Chick-fil-A: Next up in the homosexual cross hairs

Again, I'm becoming convinced that the gay rights movement is the emergent Left's primary hammer with which to bludgeon the right not to conform to the emergent Left.  In this little story, we see that gay rights advocates are incensed that Chick-fil-A supports beliefs systems that don't conform to the dogmas of gay rights.  A couple things jumped out at me.  First, apparently a Muslim and Hindu employee filed a lawsuit against the company for overtly practicing Christianity.  The fact that it was settled made me wonder at what point will this stop.  If I work for a Hindu restaurant or Muslim bakery that flaunts its religion can I sue?
Second, how utterly predictable this is.  I'm one who believes all of those lofty promises of the post-War liberal movements were just bunk.  Either lies, or the result of arrogance and naïveté.  In any event, the notions of a pluralistic, tolerant, open minded, and diverse society are quickly going the way of the butter churn.  And it's doing so in exactly the same intolerant, close minded way that once was condemned by those who promoted such things as gay rights.

This particular sentence struck me:

“It literally leaves a bad taste because I know the people who are putting this food in my mouth actively loathe me,” he said. “I’m all for freedom of religion, it’s just that I know where I want my money to go and I don’t want my money to go.”

That was by Douglas Quint, operator of The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck.   What hit me about this was the utter stupidity of it.  After all, weren't we once told how stupid, intolerant and prejudiced people used to be because they wouldn't buy a product from someone of a different religion, or ethic group, or similar distinction?  Remember those days?  Remember when it was a sign of unenlightened neanderthal culture to refuse to eat at a place just because someone was different that you, thought different than you, believed different than you?  Why, that was strictly Archie Bunker, straight out of the Middle Ages.

Well, I give you the Middle Ages - hip, sophisticated, enlightenment, LGBT style.  And if the emergent Left has anything to say about it, I'm sure it's not the last we've heard.

The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck?

Get your university degree in Beatles Studies!

Thirty or forty years ago, such a thing would speak volumes about the Beatles and their talent.  Today, where you can take courses in comic books, Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, and any one of a thousand pop culture subjects, it speaks more of the level of academic sophistication in the 21st century.  Just like J.R.R. Tolkien.  Was a time when a university that offered even part of a course studying something like The Lord of the Rings was a badge of prestige for that work.  Today, it's just slipped between classes in Reality TV on one side, and Pornography 101 on the other. 

Drug smugglers: Is there anything they won't try?

The mental image this story conjured up made me laugh. 

Europeans tell the Muslim world to stop persecuting Christians

Fair enough.  Of course, it would be nice if Secular Europe stopped, too.  And thankfully, some at the Council of Europe said as much.  Of course, there isn't outright brutality and violence in Europe.  Yet.  But laws and legal stances taken by quote/unquote "Liberal" nations in recent years have certainly made it clear that if you are going to be Christian, you're going to behave or else.  This is consistent with the growing intolerance of the secular Left, which has far more influence in various European nations than it does in America.  In Europe, individuals like Richard Dawkins or Sir Elton John can come out and say if it were up to them, they would gladly make it a crime to be religious in general, and Christian in particular.  And they are lauded, celebrated, and given all manner of awards for their troubles. 

That, of course, is the first step.  Throughout Islamic history, being a non-Muslim has been an up and down affair.  Sometimes it wasn't so bad, sometimes it could be very bad.  The same was true, of course, for Europe regarding various groups.  But in recent years, being Christian in the world of the Religion of Peace has come at a price.  In some cases merely a legal, or even social price.  But in recent years, that naturally has migrated into the next logical phase, and that's outright persecution.  So we'll see where it goes.  Not just in the Middle East, where we are already to Phase 3 of religious persecution.  But where it will go in Europe, that has been flirting with Phase 2 for many decades now.

What explosives at a Michigan Mosque?

