Contracting and Deconstruction of Religion

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Will God Ever Text Margaret Back and Answer Her Prayers?

More than 50 years ago a young Judy Blume wrote about 13-year-old Margaret Simon in a contemporary realistic novel titled “Are You There, God?It’s Me, Margaret.” The daughter of a Christian mother and a Jewish father who were not affiliated with either religion, Margaret felt “uncomfortable” about her lack of religious affiliation because friends did attend church, so she studied and visited several different places of worship.

She also had anxieties about periods, bust, bras, and boys and asked higher authorities for advice if they existed. The book has won numerous national awards and honors for frank discussions of both sexual and religious topics for junior high and middle school students. The book has been challenged since on the market and on the shelves of school and personal libraries. In the Divided States of America’s political climate today, it’s on everybody’s “to be banned list.” Blume is now 86 and defends the adolescent in her 26 novels with dynamic passion.

The battles between religion and science for many centuries have been chipping, rusting, rotting, and contracting and deconstructing churches and religions. The 19th century and the explosive growth in many sciences has emptied millions of pews and thousands of altars in Europe and the United States in the last 200 years. While many churches in Europe have become fast-food joints or parking lots, the number of American Evangelicals, fundamentalists, Roman Catholics, and “others” who identify as Christians is rapidly shrinking.

Pew Research Center, the most reliable source of religious statistics, reports that 28% of U.S. adults fit the category of “religious nones.” The largest group of atheists, agnostics, nothing-in-particulars, and just disgusted in the Divided States of America is ex-Roman Catholics. Only if we count all Protestants as one group is there a larger group. Our family left the Vatican in 1959, and Corky and I became “unaffiliated” in 2017 when Billy Graham’s son Franklin announced that God had “appointed” Donald J. Trump as “The Chosen One” and president of the DSA.

The unraveling of the Christian religion has become so revealing of religious bankruptcy, many believers are now contracting and deconstructing Christianity and asking themselves: “Can I remain in the church, or will I have to leave the faith altogether? Will enough religious timbers remain so I can build other frames from them and have enough left for scaffolds? Between 2006 and 2023 the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest individual Protestant group, lost 3.1 million members from a peak of 16 million.

The U.S. Religious Census in a 2020 survey counted 61.9 million Catholics in 19,405 congregations, the lowest number it has reported in 50 years. At this point let’s find out what God was thinking when Tom Smyth published a column “Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, God.”

Have You Seen a Baseball Player Make the Cross Sign after Striking Out?

For decades I have been watching Major League baseball players look at the sky, tip the cap, and make the sign of the cross after getting a base hit, and NFL football running backs scoring a touchdown, making the sign of the cross, and genuflecting in the end zone. I have never seen a baseball player make the sign of the cross after striking out. Ah, there’s nothing like the power of prayer and the approval of the Head Coach. Smyth is having a lot of religious fun in his essay as God, but he also raises some difficult questions about religion.

Here is Smyth as God (edited):

Are you there Margaret? It’s me. God. I just saw your messages. Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you---I’ve just been totally swamped. I’m glad to hear everything went well with your period. You see, part of the reason I’m getting back to you so late is that I was bogged down with international crises. I had my hands full of Vietnam, nuclear threats, trouble in Suez. And on top of that I’m apparently expected to drop everything to bless anyone who sneezes. What the heck is all that about? Why? It’s not in any sacred text. And don’t get Me started on how many times senators ask Me to bless America at the end of their speeches. There just are not enough days in the week, and I should know.

What’s the deal with everybody going to church on Sunday? I’m confused. I explicitly said the seventh day was for rest. And what does everybody do? They decide to get together on my resting day and put Me to work. All morning I’m getting requests and questions and apologies, and then, millions of people are outright begging Me to fix football games. Anyway, I’m sorry for going on about Myself—back to you. You repeatedly asked Me to speed up your puberty, and give you boobs, which I hope you figured out it was kind of below my pay grade. If I give you a period then word will get out, and before you know it I’ll be absolutely swamped with period requests. Well, it was great to hear from you, Margaret, and I’m glad everything worked out. But I should get going—I have to finally reply to the band XTC about the price of beer or something.”

When Will Politicians Stop Playing Medical Doctor?

The Vatican started this whole mess about the LBGTQIA+ community and same-sex marriage by teaching that homosexuals are “intrinsically disordered” because they have succumbed to the wiles of Beelzebub and his nieces and nephews. There is little doubt that gays have been part of the species Homo sapiens since it has evolved.

