Nazis, gays, and Bryan Fischer


Shorter Bryan Fischer: Because the Nazis really hated homosexuals, they are nothing like the Religious Right. Or maybe it’s that because the Nazis were gay, they didn’t hate homosexuality enough, as the Bible clearly says you should.

I don’t know. It’s a confused mess of butchered history, so who knows what this guy is trying to say. He sure seems fascinated with butch Nazis abusing effeminate beautiful boys, though.

Comments

  1. says

    I think he’s a little TOO obsessed with Nazis. As Shakespeare said, “The lady doth protest too much methinks.”

  2. says

    Expelled II: Homophobic Nazis persecuting homophobic creationists.

    Seriously, they seem to have a kind of fascination with the Nazis. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

    Well, yes there is, in case anyone misses the point.

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

  3. says

    He sure seems fascinated with butch Nazis abusing effeminate beautiful boys, though.

    I’m betting there is a leather cap and little leather trousers in his closet somewhere.

    *warren just bought some

  4. says

    The Nazis, like all evolutionists rejected intelligent design and hence say no intrinsic purpose in anything. Like the evolutionists of today, they saw nothing wrong with using the anus as a sex organ when it was clearly not designed to be one.

    Like all evolutionists, the Nazis still had to deal with the witness of the Holy Spirit pointing out their sins even though they denied their existence. The “effiminate boys” reminded the Nazis of their sin brought on by their denial of the teleogical meaning of the anus, so they decided to kill them. The religion of evolutionism is cannibalistic as well as genocidal; evolutionists will often slaughter their own becuase other evolutionists are grim reminders of their own sin they spend their lifetime trying to deny!

  5. says

    The Nazis, like all evolutionists rejected intelligent design and hence say no intrinsic purpose in anything. Like the evolutionists of today, they saw nothing wrong with using the anus as a sex organ when it was clearly not designed to be one.

    Like all evolutionists, the Nazis still had to deal with the witness of the Holy Spirit pointing out their sins even though they denied their existence. The “effiminate boys” reminded the Nazis of their sin brought on by their denial of the teleogical meaning of the anus, so they decided to kill them. The religion of evolutionism is cannibalistic as well as genocidal; evolutionists will often slaughter their own becuase other evolutionists are grim reminders of their own sin they spend their lifetime trying to deny!

    Hi Poe

  6. brokenSoldier says

    Article:

    …the homosexuals the Nazis persecuted were almost exclusively the effeminate members of the gay community in Germany, and that much of the mistreatment was administered by masculine homosexuals who despised effeminacy in all its forms.

    So apparently you were fine being homosexual as long as you weren’t girly about it…what absolute bullshit, but business as usual from this guy. (Try actually reading Mein Kampf before you spout off about what the Nazis did and did not actually believe in, and who they did and did not persecute. While it is true that some of them may have had an affinity for young boys, the beliefs of their party and worldview definitely held homosexuality in great contempt, specifically for religious reasons.

    But since Brian Fischer can’t seem to grasp this, maybe a more modern example is needed. We only need to go as far as Reverend Ted Haggard. Just ask him how much the non-effeminate homosexuals in his congregation are tolerated.

    Just because someone might be gay underneath but hiding it does not mean that their party, or other affiliated group, shares their secret pleasures as tenets of belief. If modern evangelicals haven’t taught you anything, Brian, it is that homosexuality is a subject that you guys need to tiptoe around, because you inevitably end up digging around in the sandbox and finding another one of your own kind in there. But then again, keep on digging – it seems to make certain ones among you face who they really are, while at the same time peeling just a little bit more of that hypocritical veneer that covers the fundamentalist worldview.

  7. Dutch Delight says

    It seems to me that some christians in the US have remade the nazi empire to fit their version of history. I suppose it’s good enough to fly under the radar in the US, but try and publish crap like this in Germany or other countries in Europe (you know, where that stuff actually happened) and you’ll get your ass handed to you, in court if at all possible.

  8. Jams says

    Clearly, the case that Darwinism leads to rough bare-backing is now complete.

  9. Alligator says

    PZ, what he’s saying is that anyone who isn’t a Turbo Christian (patent pending) is a Nazi. The focus on homosexuality is gratuitous and redundant because it goes without saying you can’t be a Turbo Christian (patent pending) unless you hate the gays.

  10. woozy says

    Oddly, I thought this article was very clear and cogent (and utter bullshit).

    Short Interpretation: Nazi’s were nasty horrible human beings. The Nazi party was almost entirely homosexual and only persecuted effiminate gays because the were effiminate. Nazis also persecuted clergy.

    Hence when the left accusation that the fundamental right are Nazis for their persecution of homosexuality is innacurate because we persecute homosexuals for different reasons. And since our hatred isn’t Nazi hatred, our hatred is okay and justified. To wit:

    The Nazis loved homosexuality but hated effeminacy and women whereas the Foundamental Right hate homosexuality but love effeminant straights and women.

    The Nazis persecuted Jews but really, really persecuted the religious whereas the Foundamental Right love the Jews but the Jews weren’t as really, really persecuted as the Foundamental Right were.

    The Nazis were a bunch of homosexual and sexual perverts whereas the Foundamental Right are a bunch of upright heterosexual family folk.

    The Nazis hated people in a bad way. The Foundamental Right hate people in a good way.

    Clear and cogent. Clear and cogent.

  11. Feynmaniac says

    Okay let’s start the pool. My money is on him looking to screw young male pages. Who has got soliciting gay sex in airport bathroom? Getting high and having sexx with a gay prostitute? Rev. BigDumbChimp, can I put you down for gay sadomasochistic Nazi dungeon?

  12. Jackson says

    Lots of problems with this article. I was troubled by this paragraph:
    Hitler’s Brown Shirts, the dreaded SA, better known as “Storm Troopers,” were the creation of another homosexual, Gerhard Rossbach, and Storm Troopers were almost exclusively homosexual. They also, sadly, comprised most of the leadership of the Hitler Youth, resulting in frequent instances of sexual molestation.

    I thought it was generally understood that homosexuality and child molestation are two different and distinct things, just as heterosexuality and incest are two different and distinct things.

  13. aratina says

    The website pumping this book is quite disgusting; its mission: “To track, synthesize and expose the secret, social and political corruption of America’s powerful, government financed Lesbian Mafia.” They post the book online, but who could stomach reading it?

  14. Bride of Shrek says

    After reading Chapter 6- Homosexuality and Concentration Camps, I am truly disgusted that this sort of filth is published. It just goes beyond the pale of any form of basic human decency to write this stuff.

  15. XQJ-37 Pan-sexual Roto-Plooker says

    Rev. BigDumbChimp: Warren just bought some? I don’t think so. You’re clearly confusing Hitler with L. Ron Hoover. Keep your bad guys straight. Er, correct.

    Sheesh.

  16. Joe Z. says

    This Fischer guy also has a rant about California’s recent court ruling regarding same-sex marriage. Its title? “Tyranny alive and well in America.” Oy vey.

