missing my blogs?

Dear Friends, you must forgive me for my recent absence. I apologize that these blogs may be sporadic and for that I’m sorry. This year so far I have been so very, very busy with other writing pursuits and I apologize for the neglect here, especially after posting some heavy duty faith crises and then leaving you hanging. Fear not, I will continue to share the minutiae of my spiritual journey, literary landscape, mental health, joyous inspirations, and so on. I’m very busy right now preparing an art show, and the launch of my second book for April, as well as the final touches on the third book (‘b-sides’ and outtakes for the second!) and third!- a fiction. That means, yes, three books this year and you’ll be so tired of reading me that you won’t care if these blogs are spaced apart!

I’m very excited to be doing more research on our heritage diet and will be bringing you another series of ‘controversial’ writings on nutrition, gluten, meat, fat, and the like, including an expose of how ‘The China Study” almost had me fooled. I’m currently peeling back layer after layer of propaganda and I’ll be sharing that with you very soon on an exciting new Paleo eating website!

On a less volatile note, I’m busy with two new spin offs from Fascinating People (fascinatingpeople.wordpress.com). Fascinating Queers launched at Out Impact Magazine, and starting next week, I’ll be covering Fascinating Canadian Women at Cahoots Magazine! I am also developing another column that you’ll be able to read regularly online later this spring- centred on major themes in history and their interpretation in mythology. Myth buffs will get their fill- not just of classical mythology, but of stories all around the world, how religions interpret them, how various cultures express the big questions, now and back through our history. All of this is very exciting and I’m very busy- but you will of course see entries again about my wild mood swings, and my compulsive reading habits.

Joy to all,
Lorette

my book to launch soon!

Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (irreverent ramblings from the end of the world)

by Lorette C. Luzajic

Handymaiden Editions, 209

My second book will be available APRIL 18, 2009!!!!

Stay tuned for book launch celebration details.

xo

My Crisis of Faith: Farewell to God?

My Crisis of Faith: Farewell to God?

My church prayed for Obama to win the election, and we celebrated with a community viewing of the inauguration ceremony. While no president could be exactly what anyone wants, morally, politically, personally, we hoped America would see through the lies, murder, warmongering, torture, and hatred values of George Bush. With all the debate going on now whether or not Obama is a ‘real Christian,’ how is it that none of these lazy thinkers can see that Bush stood for none of Christ’s values at all?

I love my church. After decades of bitter spiritual exile, in which I was a believer without a church, because I had not found a church of progressive thinkers who were not racist and respected women, I felt welcomed into a thinking community where all were encouraged to be leaders in effecting change around the world. I thought my church was giving, courageous, and deeply spiritual- now I wonder if we’re just woefully misguided, along with our more murderous predecessors of faith?

Not yet a week into Obama’s office, I’m on the verge of canceling my faith. Not because Obama isn’t a REAL Christian. It’s because the army of God has made it abundantly clear to me that they are ignorant, prudish yet obsessed with sex, hate mongering, war loving, vicious, hurtful, spiteful, vindictive, uneducated, murderous people.

Inside I’ve known this all along.

Religious hatred is one of the chief causes of war. It was one of the causes of the Holocaust. The cause of the genocide of native North and South American Indians. (Conveniently, my church could always blame these bad things on the Catholics, but plenty of Protestants hunted natives for sport. Don’t believe me? Check your history books.) Oh, yeah, then there were the witch burnings. Thousands, maybe millions, of women and suspected homosexuals tortured and burned at the stake for their husband’s impotence, or for having sexual intercourse with Satan. Then there are all those practices to ensure women’s morality- such as castrating them with a rusty razor, a practice still widespread in countries today. The Pope giving the finger to poverty by continuing to preach his bullshit ban on contraception. And racism, let’s not forget- Christians had to bring the heathen devils to America to build it for them and farm their food supply. I have a few books written in the 1800s. In Defense of Slavery is a Christian treatise on the moral imperative of breaking the backs of other human beings. There was little in there about sexually molesting, raping, and siring with the slave girls, but clearly, our forefathers had nothing against extracurricular sex, so long as it was had by men.

Yet, still, I pushed these shocking, horrible facts aside in order to believe. Like Mr. Jones, I want to be someone who believes. I’ve taken great comfort in my faith through the years, in the feeling of being loved by God no matter what. I’ve felt I had to answer to someone for the way I lived, and that the kindness of Christ was clearly the way we should be living. Furthermore, there is a great comfort in believing in magic and miracles, and in the idea that ultimately, justice will prevail, even if it is not meted out here on earth. Clearly, human beings are religious. Few societies, anywhere, and fewer individuals within them, deny God. We are a religious species. From early rites and rituals to our most spectacular temples and art, people want to believe in God. We need a vocabulary, a way to understand the mystery, to explain the unknown. For these reasons, I’ve never held anyone’s religion against them, including my own, even if it led some to unconscionable things. I believed truly, that the mayhem might be even more profound, given the low intellectual and moral capacities of most humans, than it already is.

But now I’ve been inundated with the venom of my fellow believers, who are looking past the immense strides and progressive morality of a president who has to clean up a world in shambles, clear up the economic catastrophe and war crimes of his predecessor. But Christians everywhere, with no apology for Bush’s war obsession, lies, and megalomania, are yammering on about Obama’s pinko agenda. He’s a babykiller, a radical Muslim terrorist, and a servant of the homosexual agenda.