M-80 Fireworks

Explosives?  Read the story here.  Unless there was something in addition to what was mentioned, and the police asked the reporter not to report it, I'm missing the 'explosives' that could destroy the Mosque.  Class C fireworks are consumer type, those sold to individuals as opposed to fireworks sold to companies that put on neighborhood and city displays.  Nor do I consider M-80s an 'explosive'.  Oh, they can cause harm alright.  And I'm not saying the fellow shouldn't have been arrested, wasn't trying to cause harm, or was not aiming his intents at the Mosque.  Of course he's innocent until proven guilty.  But again, unless there were devices not mentioned in the story, I wouldn't consider an 'undisclosed' amount of M-80 firecrackers to be what you call an explosive.  When we think explosives, let's face it, we think of Oklahoma City.  We think of cars or trucks loaded and ready to wipe out a city block.  M-80s could certainly harm people, and do a significant amount of property damage.  For that reason alone, it is a serious story and needs to be looked into.  But 'explosives'?  Couldn't they simply have said ''Man arrested with quantities of illegal fireworks?"  That would have been more accurate.

Now for the analysis.  Why the headline?  Did the copy editor not know what M-80s are? Perhaps.  They are illegal after all.  But perhaps the individual writing the headline thought 'explosives' was, well, more explosive.  It evokes.  It conjures up a notion.  My first mental picture was of a vehicle rigged to detonate outside of a Mosque, drums of explosive liquids connected to a fuse.  And I can't help but wonder if that's exactly what the headline writer wanted me to think.

Why?  Why would someone - if I'm reading this correctly - want me to think of Oklahoma City or, less likely, the various attempts by Muslim citizens to destroy larges swaths of lower Manhattan?  Assuming I'm right, that there was a method to the headline writer's madness, I think the answer comes from The Joker.  The Dark Knight has been running for the last few weekends on a host of cable channels.  I've had the chance to revisit the film, Christopher Nolan's talent for a good yarn, the various actors and characters with which we are so familiar, and of course, the late, great Heath Ledger's penultimate performance as the clown prince of crime himself.

At the end of the movie, the Joker is disappointed in the failure of Gotham City's residents to turn on one another.  Having put two boatloads of residents and criminals at the mercy of one another, he apparently imagined that one of them would destroy the ferry carrying the others in an attempt to save themselves from certain death.  Well, not to spoil the movie if you haven't seen it (STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVEN"T) -


But it doesn't work.  Turns out, both the citizens and the boat full of criminals are not willing to slaughter hundreds of people they don't know, even if it means losing their own lives.  Of course, the Joker has one more card up his sleeve, but you'll have to watch the movie to see what happens next.  The point is, he was trying to show that the people of Gotham, when push came to shove, were as ready to sink to his level, to kill indiscriminately.  And they didn't.

And that brings me back to firecrackers and mosques and media reports and whether pigs have wings.  In case you haven't noticed, and many on the Left side of the ideological aisle - and not a few Catholic apologists - haven't, the tendency in America is to see everything about our country in the worst possible light.  The glass isn't half empty, it's empty.  The lens is cracked and darkened.  Ours is a sad nation of racism, imperialism, butchery and slaughter.  We massacred Indians by the billions, owned slaves by the billions, dropped atomic bombs on babies by the billions.  We don't do, think, or say anything about our country what that we must remind ourselves forever about the unforgivable sins of our fathers.

So naturally, when the 9/11 attacks occurred, our Pavlovian response was, "That was horrible!  What did we do to make them hate us that much?"  From there, we immediately feared what this country, founded on, and perpetuated in, racism, bigotry, ignorance, and brutality, would do to our Muslim neighbors.  For weeks and months we heard discussions about how we must show restraint.  How we must avoid lashing out and butchering those who may be Arab, or Muslim, or anything not like us.  We feared that the Bush administration would react like Roosevelt, and round up Muslim citizens by the millions, shipping them off to secret concentration camps in the Nevada deserts.  We imagined hordes of mindless rednecks, shambling about like so many extras just eloped from the set of The Walking Dead, going from door to door, seeking out hapless residents of Middle East descent.  In short, we imagined that those horrible stories we've told ourselves about America and its past were not only true, but inevitable.

And yet, almost ten years later, there has been almost no backlash against Muslims, Arabs, or anyone of Middle Eastern descent.  I'm not saying there was none.  There was, especially in the days and weeks after 9/11: vandalism, threats, some off color verbal assaults.  There were even a few cases of threats of violence and assaults.  But as of now, not one Muslim has been killed because he or she was a Muslim.  Not one that I'm aware of.  Out of 300 million Americans, said to be racist, ignorant, bigoted thugs descended from a nation of bigotry, not one of millions of Muslims has been killed solely on the basis of being Muslim.