    Apparently Fischer has never heard of the tyranny of the majority. In his mind, if the majority of Americans oppose gay rights, then it’s unconstitutional to protect them. There’s also some legal mumbo jumbo about states rights and the fact that the California Constitution never mentions same-sex marriage (why the hell would it?), but the gist of the whole thing is: The majority hates gays. Judges must represent the will of the people. Therefore, giving rights to gays violates the majority’s constitutional rights.

    Durn those activist judges, upholding the rights of minorities! How dare they do something as unconstitutional as enforcing the Constitution?

    I need to lie down for a minute.

  17. says

    The usual “we were the persecuted ones” and “we were the only ones who fought back” crap from the religious right.
    http://nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm illustrates just the depth of xtian involvement in the nazi state and even a cursory glance at a history luther will indicate the fundamental protestant foundations to the ideology behind nazism. The extreme parts of nazism are fundamentally dogmatic and are founded on xtian and more specifically protestant ideals with a pagan twist for garnish.
    as for the pink swastika it really is a trashy text and sloppily written and researched. Many critiques are to be found online from various sources http://www.glinn.com/pink/apsc07.htm#P177. Many of its supporters words are to be found online too, but they seem to be all from the extremist xtian side trying to rewrite history to what they preach.

  18. says

    Rev. BigDumbChimp: Warren just bought some? I don’t think so. You’re clearly confusing Hitler with L. Ron Hoover. Keep your bad guys straight. Er, correct.

    You are correct. My bad. Now me and my pygmy pony are off to the dental floss farm.

  19. Colugo says

    Rohm’s SA (storm troops) had a high representation of homosexuals (not just pederasts), including Rohm himself. Hitler despised homosexuality, which is one of the reasons why he had Rohm assassinated on the Night of the Long Knives. Another motive was that Rohm was planning a ‘second revolution’ against the plutocrats and aristocracy. Hitler’s blood purge of the Nazi Party was designed to eliminate deviationist tendencies within the National Socialist movement, including the ‘National Bolshevik’ faction of the Strasser brothers (which Goebbels belonged to before allying himself to Hitler).

  20. Karley says

    Right wingers tease me with their talk of lesbian mafias and feminist terrorist groups. WHERE CAN I FIND THEM?!? I want to subscribe to their newsletter!

  21. G. Shelley says

    Flasherjack beat me to it, but I was going to ask PZ if he’d seen the defeating Darwin article:
    1st law of thermodynanimcs (prime mover argument, for which god of course gets a free pass).
    2nd law (the law says things break down and the theory says the get more complex and laws outrank theories).
    Fossils (no transitional forms).
    Genes (Biochemical evolution has not been worked out in detail and no bacteria has ever been observed to change into a different species).
    Amazing that people as ignorant as that can feel so proud of their lack of knowledge

  22. Fran W says

    Oh, it all makes perfect sense!

    All of the 2.5 million Nazis Storm Troopers were gay. In fact, pretty much all the Nazis were gay. Including Ernst Roehm, Heinrich Himmler, Gerhard Rossbach, Hermann Goering, and Adolf Hitler himself. In fact, the gays CREATED the Nazi party, all by themselves.

    Oh, yes, the Nazis rounded up gay men, but only the girlie-swirlie ones, and less than one percent of the gay population were killed by Nazis. Most gay’s deaths were accidental. The Nazis were all manly gays themselves. And they were way way meaner to the Jews — and to the CHRISTIANS! They hated priests and were into the occult and stuff. In fact, the Nazis were all anti-Christian! (And pedophiles. Which of course makes them gay.) Oh, the poor widdle Christians. How they suffered!

    So, in effect, saying that Christians who persecute homosexuals are acting like Nazis is dumb. It’s the other way around. Nazis were gay, and Nazis persecuted Christians. Ergo, gays are bad and Christians are good. The Nazis only became horrific because they rejected Christianity and embraced homosexuality. So as long as gays are around, Nazis are right around the corner waiting to arise and destroy the world again, bwa ha ha ha ha.

    And if you don’t believe all this, you deserve to be spanked. By Bryan Fischer. So call him. He’s waiting. He’s even got his little leather britches on….

  23. Midnight Rambler says

    aratina @15:

    The website pumping this book is quite disgusting; its mission: “To track, synthesize and expose the secret, social and political corruption of America’s powerful, government financed Lesbian Mafia.” They post the book online, but who could stomach reading it?

    It seems pretty clear that the guy running it is not just homophobic but pretty seriously disturbed. As an example (all emphasis as in original):

    From where does this constant vomit against men and women originate ? Do you for one minute think that this just comes about by chance? NO CITIZENS, NOT BY CHANCE: This hate mongering is a master plan promoted by a cartel of (13 million) psychotic lesbians and a majority of established institutions of which they control; and do you know why they are getting away with it? Because they operate under a fictitious image as “Radical Feminists” DID YOU KNOW FEMINISM IS LESBIANISM?

    […]

    (follow close) This missing link is the frantic engine that drives lesbians to excel over heterosexual women in the work place. While the wholesome woman enjoys the complacency of love, security, and companionship with man and children, the lesbian is frantically driven to fulfill a mans role in life. These frenzied aberrations give birth to many social disorders such as anxieties, compulsions, obsessions, psychotic phobias and often linked with grandiosity. Unbeknown by most, lesbians have a grandiose plan in effect to overthrow the heterosexual culture in the U. S. and replace with a Lesbo Amazon Nation.

    Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno and Donna Shalala are well on the way towards fulfilling this goal.

  24. Colugo says

    Junk history like the Pink Swastika aside, some confusion arises from to the fact that Adolf Hitler is not the sole creator of Nazism. Think of increasingly smaller nested circles in a Venn diagram: European fascism, German fascism/national socialism, NSDAP, the Hitler faction of the NSDAP. The NSDAP came to dominate German fascism, and then the Hitler faction consolidated its control over the NSDAP. Eventually, Nazism dominated the international fascist movement, at least within the Axis. Because of that history, pro-Stalin/Slavophilic factions within German fascism were marginalized and Italian fascism became antisemitic. Regardless of the history of the SA, Nazism in power was anti-homosexual.

  25. Joe Z. says

    I don’t want to click. I don’t want to click! But I cannot help myself.

    Four easy steps? My goodness, these are among the oldest and most tired arguments ever used. “Second Law of Thermodynamics, All Mutations Are Harmful, We’ve Never Seen Evolution in Action blah blah blah”. It’s interesting that he mentions bacteria, though, considering the evolution of nylonase. We haven’t seen bacteria evolve? Please. Oh, no, wait, what he’s saying is that we haven’t seen bacteria speciate.

    Oh, and did you check out his diatribe on how fighting global warming is a crime against humanity? C02 isn’t a greenhouse gas, he says! It’s plant food! I want to hurt him. I want to hurt him badly.

    And what’s that way down in the right margin of the page? A link to a book advocating the conquest of Mexico? I won’t even link to it. Just thinking about it makes me queasy.

  26. says

    @#25 —

    Flasherjack beat me to it, but I was going to ask PZ if he’d seen the defeating Darwin article:

    Not only has PZ seen it, he wrote a post about it. Check out the comments thread for some simultaneously frustrating and amusing “debate” with homo ipso, Bryan Fischer.

