Upon a Patent and Unremarkable Anus

Longtime readers know that The Swill to Power is a safe, welcoming place where people of all persuasions can come together to share diverse opinions; a meeting point for those who seek truth and truths, and who wish to conduct their inquiries as a social, interactive process infused with the democratic spirit of tolerance upon which this great nation was founded.

Except, of course, for Christians.

It is not that the Swill promotes "intolerance." It is simply that "tolerance" is a word that doesn't really belong in this here discussion. We don't, after all, speak of "tolerating" the proposition that four plus four is twelve. Are we "tolerant" toward the idea that midgets should be gutted, stretched like stumpy salmon in the sun, pressed into little herring shapes and fed to starving seals down San Diego way?

Non est. Per contra.

Yet, somewhere along the line, it became more than a matter of good manners to avoid discussing religion and politics at the dinner table: it became a moral-political injunction to "tolerate" the most retrograde beliefs and behavior, so long as such behavior was inspired by the Gee Oh Dee.

Oh, you're a pharmacist who doesn't believe that rape victims should have access to emergency contraception? What kind of an asshole are you, and what are you still doing employed by a state-regulated industry? Oh, you're a CHRISTIAN. Forgive me for judging. Seriously, please, forgive my intolerance. Hello! What's that? You say that you don't believe Africans should have access to condoms, despite almost unimaginable rates of HIV infection and overpopulation? That's horrific! Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were a CHRISTIAN!!! Lord, how could I be so historically narrow minded? And so insensitive! Can you ever forgive me? Ha, ha, silly question.

Look. The Swill enjoys the generous mandate of an increasingly excluded majority: those billions and billions of global citizens who object to the attempts of startlingly empowered monotheists to impose their bronze-age tribal traditions on us. We are those legion who want our babies' genitals unmutilated, our unmarital ass-reaming to remain a decision between consenting adults (or, in the case of many grammatically informed assreamers making the decision simultaneously, "among" consenting adults), our women as empowered or disempowered as our men, and our scientific methods, well, scientific.

Friends, The Swill takes its mandate seriously and with regard to no fundamental discrimination among monotheisms. In the end, we've taken the increasingly controversial position that we're against bronze-age (and Renaissance, and mid-19th-century Great Awakening) orthodoxies generally. We all are historically located subjects, however, and in order to keep our eyes on the proverbial prize (and on the most pressing forms of oppression in these U Esses of A) we try particularly hard to to make Christians feel particularly unwelcome. It's not that we object to Christianity any more strenuously than any other form of theological mystification, but rather that Christians present the most immediate threat to the American Way of Life.

We don't, as grandma advises, want to encourage them.

The Jews are doing their own thing, and while Joe Lieberman may be a murderous chump in thrall of the insurance industry, he really doesn't give a rat's ass whether you enjoy bacon or not. (Also, for very sound historical reasons, one should never write "The Jews" except ironically.) Yeah, he'd probably ban your porn, but so would my mother, and she's an atheist. When you show me a Delaware Buddhist who wants to throw my gay pals in jail (or keep them from enjoying tax benefits afforded to any cracker dipshit with twenty bucks and a syphilis test) we'll talk about expanding my "Keep Away" sign. When I see a Taoist who argues that bulldozing Palestinian houses is divinely authorized, I'll object to, well, whatever it is that qualifies as Tao. Ditto for the next time I come across a Jainist who thinks that firebombing people is sometimes a necessary, if unfortunate, action, or a secular humanist who thinks that women shouldn't have professional lives.

And please look here before you say "But true Christians are tolerant and democratic!" Right. I know. I KNOW!

For the record, we also don't support the deportation, incarceration, or sterilization of people based upon their beliefs. Those are the kinds of solutions that religious folks come up with when confronted by behavior or beliefs they disagree with. The Swill simply wants to do its part to make theists socially undesirable. You can start by saying something out loud you've been wanting secretly to say for some years now, but that years of ideological training have made you secretly kind of scared to say: "Fuck God."

Go ahead! Say it with me! OUT LOUD! You'll enjoy it. It's liberating. "Fuck God."

Nonetheless, and despite all this business, we are impressed with our pal squeezychortle's recent reflections on Pat Robertson, Saul of Tarsus, Pennsylvania, and Terry Schiavo's anus, which her autopsy declared to be "patent and unremarkable."

Read him. And may all of our autopsies say the same damn thing.

Except for the Christians.