Friday, February 22, 2008

The logic of faith.

You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. In Israel a member of the Knesset, Shlomo Benizri of the Jewish Shas Party, noted that the Attorney General ruled that same-sex couples could adopt. He also noted that two days later there were a couple of small earthquakes. Of course, you know where this logic is going.

“Why do earthquakes happen?” said Benizri. “One of the reasons is the things to which the Knesset give legitimacy, to sodomy.” He also said “passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity is the state of Israel which anyway brings about earthquakes.” Not eloquent, just barely coherent, but you get his point.

And there was a time when I was obviously deceived by the forces of Satan into thinking that tectonic plates had something to do with it.

This sort of bizarre logic is found across the religious spectrum -- there is a tendency that when someone believes one impossible thing that they easily fall for lots more. Some years ago I was writing a story about the Moral Majority for a publication where I was employed. I traveled to Indianapolis where Jerry Falwell was holding a rally with his local lackey, the Rev. Greg Dixon of the Indianapolis Baptist Temple. Dixon and his crew were pushing for legislation to make it a felony for someone to be gay in the state of Indiana. As. Rev. Dixon put it in one of his sermons, he wanted gays either executed or imprisoned if they couldn’t get the former legislation through.

Dixon had a Theopublican member of the state assembly, who was also a minister in Dixon’s church, introduce this legislation which they called “the Right to Decency Bill”. And they sponsored a “March for Decency” in downtown Indianapolis where all the good Christian folk were to come out demanding that the heretics be burned at the stake or some other similar loving deed.

I went around interviewing the legions of God who were marching. One little girl was carrying a sign daddy or mommy gave her demanding that all gay people be killed. How sweet and all-American! The love of Jesus was just everywhere that day.


One woman I meet explained to me that the drought which California was experiencing that summer was, of course, the result of California being tolerant of homosexuals. Apparently homosexuals cause droughts (not just earthquakes).

I couldn’t help myself and asked a few follow up question with as serious an expression as I could force myself to muster.

“Oh,” I said. “So the congregation of homosexuals in one area results in a drought?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, would this mean that if an area was being flooded because of heavy rains that we could bus in homosexuals and stop the rains?”

She thought about it for a second. Considered the logic based on her own premise and said: “Yes, absolutely. That would work.”

The mind of the believer never ceases to amaze and amuse me.

Photo: The photo is from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert which features a bus load of drag queens in the middle of the Australian outback. Please note there is NO rain! What more proof do you need?

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