  27. MYOB says

    I have a strange fealing that when aliens invade Earth in 2012 as all the nutjobs say will happen, the aliens will happen to be gay.

    MYOB’
    .

  28. says

    The four steps got debunked in an earlier article here…

    The SA was indeed mostly gay. Hitler and the SS killed them all when they were no longer useful. How does that equate to loving homosexuals?

    Oh, and they were all manly homosexuals, too.

  29. wrpd says

    Thirteen million psychotic lesbians and my friend Judy still can’t get a date. So unfair.
    This whole issue of butch vs fem gay men is bogus. The rules judging who is butch and who is fem must be written soemwhere in the Gay Agenda(tm), which, by the way, I still have not received. Do I have to subscribe? Is there a secret gay website?
    Back to the butch/fem rules: is it a sliding scale? Does one win points for things like smoking cigars and lose points for wearing silk underwear? Is there a test one has to pass? Do you fail if you don’t know all of the lyrics for “Dreamgirls” or is that a good thing?
    Face it, most gay men fall somewhere in the middle, which means, realistically, if it were true, there were the 5% butch gays persecuting the 5% fem gays, leaving the 90% alone. Yep, that makes sense.

  30. Brendan S says

    #24:

    I’ll bet if you asked them, they’d say the ACLU. Not hot Lesbians in Leather taking revealing pictures of themselves subjagating men.

  31. Mena says

    It’s quite telling that these guys who are focused on homosexuality as one of the most serious issues facing the country never remember that lesbians exist. Kind of like skits where you see two guys getting close to each other and then reacting with a slap and yelling “fag”. Real straight people don’t actually care, and neither do well adjusted (out) gays. Hmmm…

  32. Dennis N says

    Not ten percent of the men who preach from the pulpit are sexually normal either, I’d say, judging from court records and airport bathrooms.

  33. Dr. G. says

    I cannot believe this Bryan Fisher guy … well, I should, since there is also all of that ID sss … stuff, but I still cannot believe it. Anyway, I could not find a way to let him know this little secret example (there are many more, but that is an aside), come close to the screen (quietly!):

    Have you heard of protein engineering? One of its aims is to be able to design changes in proteins to make them better at some thing or another. One thing they were working on, finding out how beta-lactamase changes from “destroying” one “form of penicillin” to destroying another (one of the antibiotic resistance problems). So, the strategy consisted in comparing the proteins acting on each of the different penicillin forms and then try introducing the changes in the other protein expecting to find the key mutations that way, but it was slow and painful, because it was a bit hard to distinguish the importance of one mutation over another. Well, some guy suddenly had success at changing the specificity of beta-lactamase very rapidly in the lab! Of course “intelligent design” … ?? … well, intelligent strategy maybe, the guy used an error prone PCR reaction on a beta-lactamase gene to get lots of mutant variants of the gene, randomly, to recombine the most successful variants from one cycle to another, and had a selection strategy, so in the end, the random mutations with selection … wait wait, then random mutations can lead to active proteins with different specificities? Are you telling me that there is evidence that random mutations with selection works to produce healthy variants? Who would have guessed!

    Now, I do not want to demerit the idea of protein engineering. The point is, mutation and selection do work to produce viable and powerful variants in the lab. But designing proteins is an excellent goal, should be feasible, and it is worth working on the problem. Especially because it is not easy to find selection strategies for everything we need in medicine, industry, and for advancing our understanding of how proteins work.

  34. says

    @#40 Dennis N —

    Not ten percent of the men who preach from the pulpit are sexually normal either, I’d say, judging from court records and airport bathrooms.

    And the ones not going for the little boys are going for the little girls.

    My favorite part of the article is the megachurch’s response to finding out that one of their pastors solicited sex from a 13 year old girl (well, really an undercover cop) online: they want to put it behind them (sound familiar?):

    “We’ve taken a hit from the enemy this week, but we will rise above and respond to the challenge … ,” he [Pr. Graham] said, as church members applauded. “We are confident and certain that in the days ahead that God is preparing us for something magnificent and wonderful in the ministry of this church. …We want to put this in our rearview mirror.”

  35. says

    This Fischer is an obvious dullard, since even I can spot it.

    What do they mean by ‘transitional fossils’? (that’s a real question). Isn’t the fact that there are all kinds of fossils from different periods transitional?

    If these guys want to witness diversity, they should plant some columbines – those things mutate like crazy, and quickly.

    How did all this crap get started, this ‘evolution is a crock’ thing? It’s relatively new, after all – we studied evolution in school when I was a kid and I’m not exactly young anymore. Why do they have such a problem with it? Who are these nitwits, where did they come from and why is anybody paying any attention to them?

  36. says

    Another amusing thing – he describes at the end how the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist League is only for gays. This is true. The way it is written makes it seem like it’s a Nazi group that has been going since the time of the third Reich, when in fact it’s a group founded in 1974. See The Fringe of the Fringe, a report on gay white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

  37. J says

    Does anyone know where the lie “Hitler was an atheist” originated from? Surely it couldn’t have been invented so many times independently. I’m curious to know.

  38. says

    Right wingers tease me with their talk of lesbian mafias and feminist terrorist groups. WHERE CAN I FIND THEM?!? I want to subscribe to their newsletter!

    I was gonna mention the phrase ‘government financed lesbian mafia’ sorta… caught my interest…

    Oh. Wait. I did it again, didn’t I? Shared a little too much, right?

    My apologies.

  39. says

    Does anyone know where the lie “Hitler was an atheist” originated from? Surely it couldn’t have been invented so many times independently. I’m curious to know.

    I’m sure it’s just a continuation of the idea held by some fundamentalist theists that all people who do bad things are atheists.

    It’s purely a tool they use try and advance their agenda.

    Lying is one of their favorite tools.

  40. Patricia C. says

    This looks like some desperate blowback to me. Dawkins and Hitchens have slapped the fundies faces so many times with the fact that Hitler was a christian/catholic that they are now trying plan B.
    Tagging on pagan and gay isn’t going to change the fact. Strike two.

  41. MAJeff, OM says

    This looks like some desperate blowback to me. Dawkins and Hitchens have slapped the fundies faces so many times with the fact that Hitler was a christian/catholic that they are now trying plan B.
    Tagging on pagan and gay isn’t going to change the fact. Strike two.

    Thing is, it’s not new.

    Lively was the communications director for the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance in the early 1990s. After they OCA’s Ballot Measure 9 lost in 1992, he left and wrote “The Pink Swastika.” Arlon Lindner, a member of the Minnesota House at the time, used the book to proclaim on the floor of the House that gays weren’t persecuted by the Nazis, while also trying to remove people who were persecuted for being gay from the legal definition of Holocaust survivor. That was in 2003.

  42. Dahan says

    What the fuck is “sexually normal”? I’m sorry, I thought I was fairly well versed in sexuality, but obviously I’ve missed something.

  43. CalGeorge says

    Once again, another wingnut simplifies things enormously in order to bash gays.