I find hope and poetry in the fact that Obama is half black, half white. Much of the world, which has rejoiced at his victory, sees this potent symbol. That Obama’s father is Muslim and Obama is Christian is also a symbolic possibility of hope, given the horrifying mess of Christian-Islam relations right now. Obama has reached out to all enemies and asked that they come with open hand, and we’ll work for peace. Not to approach with a fist. I’m not naïve enough to think this means instant world peace- humans have difficulty enough disagreeing peacefully within a single family or country. But it’s a damn better start than bulldozing into terrain that is none of our business and starting a fight in someone else’s home.

The fact that Obama follows Christ’s message to feed the poor and visit those in prison and help those who are tortured is labeled Commie by these ignorant groups shows how deep and impenetrable their inability to get along with others reaches. Let’s recall that Christians are the newcomers on this land, and the cost for freedom here was the blood of native Indians, who had very different faith systems. Yet Christians, never a group for seeing logic, can’t accept that all humans have human rights, regardless of their religion.

Seeing as you can’t agree on the right church, the right interpretation, the right rules within the same religion, how should those to whom you minister know to choose? The feud between Catholics and Protestants- meaning the murder going on between the two- is still raging in Ireland and elsewhere. But right here at home, there are hundreds of denominations with their unique interpretation of the Bible, insisting their view is infallible, totally inflexible. And regardless of how well-meaning any president is, any citizen for crying out loud, OF COURSE the guy’s not perfect. No Christians seemed to mind when Bush was slaughtering infidels. But now you’re all calling for ARMS because Obama thinks gays should be able to find employment?

I’m well enough versed in church rhetoric to know that Christians will conclude that if my faith is wavering, I was never “really” a Christian, or I had never been “born again” or that I was a ‘backslider.’ The third may be applicable, but certainly I was- am- “really” a Christian. I had most certainly been born again as a child, deeply schooled in the Bible, traditionally devout until some major hurdles came my way. I was sixteen when a friend was gang-raped and murdered. The “comfort” extended to me that she “might not be in hell” because she may “have called out to Jesus during her torture” immediately gave me pause to reconsider how Christians view women. I left the church and read all about the great matriarchy, but largely saw it as a symbolic force of history, not a literal one. Indeed, my faith, though perhaps not exactly like your faith, was unwavering, despite embarrassing me frequently among the educated and intellectual circles I am part of.

I believed in God. I had a personal friendship with Jesus. As for arguments about what a ‘real’ Christian is, no Christian has yet sorted that out. Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, Baptist, Calvinist, Fellowship, United, Unity, Coptic, Orthodox, Mormon- there are literally thousands of offshoots with the same basic premise and a unique constellation of magical ideas who all believe their exact interpretation is the truth revealed. So whoever is right, only an extremely small percentage of Christians are actually going to heaven.

I’m not the only intelligent person to cherish my faith. Indeed, nonbelievers form an extremely small number of human beings. My faith has not been literal and nor has it excluded all other faith traditions, but it has been constant and amazing, a source of deep joy as well as restless conflict. The characters of the Bible are real to me, especially my beloved Jesus, who said even when I am lost at sea, to cling to my belief in him and I would find peace. And I have, great, tremendous peace. I cannot ever blame Christ for the unseemly hatred of his ‘followers’. But now, I feel the truth is being revealed at long last, or unveiled. I have always, always questioned how to have faith, and what kind, and who to listen to as a teacher. But I have never, ever questioned giving it up entirely, or asked with an open heart if I have been deluded all along.

Now with a wide-open heart, I am exploring the question I never wanted to explore: is it possible that it’s ALL bullshit?

I’ve long cherished a belief in the miraculous, in signs and wonders, in the divine blessings, in the majesty of Mahalia Jackson’s gospel music. But now I’m more and more sure that these wonderful experiences are psychological illusions, escapisms, delusions just like drugs. They’re lovely, but they are not reality.

The more I investigate historical messengers, the more corruption is unveiled. It seems the whole of religion- indeed, perhaps, the whole of human history, is all about insecure masculinity.

The biggest uproar I see right away is hysteria over the “extremist homosexual agenda” of which Obama is purportedly a pawn. After all, within five minutes in the White House, they say, he updated the official web page to show support for the gay and lesbian community, giving those evil homos free reign. Apparently hate crime legislation is “dubious and discriminatory” as these Christians want to defend their right to gay bash. The President also called for the passing of employment discrimination acts to end discrimination in the workplace. A law like this might “ force business owners (religious and otherwise) to abandon traditional values relative to sexual morality under penalty of law,” says Americans For the Truth About Homosexuality, a group that adheres to a scientifically outmoded idea that being gay is a depraved moral choice. Now, I’m not sure when basic human rights and freedom to find work and not get beat up where any extremist agenda. Perhaps we should repeal all progress so far, and put blacks back in the cotton fields, and force women out of the voting polls and the workplace.

It’s obvious that president of the organization, Peter LaBarbera, is a self-loathing homosexual, taught to hate himself and so he teaches others to hate, too, in opposition of the words of his teacher Jesus, who preached love. That said, of course there will always be some who believe it’s wrong to be gay, just like they believe it’s unclean to be a menstruating woman, sin to eat oysters, or to sleep with both a mother and her daughter, or to clip the edges of the beard. And so I propose that we renege all equality laws for employment and discrimination concerning menstruaters, shavers, or oyster eaters.

