Same anti-women story in Jewish religion

As Muslims strive to keep women uneducated and hidden away, and Catholics await word from their new pope about the status of women in the church, another religion also keeps women underfoot.

Israeli police on Thursday detained five women at a Jerusalem holy site for performing religious rituals that ultra-Orthodox Jews say are reserved for men.

It's the same old story: women are unworthy of interaction with gods. They are intrinsically "unclean". Thus, they do not deserve male respect and mustn't be allowed to touch the super-special magic items that every man can touch. That would be a sin and it would make the baby Jesus/Allah/Yaweh cry!

About 120 women arrived Thursday morning for their monthly prayer service and police detained five for wearing prayer shawls, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Mustn't wear the magic garments! Nuh uh-uh. Can't do.

Religion doesn't like women. It never has and it never will. It amazes me that women don't secede from religion en masse. Wouldn't that be great? No religious man would have a religious wife, and the wives and girlfriends and daughters would laugh at the religious males. And of course, they would never have sex with a religious guy. This could be an effective movement if men weren't the vicious, hateful creatures that they are. Because let's face it: they'd kill the women if they wouldn't have sex with them and wouldn't "respect" their idiotic relationship with an imaginary being.

Religion is a cesspool. That's the short version of this and every story about religion. It needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth.

The Roman Catholic church is a cesspool

I'll let PZ tell you about it. I'm too nauseous, myself. Ugh.

The GOP throws the election

Only a day after Todd Akin made his insane comments about rape, the GOP has approved "a federal ban on abortion with no exception for rape and incest survivors".

What else is there to say? The GOP just lost the election. To think of all the money that was spent on this doomed Romney campaign! And for what? A platform that guarantees they will lose the election? This turn of events is shocking in so many ways. They truly don't see women as autonomous human beings -- and are happy to admit it!

The GOP will never come back from this.

Bishops' confused morals take center stage

Y'all know about the Fortnight for Freedom, right? It's the sleight-of-hand introduced by the Catholic bishops group led by Cardinal Timmy Dolan. It has that freedom-ish name, and it's described as taking place "during liturgical feasts for martyred defenders of the faith". Oooh, it's freedom-ish and somehow connected to "martyred defenders". It sure must be important.

Of course, it's merely a Bright, Shiny Thing campaign designed by Dolan and the Vatican to take the wind out of Obama's sails -- because the Roman Catholic Church is the GOP. It is also NOM, the despicable organization whose only purpose is to harass gays.

Timmy tries hard to make the campaign sound plausible. Instead of revealing what it is -- a campaign against the president, against women and against gays -- Dolan describes it this way:

"In only the past few years, we've experienced rampant disregard for religious beliefs in this country," wrote New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, in an e-book released for the "Fortnight" effort. Among the examples he cites are approval for embryonic stem cell research, legal justification for torturing prisoners and support for same-sex marriage. 

Timmy figures if he throws torture in there, no one will notice what he's really doing. This faux campaign is about denying contraception to women, about denying the rights of non-Catholic employees of the church, about deflecting attention from the priest child-abuse scandal and Timmy's own contribution to that scandal: paying off the priests who raped children, and it's about the church's intense, pathological hatred of gay people.

Fortnight for Freedom indeed. Note the GOP newspeak name for the campaign. I wonder why that is. Duh. The church is the GOP. Here's another excerpt:

"We can see that there is a loss here of a sense of truth and objective moral norms -- rules of conduct that apply always, to everyone, everywhere -- an infringement of religious liberty and an 'eclipse of the sense of God and of man,'" wrote Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

We've lost our moral norms, eh, Timmy? Ahem. Priest rapists. Have you forgotten about that, Timmy? The man does not own a mirror. But he doesn't go unchallenged in the article:

Opponents are unconvinced. "This bishops' project isn't about religious freedom — it's about privilege," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "They are asking for preferential treatment from the government, and if they are successful, it would undercut the rights of millions of Americans."

That's quite a church they've got there. I can't imagine why anyone remains Catholic.

Nuns don't sit still for Vatican trashing

Sister Christine Schenk.

I'm sure readers of this blog are aware that the Vatican attacked American nuns with unusual, public viciousness a few weeks ago. "Radical feminist agenda" indeed. American Catholics aren't pleased about this development -- and the nuns aren't taking it lying down. Two days ago, they responded.

Let's take this from the top. The boys club that is the Roman Catholic church is upset that American nuns won't echo the Vatican's hateful teachings about gay people and women. You must engage in the Vatican's hate campaigns in order to be an official Catholic these days. That is the Vatican's message.

But it's basically a man vs. woman thing. This male-only church hates women. And the very idea that American nuns question this antipathy drives them wild. So what is the Vatican going to do? Put a man on the case, of course.

Archbishop Sartain was assigned by the Vatican to spend five years revising the statutes of the sisters’ organization, vetting their speakers and publications, and making sure their events featured the eucharist, which can be administered only by a priest.

I love that. With this bit of prestidigitation, the nuns must include a bigoted male priest in all their activities. I roared laughing when I read about this. As Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of futurechurch, put it:

“Here you see women, very competent, highly educated, doctorates in theology, masters in ministry, C.E.O.’s of hospitals, heads of school systems, being treated as if they were children,” she said. “That in itself goes to the issue of where are the women in the decision-making structures in Rome.”

Indeed. This won't fly in America. Won't fly at all. The popey guy really stepped in it this time.

In Cleveland on Wednesday night, about 650 people, including laypeople, about 100 nuns and a handful of priests in their Roman collars, gathered for a prayer service inside a Catholic church to honor the nuns. When the nuns were asked to stand for a blessing, the congregation responded with a spontaneous standing ovation that lasted nearly five minutes, said several people who attended. 

And that's the way it's going to go in this country. Popey guy: no; nuns: yes!
 
