Festivus: Seasons Greetings

Artist's impression.

This holiday season, as many as eight state capitols will be graced with a rainbow-festooned Festivus pole—a 6.5-foot-tall display crowned by a glittering disco ball. The pole was designed by Chaz Stevens, head of The Humanity Fund, a scrappy advocacy group that champions separation of church and state, free speech, and constitutional equality. Stevens hopes to place his display in Republican-dominated states—Arkansas, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, Michigan—as a protest against what he views as their support for laws respecting an establishment of religion.

Several states quickly agreed to display Stevens’ pole, which was wise: As I explained in 2014, the First Amendment bars the government from allowing some groups from expressing their beliefs on state grounds while excluding others based on their viewpoint. Once states allowed Christians and Jews to erect mangers and menorahs in capitol halls, they were constitutionally required to let Stevens display his own expressive symbol...

Outward, Slate.

Seinfeld reference klaxon!

There follows a Q&A with Chaz Stevens...

In 2013, I got a tip saying, did you know there’s a manger up in Tallahassee in the capitol? So I write to Tallahassee, saying I want to put up a Festivus pole, thinking there’s no way in hell they’ll say yes. Three days later, they say yes. Up goes the pole...

Right around the corner, Kim Davis and her crazy people in Kentucky say, we’re not gonna give marriage licenses. That just drove me nuts. The very day that happened, I said to myself, those little fuckers! I am going to troll the living shit out of them. I’m going to wrap my pole in gay pride and put a disco ball on the top and stick it in the bowels of the Florida rotunda.

PS Somewhat spookily today's Independent republishes Christopher Hitchens' 2011 essay, The True Spirit of Christmas, which touches on this nonsense...

But what is all this clutter doing on the White House lawn or in the public rooms of the executive mansion, or on public property and in public schools? Quite apart from the clear stipulations of the First Amendment, this seems to me to violate the Tocquevillian principle that American religion is strictly based on the voluntary principle and neither requires nor deserves any taxpayer-funded endorsement. 

It also offends - by being so much in my face, without my having requested it and in spite of polite entreaties to desist – another celebrated precept about the right to be let alone. A manger on your lawn makes me yawn. A reindeer that strays from your lawn to mine is a nuisance at any time of year. Angels and menorahs on the White House lawn are an infraction of the Establishment Clause, which is as much designed to prevent religion from being corrupted by the state as it is to protect the public square from clerical encroachment...

Religious News: It's A Miracle!

Mirror.

Not really up to speed on this, but presume the 'second miracle' was finding a cure for cancer by planting some magic beans or something like that, yes?

Update: Oh hang on, it appears she was a complete lunatic and a charlatan. Sorry, as you were...

Sex Pope: Papal Celebrity Sweepstake

Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite.

Christopher Hitchens.

Okay.... so when do YOU think Pope Francis will be exposed - Cardinal O'Brien style - as a big ole gay?
Please email Fagburn your answer - I'll allow it to the nearest week. 
First come, first served.
The prize is either eternal life strumming a lyre on a fluffy cloud, or being peed on by an Apache transvestite, whichever you prefer.
There is no cash alternative, and the editor's decision is final.

Nick Cohen: Yah Boo Sucks!

Of course, there is so much more in The Observer today than La Burchill's hate-filled bigotry-by-numbers.
Columnist Nick Cohen is wondering out loud; Why This Obsession With What Gay People Do In Bed?
Nick, you're getting paid a lot for this - how about you telling us?

If nothing else, the arguments about homosexual emancipation have taught us that the penis stands tall in the conservative imagination. Like the dark tower of Mordor, it looms over all else: filling the mind and blotting out the light. Those who attempt to pretend otherwise always stumble over their own flat feet...

Good intro, Nick.
But can he keep it up? 
Cohen argues;

"Many homophobes, who make a great show of their disgust at "unnatural practices", imitate the old man. In 1965, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein tried to stop the repeal of criminal penalties on homosexuals by bellowing that "one may just as well condone the devil and all his works" as allow gay sex. True to form, Nigel Hamilton, his biographer, revealed that Monty had passionate, if unconsummated, relationships with young men"

An overly simplistic and reductive cliche this may be - but always fun for winding up rabid anti-gayers, nonetheless.
Next he quotes that great hoary old quote from his old chum Christopher Hitchens...

Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner, rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine.*

Warming to his admittedly half-baked theme, Nick Cohen then strikes a note of caution.

But 'yah boo sucks, you're really gay' is not an adequate response to prejudice, however true it may be in individual cases... hatred flows from many sources.

Who knew!!?
Apart from you, for half this article, Nick?
Well, you've well and truly buggered that straw man.
I doubt he'll ever walk again.
And in conclusion, sir?

I've no doubt it is satisfying for gays and lesbians to say tu quoque but noli me tangere is the more conclusive response.

And that's your actual Latin - offered in The Observer without translation, natch.
What do you mean you don't know what it means?
Bloody pleb!

* Nick shows how totally down he is with The Gays by writing about a "gay massage parlour". Anyone ever heard of one of these? Nope, me neither.

Christopher Hitchens: 1949-2011

Goodbye, you silly bugger.