​What a Thoughtful Birthday Gift!

by Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

08 July 2021

Miranda Was Wrong: We Are Terribly Short Of ‘Goodly Creatures’

Before I attack God, Catholics, evangelical Christians, and Trumplicans, I’ve got to attack the Supreme Court. The Court voted 8-1 that a foul-mouthed bratty teenaged cheerleader, with parents who want be “friends” instead of parents, had had her First Amendment rights violated.

She had been suspended from school for using Trumpian profane language against teachers, coaches, and school. She had used Snapchat to broadcast her gross off-campus tirade about not being selected a varsity cheerleader.

Brandi Levy was suspended by her principal for attacking the coach and school with this language: “f--- school, f---softball, f---cheer, f---everything” while extending her middle fingers. She made the national news. She and her parents sued the school for her suspension; thus starting judicial challenges ending in the Supreme Court.

Brandi’s school had the usual published school rules, including prohibition of foul language, unsportsmanlike conduct and disrespect for school. Let’s remember that all school employees, whether principal or junior aide or janitor, are “in loco parentis.” In other words, we act as parents for all school activities—whether we are in class, eating lunch, at a basketball game in the school gym, singing in a nursing home—or 150 miles away on a football fan bus.

It’s very important to school success that everyone obeys the rules. Brandi didn’t. But the Supreme Court said the school violated her First Amendment rights because she said “those” words off-campus! Where were her parents? They weren’t in her Snapshot! Were they by her side, cheering her on? Would other parents of children at Mahanoy School approve of her foul mouth and allow their students to stand off-campus and yell the same language?

Everything students do, off-campus or on, affects the welfare and reputation of the school. As principal of two large Fargo high schools for a total of 11 years, I followed that principle. The Supreme Court, with an idiotic ignorant decision, has just created another “free speech” mess for K-12 schools. “Free speech” gets very expensive sometimes. How long would Brandi keep a job at McDonald’s or West Acres using that language and breaking their rules? Students learn survival skills in school.

Why Have So Many Christians Forgotten the Teachings of Jesus Christ?

My next rant is about the Christian religion. In the Middle Ages, Geoffrey Chaucer in “Canterbury Tales” wrote about the sale of indulgences which would reduce the time spent in purgatory, for sinners going eventually to heaven. The Vatican got rich from the extortion. And later it turned Martin Luther into a protester that changed the Roman Catholic Church.

At the beginning of the 17th Century Shakespeare had completed “Hamlet,” considered to be the finest play ever written in the English language. It is all about religion, faith, sinning, murder, suicide, redemption -- and real life. I have had the pleasure of teaching it about 50 times. In his famous “to be, or not to be” speech, Hamlet asks the big question about the fact that “no traveler” has ever returned to earth with evidence after being in Heaven or Hell:

“To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

but that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn,

no traveler returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

than fly to others we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

and thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

and enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

and lose the name of action.”

What is Hamlet saying about faith? Faith is belief without evidence because no traveler has “returned.” He is asking what can be justified by faith alone. Faith gives comfort—but what else? Faith allows you to believe whatever you want to believe -- fact and evidence be damned.

The Vatican Says the LBGTQ+ Community Is “Intrinsically Disordered”

If we want to believe in God, the Bible, and entomologists, God created 330,000 different species of beetles (possibly 1,000,000, some scientists say). but He created only two different humans, a perfect male and a perfect female.

Did somebody else create all those “intrinsically disordered” gays? Maybe it was that guy Lucifer. The Bible says God has checked out every one of us in the womb. Was He just negligent in letting all those gays, lesbians, transgenders, asexuals, bisexuals, queers, and those gender-fluid others through the birth canal? Why are thousands of intersex babies born each year with both male and female genitals inside or outside the body? Why do toddlers object to being born girls or boys and desire to be the “other” sex?

We have had gays on earth since Lucy fell out of the African tree, since Alexander the Great used elephants in war, since Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and was employed to finish St Peter’s basilica, since Leonardo DaVinci carved the Pieta, and Little Richard played rock-and-roll on the piano.

Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians have swallowed and digested the Vatican “disordered” line since Martin Luther posted his 95 truths and lies on the Wittenberg church door. The Vatican and evangelical Christians should realize that the U.S. military with 5.8% “intrinsically disordered” is ready to protect their dumb discriminating asses.

The Vatican Is 'Disordered'

There’s overwhelming evidence the Vatican is on life support in Europe. The evidence here is millennials will probably pull the Vatican plug soon. The Catholic Church may survive in some form because, even Germany, the country of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger--Pope Benedict XVI is accepting the LBGTQ+ community now as equals. Some bishops and priests insist on blessing same-sex marriages and LBGTQ+ members.