Now, Muslims since 9/11 have killed other Americans.  And multiple attempts by Muslims to kill many more have been thwarted.  But despite story after story of Muslims cowering in back alleys in fear of their lives, despite story after story telling us that crimes against Muslims are exploding all over our country (without actual examples), and despite the fact that we are continually reminded of our sad history and inevitable violent attitudes toward minorities, Muslims remain safer here than in the nations of the Islamic world.  In short, the death camps and endless mobs that were to fall upon the American Muslim community never happened.

And I get the feeling sometimes that the media - one of the prime proponents of the 'America Sucks' mentality - has yet to get over that.  Having seen the carnage of 9/11, and reflected on its dire appraisal of the American nation, they thought, 'And here we go!' And they waited, and waited, and waited, and waited - to no avail. Their worst nightmares never happened.  No murders, butchery, slaughter - nothing. So each and every time something happens, each and every time a Muslim makes an accusation, each time a Muslim group says it fears for its life, each time someone is caught doing anything to anyone that is Muslim, the national media is there.  Not only is it there to give the story more attention than it will for anything short of the Super Bowl, but I can't help but think it's there to fluff the stories a little.  To make them sing, if you will.  Sing of racists and bigots, of angry mobs and violence. 

Therefore a man who, if reports are true, is obviously off the deep end and obviously needs arrested, just isn't enough.  It's not enough that the worst this nation of imperialists, Islamaphobes, homophobes, anti-Semites, racists, and sexists can muster is a vehicle filled with firecrackers.  Nope.  It has to be more.  It has to be 'explosives'.  For if we aren't continually shown the errors of our ways, if our sins are not forever before us, we might someday stop and say, "You know, considering 9/11 and everything since, we Americans have done pretty darn good, haven't we?  And that might mean some of those things upon which our country was founded weren't that bad after all."  For people who want nothing more than to burn down the foundations of our country, such a revelation could be disastrous.

Again, I realize that there could be more.  Maybe there were drums of gasoline or other hazardous chemicals in his vehicle.  Maybe there were crates of TNT.  Maybe the media isn't saying this because we all know how restrained the media can be when it comes to holding back on stories in case of copy-cats.  But if not, then the above theory is the one I'm going with unless I am shown a reasonable alternative.

I hate being right all the time

It may take me years, but I am usually persistent enough to make sure I win an argument, no matter what!  This will mean absolutely nothing to everyone else on the planet, but for the sake of one person, it is more than worth the post.  The sweet, sweet feeling of being right.  The post will be pulled once the point is made.

Souvenir condoms for royal wedding?

Please.  If anything else will be a more appropriate future epitaph for England, I can't imagine what it would be.

For the Challenger Seven

Francis "Dick" Scobee

Ellison Onizuka

Christa McAuliffe

Gregory Jarvis

Judith Resnik

Michael J. Smith

Ronald McNair

God grant His peace to them and their loved ones

Blogging will be sparse

Owing to family issues and a host of other priorities, blogging will be light today and probably continue to be until next week.  I'll see what's happening, and if anything is worth saying.  Right now, I leave you with this link.  It's actually a story about the upcoming SyFy movie Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.  That's right, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.  The strange thing is, the story takes the project somewhat seriously, giving loads of doubt benefits to its stars, former 80s pop queens Debbie Gibson and Tiffany.  Debbie Gibson?  Tiffany?  Mega Python vs. Gatoroid?  I don't think I can write anything that will top that.  So enjoy the review.  If you have time, make sure you catch the movie.  I'm sure it will be worth your time.  I'll be back in force next week, unless something else comes up that really catches my attention or boils my blood. 

Oh, and please pray for my family, as many things are happening right now and it's almost impossible to imagine what things will look like two months from now.

TTFN

400 Rabbis demand censorship in the name of Holocaust Remembrance

I'm no Glenn Beck fan.   Like most people who have a perpetual microphone in our cable news universe, he doesn't let a little thing like solid scholarship or sound reasoning get in the way of his agendas.  Though when I watch scholars interviewed for outlets like the History Channel, I can't say there's much room to pick at Beck, or Olbermann, or others who make a mockery of historical research.  Still, it's bothersome that a generation of such self-proclaimed enlightened intellectually sophisticated consumers care so little about what's actually true when it comes to advancing agendas.