It’s particularly amusing and yet tragic that popes, cardinals, and bishops have made this decision in St. Peter’s house, completed by Leonardo DaVinci and colorfully decorated by Michaelangelo. How many Catholic transgender men and women have been named saints by the Vatican? Joan of Arc is one that comes to mind. They looked terrific in men’s clothing.

Politicians playing doctor in Republican, Trumplican, and conservative states have been trying to pass about 500 bills relating to the LBGTQIA+ community, concentrating on transgender people. A study by the Trans Youth Project involving 220 transgender and nonbinary youth aged 12 and over of those participants who had been receiving puberty blockers for five years and hormones for 3.5 years indicated that 96% were very satisfied with those treatments. Only nine had some regrets about their condition, with four continuing care, four quitting care, and one is undecided.

Puberty blockers are medications used to delay changes caused by puberty and, according to the Mayo Clinic, they do not result in permanent physical changes. If a person stops taking puberty blockers, puberty resumes. Puberty blockers are also prescribed for cisgender children who start to show puberty way before the typical age. Gender-affirming hormones are also used to induce physical changes in individuals so that the changes align with their gender identity such as facial and body hair or breast growth. Princeton University Professor of Psychology Kristina Olson, the lead author of this study, states: “There are huge disparities in who accesses that care. Inequities in the American health-care system result in some trans youth being able to access gender-affirming care more readily than others. The result is that LBGTQIA+ affirming research often involves sample groups that are disproportionately White. Seventy percent of the participants in this study were White.”

So slightly more than 60 children in this study are Black, Hispanic, and Native American. This study was published in “JAMA Pediatrics” and is reinforcing a message from medical doctors and parents of gays to politicians: “How experts treat transgender people is none of your damn business. Get out of the way!” All major medical associations formed by doctors, mental health specialists, and hospitals report that gender-affirming medical care dramatically reduces suicide and depression in transgender individuals. At least two dozen states should repeal restrictions placed by politicians.

What Will Six Catholic Supreme Court Politicians Do with Trans Laws?

Just last week two transgender women strutted down the runway at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in New York City, establishing a precedent for one of the most iconic fashion shows in the world. Transgender Valentina Sampaio, one of the models, said: “The Victoria’s Secret family has shown the world that being trans is just as exceptional and beautiful as anyone else on that runway. Inclusivity is crucial to the world we’re building, and I’m honored to walk with pride, love, and the hope of inspiring the next generation. This is a long-held dream come true.”

A week before the New York show, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, playing doctor again, filed a lawsuit against Dr. May Lau, a Dallas pediatrician, who has been treating more than 20 minors, for violating a Texas law that bans gender-affirming care for people under age 18. Passed in 2023, it prohibits health-care professionals from treating anyone under the age of 18 with gender-transitioning interventions such as surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormones. Upheld by the Texas Supreme Court last June, doctors in violation of the law can lose their medical licenses. Dr. Lau currently works for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center which adds some fascinating political drama to the suit.

The American Civil Liberties Union is getting involved in the case because: “The ban on gender-affirming care threatens the health and lives of Texas transgender youth and penalizes physicians who provide the best standard of care for their transgender patients. Doctors should not have to fear being targeted for providing health care to their patients.” I might add--particularly when some dumbass politician thinks he knows better and throws his ignorant self between doctor and patient.

There soon will be more excitement, fury, lies, and protests in this country because the Republican Supreme Court is going to hear a Tennessee transgender case about gender treatments similar to the ones Paxton is sticking his Pinocchio nose in where it doesn’t belong. Will the Court majority decide they want Americans to live in the 14th Century or the 21st? Stay tuned. The lead attorney to oppose the Tennessee law is 41-year-old Chase Strangio who will add a lot of pizzazz to the case because he is the country’s leading expert on transgender laws, and he will bring some interesting issues to the Court and its Catholic members because he will be the first openly transgender attorney to argue a case before a Supreme Court that has the lowest approval rating in Court history.

This is a case that should be shown on every TV network in the country. People deserve to see this “bad-troubles” Court in action on a case that has been developing for 300,000 years. Everyone should be able to see the intrinsically disordered Roman Catholic members of the Court asking and answering questions of the opposing attorneys.

Note: The headline was “Trump Serves Fries and Falsehoods.” It should have been “Trump Serves Fries and Lies.”