    It helps to look at the facts (according to Wikipedia):

    Ernst Röhm, a man Hitler perceived as a potential threat, and the leader of the SA, the Nazi Party’s first militia, was discreetly gay until 1925 when he was outed by a Social Democratic newspaper that published a number of love letters written by Röhm, as were some other top leaders of the SA, such as Edmund Heines. After 1925, Röhm was quite open about his sexuality and was a member of the League for Human Rights, Germany’s largest gay rights group.
    […]
    In late February 1933, as the moderating influence of Ernst Röhm weakened, the Nazi Party launched its purge of homosexual (gay, lesbian, and bisexual; then known as homophile) clubs in Berlin, outlawed sex publications, and banned organized gay groups. As a consequence, many fled Germany (e.g. Erika Mann, Richard Plaut). In March 1933, Kurt Hiller, the main organizer of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sex Research, was sent to a concentration camp.
    […]
    Shortly after the purge in 1934, a special division of the Gestapo was instituted to compile lists of gay individuals. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS, created the “Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.”

    Gays were not initially treated in the same fashion as the Jews, however; Nazi Germany thought of German gay men as part of the “Master Race” and sought to force gay men into sexual and social conformity. Gay men who would or could not conform and feign a switch in sexual orientation were sent to concentration camps under the “Extermination Through Work” campaign.
    […]
    An account of a gay Holocaust survivor, Pierre Seel, details life for gay men during Nazi control. In his account he states that he participated in his local gay community in the town of Mulhouse. When the Nazis gained power over the town his name was on a list of local gay men ordered to the police station. He obeyed the directive to protect his family from any retaliation. Upon arriving at the police station he notes that he and other gay men were beaten. Some gay men who resisted the SS had their fingernails pulled out. Others were raped with broken rulers and had their bowels punctured, causing them to bleed profusely. After his arrest he was sent to the concentration camp at Schirmeck. There, Seel stated that during a morning roll-call, the Nazi commander announced a public execution. A man was brought out, and Seel recognized his face. It was the face of his eighteen-year-old lover from Mulhouse. Seel then claims that the Nazi guards stripped the clothes of his lover and placed a metal bucket over his head. Then the guards released trained German Shepherd dogs on him, which mauled him to death.

  44. Jams says

    @ #43 Etha Williams

    Clearly, whenever a good Christian turns gay it’s because the homosexuals are winning. The only thing you can do is forgive them, fix them, and continue on with the fight. At the end of the day, the thing that really matters is that good people realize that being gay is wrong.

    Like every war, the war against gay possession will have it’s casualties. They too should be honoured.

  45. Bubba Sixpack says

    The Nazis also sent atheists to the concentration camps. But that doesn’t stop the wingnuts from saying Nazism was atheistic. They make their own reality, after all.

  46. MAJeff, OM says

    An account of a gay Holocaust survivor, Pierre Seel, details life for gay men during Nazi control. In his account he states that he participated in his local gay community in the town of Mulhouse. When the Nazis gained power over the town his name was on a list of local gay men ordered to the police station. He obeyed the directive to protect his family from any retaliation. Upon arriving at the police station he notes that he and other gay men were beaten. Some gay men who resisted the SS had their fingernails pulled out. Others were raped with broken rulers and had their bowels punctured, causing them to bleed profusely. After his arrest he was sent to the concentration camp at Schirmeck. There, Seel stated that during a morning roll-call, the Nazi commander announced a public execution. A man was brought out, and Seel recognized his face. It was the face of his eighteen-year-old lover from Mulhouse. Seel then claims that the Nazi guards stripped the clothes of his lover and placed a metal bucket over his head. Then the guards released trained German Shepherd dogs on him, which mauled him to death.

    I seem to recall seeing an interview with this survivor, although I could be wrong. There was a docu a couple years ago, with Rupert Everett as the host/narrator, interviewing gay survivors of the camps. When one man talks about living with the physical effects, for over 6 decades, of being raped with chunks of wood, well….

    Lively and Fischer are without conscience.

  47. says

    It seems to me that some christians in the US have remade the nazi empire to fit their version of history.

    I disagree, in fact when you have a President who rules over a country namely Iran, saying there are no homosexuals in his country. We see little outcry by the left which becomes very telling. It is because he’s a Muslim and not a Christian? Conservatives have always called him a “Nazi” of our time as he has been known to put homosexuals to death if they don’t repent back to Islam.

  48. says

    @#52 Dahan —

    What the fuck is “sexually normal”? I’m sorry, I thought I was fairly well versed in sexuality, but obviously I’ve missed something.

    Heterosexual sex in the missionary position only, without birth control, preferably while the woman is in the most fertile phase of her menstrual cycle.

    Or something like that.

  49. MAJeff, OM says

    *headslap*

    How did I ever fail to notice that it’s conservatives standing up for the rights and dignity of gay people?!

  50. says

    “I disagree, in fact when you have a President who rules over a country namely Iran, saying there are no homosexuals in his country. We see little outcry by the left which becomes very telling.”

    Yes, it tells you that we don’t live in Iran and very little influence over the social dynamics of that country, and that their policies in turn affect us little. I regard Iran’s treatment of homosexuals as barbaric in the extreme, but to expect me to raise an equal amount of fuss about the social climate of a country I do not live in as in one that I do, is just silly.

  51. Dahan says

    @58.

    Oh.

    Well, I’m sorry, I just can’t get into that sort of kink, but if it works for some people…

  52. Bubba Sixpack says

    “How did I ever fail to notice that it’s conservatives standing up for the rights and dignity of gay people?!”

    Yes, conservatives are liberal and liberals are fascists. Get with the program.

  53. MAJeff, OM says

    My favorite aspect of the “heterosexal=normal” thing is that when the term “heterosexual” was first coined, it referred to a category of sexual deviants–people who we might now consider “bi” (“hetero” meaning multiple) or those whose desires were linked to pleasure and not reproduction.

    Heterosexuality became normal sexuality in the early decades of the twentieth century, as the men of the professional-managerial classes needed a means for establishing their masculinity, especially in relation to the physical laborers they were managing (after all, as we all “know,” it’s physical labor that makes one manly). Desire for women became a marker of middle class masculinity. Urban faeiries provided a social model of male femininity against which these professionals could contrast their newly established normal heterosexuality.

  54. says

    Maybe I should spell the matter out for them, since they’ll never get it themselves–

    The Nazis were anti-enlightenment types who operated according to prejudice.

    The fundies are anti-enlightenment types who operate according to prejudice.

    Both because of the history of the West, including Xianity, and because the two groups favor “their own,” Nazis and fundies wish to sanction the persecution of gays (save the gay neo-Nazis, of course).

    In fact, this does not mean that they are the same or highly similar to each other, for oppression has many degrees and manifestations.

    The definite similarity is that both groups are oppressive to gays, and often to others as well. The lesson is that authoritarianism, oppression, and prejudice are the enemies, even though one group is not as oppressive as another one.

    It’s the oppression that matters, not whether or not certain gays are singled out for attack–even if this were true of the Nazis.

    After all, what is their point? That Nazis didn’t hate all of the homosexuals, but only certain ones? And the fundies are better because they hate them all the same? I fail to see why blanket discrimination is better than is more selective discrimination.