Clearly, this concept is ludicrous. But let’s say, even if you do believe it’s a sin to be gay, can you seriously refute basic human rights? No way. Last time I checked, we all err. If we were to deny basic human rights to liars, cheaters, the greedy, thieves, gossipers, or those who have sex before marriage, guess not one of us would have any rights at all. I would like to deny employment rights to all liars and bigots, because their acts are against my religion.

Of course, the LaBarbera site americansfortruth.com features a salacious photo of leather S and M equipment with the shocking headline Pig Orgy. It can’t just show a nice gay person in his backyard with a barbecue. Yes, sex free for all orgies are a bit disturbing, but no gay man has ever invited me to participate in one. However, straight men have constantly pushed, belittled, prodded, begged, pleaded, whined for sex. Perhaps we can put pictures up on this truth site of straight men buying child prostitutes in the Philippines, or their nice straight magazines featuring spread-eagled pregnant women or gaping female buttholes. Yes, sex is dark and dangerous and dirty, sometimes. Disconcerting. I could get myself in trouble right now by saying that that is something to do with men, not specifically gay men. But I won’t. I’ll just say that there are a lot more S and M practitioners who are straight then gay. While I would hope that after being granted employment rights, the gay man would not bring out his business right there at work, but hey, those sick straights do it fairly often in hopes of wooing the secretary or proving themselves.

At least LaBarbera manages to restrain himself and still use genteel language. This good Christian man was a bit less eloquent. “The bible says that during the end times (2012?) God will separate the wheat from the chaff. I say let the chaff go. Fuck ‘em and every other preacher willing to crawl through shit-smelling rump rangers just to pray at Obama’s feet. I guess when you take it up the ass after God tells you your ass is for shitting then you can’t expect him to do you any favors. Cancer maybe. But no favors. Just remember when you’re infected with some fantastically exotic homo-virus don’t even bother begging money on the corner from all those “close minded hatemongers” that told you not to play with people that smell like shit. You know – the conservatives, “rednecks”, working class, christians, muslims, nuclear and extended families, soccer moms, jews, and all of those other “crazy” people that know clean is better than dirty.” A friend of the nice gentleman above mentioned that he’s stockpiling ammunition and heading into the Appalachians. Right- where the men f* their children up the ass, or their unwilling wife, and have babies with their babies? You know, I’m tempted to observe that every man, for whatever reason, is obsessed with the elimination orifice, especially straight ones. Don’t you know that pornography outsells every other entertainment industry? HUH? Yes. And most of that, but not all, is heterosexual porn purchased by men. Half of it features homosexual acts between women, and the other half is completely obsessed by the female anus.

Or this: “The homosexuals cannot reproduce after their own kind so they prey on the young people of today. If Obama gets into office, our country is surely done for.” You can’t ‘catch gay,’ you creeps.

Why are so many Christians threatened by gays? Why not claim that ‘liars’ or ‘rapists’ or ‘thieves’ are threatening the moral fabric of America? Oh, yeah, that’s right- the Old Testament encourages God’s armies to ‘leave no man, woman, or child’ alive, except for virgin girl children, so that they may be raped.

You know the innocent guy who was beheaded on the Greyhound Canada bus? The upstanding moral citizens of Reverend Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church said he was beheaded by God for Canada’s fag loving agenda. No mention of the sin committed by the beheader. Now they were rejoicing at Obama’s grandma’s death, as she was headed straight to hell for raising a fag lover.

Perhaps Phelps is a little extreme for you moderate minded conservatives. No need to hold up fancy picket signs- just quietly execute the abominators, just like the good book decrees. Well, friends, my Bible also decrees the execution of a wide number of sinners- unruly toddlers, teens who have lost their faith, women who have been raped, those who commit adultery, and those who work on Sundays. Prepare to tremble- by your obsession you shall know them. And seeing as every three days another evangelical pastor is arrested high on drugs with a male prostitute, we know there are many other queer fornicators who have not been found out. Get in line for the guillotine. Those who have not been fancying the fancy boys have surely had their hands full of garden variety pornography, and porn is adultery. Man, death row is overcrowded these days! Why not let your very own Texecutioner do the deed?

Furthermore, for those “Christians” who don’t want your kids polluted by “cross dressers and transsexuals defiling the role of men and women” I would like to ask you if you have ever met a transsexual person. Do you ever consider that no one wakes up and says, “Hmm, I think I’d like to live the rest of my life in identity torment and I’m going to cut off my dick?” Once you thought brain damage in the womb, birthing “tards” (retards, for those not schooled in Christian redneck vocabulary- in our vocabulary, ‘mentally challenged individual), was the consequence of a woman’s lust for Satan. Now you think the same thing about someone who has had serious hormone havoc, not of his or her own volition? Have you ever read a single book? Including the Bible, where Jesus clearly shows compassion and love for all humans, not just his followers?

I’m not going to say, “Some of my best friends are transsexuals,” although I could, because one of my best friends is. Do you know how much she has suffered in this life from discrimination and death threats and public ridicule? Never has she hurt anybody. She is not stereotypically campy or slutty. She is an engineering student unable to find decent work to fit her education, but always working hard. She gave up a fiancée because she had to be honest about her identity confusion. She is a loving friend. Instead of feeling sorry for herself for not quite fitting into the mold around her, she goes to Haiti where the children are dying, and volunteers at the hospitals where there aren’t enough doctors and everywhere she looked she saw small stretchers, covered, dead.

