​Christian Ideoruptcy

By Ed Raymond 

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Has Christianity Gone Bankrupt Because of Evangelicals, Stupidity, and the Vatican?

The word “bankruptcy” refers to money because of the word “bank.” The word “bankruptcy” originated in Italy from banca rotta, which literally means “broken bank.” The term developed in the 16th century Renaissance, from Italian money changers and lenders sitting on benches behind tables in prominent spots. If a money lender ran out of money or cheated a client, other lenders and borrowers would smash his bench and table.

As a Homo sapiens who has listened to Roman Catholic and Lutheran sermons for 85 years, I have concluded I can’t accept the bankrupt ideas of most Christian denominations, and I am accusing them of ideoruptcy—bankruptcy of Christian ideals preached by Jesus Christ. I have coined a word that means that some religions are without ideas and ideals. They are “rupt.”

If you believe in a Supreme Being, a God who has created you and everything else, do you believe he hates LBGTQ+ persons He has “knit” in wombs? Do you believe the Bible, said to be a list of the truths of God, when it states: “for you created my inmost being: you knit me together in my mother’s womb, I praise you because I am wonderfully made, your works are wonderful. I know that full well.”

Transgenders have been “quickening” in the womb for 300,000 years, sometimes next to a heterosexual twin.

My buddy Will Shakespeare said: “no traveler has ever returned from Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell,” so believe what you want to believe. But you legislators don’t have the answer either, so don’t try to jam your ignorance down the throats of others.

So far, scientific evidence shows at least 7% of the populace belongs to the LBGTQ+ community—with about 1.7% transgenders. More than 40% of the U.S. population knows a transgender. Accept them. Love them. They don’t have a choice. The brain wins the argument. The testicles and vagina can’t talk and can’t think. They can’t convert. A few know at the age of two they belong in another gender—and many know by middle school.

To ND Legislators: Go to Your Library Before You Close It Down

Check out William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the best history of how Adolf Hitler turned Germans into mass killers of six million Jews, the mentally and physically handicapped, members of the LBGTQ+ community, and even those who didn’t look like Aryans. Read the entire 1,500 pages and then compare the Nazi Party’s political platform with the dozens of controversial bills you will act on in this session.

And remember: if you ban books, you put them back on the best-seller list for a long time. Remember: when you ban you must also burn. When you burn books you must prepare to kill those who want to read. Things that should never happen again always happen again. Hitler started his campaign for the Fourth Reich by burning 20,000 books—in one of the most sophisticated countries in Europe.

There are 50,000 members of the LBGTQ+ community in North Dakota. Are you going to try to convert them to heterosexuality or help them convert to equal membership in their communities—or force transgenders into conversion therapy so they become suicidal? Are you going to play doctor again when the only clue you have originates in Roman Catholic dogma, karma, and crap which claims homosexuals are “intrinsically disordered?”

Leonardo DaVinci “disordered?” He was the only engineer-architect trusted by a pope to complete the dome on St. Peters! Michelangelo “disordered?” He painted all those beautiful nudes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!

By the way, about all those bills about nudes, breasts, nipples, and other parts in paintings, drawing, books, and works of art, are you going to ask Pope Francis to put “ADULTS ONLY” signs all over Rome? Is God male or female? Maybe them is nonbinary, although them is usually a long-haired blonde, blue-eyed Aryan. What about all those sexy diagrams of human bodies in offices in Sanford hospitals and clinics?

Polls Indicate Catholics Choose Abortion at the Same Rate as Others

I see the legislature has nine pro-life pregnancy-related bills to “debate” and pass. Well, pregnancy is complicated. Only about 75% of fetuses survive to see the light of day. Besides those aborted by choice, there are thousands of reasons why fetuses are miscarried or cannot survive to term in the womb that God has checked out.

The second I read there were nine bills in a bundle called “Responding with Love”, I thought of the nine circles of Hell described in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, written in the 13th century.

With the hundreds of abortion bills pushed by Trumplicans because of the Republican Supreme Court’s decision on Roe V. Wade, many women in the Divided States of America will end up going through Hell trying to get an abortion because of economic choice or medical reason. Religion should have nothing to do with it.

I still remember an Indiana bill years ago that required women to report miscarriages to state authorities. It didn’t pass, but women sent remains to the governor to make a point.

If a North Dakota woman has a seven-month fetus with no brain or essential organs, can she get an abortion immediately in ND or does she have to carry the dead fetus to term? Does she have to be at death’s door before getting the abortion? Inquiring minds want to know. Should they ask a politician, a truck driver, or an OB/GYN?