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

  55. Tom M says

    Storm Troopers were almost exclusively homosexual. They also, sadly, comprised most of the leadership of the Hitler Youth, resulting in frequent instances of sexual molestation. So, they had that in common with another reactionary, uniformed outfit..wait…it’ll come to me.

    as many as 100 boys and young men a day while raping them at his leisure. Alright, he just made that up; who has that much leisure time?

    Nazi Germany became the horror that it was because it rejected both Christianity and its clear teaching about human sexuality. These are mistakes no sane culture should ever make again. I thought it was evolution and Darwinism> Stein…Stein…Stein.

  56. says

    I disagree, in fact when you have a President who rules over a country namely Iran, saying there are no homosexuals in his country. We see little outcry by the left which becomes very telling. It is because he’s a Muslim and not a Christian? Conservatives have always called him a “Nazi” of our time as he has been known to put homosexuals to death if they don’t repent back to Islam.

    Little outcry from the left? Because he’s a Muslim. You live in a very distorted and sheltered world Michael.

  57. says

    @#65 Tom M —

    Nazi Germany became the horror that it was because it rejected both Christianity and its clear teaching about human sexuality. These are mistakes no sane culture should ever make again. I thought it was evolution and Darwinism> Stein…Stein…Stein.

    It was both. You may not be aware of this, but The Gays and Big Science are working together to erode the moral foundations of society. Even today, those gay scientists are toiling tirelessly in their mission to destroy Christianity.

    In all seriousness, though, this exploitation of the holocaust is really disgusting. I finally saw expelled yesterday, and in the seats in front of me, a group of children were watching in credulous horror as Stein talked about the dangers of “Darwinism” while showing photographs of emaciated holocaust survivors. After the movie I tried to approach the family to have a conversation about how the movie had distorted truth, told outright lies, and exploited a terrible tragedy for its own end, but before I could get more than a few words in, the parents carefully shepherded their children away from the dangerous atheist. Sad.

  58. Julian says

    The only truth in this guys statements is that the Nazis killed homosexuals. They didn’t care about “butch-ness” one way or another. Remember how they justified nixing the Brown Shirts? By labeling all of them homosexuals. The factor that kept you alive as a homosexual in Nazi Germany was how good you happened to be at passing for straight. The effeminate gay community’s persecution at their hands might have a higher profile do to their exposure in the Wiemar club scene (though my knowledge of the Wiemar period isn’t in depth enough to say whether that is merely a common stereotype promulgated to discredit the Republic or based in fact), but the Nazis threw all manner of homosexuals in the death camps. If they found you out, you were dead.

  59. Shirakawasuna says

    I haven’t been this offended in a while… usually I’m quite good and “mature” at dealing with hateful tripe, but this crossed so many lines…

  60. SC says

    Michael @ #57:

    I disagree, in fact when you have a President who rules over a country namely Iran, saying there are no homosexuals in his country. We see little outcry by the left which becomes very telling. It is because he’s a Muslim and not a Christian? Conservatives have always called him a “Nazi” of our time as he has been known to put homosexuals to death if they don’t repent back to Islam.

    That’s a lie, you liar. Those working for gay rights in Iran and trying to help gay people from Iran get asylum in other countries – often gay exiles from Iran and gay people within Iran working at great personal risk – are supported by allies on the left, who have been very vocal in their opposition to that government’s policies. Conservatives care fuck-all about what happens to gay people in Iran, and only mention these fundamental violations of rights (which they support at home, to the extent that they can get away with it) if they can use them cynically to further their agenda to, as McCain so cheerfully sang, bomb Iran.

    For anyone interested, here’s one Canadian organization that needs support:

    http://www.irqo.net/

    Also, for true horror, Iran’s punishment code on homosexuality:

    http://www.irqo.net/IRQO/English/islamicpunishment.htm

  61. Julian says

    Michael: Go back and rad the news from when that information came out. There was a huge liberal outcry about it. The difference is that liberals aren’t so reactionary that they’re going to decide to bomb an entire country into the stone age just because that country’s leader says something they don’t like.

    You can’t legitimately believe that conservatives, who frequently kiss the feet of pastors that call on the U.S. government to segregate or exterminate homosexuality, who spent all of the 1940’s and 50’s labeling them mentally ill and defending electroshock as a cure, who have refused the Log Cabin Republicans a say in party policy since their founding, and go on television to defend upstanding straight boys when they crack a homosexual’s skull open on the curb for kicks, are great defenders of the homosexual community and its rights, can you?

  62. Ichthyic says

    Heterosexual sex in the missionary position only, without birth control, preferably while the woman is in the most fertile phase of her menstrual cycle.

    Hey, that means I’m still a virgin!

    Steve Carell, eat your heart out.

    umm, just to be clear it’s missionary position ONLY, right?

  63. Chris H. says

    It is official: Nazis were homosexual evolutionists and definite atheists. Someone, finally, was able to connect the dots.

    It may be relevant to point out Hitler could have been Jewish; it is speculated that his father was, in fact, the illegitimate child of a Jewish man. This is speculation, of course, but so are most of the points brought up by Mr. Fischer.

    Hitler was also a vegetarian. The plot thickens. It seems the only victims of the holocaust were straight, white Christians.

    “Even today in America, it is chic in some homosexual circles for individuals to wear replicas of Nazi Germany uniforms, complete with iron crosses, storm trooper outfits, military boots and even swastikas.”

    Uh, how does this guy know this? Do we have another Ted Haggard?

  64. Intelligenceresigned says

    Don’t click on the “Survivors….of the abortion holocaust” link to the right on that same page. You’ve been warned! It is pretty gruesome. From the site… “If you were born after 1972, we challenge you to consider yourself a Survivor of the Abortion Holocaust. 1/3 of your generation has been killed by abortion in America!”

    I find it hard to believe their claim that 1/3 of our generation has been aborted. But what I find even more disturbing is the thought of millions of children being born into homes where they are either unwanted, uncared for, left in an orphanage or grossly neglected in some other way. Oh, wait, once I actually took the time to look over their site, I realized that it is chock full of right wing evangelical propaganda. What was I thinking?

  65. natural cynic says

    Just how many homosexuals could there have been in Germany c. 1930?

    With a population of just over 60 million, even with the ridiculously generous percentage of 10%, there could not have been more than one million in the cohort that would comprise the SA. And many of those would have been the effeminate ones that were persecuted. A good alternate hypothesis from Fischer’s delusions could be that the SA bully boys were such good recruiters for butch homosexuality.

  66. natural cynic says

    @ 78:
    Actually, the proportion aborted was about 7/10. God causing miscarriages is responsible for the difference.

  67. Charlie Foxtrot says

    Well, I, for one, welcome our new Savage and Unnatural Overlords!

  68. Art says

    LOL.

    One issue not mentioned, or I missed it in the comments, was that all sex, particularly gay sex, operates at two levels. There is the well understood pleasure economy and procreation.