I’m not even going to get into the ‘have you ever met any gay people’ thing, because anyone at all with any education, empathy, or spirit of Christ inside them knows full well that gays are a gift of God, that they bring wit and candor and verve and style and hygiene and creativity and great art and great science and love and kindness and joy to this world. And in a final futile attempt to get it through your sick, selfish minds that gays deserve jobs, too, and that their life is just as sacred as yours, I’ll say this: so what if you think it’s sin to be gay. There are other sins, and if you’ve committed them, you do not deserve basic human rights.

Next is the ignorant faction who hysterically screeches babykiller about Obama, because of course, Bush was ‘pro life,’ a fact evident as the Texecutioner cheerfully presided over 152 death row executions. Several of the deaths were Gulf War survivors who went mad from nerve gas, and were brain damaged. At least one of these was innocent- but George didn’t extend his death despite new evidence suggesting he was wrongfully convicted. Though Bush himself went on a 100 000 body killing-spree in the Middle East, he actually made fun of a woman he sentenced to death, publicly, in the news. Making a mocking face for the camera, he pitched his voice higher and mumbled, “Please, don’t let me die.”

Karla Faye Tucker was the first woman to be executed in Texas. And her crime was abhorrent- she participated in a bloody frenzy with a pickaxe. I knew nothing at all about the crime but when I read that bare information, I immediately was certain the rampage was fuelled by methamphetamine. It’s unfortunate for Karla that her childhood was filled with violence and abuse and prostitution by age fourteen, and that like millions of other Americans, including George Bush, she drowned her sorrows in drugs and alcohol. Meth makes you into a hollow shell of fear and terror. Their terrifying paranoia is real, in 3D. The person really believes that they see men with guns in the house, kidnappers, aliens, wars, or demons.

Karla needed to take the consequences of her crime, yes, in respect to the victims. But meth free, fifteen years later, she was a model prisoner and deeply sorry for what she had caused. She also became a Christian. She did not ask to get out of prison.

Though Bush himself is an alcoholic and apparently, a cocaine abuser, he turned down her request to carry out the rest of her life in prison, and made fun of her- hardly fitting for a redneck, never mind a president. Pope John Paul II, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and Pat Robertson were among those officials who begged Bush for her life. And though not all of his casualties are dead, about one hundred thousand are. Pimp Daddy Bush has also caused at least 50 thousand Iraqi women and girls to resort to prostitution for survival in nearby Syria. Who knew the land of the Bible would become a destination spot for sex tourism!

Paul Craig Roberts of V World said it best: “The same stupid American people elected a Congress that is too corrupt to impeach a president who is a liar, a war criminal, and a tyrant. Instead, they are prepared to let Bush off with a mere “mistake,” a courtesy denied to President Clinton. Lying about sex is an impeachable offense. Lying about war is a mere mistake.”

Now that we’ve established just how sacred life is to Bush, who established National Sanctity of Life Day, it’s easy to see why Obama’s outreach programs and health care for the poor are so controversial. Because sharing wealth is pinko, and just like he did for queers, he signed up for worldwide baby massacres in the first five minutes of his reign. (The friendly Christians who have dominoed my crashing faith claim that “the nigger is legalizing white robbery by asking the rich for another five percent in tax.” Never mind that the poor have been funding the rich corporations, and slaving for them, for centuries.)

I’ve been arguing on chat boards about abortion now for half the week, a topic I prefer not to talk about. There won’t be a resolution, because the issue will go on legal or not, and like it or not. It is something practiced worldwide to varying levels of safety. It’s an unpleasant, emotional debate and an extremely difficult thing for women the world over to face. Despite my left wing comrades and feminazi friends, I don’t know anyone who takes the matter lightly. Nor do I. Life is precious.

Yes, it is, and sometimes difficult things need to be weighed. No one will ever agree on the right or wrong of it, but on the message boards, most of the “pro lifers” seemed to agree that the best punishment for the crime is the capital kind. Of course, only women and their doctors will be executed in this utopia. I suggested that all men who use the sexual services of children should be executed, but in their eagerness to swap back and forth gruesome photos of mutilated babies, no one heard. I also suggested that men in general- who impregnate the women who should be executed- should share a spot with their lady on the electric chair. Then I thought I’d make a post that showed some brutal photos of other important children- child slaves in Bangladesh, starving kids in Sudan, orphans in Romania. There are many causes that suffer our lack of attention when we only moralize on this one thing.

The simple, cruel fact of the matter is that there are too many children, and yes, they are all miracles. With half a million women dying worldwide during childbirth, and millions more made ill, and billions impoverished, some enough to be forced to sell a girl into slavery or prostitution, it is absolutely imperative that we get contraception to these communities. You don’t have to agree with abortion to believe that there are much larger issues at hand. It could be said that every time we don’t help the starving or sick masses, we commit murder.

Well, the Catholics think contraception is just as bad as abortion. The narrow-minded scream of Obama’s plan to annihilate all children. After all, he immediately passed an order around the globe to start murdering babies.

President Barack Obama struck the rule that prohibited American dollars from being granted to foreign family planning clinics unless they agreed not to use their own private funds for abortion services or counseling. So, because a contraception initiative MIGHT discuss abortion, we have withheld our support. Given that many third world women die during pregnancy and complications, and they could have had access to contraceptives, this is also murder. You don’t have to agree that abortion is acceptable to see that it is unconscionable to refuse to support access to health care.

