American Taliban

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

Life In Lake Wobegon Among The American Taliban

I don’t know why Republicans in the Minnesota Legislature are working so hard to get their social and fiscal agendas passed before the end of the session. Many of them will not remain state residents anyway because the Rapture is taking place on May 21 at 6 a.m. On that Saturday the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party will have overwhelming control of the legislature for the next 153 days during the End Time. I’m assuming that few DFLers will make the Rapture so we will end up with a solid majority. We are so sinful. But the Talibanistic evangelicals in the Republican Party will have attained some of their lifelong dreams regarding the sex life—or lack thereof—of the American people.

I wonder if all of those passing muster for the Rapture will be embarrassed to be nude while flying up to Heaven’s gate. I read someplace that one gives up all earthly possessions, including clothes and jewelry, when one is called. Anyway, it’s definitely a clean underwear time. I remember the scene of the passenger jet pilot, who had sinned the night before with an attendant, coming out of the cockpit to check on a disturbance only to see little piles of clothing on some of the passenger seats. The Rapture had started and he had missed the call! I saw an estimate the other day that an average of 61,000 Americans are in the sky at any given moment. I wonder how many pilots and co-pilots made the Rapture with their hands on the controls ... And what about the televangelist who had locked himself in the toilet with a magazine … It may not be a time to fly ...

Brooks Brothers Suits And Rolexes Falling From The Sky

With all of the Bible-thumpers and bigots qualifying for the Rapture because of good deeds and sacrifices for the poor and disabled, I know I will get a chuckle out of the homeless, indigent, alcoholics, and other street people quickly dressing themselves in Brooks Brothers suits, Macy’s best line of dresses, Nieman-Marcus accouterments, and Gucci loafers that have fallen out of the sky on May 21. And the number of Rolexes on their wrists and cash clips in their pockets will be simply amazing. All of this could make a helluva reality show. It could be centered in Lake Wobegon where everyone is beautiful, dedicated to the free market, intellectually above average, and Republican. This is where most of the American Taliban live. From houses dominated by pictures of the pope or other religious leaders, the Bible-Thumpers can preach to the rest of society about guns, gays, the evils of sex and contraceptives, low taxes, abortion, personal accountability and balanced budgets.

Do We Live In The End Times Or In Just More Complex Times?

The American Taliban interprets the Bible literally. The radical Muslim Taliban interprets the Koran fanatically. The two Talibans desire to put their respective continents under Christian and Sharia “law.” I wonder if they saw the hour-long interview of Chastity Bono on the Piers Morgan show last week. For one thing it highlighted how little we know about sexuality, the human body, and the brain. Life today, because of research, electronic equipment, the scientific approach, and the study of the human brain, is very complex. Leviticus and simple Bible and Quran verses just don’t cut it anymore.

Chastity Sun Bono was born in 1969 as the female child of “Sonny and Cher,” a couple who at one time had the top-rated TV entertainment show in the world. It is ironic that Chastity was named after a character in a movie produced by Sonny Bono before she was born. It was Cher’s first feature film, playing a bisexual woman. She was also pregnant with Chastity while making the movie.

From A Beautiful Little Blond Child To A Hairy Marlboro Man

Morgan showed clips of Chastity when she was a child, a beautiful little blond girl with a sweet smile, performing with her parents on the “Sonny and Cher” show. But Chaz, who has now become a female-to-male transgender man, never felt much like a girl when growing up. Chaz wrote later: “As a child, I always felt there was something different about me.” Chastity’s playmates were mostly boys. She liked toy trucks and bows and arrows. As a teenager, Chastity realized she was gay and was later outed as a lesbian. She later publicly declared herself in the Advocate, a leading gay monthly magazine. Chastity had a lesbian partner named Joan for years who later died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. During the 1990’s Chastity wrote several books, discussing life with her parents, her music career, and the problems of being gay. Still, Chastity was not satisfied with her life. She continued to think like a man and feel like a man. Chastity decided to start the female-to-male gender transition when she was 38. It took three years of hormone therapy and many operations, including the removal of her breasts, before she petitioned to change her name to Chaz and be listed as a male by governmental entities.

Chaz said Cher, although a supporter of gay causes, went “ballistic” when he-she came out as a lesbian. It took over a year for Cher to become proud of her lesbian daughter. Chaz has made a documentary film about his life and transformation. He and his girlfriend Jennifer have been together for over six years. They both enjoyed their lesbian relationship prior to his transition to male. There is another fascinating element to their present relationship. Jennifer is also a bisexual. Should they both be treated as second-class citizens? You know. The old “Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner” bit?

Same-Sex Marriage And The Maelstrom Of Religious Claptrap

Protestants who interpret the Bible literally say that it forbids abortion. Bible experts say that there is no possible reference to abortion in the Bible. I’m not going to argue about that. If you want to insure a ham salad against disease you can get your info out of Leviticus if you look hard enough. Catholic doctrine says that “God alone is the opener and closer of the womb. It has always taught this and will always teach this.” That’s funny. According to reliable sources, Pope Pius IX in 1869 was the first Catholic leader to indicate that abortion was a sin equal to murder. St. Augustine did say back in the 5th century that there was “Sexual Sin” because he had committed some. I guess the Republican members of the Minnesota Legislature have found the answers to homosexuality and abortion somewhere in the huge maelstrom of religious philosophical soup that also includes snake-handlers, chicken-killers, hair growers and religious pedophiles.

