Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal explains it all.

Today, the United States put an end to a group of religiously-motivated violent extremists who planned murderous attacks on Americans and planned to kill them with weapons of mass destruction as part of their religious war. They claimed their prophet “wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword”.

I look forward to seeing the right-wing talking heads criticizing this faith as a “religion of hate” and condemning its followers.

With marriage equality now taking place in D.C., employers in D.C. will of course have to extend the same benefits to same-sex spouses as they do opposite-sex spouses.

The Archdiocese of Washington found this untenable. Health benefits? To the gays? What’s a Catholic employer to do?

Catholic Charities will continue to honor the health plan coverage that current employees have as of March 1, 2010. As of March 2, a new plan will be in effect that will cover new employees and requests for benefit changes by current employees. The new plan will provide the same level of coverage for employees and their dependents that you now have, with one exception: spouses not in the plan as of March 1, will not be eligible for coverage in the future.

That’s right — straight or gay, if your spouse wasn’t on the plan as of March 1, s/he can never, ever get health care coverage. See? Now they don’t have to give benefits to the gays — and it’s legal!

Yeah, that’s pretty much the embodiment of Christian charity right there.

Read on.

NO SERIOUSLY

Check out the results from this poll.

I… I am speechless. I can’t even summarize it.

Okay, let me try. 2000 Republicans surveyed, and the results include

Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13

THIRTY ONE PERCENT
SOMEWHERE, MARGARET ATWOOD IS PULLING OUT HER HAIR

Levicitus 18:22:

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Same book, 11:10-11:

And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.

I look forward to the Catholic church spending $394,000 to ban finless, scaleless seafood in Maine. To do otherwise would be hypocritical.

I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

So writes President Jimmy Carter.

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham writes in this week’s issue:

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

Read on.

…or so a bunch of wingnuts would have you believe. Why?

Krispy Kreme, being the genial purveyor of glazed goodness that it is, decided to get in on the Obama inauguration craze and is offering one free doughnut to every costumer on January 20, Inauguration day, and released this seemingly innocuous press release:

“Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies — just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet ‘free’ can be.”

Well, The American Life League noticed the liberal use of the word choice and decided to blast the chain bakery for producing abortion doughnuts.

“The unfortunate reality of a post-Roe v. Wade America is that ‘choice’ is synonymous with abortion access, and celebration of ‘freedom of choice’ is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand,” the group’s president, Judie Brown said in a statement.

Yes, that’s right. Use the word “choice” in a PR statement, and you’re an abortionist.

Read on and let your mind boggle. Then go buy some Krispy Kremes.

The star-studded cast sings:

The AP reports:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a “task that is from God.”

In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it “God’s will.”

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal injects its own take on religion in politics.

Ben Stein: Ivy League grad, valedictorian from Yale Law, host of a game show whose premise was that he’s super-smart.

Alas, Ben seems to have missed a few science classes somewhere in there, because his latest cause? Creationism.

Pat Robertson’s at it again, saying that

…earthquakes that have rocked the [region] recently… had been caused by lawmaking that gave “legitimacy to sodomy”.

Furthermore, Robertson said that h— wait, what? Who?

Sorry. Force of habit. Turns out the idiot bigot fundamentalists in question are of an entirely different stripe:

An Israeli MP has blamed parliament’s tolerance of gays for earthquakes that have rocked the Holy Land recently.

Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave “legitimacy to sodomy”.

…He called on lawmakers to stop “passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes”.

Read on at the Beeb.

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,” Huckabee said.

(emphasis added)

Read on.

…and I’m not referring to the spelling of “labeled”.

[Tony Blair] told the BBC that he had avoided talking about his religious views while in office for fear of being labelled “a nutter”.

From the the Beeb.

The War on Christmas continues, as brought to you by… um, Christians?

As Christmas draws near, Pastor John Foster won’t be decorating a tree, shopping for last-minute gifts or working on a holiday sermon for his flock. After all, it’s been 50 years since Christmas was anything more than a day of the week to him.

He’s one of very few American Christians who follow what used to be the norm in many Protestant denominations–rejecting the celebration of Christmas on religious grounds.

…Through much of the 19th century, schools and businesses remained open, Congress met in session and some churches closed their doors, lest errant worshippers try to furtively commemorate the day.

…That rejection was rooted in the lack of biblical sanction for Dec. 25 as the date of Jesus’ birth, as well as suspicion toward traditions that developed after the earliest days of Christianity. In colonial New England, this disapproval extended to actually making the holiday illegal, with celebration punishable by a fine.

Read on.

DailyKos reports:

The “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” video game, is set in a “post apocalyptic” New York that looks almost exactly like New York City after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and lets players simulate commanding a paramilitary Christian army that seeks to convert Jews, mainline Christians, Muslims, atheists, Buddhists, and everyone else in New York City to fundamentalist Christianity. All who resist will be killed.

…Now, with the blessing and endorsement of the Pentagon, a Christian ministry with apocalyptic fundamentalist beliefs that is planning a series of tours it calls a ‘military crusade’ to entertain US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq will also be distributing the “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” ‘Convert or Die’ religious warfare video game….

To US troops.

What ?

Let me repeat:

The United States Pentagon has endorsed sending a Christian supremacist religious warfare video game to United States troops in Iraq, a predominantly Muslim nation.

Once again:

“Left Behind: Eternal Forces”, a game depicting fundamentalist Christians religious warfare will be distributed to US troops.

Courtesy of the PENTAGON.

First, the good news: yesterday, for the first time, the Senate was opened with a Hindu invocation.

Now for the bad news.

As if Mitt “Anchorman” Romney didn’t have enough religion issues to deal with,

When asked his favorite novel in an interview shown yesterday on the Fox News Channel, Mitt Romney pointed to “Battlefield Earth,” a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.

Read on.

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), who’s served eighteen terms, recently acknowledged that he is an atheist. Given that there are more atheists and agnostics in the US than there are Congregationalists, and given that 13% of US adults declare themselves as having no religion*, it was about time there was an atheist in Congress. Or, more accurately, it was about time that one actually admitted his views in public.

Meanwhile, for another religious group, persecution continues unabated in this country, as a high school student was denied the right to dress as his religion allows.

 
* Don’t believe me? Check out the census data.