Obama cannot change the laws of other countries, and the States already has abortion on demand. So he is not actually babykilling at all. He is simply allowing support for birth control services. Yes, those services MIGHT counsel abortion to women who would otherwise die. Poor Catholic or Muslim countries do not offer abortion on demand- only abortion that would preserve the health of the mother! Contraception would reduce this number. But the fanatical self-righteous can’t see beyond their indignation and think about the matter at hand. Obama is not so powerful that he is able to legislate babykilling around the world. In fact, he will drastically reduce it.

Not everyone has the option of saying no, like we purportedly do. I’m sure you’ve wondered why women in India “keep having babies.” I doubt they’re thrilled about it. Believe me, if you are waiting in the rice line in Sudan, you’re not thrilled to by the blessing of a late period. What a miracle! Another precious bundle of joy for the starvation statistics! Another girl child to sell for rice money! That we let this happen when we have an option of providing contraception and education is reprehensible.

“Denominations including the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church and the Union for Reform Judaism, among others, have urged the U.S. to support family planning overseas, teaching that wealthier groups and nations have a special responsibility to help and care for persons in the poorer countries of the world, which includes support for the basic reproductive health services,” writes Reverend Dr. Carlton W. Veazey on www.rcrc.org. It may well be a case of the lesser of evils. Abortion is heartbreaking, but it’s more heartbreaking to endanger a sick, impoverished mother, a child who may live suffering until he’s three or five, and all of his or her brothers or sisters. To withhold contraception because the clinic might talk about abortion is beyond all belief, especially while we are talking about our care for life. We must also care about those already born.

The fact of the matter is that it’s best to avoid abortion, which may be a necessary evil, but an emotionally distressing choice no matter what situation the woman is in. The best way we have to avoid it is to use birth control, lots of it. Organizations that educate about birth control may discuss abortion, and that is why the west withdrew support of those outreach initiatives. MAY DISCUSS. Consider here that in most countries around the world, abortion on demand is not available. Abortion is only considered if the life of the woman is at risk. A sick, hungry, or refugee mother will very possibly die during pregnancy or shortly after, meaning her child will also die and so will her other children. Clearly, in this case, there is less human death by access to safe abortion. Better yet, the woman will have contraception available to her.

The archbishop of Rio said that condoms will continue to be a ‘sin’ because DOGS do not take the time to place a condom over their copulation act. Thus, it is unnatural. Of course, the fact that dogs do enjoy gay sex doesn’t sway the natural argument for gay, because we are not dogs.

Aside from preventing more poverty, more abortion, and more child prostitutes, contraception saves lives by preventing AIDS. We already know that religious groups believe AIDS is God’s special bundle of love to homosexuals, though the fact that it’s rampant among women and children in Africa probably has more to do with lack of clean water and food and other immunity-necessities, as well as the widespread practice of female mutilation which makes even the most monogamous sex bloody. Forget the fact that STDs including AIDS are practically nonexistent among gays- gay WOMEN- because the religious authorities don’t mind gay women as long as they let men watch.

Then there’s the Cardinal Alfonso Lopez de Trujillo, the Vatican president for Pontifical Council for the Family. He stated that condoms are ‘secretly’ made with tiny holes to let the AIDS virus pass through. Nice. And not isolated. Cardinals and archbishops in Nicaragua, Kenya, Uganda, to name a few, told their flocks that condoms CAUSE AIDS. Cardinal Wamala of Uganda said that women who die of AIDS instead of succumbing to the evil of the rubber are to be considered ‘martyrs!’

I can just see it- Saint Bantati, who heeded her Lord’s admonishment against latex and suffered and died! Praise Be!

Of course, of course, ‘real’ Christians aren’t Catholic or Mormon or Lutheran or Unitarian or Anglican or whatever version you are not.

Of course, religions that are heathen to Christianity are even better at social control than we are. Foreign Policy Magazine reported that Pakistan’s AIDS problem was smaller because of reverent Islamic values. Of course, a woman in Pakistan can be SENTENCED TO GANG RAPE to assuage a crime committed by HER BROTHER. Smile, God loves you.

So question- if babykiller Obama will save so many lives through health care aid and contraception, helping to prevent AIDS and prevent unplanned pregnancy and hence prevent abortion among sick women, how will he carry out his murderous agenda?

Question: what if the unborn that we want to save are homosexuals?

Another question: I’m tempted to ask how close to the truth it is that there would be almost zero need for abortion or for contraception if all men the world over would keep it in their pants. But that ain’t gonna happen, and it will be women and children suffering from this double standard, including being condemned as “whores” who should be “executed” or sterilized for ‘not using birth control’ or sentenced to death for ‘spreading their legs.’ (All quotes from the wonderful godly pro life people this week.)

On a discussion blog made to warn us about “Comrade Obama” and against ‘ecofascism’ that refers to the babykilling regime, I mentioned the admitted lies of Bush and the 100 thousand dead.

“ If you call my President a war criminal one more time, I’m going to ask the powers that be on this blog if they will edit that out of your comment or delete your self-righteous drivel altogether. Please. I normally fully support free speech, but sometimes I just get sick of Bush Derangement Syndrome…May Jesus open your eyes to the truth of this matter.”

Yes, it’s a volatile issue. No one wants to hurt a child, but the fact remains that there are millions of hurting children and not enough resources or humans willing to look after them. On that blog, I never once spoke in favour of abortion, merely raised questions about Bush’s pro-life stance, and what we are doing about the millions suffering. Nonetheless, I was referred to as the enemy and as an “Alinsky acolyte.” Apparently they knew my ‘tactics’ and ‘strategies.’ They knew I was coming in from the left!