“Hell Is Easy To Define”

If we accept the idea on faith that God sees us in the womb (a Protestant idea from Bible verses) and that He is also the “opener and the closer of the womb (the Catholic idea),” then I would think that God accepts all “products” from the uteri of the world. Medical surveys indicate that about 20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Was that tragic number of rejections God’s work? We always hear the commiserating excuse: “Something had to be wrong with the fetus.” Did the fetus fail God’s sonogram? Is God a casual observer of man or is He an active Gyn-Ob? If He identified all of the miscarriages, why did He pass all the homosexuals, approximately 400 million of them on His green Earth at one time, so they could be born to adoring parents?  I’m beginning to think Don Koons of Dallas was right in his letter to Time magazine: “Hell is easy to define.  It would be spending eternity with Evangelicals.”

If some nutcase tells you homosexuality is relatively new on earth and we are being punished for their entrance through the Rapture, show him the archaeological report about the 5,000 year-old-gay man found in a grave in Prague. During this historical period men were always buried on their right side with weapons such as hammers and flint knives and food and drink. Women were buried on their left side with an oval-shaped container. This male had been buried in “female” style.

Do Minnesota Republicans really believe that gays, lesbians, transvestites, bisexuals and transgenders are really second-class citizens? Are they unrepentant sinners? What about the sexual determiners testosterone and estrogen? How dare you judge our sons, daughters and grandchildren based on the testimony of ignorant old men and frustrated celibates who burned thousands of heretics at the stake?

DFL Senator Steve Simon of St. Louis Park had it right when he testified to the Republican-dominated committee on the same-sex constitutional amendment: “How many more gay people does God have to create before we ask ourselves whether or not God actually wants them around?” To Fargo Bishop Samuel Aquila I have one request: “Please read Thesaurus Pauperam (Treasure of the Poor) by Peter of Spain who later was elected Pope John XXI in 1276. This Roman Catholic pope wrote extensive recipes for pre-and post-coital contraception and offered cogent advice on birth control, how to provoke menstruation, and how to use herbs for family planning. Evidently this pope couldn’t find anything in Catholic canons, literature or propaganda about abortion as murder. Many of the recipes written and approved by Pope John XXI have been found to be very effective by contemporary researchers.

Shoot First Bills, “Stoopid” Women Abortion Bills, Cloning and Stem Cell Bills, Private Prisons Bills, Animal Farm Video and Photograph Bills, And Other Fascinating Republican Legislation, Including The State Budget

If all of this crap passed and was signed by Governor Mark Dayton, perhaps society would be better off in a Baghdad gulag or Bangladesh swamp. The National Rifle Association is pushing the “Shoot First” bill so all the little riflemen in the legislature are acting like lemmings. Perhaps Minnesota and “Shoot First” states will become battleground states, or, more succinctly, the battle of the paranoids. What kind of paranoid life does one lead if you have to carry a gun to feel safe? Every shadow, every errant “look,” every backfire of a Belchfire V-8, every vacant-eyed drunk in the local bar, every road rage incident–and so it goes. Yes, stuff happens. But to think about it every minute? Good Grief, what a stressful life!

Opposing embryo stem cell research comes with the territory of the American Taliban. We may be at least approaching the threshold at University of Minnesota labs of solving some major diseases through embryonic stem cell research. But no matter. That little period in the petri dish is more important than the father with Parkinson’s or the mother with diabetes. We might even have a shot at Alzheimer’s. I have never understood all the screaming about one embryo when 400,000 are frozen or dumped in the garbage each year because of invitro fertilization procedures. Pragmatism should reign in this field. There is more to life than being pro-life. Dick Cheney voted against Head Start programs every time they were introduced in the House of Representatives but still called himself pro-life. Is he? The American Taliban seems to forget about the fetus once it becomes a baby. The times they are a-changin’. Brazil, a Roman Catholic country, recently approved civil unions for gays and distributed 84,740,000 condoms for Mardi Gras. That blows Pope Benedict’s 18th century idea that sex is for procreation only!

Republicans always want to go on the cheap unless its personal. They want cheap firefighters, cheap police, cheap teachers, cheap plumbers and carpenters, cheap office workers, cheap welders, cheap anybody who actually labors for a living. I see the Minnesota Republicans even want private prisons so they can have minimum-wage guards. They don’t seem to believe that the public deserves accountable public service employees serving the public.

They are also trying to pass legislation that would keep people from taking pictures or video at an “animal facility.” I guess the American Taliban believes that if we have “dominion’ over God’s creations we can treat them any way we want. Dog won’t behave? Bring out the waterboard and the bucket?

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