With that said, my stomach almost fell out my butt when I read this story, that 400 rabbis are doing nothing less than demanding censorship of Glenn Beck.  Why?  Because he keeps invoking the Holocaust in ways they don't like, and attacks George Soros, who happens to be a Holocaust survivor. 

Now quick, what's wrong with this picture?  Well, first, so what if he uses the Holocaust?  How are we supposed to remember it and learn from it if we don't use it an apply it?  And where were they for all those years that Republicans and Conservatives have been called Nazis, that everything America ever did was compared to the Holocaust, that our treatment of minorities has been repeatedly compared to the Nazi treatment of Jews, and every time someone over the decades has advanced a liberal agenda by comparing their opponents to Nazis?  Or when some rabbis actually insisted that the traditional Christian Gospel was inherently anti-Semitic?  I know a few exceptionally egregious times some rabbis spoke out.  But I can't remember any calling for censorship.

Second thing that bothers me is the idea that since Soros is a Holocaust survivor, he is somehow immune.  I could care less if he is a Holocaust survivor.  A man who spends billions on advertisements doing the very thing that the rabbis are suddenly concerned about deserves the criticism he gets.  If a holocaust survivor axe murders children, is he immune?  Come on.  That's about as cheap and cowardly as you get.

Third, I'm growing tired of being told that "Hitler and the Nazis were evil and killed 6 million Jews" as if that is all that can be said, studied, or read about.  Any and every other grotesque inhumanity of history is debated, denied, argued about, and discussed - providing they haven't just been forgotten about.  While there was something particularly sinister about the Nazis using everything that science, technology, industry, and the latest political and scientific theories about humanity to such horrible ends, it wasn't the only horrible thing of the last century. Or any century for that matter.  Learning from the Holocaust means learning from, and doing so to avoid future holocausts, not simply bemoaning the past for the sake of bemoaning the past.  Certainly not for the sake of advancing political or social agendas.

Fourth, sorry, but growing tired of Jews in the name of the Holocaust turning to good old fashioned intimidation, bigotry, censorship, and a host of other things that were the stuff of what led to the holocaust.  When Mel Gibson produced his film The Passion, I was gobsmacked at how many Jewish commentators called for it to be banned.  Banned?  Would we like to have some book burnings, too?  Again, remembering the Holocaust means learning from it to prevent it from happening again - to anyone.  Not just Jews.  And certainly not happening to anyone because of Jews willing to exploit the holocaust for their own agendas.

So shame on these rabbis.  They can complain about Beck all they want.  That is their right. But censorship?  Come on.  That suggests despite a lifetime of obsessing over the Holocaust, these rabbis have apparenlty learned nothing from it.  And that would be a shame on this Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Religious cleansing of Christians

Yep.  That's about right.  Largely because we, in the West, have focused on the sins of Christianity so long, I doubt most care.  Even some Christians.  Many former colleagues from more liberal denominations had no problem jumping on the 'Christianity is the most evil belief in human history' bandwagon.  When people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens maintain the everlasting admiration of our media culture, it's not hard to see why no one particularly cares that Christians are being targeted for extermination.  If it were some other group, maybe.  If it were some Christian based culture going after a non-Western, non-Christian culture, you better believe we would be pitching hissy-fits right now.  But it isn't. It's just Christians who are beginning to be targeted. For years we've heard folks tell Christians to stop bellyaching about being hated, loathed, mocked, ridiculed, and verbally attacked.  Now they are being physically attacked and I"m still not seeing a turn around from those who once said there was nothing to worry about.  I'm starting to wonder if it's not because they don't care, but because they do, and are firmly on the side of those doing the persecuting.  Maybe not, but it's enough to make me wonder.

Randy Sly likes "The Rite"

I'll see.  But his review suggests it might be worth seeing.  I don't go to movies that much anymore.  I will if there's something my boys might want to see.  Otherwise, I'm happy to wait for DVDs.  I also don't look for too many devotional films that will uplift my soul.  Hollywood is usually as good at deep and thoughtful religious reflection as it is promoting historical accuracy.  Worse with Hollywood takes on religion is the nuances involved.  It can play fast and loose with historical facts if it has to, in order to make an obvious point.  That's fair (as long as folks keep that in mind).  But with religion, the problem can be those slight shimmies of doctrine, or digressions from the truth.  It can seem like something that is awash in Christian teaching, but along the way an ever-so-subtle non-Christian (if not anti-Christian) viewpoint enters in.  I'm not saying that happens in The Rite.  I've not seen it, and am willing to give the benefit of the doubt.  But doubt is just what I have whenever I see any television show or film approach the topic of religious truth. 