I regret I’ve never heard of Alinsky, though apparently I’m playing his game, so I had to look it up. Seems these Christians are also anti-Semites. (What about Jewish unborn babies then?) Alinsky is a Russian born Jew who believes in the deadly notion of power analysis, which according to Wikipedia “looks at relationships built on self-interest between corporations, banks and utilities.” He taught the poor how to actively seek democracy and representation. Now, I’m sure it would take some serious study to really know what I’m being accused of, but from my quick wiki skim, I can’t see what in the world is wrong with addressing the rights of the poor. Jesus said, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor.” For starters.

Interestingly enough, I never advocated choice or abortion on this blog, but merely questioned how a warmonger could care about life, and whether contraception or abortion might possibly be more humane options than more children being born into poverty. In addition to being accused of my Jewish or atheist regime, my thoughts were curiously referred to as “parrot droppings” and I was called a “troll” and a “twit” and a “fool” and a “brainless turd” by these loving Christians who never considered that I too, am a compassionate Christian who hopes the world can avoid as many abortions as possible. Hence, why contraception is so necessary. Perhaps Jesus did “open my heart to the truth of the matter” because my belief, which I confess has been shaky after multiple personal tragedies and a deep depression last year, kick started into full erosion with the words of these deeply spiritual and Christlike bloggers.

When I dared to mention that I had dropped by with an open heart and that spiteful people like this certainly don’t make any points for witness to the Lord, I was lambasted as a pitiful and desperate loser who needed to refute those of deep intelligence and conviction in order to feel important. In fact, it’s starting to feel more and more important to run fast and far from anyone who identifies with faith.

I’m also noticing that a seemingly non-controversial topic- pollution, smog, environmental disaster, lack of clean water- is apparently contested by Christians who believe ‘there will be a new heaven and a new earth,’ so no real reason to look after this one. Apparently, the fear of running out of clean water is proposed by ‘ecofascists’ despite vast documented evidence to the contrary. Ummm, it’s a FACT that people in Africa, India, South America, and hell even here in Canada, don’t have clean drinking water. Or food. It may be that global warming is a natural cosmic phenomenon, not caused by us, but there’s no question we have poisoned our own food supply with chemicals and greed and overpopulation.

But apparently people who care about stewardship of God’s stunning creation, earth, are practitioners of witchcraft. That’s right, it’s pagan heathenism to care about the earth. It’s the president’s communist agenda to be concerned about our pollution, and he’s practicing witchcraft.

And then there’s sexism. Because all over, I see religious men writing about how Obama’s sold out to the evil of women’s power. I recall back in the 1500s, Protestant reformers Calvin and Knox also warned us of the monstrous regiment of women. Then they burned us at the stake. Calvin couldn’t tolerate a woman who didn’t want to marry and get pregnant; Knox couldn’t keep his hands off of children and in his 50s married a 15-year-old girl. Both eagerly stoked the funeral pyre upon which thousands of women lost their lives- to both Catholic and Protestant hatred. But now apparently in 2008 I’ve got to rescind my right to vote and if I’m a real Christian, I have to worship and submit to a man’s “headship.” It’s increasingly transparent that that’s all religion has ever been- the hatred of women and little else.

Of course, over and over we hear the catchphrase “family values” as if no family exists outside of the traditional “Focus on Family” style family. To the contrary, there are hundreds of kinds of families in cultures worldwide, and even here in North America. But by assuming that ‘the other’ is ‘against’ ‘family values’ “Christians” insidiously imply that unmarried, single parent families, extended families (read: Catholic), gay families, broken families, family-less families, childless families, are not families at all. How the American family dream came to be the Biblical prototype I’m not sure, because ‘Family Values’ in the Bible are a whole different ballgame.

Abraham fathered children by two women. Jacob married sisters Leah and Rachel, and also had children by two different mistresses. The sexy lovers in Song of Solomon were not married. And unless you totally block out the reality of everything, David and Jonathon were in love. When J. died, David said, I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan, your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women…” [II Samuel 1:26] Then there was a whole lot of incest, polygamy, concubinage, and more. While none of these were held up as the hallmark of perfect family life, neither was anything else. The family, in all of its forms, is imperfect, and based on our culture, neighbourhood, and circumstance. And ALL families are sacred.

James Dobson, who leads Focus on Family, got his knickers in a knot while telling Obama his interpretation of scripture was incorrect while Dobson’s and all other evangelical Christians’ was right. He called Obama’s leadership the “lowest common denominator of morality” (though I vote Bush as much lower!) He said Obama had a “fruitcake interpretation” of the constitution. Focus on the Family has been pumping propaganda of a post-Obama world where terrorists have overtaken the States, homosexuals reign over every family with their sex orgies, where black crack gangs take over the streets, where poor people clog up the lines at hospitals, where doctors are murdering old people left and right, where we all masturbate all the time, where taxes are robbed from white men, and half-dead babies bumble around in the streets. Perhaps there is a different interpretation? That peace is possible, even among Christians, that poor black kids who were not aborted might have access to health care, where discrimination is wrong, where people who earn over 250 thousand dollars pay an extra five percent to help the poor like Christ commanded (yes, that’s what the big Obama tax threat is), where people grow up and realize they can’t live in a bubble and call it reality. We can’t clean up a mess that way.

