moment.

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Here is a basic history of terfism. and a few links. I'm still looking for the European study I referred to.

TERF ideology has become the de facto face of feminism in the UK, helped along by media leadership from Rupert Murdoch and the Times of London. Any vague opposition to gender-critical thought in the UK brings along accusations of โ€œsilencing womenโ€ and a splashy feature or op-ed in a British national newspaper. Australian radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys went before the UK Parliament in March 2018 and declared that trans women are โ€œparasites,โ€ language that sounds an awful lot like Trump speaking about immigrants.

According to Heron Greenesmith, who studies the modern gender-critical movement as a senior research associate with the social justice think tank Political Research Associates, gender-critical feminism in the UK grew out of a toxic mix of historical imperialism and the influence of the broader UK skeptical movement in the early aughts โ€” which was hyper-focused on debunking โ€œjunk scienceโ€ and any idea that considered sociological and historical influence and not just biology. Those who rose to prominence in the movement did so through a lot of โ€œnon-tolerant calling-out and attacking people,โ€ Greenesmith said, much like gender-critical feminism. โ€œAnti-trans feminists think they have science on their side. It is bananas how ascientific their rhetoric is, and yet literally they say, โ€˜Biology isnโ€™t bigotry.โ€™ In fact, biology has been used as bigotry as long as biology has been a thing.โ€ (See scientific racism, eugenics, and the justification for slavery that black people were intellectually inferior to white people.)

Though TERFism got its start in the US in the โ€™70s, the ideology has largely fallen out of favor as the countryโ€™s mainstream feminist movement has continuously battled against the religious right for abortion access and LGBTQ rights. In a country where political coalitions on the feminist left are crucial to the survival of basic womenโ€™s rights, it doesnโ€™t make much sense to spend time oppressing a tiny population who are otherwise valuable allies in the culture war.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/5/20840101/terfs-radical-feminists-gender-critical

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/debunked-the-swedish-study-doesnt

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/debunked-misleading-nyt-anti-trans

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Give me a few I'll look them up.

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Eh, no she isnโ€™t.

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Apr 11ยทedited Apr 11

They disobey the words of their savior by praying in public when they are told not to. They judge others when that savior tells them not to because they too will be judged. Yet somehow WE'RE the god haters.

I can 'hate' fictional characters in mainstream literature for the time period I'm reading that literature knowing all the while that they are simply the author's imaginings. But hate an imaginary deity? I can hate what awful things that figment of the imagination's followers do in its name. And abuse of women and a woman's right of choice by adherents of a patriarchal misogynistic religion is certainly something to be hated.

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Evangelicals take a smorgasbord approach to the teachings of Jesus.

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๐ด๐‘™๐‘™ ๐‘Ÿ๐‘’๐‘™๐‘–๐‘”๐‘–๐‘œ๐‘› ๐‘–๐‘  ๐‘๐‘Ž๐‘“๐‘’๐‘ก๐‘’๐‘Ÿ๐‘–๐‘Ž ๐‘Ÿ๐‘’๐‘™๐‘–๐‘”๐‘–๐‘œ๐‘›.

-- David Silverman

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And every other part of scripture, both Old and New Testaments.

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founding

This whole MAGA, dominionist movement is nothing but the externalization of Judgmental Personality disorder. The wave of History is sweeping them into a time that they will struggle to turn back to the 1860s with every resource they have up to their dying breaths. It is up to the rest of us to stand in their way every step of the way until they toddle on off this mortal coil. The only good thing here is that the average age of these addled voters is getting up there.

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sadly, stupid people breed...

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"I've been all around the world and only stupid people are breeding"

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Never seen the video. Singer is cute, but the drummer is hot.

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founding

But not in their 50s - 80s.

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founding

I know they can do it, but at the replacement rate for their natural attrition.

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Surprised he wasn't a Mormon.

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They were still killing off rivals then.

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nOTHING ON THIS ENTIRE DIOCESE DECLARING BANKRUIPTCY. First the priest rapes the kid, then the entire diocese fucks him over.

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2024/04/abuse-survivors-question-bankruptcy-move-by-baltimore-archdiocese

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I saw that on Jeff Tiedrichโ€™s site today. Gross

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And Comstock was a chronic masturbator, hmm, I sense a pattern.

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Talk about "virtue signaling." Good grief.

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Apr 11ยทedited Apr 11

"Look at us, God! Aren't we being good? *pantpant* *wag tails*

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Ahem. As a former servant of Dogesses (and dog sitter*) I resent the comparison.

* RIP Sam, Chaussette, Texas and Akon. You were good doggies.

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Apr 11ยทedited Apr 11

The AZ legislature also refused to hold multiple votes which may have eliminated the old law. AIUI that refusal involved many more legislators than just the prayer group.

So this may have been much more damaging than just virtue signaling. This could have been a form of subtle coercion. A demonstration to all the other GOPers in the room of "hey, nice reelection campaign you've got going there. Be a shame if I pointed out how you stood against Jesus and allowed a vote on this."

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Dogs marking their territory.

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I fail to see how the idea that a Christian prayer can somehow change the course of events in life is anything different than wizardry or witchcraft (two things Christianity is supposed to be against).

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They accept only their own brand of wizardry and witchcraft. They allow no others.

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