    But there is also the power economy. This is a central theme in fascist thinking. In this sex is a demonstration of power within a well defined linear structure. This is seen in dogs where the dominant dog will hold down and hump the lower rank dog even if the other is not of the opposite sex.

    Also like dogs sex is a reward and distraction from carrying out the will of the higher power structure. A power structure which has both pride and contempt for anyone lower on the pyramid. Pride in what they can be made to do, particularly if the act is unfeeling and tends to limit individualism and independent thought. The ideal is an unthinking robot which has no independent feelings or thoughts. Contempt in that they are literally underlings. Having value only to the extent that they serve to advance the cause.

    In this homosexual acts, but not homosexuality, are encouraged as a method of domination and breaking the individual will and submission to the power of the collective expressed through the hierarchal power structure.

    In other words your allowed to hump your charges. Your even allowed to enjoy it. Presumably getting off on the sadistic cruelty and power. But they must never enjoy it. That would be feminizing and getting your hands dirty taking part in the economy of pleasure.

    Pleasure in underlings must be avoided. Sexual release for underlings must be avoided. Their frustration and sexual energy is redirected toward political ends. This is clearly seen in the records of the birth rates for Nazi party members. Despite the creation of special leaves for the purpose of breeding and the formation of literal baby factories the birth rate went down instead of up.

    This is pretty common for all fascist organizations. Including the Xian church. The priests and preachers are supposed to be untouched, or less touched, by sexuality. This sexual repression and frustration coming out as fanatical belief and energy in pursuit of the cause and power structure.

    While the Xian power structure, presumably, has less emphasis on expression of power dominance through actual sex the thread is not entirely lost. throughout the dogma there are references to submission to the higher authority. The man to Jesus, or church power structure, and the family to the head of the family. Not explicit on its face the sexual edge becomes clear when well hidden from outsiders the church leaders talk about both men and women being ‘the bride of Christ’, the oneness of ‘the wedding day’ and being ‘opened up and penetrated by Christ’.

    These words being freely used within the church and both males and females openly declaring it to large congregations without any sense of self-consciousness about homosexuality or irony in that they persecute gays. But, evidently, with God there is no sexuality. Just the dominance to match their submission.

  69. DLC says

    “The nazis liked homosexuals as long as they were manly homosexuals, ergo they hated christian fundamentalists” ?

    Wow. Yet another proof that the internet is loaded full of teh stoopid(sic). Somewhere there must be an Internet Statue of Liberty Stupid, that says “Give me your tired old arguments, your poor logic, your idiotic yammerings yearning to be free”.

  70. Patricia C. says

    #51 MAJeff – You are right it isn’t new. What looks new to me is that the atheists aren’t quitting. I don’t recall ever hearing anything about the Pink Swastika in my little fundie Oregon town.
    This looks like scared clutching for any straw. The Nazi/gay thing isn’t going to work if enough of us continue to point out the facts.
    The god is in science debate – I think is bullshit – but it is beyond my education to argue. I’ll join the choir in the point & laugh section, and furnish homebrew.

  71. Dennis N says

    Not ten percent of the men who preach from the pulpit are sexually normal either, I’d say, judging from court records and airport bathrooms.

    I didn’t mean to push an idea of sexually normal, I just wanted to turn their words on them. No one criticized me, but I wanna correct myself.

  72. says

    George Takei is getting married.

    Good for Sulu. He’s been with his partner Brad for something like 20 years. You’d think that he would have been able to get married before. Well now he can.

    *how the hell does the Rev. know this?

    I have a guilty pleasure of listening to the Howard Stern show. Takei is on the Howard Stern show as their “announcer” every couple months. Everything is talked about. Takei is a pretty cool guy.

  73. Rattus Norvegicus says

    Rev. BigDumbChimp sez:

    I’m betting there is a leather cap and little leather trousers in his closet somewhere.

    Not to mention a leather brown shirt.

  74. says

    According to Nazi historian Louis Snyder, Roehm recruited homosexuals into the SA because Roehm felt Germany needed “a proud and arrogant lot who could brawl, carouse, smash windows, kill and slaughter for the hell of it. Straights, in (Roehm’s) eyes, were not as adept in such behavior as practicing homosexuals.”

    I thought this part was PARTICULARLY special.

  75. Rattus Norvegicus says

    I disagree, in fact when you have a President who rules over a country namely Iran, saying there are no homosexuals in his country. We see little outcry by the left which becomes very telling.

    Au contraire, mon frere. There was a lot of laughter and ridicule from the left, which was richly deserved for such a moronic comment. You were looking for outrage where laughter was appropriate.

  76. says

    I disagree, in fact when you have a President who rules over a country namely Iran, saying there are no homosexuals in his country. We see little outcry by the left which becomes very telling. It is because he’s a Muslim and not a Christian? Conservatives have always called him a “Nazi” of our time as he has been known to put homosexuals to death if they don’t repent back to Islam.

    That’s a distorted view. You clearly elide the actual outcry, by organisations such as Amnesty, because it is inconvenient to your argument. I have yet to hear a Conservative call the Ahmadinejad a Nazi because of his treatment of gays. Rather they focus on WMDs and support for Iraqi insurgents.

    Where Iranian social policy, such as treatment of women, appears in Conservative commentary at all, it serves the purpose of sharpening the rhetoric and no more. As we have seen in Afghanistan, playing the women’s rights card makes for helpful propaganda, but tends to be forgotten once the threat changes. Conservatives were all over womens’ rights in 2002 to justify the intervention in Afghanistan and the ouster of the Taliban. In 2008, while America’s erstwhile Muslim allies in Afghanistan continue to treat women appallingly and deny them rights and opportunities, the Right is silent and the Left, as before, continues to agitate.

    So it is with Iran. If America comes close to war with Iran I’m sure some Conservative will, in bad faith, bring up the poor treatment of gays. And I feel confident that they would drop it like a hot potato the moment it stopped being convenient to defend the queers.

  77. DLC says

    Re Iran and gays:
    There were also some voices of dissent or derision from the center and right as well. Is it me, or does the Iranian PM sometimes come across like “Baghdad Bob” saying there are no American Soldiers in Baghdad.
    (personally, I wish there hadn’t been any American Soldiers anywhere inside Iraq… but that’s another story.)

  78. Chad says

    http://www.qrd.org/qrd/religion/anti/annotated.pink.swastika

    I went and looked up this book and found this link above, I noticed where the writers attempted to ‘define’ homosexuality as follows:

    “Two terms used frequently in this book, ‘homosexualist’ and “pederast,’
    will be unfamiliar to many readers. We use the term homosexualist to refer
    to any person, homosexual or not, who actively promotes homosexuality as
    morally and socially equivalent to heterosexuality as a basis for social
    policy.
    In our view Harry Hay, founder of the American gay-rights movement, and
    President Bill Clinton who attempted to force the military to accept open
    homosexuals, are both homosexualists. Each has worked in his own way to
    legitimize homosexual behavior in America. Many heterosexual people are
    homosexualists. Many self-described homosexual people are not homosexu-
    alists. A homosexualist is defined by his actions in a socio-political context.
    This definition is different from Samuel Igra’s use of the term in Germany’s
    National Vice, which we have quoted extensively. Igra uses “homosexualist”
    to mean homosexuals only.”