Dobson said Obama is stretching the Bible to fit his own ‘confused theology” but any group of Christians will say the same about another group’s interpretation. Obama was told he shouldn’t ‘reference ancient dietary laws’ when refuting Dobson’s personal interpretation of the Bible. What Obama said is, “Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?… Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?..”So before we get carried away, let’s read our Bible now…Folks haven’t been reading their Bible.”

So? Who will pick up the first stone to stone me, as I stray from my faith? Mom? Dad?

And then there’s racism. Sadly, Judi McLeod of the Conservative Free Press, is not the only one to accuse Obama of Islamic conspiracy. “What if Obama is engaged in pious fraud? This is a Muslim practice of pretending not to be Muslim to further the cause of Islam or to “defend the faith”. He becomes President and then says, “Gee…I think I want to be Muslim again” after he finds the “football” in his hands that carries the launch codes for the USA nuke forces,” she writes.

“Fuck, I HATE that purple-lipped, slackjawed nigger and his ugly-ass chimp of a wife,” wrote one thoughtful commentator. But hate is empty without murder, and so multiple death threats from God’s right hand were uttered, including: “This is bullshit. There’s no reason to put up with it. Someone kill this platelip and fucking save our country!”

And “nigga man’s gunna get his head blown off.”

Though he has been accused of being a Jew-lover by anti-Semites, some Jewish wing nuts have written that Barack Obama’s name means “Lightning from the heights” or hence, Lucifer, and that therefore, Obama is actually Satan. Haven’t we outgrown the idea that the nigger is the devil in disguise? Or, is he secretly Jewish? His mother might be! “Obama, secret Jew!” some ‘Christians’ write. But if he’s Christian, he’s the wrong kind. The wrong colour. He’s a Muslim terrorist! Religious bickering is starting to sound more and more grade two playground than ever before. Grow the fuck up. IT IS NO EASY FEAT to navigate a world on edge of total war over religion and race. Let him do his job as best he can, and support him.

It goes on and on. Fuck, argue over the economics of health care, go ahead, but one reverend writes about the “sin” of mental health problems and the fact that our future reliance on Obama’s mental health care injections is Satanic mind control because relying on doctors for our health is the aim of the devil.

You know what? It’s one thing to protest partial birth abortions and lovingly rally for resources for women. It’s one thing to ask for freedom of your religion. It’s one thing to disagree with the new president on many matters.

But it’s another matter entirely to hatemonger against homosexuals without viewing the plentitude of perversions in your sick world. To refuse medical care to poor women because you think you have the answers for difficult questions. To say Bush is not accountable for his war crimes, but Obama is evil because he lets homos have jobs? To jump on different hate wagons- he’s the devil, he’s black, he’s a pawn of the Middle East, he’s a pawn of the Jews, he’s a closet homo. Oh, and why is it that those of you who say you are pro life are angry that Obama reasonably thinks gun control is a good idea? What about all those murders, suicides, and accidents? A gun has only one purpose- to kill. If you think you need to protect yourself, use a knife. Of course, now that a nigger is president, he might creep into your home looking for crack and you must be prepared.

Shame on every one of you religious bigots, fearful, sick, disgusting, racist, sex obsessed, self-righteous, idiots. I thought progressive faith would lead us to a place in history where we could follow God in the traditions of our culture, celebrating our uniqueness, while rejecting the narrow minded assumptions, garbage left over by power-hungry religious fascists.

I understand that many, many of you religious people, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, have never acted in these manners and want me to understand that “not all Christians are like that.” Yes, many Christians, Muslims, Jews, and more have given their lives to charity and love and compassion. You may even feel that you outnumber in multitudes the sick few who act like I’ve described. But I don’t think you do. I think kindness is a minority group, marginalized. That you have been kind because you are an extraordinary person, not because God led you to be that way. Did God lead those people to be THAT way? or is it just that we are animals after all? We are ‘filled with sin’ but not the sins you can’t help- your gender, your geography, your orientation. Not the sins that might be foolish errors but aren’t born out of venom and murderous rage. These crimes, genocide, bigotry, torture, greed are not few and far between but make up most of religious history.

I’ll say it now- being female is not a sin, loving and consensual sex is not a sin, being gay is not a sin, being mentally retarded does not mean you are demon spawn- though you used to say it did. You all obsess about the things a person cannot change- the colour of their skin, their gender, their sexuality.

But the real crimes are lying, hatred, bigotry, racism, guns, war, killing, allowing poverty, religious intolerance, withholding medical care from anyone- including the mentally ill, allowing hunger and homelessness, rape, rape of children, pollution, obsession with other people’s sex habits, cutting down forests to make junk, not allowing women to vote or speak at the pulpit or study, wasting food, emotional abuse, the widespread practice of female castration and infibulation, marrying off your girl child to anyone but especially to an older man, censorship, discrimination, child slavery, sex slavery, beating your wife, beating anyone, thinking your wife is not your equal, thinking your husband is not your equal, making fun of disabled or mentally challenged people, allowing the kind of poverty and abuse that leads to hopeless addictions and other esteem issues, not caring about the poor, being cruel to your parents or children or anyone, lying to your partner about sex or other important issues, lying about fidelity, committing to a relationship when you can’t be faithful, using a person, not being there when a friend needs you desperately, arrogance, swindling, senior citizen abuse, lynching, slavery, killing people, exploiting others, stepping on people to get rich, underpaying workers, poisoning the food supply, banning contraception or withholding it, sentencing suicide attempt victims to hanging or suicides to eternal damnation, torture, chopping up native Indians and making their flesh into dog food (yes, we did, oh vile Christians), rape of native children in reservation schools or mutilation of their tongues and bodies if they did not learn catechism quickly enough, hunting natives for sport, parading around putting crosses all over South America holding heads of conquered victims on sticks with great pride, human sacrifice to sun god- no it’s not more barbaric and heathen than Christian crime but equally so and also religious, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, imprisoning anyone for victimless crimes or for different conscience, genocide, the holocaust, war crimes, never-ending religious wars, …get the point? Put a little love in your hearts.