PS: Even I like nuns.

Evil sky god speaks through popey guy

Shady popey guy.

An AP story reveals that the popey guy isn't mean. He's just enacting the sky god's plan. Here's how the story begins:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI began his eighth year as pope on Tuesday after spending the waning days of his seventh driving home his view of the Catholic Church, with a divisive crackdown on dissenters and an equally divisive opening to a fringe group of traditionalists. 

He's a fun guy. The article is an attempt to understand "Benedict's recent moves to quell liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism" Is it all coming from the evil popey guy's mind? Is he the worst thing that ever happened to Roman Catholicism? Nah, they say.

The pope promised [in 2005] not to impose his own will on the church but to rather listen "to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history." 

See? It's the sky god who wants to punish liberal catholics, nuns, women in general, and gays. The poor popey guy's got nothing to do with it. The words fall out of his mouth, sure -- but it's not his fault! He's sweet -- cuddly, even. It's just that the sky god is making him say these awful things.

The Vatican last week put those words into action, cracking down on the largest umbrella group of nuns in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious . . . and accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith." 

Indeed. Let's all attack the nuns for having a heart. That'll help the church's image. But it's not just the nuns.

[O]n the very day it announced the crackdown on the U.S. nuns, the Holy See said it was nearing agreement to bring an ultra-traditionalist conservative group of Catholics back into communion with Rome after two decades of schism.  

To critics, the coincidence was remarkable: the Vatican was in a way rejecting the U.S. nuns who had embraced Vatican II and its call to go out into the world to serve the poor, while embracing the Society of St. Pius X which had rejected Vatican II.

But as he says, it's not him; it's the sky god who whispers in his ear. What can the poor guy do?

Is this guy the best thing that ever happened to the Roman Catholic Church, or what? He's given us pedophilia scandals that he himself facilitated. And he's begun a literal pogrom against gays throughout the world. (And let us note that the popey guy is a big queen. Closet cases always lash out at openly gay men. It's what they do.) He clearly is the most evil pope in ages. If he keeps this up, the church won't last another ten years. Go, popey guy!

The disease spreads

Some financially strong Catholic-sponsored medical centers are joining with smaller secular hospitals, in some cases limiting access to treatments like contraception and abortion.

The roman catholic church is going down

Victim. Ha!

There is a marvelously reassuring and chuckle-some article in the NY Times today about the "state of siege" that US Bishops seem to think they're under. In essence, they consider any externally imposed constraints on their ability to continue discriminating against gays and women to be an infringement of their inalienable "religious rights". These guys are so tone-deaf and immoral, it's shocking.

The article has wonderful quotes like this:

Scott Appleby, a prominent religious historian at the University of Notre Dame, says many church leaders have recently adopted "a more pugnacious style, much more of a kind of culture-wars attitude." At the same time, the bishops' have been stung by their loss of public influence from the sex abuse crisis and the years of bruising revelations that many dioceses moved guilty clergy among parishes without alerting parents or police.

"The church no longer receives deference or the hands-off attitude that it once had for many years. That's gone," Appleby said. 

Duh. I wonder why. There are evil groups and there are evil groups. The roman catholic church is one of the truly evil groups. Go read the article. It's fun.

Sickening arrogance

Reading the news, it horrifies me to see so many states trying to outlaw gay marriage. I mean, here is a group of elected lawmakers with virtually no gay members -- and they get to decide how my life should proceed and what rights I'm entitled to?

I mean, imagine if male congress-critters were trying to tell women whether or not they could have an abortion.

Oh, wait!

Men are less responsible than women

I've been planning to write a post about this for some time. You know, it was hard to tell who was responsible and who wasn't, way back in the days when I lived in a largely gay community. Gay men weren't pushing to have babies in those days, or marry. Our lives were totally about fun. (Well, we worked too, but fun was a major driver in our lives.) So in that era, I wasn't aware of the differences between men and women.

But after I moved out of NYC and into the rural area in which I now live, I met a ton of straight people with children. And one thing that has come through loud and clear to me is the childishness of the men, and the responsible nature of the women. I don't know what to attribute this to, other than obvious child-rearing differences, but it's a stark fact. The straight men I've met up here are much, much less responsible than the women. They're children, really, and the wife or girlfriend is the only one who holds things together. In many relationships, it seems the men have a mommy rather than a life partner.

What prompts me to write today is an article in the New York Daily News today about a book that takes an absurd tack in analyzing this situation. Oh, no, it's not the men's fault -- it's the damn, uppity women. Mind you, the book is being excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, so it's not surprising that the book's message is warped. Here's an excerpt:

"Hymowitz's book, "Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys," is excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, and discusses the "novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance" that characterizes many young men in today's society. 

Though she attributes a number of elements to the notable emergence of this boy-to-man subculture, chief among them are financial stability and changing sexual hierarchies."

Uh, huh. "Changing sexual hierarchies." It surely has nothing to do with the stupid, irresponsible nature of the men themselves. Nope, it's the uppity women. Sigh.

People are such twits about prostitution

People have sex. Get over it. And as for money for sex, what do you think marriage is?

Today's AP article on the four women killed by a serial killer near Jones Beach in NY, is really irritating. Here's their lead paragraph:

The four women were prostitutes in their 20s, advertising their services online, living on the margins of society and not likely to be immediately missed. They appeared to share similar middle-class childhoods, but it is the way they lived their adult lives that has authorities chasing a serial killer. [My emphasis.]

No, AP, it is not "the way they lived their adult lives" that is causing police to chase a serial killer. That's happening because there is a serial killer out there. He did the killing. Don't try and foist blame for their murder on the victims. What a bunch of anti-women prigs AP must be to say such a thing. Ugh. AP, you are disgusting.