  79. EyeNoU says

    “…Hermann Goering (who may not have been homosexual but who liked to dress in drag, paint his nails and put rouge on his cheeks), ….”. Is he saying we should beware of political parties who have candidates who do this (Rudy Giuliani)?

    “Even today in America, it is chic in some homosexual circles for individuals to wear replicas of Nazi Germany uniforms, complete with iron crosses, storm trooper outfits, military boots and even swastikas.” I lived in a gay neighborhood for a couple of years, went with gay friends to their favorite bars and parties, and I didn’t know that. How does HE know that?

    Re: comment #4, you have never seen the Ray Comfort/Kirk Cameron banana video, have you? Since the penis fits into the anus, it was obviously DESIGNED to go there……

  80. Blondin says

    “Adolf Hitler could dance the pants off Churchill!”

    — Franz Liebkind

  81. Graculus says

    I didn’t even get to the end of the post before mentally betting that this guy has a complete “Tom of Finland” collection.

  82. says

    These people are disgusting. I’m sorry, I can’t even comment intelligibly, these people have boiled my blood so… How can people have such horrible, religiously-motivated beliefs, and honestly try to shield themselves from criticism of these attitudes using ‘respect our religion’?

    Excuse me – I have to go throw up.

  83. says

    Googling Scott Lively (the author of this book waste of innocent trees) brings up this “family”-obsessed website.

    Hmmm… conservative Christians with strong belief in “family values” and traditional gender roles, that sounds curiously familiar.

    Heterosexual sex in the missionary position only, without birth control, preferably while the woman is in the most fertile phase of her menstrual cycle.

    You left out “with someone of the same colour”.

  84. Interrobang says

    I can’t help it. I really have to mention this.

    (Just FYI, that language is, in fact, Hebrew.)

  85. says

    @#95 Russel —

    http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hutchison/071029

    That’s a truly bizarre article. Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Freemasonry, Postmodernism…it’s a huge conspiracy!

    Possibly the most confusing part of the article for me was:

    Darwin supplied a creation myth for the biological sciences. Einstein supplied a creation myth for physics and astronomy.

    Maybe I’m unaware of some of Einstein’s contributions to physics…how does the ToR qualify as a “creation myth”? Maybe they mean the inclusion of the cosmological constant in general relativity? Still, Lemaitre seems like a better person to credit/blame for giving a plausible physical explanation of the origin of the universe.

  86. Kseniya says

    Maybe I’m unaware of some of Einstein’s contributions to physics

    Etha, I believe it’s Fred Hutchison who is unaware; or it could be that he’s catering to a presumed level of ignorance in his readership. Of course you’re right about Lemaitre, but that name has no resonance with Hutchison or his audience, for whom “Darwin” and “Einstein” are totems.

    I do appreciate that Hutchison has tacitly acknowledged that Genesis is a creation myth. Heh.

  87. Ryan Cunningham says

    Apparently, the author is trying to say the Nazi party leaders had teh gay. The whole Holocaust thing was just some kind of crazy BDSM party.

  88. says

    Do you get the impression that some people want to justify their own hatred by minimizing the hatred of others?

    In any case, the whole website that op-ed piece by Bryan Fisher appeared on promotes Right-wing extremist bigotry.

  89. brokenSoldier says

    From the article:

    Human agendas often trump the search for truth because most men are rascals and few are angels. The rascals of modernism swallowed Marxist nonsense because it served their agenda. Magical thinking enabled them to gloss over Marx’ preposterous formula.

    (bold mine for emphasis)

    Truer words were never uttered… Even though this is a gross distortion of fact in the history of Marxism and how it spread, it is an interesting distortion nonetheless. It is the epitome of projection, and explains how people of this kind of mind, especially the educated, scientifically inclined ones among them, can buy into the garbage science promoted by the Disco Institute. If written correctly, it would read:

    “The rascals of conservatism swallowed the Intelligent Design nonsense because it served their agenda. Pseudo-scientific thinking allowed them to gloss over Intelligent Design’s preposterous inconsistencies.”

    The agenda in this case is getting religion back into state education, which is quite like stuffing the fox into the henhouse and locking the door behind him. This guy could have used a bit more education on Marx, and actually reading and understanding his writings would be a good start. But then again, an actual working knowledge of the material would restrict him in what he could say about it, forcing him to stick to fact rather than being able to twist and bend his medicore (at best) understanding of the subject into any conclusions he sees fit.

  90. brokenSoldier says

    Darwin supplied a creation myth for the biological sciences. Einstein supplied a creation myth for physics and astronomy.

    It never ceases to amaze me that the chief modus operandi of someone attacking science from the religious side is to it undeniably to religion, as if somehow bringing the two together will place them on equal footing. Science disagrees with religion for not being empirical or scientific, while religion attacks science for being a religion. Quite hilarious indeed, and a tactic I hope they continue in the future. It never ceases to provide me with a laugh.

    Besides, wouldn’t Darwin’s contribution – if you call it a myth at all – be more accurately called a progression myth? In all the Darwin I’ve read, I’ve not once read him state that he ever divined the origin of life.

  91. Jams says

    “Science disagrees with religion for not being empirical or scientific, while religion attacks science for being a religion.” – brokenSoldier

    If only that fit on a bumper sticker.

    I have a similar problem with the “monologue of rationality” crowd, who argue that religion says something rational about irrationality, while rationality has nothing rational to say about irrationality. It makes ouchy in my brain.

  92. says

    @#108 brokenSoldier —

    It never ceases to amaze me that the chief modus operandi of someone attacking science from the religious side is to it undeniably to religion, as if somehow bringing the two together will place them on equal footing.

    This is something that puzzled me when I went to see Expelled last Saturday. It seemed like in the first half of the movie, BS devotes his efforts to showing how ID is scientific, and then for most of the second half, to how “Darwinism” is religious (and dangerous, of course). It seems that he acknowledges that science has superior explanatory power over religion, but can’t deal with the consequences. (Then he goes on to say things like “science leads to killing people”…the whole spiel is really a garbled mess of self-contradiction.)

  93. Kseniya says

    the whole spiel is really a garbled mess of self-contradiction.

    Yeah. It’s a mess.

    Well, I suppose that does make sense. It’s an appeal to emotion and prejudice, not reason.

  94. wrpd says

    “Even today in America, it is chic in some homosexual circles for individuals to wear replicas of Nazi Germany uniforms, complete with iron crosses, storm trooper outfits, military boots and even swastikas.”
    I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. Eric Cartman is gay! Did you ever wonder where Butters got his nickname?

  95. Ichthyic says

    @chad

    I love looking at the rationalizations used historically to repress groups of people, because they never seem to really change. Let me take the liberty of substituting a few words from the authors’ definition of “homosexualist” in The Pink Swastika:

    We use the term womanalist to refer
    to any person, woman or not, who actively promotes women as morally and socially equivalent to men as a basis for social policy.

  96. brokenSoldier says

    (Then he goes on to say things like “science leads to killing people”…the whole spiel is really a garbled mess of self-contradiction.)

