How do I know? Because I heard it from one of the people who is closest to god, and that is Rick Santorum, the once and future and forever candidate for the US presidency. What happened is that when he was asked by Buzzfeed about Bruce Jenner’s announcement that he was transitioning to a woman, this is how his reaction was reported:
“If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman,” Santorum, who is weighing running for president again in 2016, said in response to a question from BuzzFeed News during a roundtable with reporters at the South Carolina Republican Party’s convention. “My responsibility as a human being is to love and accept everybody. Not to criticize people for who they are. I can criticize, and I do, for what people do, for their behavior. But as far as for who they are, you have to respect everybody, and these are obviously complex issues for businesses, for society, and I think we have to look at it in a way that is compassionate and respectful of everybody.”
This came as a surprise because Santorum sounded like a normal human being for once and not some religious nutcase. But he apparently feared that his humane words might alienate his bigoted base, because he then used Facebook to walk back some of the implications and to suggest that all he was doing was expressing empathy for Jenner and nothing more. In the process he let slip this important piece of news.
Many of you may have read a story published by the website BuzzFeed where I was asked for my thoughts regarding Bruce Jenner. My comment affirmed Jenner as a person, made by God in His likeness as we all are. It was meant to express empathy not a change in public policy.#compassion
As commenter to that post said, “It’s amusing when someone has to apologise because they came across as a decent human being.” Of course, the phrase that he “affirmed Jenner as a person” is meaningless blathering, since however close Santorum thinks he is to god, he cannot actually deny a person’s existence.
But if the Christian god made Jenner also in his likeness, and Jenner is transgender then, using the transitive property, god must be transgender in at least as one aspect of his personality, no?
I never quite understand how these religious people square the circle that if all humans are god’s chosen creations, and he creates gay and transgender people, then how can they be not accepted for who they are and treated accordingly?
It’s Satan’s fault I suppose, Christians are always talking about how he’s more powerful than their own God after all.
god either doesn’t have a penis or a vagina, or has both.
I’m all for bagging on Rick Santorum and what he believes in, but maybe the best moment to do that isn’t right after he shows a rare spark of human decency?
Fitzgerald,
I agree. But the problem was not that he showed a spark of decency but then walked it back, as if he felt that he had gone too far.
I don’t think the important part to the religious folk is to make a logical set of beliefs. It’s entirely possible to have an internally consistent set of beliefs. On a small scale all stories ask us to believe in them a little and it’s their internal consistency that keeps them feeling real to us and allows us to suspend our disbelief. Religions don’t really seem to be concerned with that though. Christianity for example throws a deliberate monkey wrench into that from the start by being downright schizo about how many gods they’re really worshipping. It’s supposed to be one but it’s really three except that they’re all the same one… until they’re not.
I think what they’re really mostly about when they get popular is re-enacting the worst social aspects of school. Lots of people playing neutral supporting cast while certain people rise to the top, often by discriminating against others. Tell the largely neutral masses to adhere to a difficult moral or thought-policing code so they don’t think they’re good enough to be on the top of the heap then tell them it’s okay, there are still people under them they can treat poorly. It’s not a complex dynamic either, it’s something the school bullies in my class started doing when I was in first or second grade and I assure you they weren’t geniuses of any sort.