While waiting for an answer, why not study why we kill or wound 19,000 kids a year with firearms? It doesn’t take very long to determine that guns kill. A four-year-old girl recently killed her three-year-old sister in Houston with a firearm with five adult idiots in the house.

The Six-Week Heartbeat Scam Is Alive and Well Despite the Facts

ND Senator Janne Myrdal says she has 35 years of pro-life experience and takes credit for most of the anti-abortion bills, particularly a six-week heartbeat bill in the hopper. I haven’t checked Myrdal’s voting record yet to see whether she is pro-fetus, anti-birth, or pro-both. Has she voted for Head Start, WIC programs, food stamps, and children’s health insurance?

But there is no such thing as a six-week heartbeat. OB/GYN Dr. Nisha Verma, speaking for the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, says: “The heart begins to develop at six weeks, but it has no heartbeat.”

The embryo generates electrical impulses that may eventually be rhythmical later. Dr. Ian Fraser Golding of the San Diego Children’s Hospital and a pediatric fetal cardiologist, says: “An embryo does not become a fetus until ten weeks, and the heart is normally not fully developed until around the 17th to 20th week. Even at this age, it’s tricky to find and define a heartbeat.” There is cardiac “activity” of some kind.”

After 35 years of pro-life campaigning, one might expect a Christian legislator to do a little homework before acting and voting on an issue—but I forget sometimes this is North Dakota.

A friend of one of our daughters recently adopted a foster daughter who had been rejected by her parents because she had exhibited transgenderism as a child. At 3 she recognized she was different from most males. She liked to dress as a girl and always chose typical girl toys. She knew she was a female at age 10 but she was never allowed to live as a female until she was 18.

The foster mother fights for her trans daughter and gay son when critiqued by Bible thumpers who think gays are “disordered”: “If you’re going to judge my gay children, then you’re also judging me. If you’re going to judge me, and not allow me and my rage the same grace you seem to give to everybody else, I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for the souls of those who believe God and Heaven are so far away they need to be ‘saved’ in order to be with Christ but are too programmed to realize Jesus is standing right in front of them—dressed like the transgender who now lives in my heart and home and desperately needs friends and welcoming and acceptance. She needs ‘saving’ too.”

To Trumplicans on the Planet: Why Do You Hate People Who Aren’t Like You?

As I examine some of the “culture” bills that are on the floor of the ND Senate and House, hate seems to fester and drip puss from every page. If some of these trans bills pass, the suicide rate of the 4,000 trans in our classrooms may skyrocket above the 50% that contemplate it now. What bothers me most? Trumplican legislators just don’t seem to give a damn how many die.

Keep a trans from running the 100-yard dash in a sponsored track meet? How many trans have set records in the event before? No one seems to know. How many trans have played football? Do you actually think being trans is something new? When Lucy fell out of the tree millions of years ago, the LBGTQ+ community started to have its first residents. Remember: Norwegians proved many years ago that the top 1,500 species on Planet Earth, that’s the one where God created everything, had gay members.

So now, Republican legislators, you want to put librarians in jail or have them fired if they refuse to ban books you want to burn. Fascists, that’s how Hitler started a world war and killed 60 million people, most of them readers.

I have known lots of librarians in my 19 years as a student and my 36 years as a public school and college teacher and administrator. I can’t think of a single female librarian I would never marry, or a single male librarian I would not like to go on a five-day fishing trip with several times a year.

What in Hell is the matter with you people? We already know you can’t govern because since 1933 the average annual growth of the economy has been 4.6% under Democratic presidents and only 2.4% under Republican presidents. Your only hope in 2024 is to win the culture wars of God, religion, gays, abortion, and guns.

When you’re in a library checking out Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, also check out Assholes: A Theory by University of California Professor of Philosophy Aaron James. It is a serious book, not a laugher. James writes: “In interpersonal or cooperative relations, the asshole:

(1) allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systematically, 

(2) does this out of an entrenched dense of entitlement,

(3) is immunized against the complaints of other people, and

(4) refuses to see other people as their moral equals with the same rights and privileges as the asshole.”

As the Manhattan village idiot and malignant narcissist Donald Trump leads his cult over a cliff, read the current Manual of Mental Disabilities of the American Psychiatric Association and see how The Donald is a sociopath-psychopath who loves only one person—himself.

Postscript: A Fargo Forum letter writer wrote a “satisfied” poll of transgenders had never been taken. Wrong. A study of 7,928 trans who had gender-affirming surgeries indicated only 1% were unhappy with their decision to have surgery.