Christians converting to Islam out of fear

Turns out, some Christians are doing in Pakistan what has happened in Islamic civilization from the beginning.  They are converting to Islam because they are afraid.  This isn't really anything new.  Except that it still happens, when many people are shocked as if this has never happened before.  Since its foundations, Islam has often made it more beneficial to become Muslim, one way or another.

The reason this might be shocking to some folks is the tendency we've had for the last few generations of focusing on the sins of the Christian West and ignoring the sins of anyone else.  Of course, history is fluid like that, and what we focus on and how we interpret things often says more about the historian than the historical topic at hand.  In our zeal to undo ages of European contempt for other cultures, and in the interest of validating a removal of traditional Western values from the table, we've tended to downplay, if not downright ignore, the sins of various cultures.

We've had no problem emphasizing, over and over and over and over again, the sins of Christian Europe.  We know all about the Crusades, the atrocities committed therein, persecution of Jews, wars against other religious minorities, persecution of heretical sects, the Inquisition - why the list goes on and on.  But when it comes to other cultures and civilizations, we have more or less been given a positive, vague 'it was a very good place' take.  Even when the facts of how Muslims treated non-Muslims throughout history are mentioned, they are downplayed, or qualified by 'It wasn't always like that everywhere in the Muslim world!'  Of course, it wasn't always like that in the Christian West either, but that's usually not what we hear.

So when folks today hear that Christians are converting in Pakistan out of stark raving fear, some seem shocked.  Others have the faintest reaction as if to say, "Somewhere deep in my mind something tells me I shouldn't be shocked, I just don't know why."  If we were honest about history, and applied even a tenth of the harsh and merciless standards against other cultures that we have, for decades, applied to our own heritage, we wouldn't have to wonder.

Christopher Hitchens doesn't like The King's Speech

Turns out, the film doesn't spend enough time trashing the royals for their Nazi sympathies.  Despite the headline of the article, the primary source of anger appears to come from the man who lives in perpetual hatred and anger every day - Christopher Hitchens. Yeah, that Christopher Hitchens.  The one whose approach to historical accuracy makes Glen Beck look reputable*.  The one who, like most radical Leftists, sees everything in Western History as negatively as possible, thereby validating the need to burn every traditional foundation to the ground.  From there, of course, a glorious new world will be raised, based on a militarily enforced secularism and rabid neo-Marxist Leftism that models itself loosely on how the Soviet Union should have been - had it not foolishly treated Communism as a religion which, in Hitchens' and many modern athists' demented minds, is the primary cause of evil in the world.  Of course his own Nazi-like hatred for all religion and religious people is missed by him, as he chicken pecks those in history he can use to attack any root to the problem of religion.  And even though such hatred and loathing would, in most cases, be shunned by the media, its own impotence and secular blindness allows Hitchens to continue to be the darling of the secular left, giving a brief glimpse into what the world may look like if they ever assume control.

Anyway, I hadn't planned on seeing The King's Speech.  Just not the type of movie that appeals to me, where a historical person or moment is loosely used around which to build a story.  It can be done, but is seldom done well (the movie Amadeus being a glaring example of being done well).  Nonetheless, with anti-religious bigots and radical liberal publications like The New Republic trashing it, I'm almost to the point of signing up for a couple tickets. 

*My favorite Hitchensism came in an interview on MSNBC, when he was asked about the Founding Fathers.  He declared the ones who mattered were really atheists, but had to hide their true atheism because of the hordes of religious fanatics apparently prowling the countryside and burning such free thinkers at the stake.  Of course it never happened.  By the late 18th century such things were absent in the American Colonies, and there's absolutely no evidence at all that the Founding Fathers were atheists scared to death of dying for their unbelief.  But anyone whose basic world view is based on the hatred of a group of people, a little thing like facts won't matter. I doubt he even invokes conspiracy theory.  He's content with ignoring factual objections and continuing on with his sad, slow, decent into madness and whatever eternity awaits him.  I pray that he pulls out in time.