The Vatican insists on calling homosexuals “intrinsically disordered” while probably having a higher number in the priesthood than the rate in the general population. The Vatican still insists abortion is murder, while countries in the European Union, Canada, and Norway are planning to end all legal barriers to abortion.

In at least a dozen columns I have written about the Norwegian studies of the top species in our world to see how many had gays. The researchers stopped researching after proving the top 1,500 species had gay members.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted a “Dud Stud” study on sheep because sexy rams run thousands of dollars. No sheepherder wants to buy an expensive ram not interested in ramming ewes. The researchers discovered that 8.5% of rams were only interested in ramming rams. That’s very close to the same percentage of human gays in the world.

Does Life Begin at the Moment of Conception or at Birth?

The question is: does that fertilized speck represent a human being? Is that speck equal to a Nobel Prize winner or a serial killer? We have to recognize that all kinds of bad things can happen to a fetus before it is born. Real life begins at birth.

The Vatican says abortion is murder. Many Christians and Catholics don’t agree. The Vatican says contraceptives are killer bullets. Over 80% of Catholic women use contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. Only 4% of Catholic women use Vatican Roulette, the temperature and calendar scheme based on “natural law.” Good luck with that.

Let’s remember that obstetricians say up to 20% of specks and fetuses are miscarried and die, some before the woman even knows she is pregnant.

Alas, the Grand Designer in the Sky did not make perfect working human beings. Stuff happens during gestation. Do males get that perfect dose of testosterone? Do females get that perfect dose of estrogen? The evidence says “absolutely NO!” A human oddity: for the first six weeks after the lucky sperm hits, we are all female anyway. Then the hormones start working—sometimes.

The Vatican has been bat-shit crazy about sex for 2,000 years. Popes with ten children were fascinated by it. Celibacy has been hot and bothered for about that long. The gray old patriarchs have come up with an impressive list of mortal sins requiring untold numbers of Hail Marys for penance: oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, pre-marital sex, contraceptive use, artificial insemination, divorce, stem cell research, vasectomy, tubal ligation, coitus interruptus, and abortion.

In the meantime the Vatican has spent $4 billion covering sexual abuse by uncelibate and horny priests, forcing some dioceses to go bankrupt. And it’s not the end. Estimates are that there are enough abuse lawsuits to take another $4 billion to settle.

The Trumplicans Are Harvesting and Cooking Race and Sex for the Next Election

Wily Will Shakespeare, in his last play “The Tempest,” writes about the social hierarchy of his world: God, king, man, woman, slave, and beast -- in that order. Prospero has sheltered his daughter Miranda from society since birth, so when she comes of age, she says the following when she is exposed to society for a short time: “Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in it!”

Her father, in shock, exclaims: “Hey, wait a minute!!” Later, Miranda is attacked by their slave Caliban who tries to rape her so he can populate the island they are on with more slaves. Shakespeare is saying: “Such is life!”

Perhaps you have noticed Aldous Huxley almost 400 years later used his “brave new world “ line as a title of his classic novel about a future 632 AD after Ford. Good and bad people have been writing about race, sex, and power for thousands of years. We learn a little bit more about the subjects every day.

The Trumplicans are at it again: bring on the culture wars of abortion, religion, gender, sex, and race and keep those ex-slaves and wetbacks out of the voting booth. Concentrate on only two political issues: lower taxes and increasing white power. Make sure Critical Race Theory is in the news 24-7. We certainly don’t want to educate the voters about our racial history.

Get the conservative Catholic bishops to refuse communion hosts to President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and other pro-choice Democrats. I have a question for the priests and bishops: if the hosts have to contain wheat, are you sure Jesus Christ does not have a gluten problem? In transubstantiation, isn’t the host immediately changed to flesh?

It seems we learn something about our history every minute. Two-hundred-year-old documents were found yesterday in a Maryland attic. One was a 1793 poster listing Amos as an escaped slave: “Whoever takes up said negro and brings him home shall receive a reward of $30 plus reasonable charges.” He was 5’ 10” and had scars around both eyes.

It was also reassuring last week to learn that Thomas Jefferson, one of our founders who wrote all men were created equal, was a generous man. We don’t know how often he raped his slave Sally Hemmings, but he had six children with her. When the children reached a certain birthday he gave each one a slave to help them get through the day and night. A tourist guide at Monticello is a white Navy vet who adds: “Those presents were human beings!” Well. After all, they weren’t human yet. Does this knowledge qualify as Critical Race Theory?