What I’m witnessing today clear as day and remiss to even admit is the fact that obviously, the religious are and always have been warmongers who cannot function in a civilized society. Unevolved, savage, primordial buffoons.

It’s hard for me to believe that we just happened here, so although I believe in evolution, I believe (d) in some kind of intelligent design, that the deepest spirituality was creativity, manifest in the majestic works of nature. The totality of the awe of mountains and cats and the ocean and cultural diversity was the manifestation of God. I can’t really believe that evolution happened, unaided. On the other hand, if there was such an all-powerful master of the universe, then certainly he has the power to end human suffering and correct our mistakes. (Yes, I’m ready for it, interject here ‘the cross corrects our mistakes’. You know what? the cross is not a free for all so you can all kill and maim.)

Now I’m questioning the inevitable, and I don’t want to let go of that which I’ve cherished, that which has sustained me. I WANT to believe we are spiritual, magical, beloved beings, not “just” animals. For the very first time in my life, I’ve started reading what the atheists have to say, and so far Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion is right on the money about what’s really right and wrong. This book, among others I’ve read when I was not this ‘vulnerable’ to “Satan’s lies” have really uncloaked that which we see clearly but do not see: that like it or not, religion is at the root of most “sin”, not “godlessness.” Dawkin’s observes that immorality and greed and murder and torture and war and rape and exploitation all happen, upon closer scrutiny, WHERE THERE IS GOD and not where this is godlessness! (Atheists have been trying to tell me this for years, but I love Jesus and didn’t look into it carefully enough.)

We cloak it as tribal war and it’s happening today. Islam versus Christianity. Islam versus Jew. Christian versus uncertain or undecided. Yet- it’s really the same. My God is bigger than your God. My gun is bigger than your gun. Dawkins writes, “If you were born in Arkansas … you think Christianity is true and Islam is false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan…”

A book I dropped like a hot potato, condemned to hell by the very title, “god is not great: how religion poisons everything,’ is proving to be monumentally eye opening. It assembles chunks of history we aren’t supposed to find out about or interpret when we do.

I can’t deny my ‘personal relationship’ however faulty, with the Lord Jesus Christ. I feel his presence and I believe (d) in the rituals and mysteries that made him my personal saviour. When we sing, “This is the air I breathe…Your Holy Presence…living in me” in church, I get chills down my spine, I feel the living water pouring through me. But all “other” religious experiences can be reduced to subjective emotion or demonic intervention, according to Christians, so perhaps my experience is the same. Clearly, the  concept that God cares personally and fully about each and every one on the planet is a farce when I see children whose eyes have been ripped out or who are eleven and pregnant. Perhaps my need for divine intervention, for belonging, for unconditional love has conjured this illusion, as it has for people in all the other religions. After all, Mormons, who believe blacks and Chinese are coloured as punishment for their sins in the celestial world, and can’t go on to heaven, are completely positive that Joseph Smith was divinely inspired and not a raving lunatic. And Muslims are completely sure that Mohammed is the prophet of God, but outsiders are taken aback by his child bride (shouldn’t be- John Knox had one, too). Hindus are certain that their pantheon illuminates aspects of the one God, but Christians are SURE they worship wooden statues, empty of all spirit except for the devil. And among those of us who are SURE they have a personal relationship with Christ, we can’t decide among us whether the REAL Christians are Catholic, Baptist, Mormon, Mennonite, etc….

It hurts to stand here, potentially faithless after decades of cherished belief. Perhaps the Bible really is just sacred poetry and historical storytelling at best, or a document to validate the power hungry, at worst. After all, this is what we Christians think of other “holy” books. Can I really survive without belief? Have these haters taken away my joy- or just my delusion? Can I go on without believing that I’ll see Marko again? Dimo, Bobby, Japey? Or maybe I won’t see them again regardless- they could all be BURNING IN HELL, right, in Hitler’s special inferno, where God sends those of us who get it wrong, the billions upon billions who were born in the wrong country at the wrong time.

I can feel my mother’s and father’s heart breaking. They did their best to train up a child. But they could not stop the history of examples of Christian faith that have unveiled themselves this past week, who have made me delve into the past and into geographical strife without blinders on.

Blasphemy is not my intention. My intention is honesty, so that we can all help each other from a place of truth. And so, I’m just going to go out on a limb and make a very bold statement of faith: I DON’T KNOW. I don’t have the answers to the mystery.

I could go it alone, just rejoice in the teachings of Christ to love one another, do my best to carry on loving with an open heart. But I feel sick. I’ve got to wonder for sure if this stuff was all made up to serve some megalomaniacs on earth. Live in peace with one another, Jesus said. I’m going to try my best, but I can’t deny a very large part of me has fallen away because of what I have seen among these “Christians.” I’m losing my religion.

Lorette C. Luzajic