The land of guilt-free abortions

Most Americans, having that divine spark within them, get a little queasy when defending the right to abort a baby.  As a general rule, much of the fighting has been about protecting our right to not think about it.  If you stop and reflect, you'll notice that we go through a great amount of turmoil to make sure nobody has to learn more about abortions than they want to.  If I go to the doctor and ask for a hangnail to be removed, I have to jump through so many loops it isn't funny.  When I had surgery about ten years ago, I had to fill out more paperwork than I did when I bought my house.  And forget insurance.  If it isn't proven to be based on medical necessity, it ain't covered.

Except for abortions.  Which seem to be easy to get, quick and painless in terms of being informed about what is happening, and a sort of 'hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil' approach by the providers.  I'm sure not all are the same.  But if they aren't, it's not because of some crack government agency monitoring every nook and cranny of the abortion industry.  Far from it, for it seems that whenever some story of unspeakable horrors emerges, we find out that there were no inspections, no questions, no investigation of the clinic since the age of glaciers.  And this around a procedure that already sports fewer restrictions on it than your average trip to a plastic surgeon.

Diplomacy: A game for all seasons

James Maliszewski at Grognardia reflects on the game Diplomacy.  As usual, he knows more about the nuts and bolts and origins of these things than I would ever care to learn.  Still, I post this as I admit it's a fun game, good for stretching the old cerebellum and teaching basic human interaction skills.  It's adaptable to online playing, or playing by email (which I did once, many years ago).  But in today's society where folks are increasingly immersed in the world of human interaction via electronic medium, a good old fashioned board game version of Diplomacy might do the trick.  Be warned, as James points out, it requires at least five to do well and yes, tempers can often turn quite cutthroat.

Culture of death equals dead culture

While American teens are fighting for the right to watch their peers engaged in sex, drugs, and drinking on MTV's latest foray into Maladomini, and American adults are apparently fighting for the right to watch American teens indulge in simulated sex, drugs, and drinking, and oft repeated defense for the show is 'you should see Britain's version!'  Which strikes me as weird.  If I wanted to start my own professional football team, I would not model my new endeavor after the Cleveland Browns, much as my family's heritage demands a certain brand loyalty. 

Looking to Britain, like looking to most of Europe, for inspiration is a little bit the same thing.  We are talking about a civilization that is already past the September of its years.  A civilization that tossed aside the last vestiges of its religious and moral heritage only to plunge into the most disastrously murderous century of all time.  From the ashes of the carnage, it decided the best thing to do was not care.  Just have lots of sex, drugs, and stop with the whole 'things matter' rubbish.  Yet to that end, it still managed to maintain hold of several stellar philosophies from the days of yore, particularly those centered around reducing the human person to a commodity to be harvested at best, exterminated at worst. 

Somehow it all links together, that the parts of Europe Americans, particularly American progressives, are all ga-ga over, continually produce this type of wonderful testimonial to its high moral principles.  Again, once Europe has been swallowed up by the expanding Islamic civilization, those generations lucky enough to make it to birth will be scratching their heads and wondering what the hell went wrong.  Stories like the aforementioned will be all they need to know.

Catholic yoga?

I dunno.  I wonder what great Catholic traditions the Hindus are borrowing.  The thing about this is it seems almost evangelistic.  As if somehow the Catholic meditative tradition isn't enough, we need to find The Better Way.  I know many folks insist that yoga can be as religious-neutral as checkers, but I'm having a hard time buying it.  A good place to start would be here, with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  There's enough red flags and warning signs for me to think there has to be a way less fraught with the danger of slipping and sliding into the modern melting pot of religious relativism.

Homosexuality or Abortion

Which will be the blade used to slice apart the Bill of Rights?  There is such a growing impatience by many on the Left to allow rights for folks who refuse to obey the gospel of progressivism, it's hard to say.  The idea that anyone in the medical community could be forced to treat abortions despite religious misgivings has potential.  But I sort of like the good old 'shouldn't anyone who speaks out against homosexuality be punished for doing so?' mantra that many gay rights advocates are promoting.  It's a toss up.  I would say, given this is heading into Super Bowl season and all, I'm going with Banning opposition to Homosexual rights by 14 points.

Eurabia: The northernmost domain of the Islamic world

As Mark Shea so glibly points out, in another generation the grandchildren of post-Christian secular Europe won't be saying, "God is dead!"  They will be saying, "Allahu Akbar!"