    Posted by: Etha Williams | May 19, 2008 4:55 PM

    Indeed, as if to pretend that religion hasn’t been one of the major factors in humanity’s insistence to fight and war with each other. You’d think that ‘intelligently designed’ arguments against science would stick to criticisms that couldn’t be turned right back around on them so easily. These arguments are definitely designed (even contrived, and often just flat-ass wrong), but they’re just not designed very intelligently.

    They look at life and see intelligent design, where only intelligence rests. (Though a big part of me doubts that many of these people actually believe what they spout, in the vein of such criminals as Kent Hovind, because their own financial greed and lust for recognition has perverted anything they might have once held as a belief.) It’s like cheating on a math homework problem in middle school algebra. The world went through the tedium of working us out for itself, while these people, by making teleological claims of divine knowledge about us and our world, are doing the intellectual equivalent of skipping to the back of the book for the answer and calling it a day. For our origin, the index (bible) said God created us, so no busy work is necessary to actually work through the problem and find the real answer. And what about the even numbered questions that the back of the book doesn’t have? They just don’t answer them – and ignore it when others do, in the case of the transitional fossil record. Very intellectually disingenuous, indeed.

  97. Owlmirror says

    (Just FYI, that language is, in fact, Hebrew.)

    The glyphs are Hebrew, but I don’t think the language is. What’s a “stalg”?

    Ah: Google says “Did you mean stalag?”, and leads to: “In Germany, Stalag was a term used for prisoner-of-war camps.”

    Well, that makes sense.

  98. brokenSoldier says

    From the Link by Bill Dauphin in #113:

    Nice catch on that one — Chris Shays seems to let us know a little too much about himself in making this evaluation of torture:

    “Now I’ve seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture,” Shays said at a debate Wednesday.

    “It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked,” added Shays. “And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn’t torture.”

    Maybe not to you, Mr. Shays, maybe not to you. But then again, listening to our own legislators give talks like this, it doesn’t seem to be in their intellectual capabilities to actually define what is and is not torture. A two hour talk by Mr. Shays should be qualified as torture, but then again half of his colleagues seem to revel in his kinds of ideas, so they deserve every bit they get as far as I’m concerned.

    They can’t get history right (a la Brian Fischer), and here Mr. Shays is showing how far they are from even getting the present right. It is a sad state indeed that the GOP finds itself in these days.

  99. MAJeff, OM says

    brokenSoldier,

    The even sadder part is that Shays is one of the saner congressional Republicans. He seems to have gone over the edge lately, esp with the torture stuff, but he’s far less crazy than a lot of the neo-Confederate/Conservative Republicans in DC right now.

  100. brokenSoldier says

    MAJeff,

    True, and that says all kinds of bad things about our current legislative crowd up there on the Hill.

  101. Bill Dauphin says

    MAJeff and brokenSoldier:

    Don’t worry; we here in CT are all over Shays. He’s the last Repub member of the House in all of New England, and he’s got a very appealing Dem opponent this time ’round.

  102. brokenSoldier says

    and he’s got a very appealing Dem opponent this time ’round.

    Posted by: Bill Dauphin | May 19, 2008 6:13 PM

    I did not know he was the last elephant in the room up there – you’d think he’d tone it down a bit in that situation. Either way, if he gets ousted I’ll buy you a beer…

  103. Ichthyic says

    Maybe not to you, Mr. Shays, maybe not to you.

    …well, why doesn’t he volunteer to be subjected to the same things for the same amount of time?

    then he can re-evaluate his definition of torture.

    it doesn’t seem to be in their intellectual capabilities to actually define what is and is not torture.

    and yet, just like creationists trying to define the ToE, they seem happy to do so anyway.

  104. brokenSoldier says

    they seem happy to do so anyway.

    Posted by: Ichthyic | May 19, 2008 6:35 PM

    Well sure, why should ignorance and incompetence concerning the issue at hand stop them now? How many times has our President been asked about an issue, only to respond with one of the following statements:

    (when asked about the economy) : “I’m not an economist”
    (when asked about the legality of torture) : “I’m not a lawyer”

    Not knowing a damn thing about what they deal with hasn’t stopped this administration from jumping in headfirst to anything yet — and I doubt they’ll change their ways anytime soon.

  105. Ichthyic says

    Not knowing a damn thing about what they deal with hasn’t stopped this administration from jumping in headfirst to anything yet

    nor has it stopped the majority of Americans from supporting appearance over substance historically.

    Thinking of the example at hand, just because Bush has such low approval ratings now, doesn’t mean all the BS he has pulled over the last 8 years won’t be quickly forgotten.

    I mean, most Americans remember Reagan as some frickin’ hero-genius.

    While I doubt that Bush Jr. will end up with similar accolades, I don’t doubt his legacy will be spun in a positive light 10 years down the road.

    We reset the stage for the rule of ignorance with each new election, it seems.

  106. Ragutis says

    Wait a minute… if the Nazis were teh gay, why didn’t YHWH make with the smiting? OK, so a hurricane in Deutschland might have been a stretch to arrange, but surely HE could have stirred up an earthquake or some strategically placed tornadoes. I mean, kill all the queers while saving millions of allied and civilian lives at the same time… win – win, right? If a pride parade in New Orleans earned them Katrina, surely the Queer as Volk Nazis deserved a real Old Testament style beatdown.

    I’ll have to email Hagee and Robertson. I’m sure one of them will have a good answer.

  107. Kseniya says

    Ratusi, YHWH called. He said that he woulda been right on top of it like you said, but that his Ark was buried in a desert someplace for most of the war.

  108. windy says

    Ratusi, YHWH called. He said that he woulda been right on top of it like you said, but that his Ark was buried in a desert someplace for most of the war.

    I thought it was buried in a wooden crate in a warehouse somewhere?

  109. David Marjanović, OM says

    OK, so a hurricane in Deutschland might have been a stretch to arrange, but surely HE could have stirred up an earthquake or some strategically placed tornadoes.

    Tornadoes are practically as much of a stretch as hurricanes there. All those east-west mountain ranges in Europe prevent them.

    I thought it was buried in a wooden crate in a warehouse somewhere?

    Not in a warehouse, in the British Museum.

    The funny thing is that museum basements are treasure chambers for big surprises. Stuff gets dug up much faster than anyone can keep up with publishing.

    In all the Darwin I’ve read, I’ve not once read him state that he ever divined the origin of life.

    He did speculate life got started “in a warm pond”. I just don’t know in which publication.

  110. says

    @#129 David Marjanovic —

    He did speculate life got started “in a warm pond”. I just don’t know in which publication.

    It was in an 1871 letter to Joseph Hooker, in which he wrote:

    It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are present, which could ever have been present. But if (and Oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.

    He then went on to add the cautionary note:

    It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.

    Source

  111. Kseniya says

    I thought it was buried in a wooden crate in a warehouse somewhere?

    Well, yeah – now. :-)

  112. windy says

    Ahem, not to be too nerdy, but the ark was stored in the crate in 1936, pre-WWII :) I guess YHWH is no match for bureaucracy, either.