Let he who is without bullshit cast the first stone

by lestro

Apparently, James Dobson, the multi-millionaire president of one of the largest fundamentalist mega-church televangelical empires in the country is going to go after both Barack Obama’s views on Christianity and the Constitution during his daily Focus on the Family address tomorrow and he is apparently so proud of it he leaked it to the Associated Press:

As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement’s biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution […]

“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said.

Dobson and [senior VP of FOF, Tom] Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.

“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.

“… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

What a fucking tool. According to the story, here’s why:

“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?” referring to the civil rights leader.

So Dobson, a war supporter who ignores “Thou shalt not kill” when it behooves him to do so (and does the exact kind of bible cherry-picking bullshit (Leviticus, anyone?) one would normally associate with “deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview”) has the balls to talk about dragging biblical understanding through the gutter?

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy – chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”

You son of a bitch. The Sermon on the Mount, which details the Christian principles that the meek will inherit the earth and that pure shall have the kingdom of heaven and the peacemakers – THE PEACEMAKERS, YOU BUSH-SUPPORTING NIMROD – are the children of God.

And Leviticus, it is the book directly following Exodus that details all the stupid bullshit Moses had to deal with and includes the gem about two different fabrics (as brilliantly laid out to a Dr Laura-like character by President Bartlett during an episode of the West Wing).

You hypocrite, if I may paraphrase, take the plank out of your own fucking eye before you try and talk to someone about the speck in theirs. Please.

Obama is right. The problem is whose version of Christianity (or any religion, for that matter) one selects to follow. Even the arguments about the 10 Commandments being posted have to ask whose commandments? The Torah? Orthodox or Reformed? Catholic? Lutheran?

But Dobson doesn’t stop with fucking up the interpretation of the things he’s supposed to know about, and dives right into an area he doesn’t understand in the least: Constitutional history.

Dobson reserved some of his harshest criticism for Obama’s argument that the religiously motivated must frame debates over issues like abortion not just in their own religion’s terms but in arguments accessible to all people.

He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the “lowest common denominator of morality,” labeling it “a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”

“Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?” Dobson said. “What he’s trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.”

No, dickhole, you are required in a democracy to accept that other people have different beliefs and it is a “fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution,” indeed, to completely ignore the idea of separation of church and state or that whole First Amendment stuff about freedom of religion and all.

You are required in a democracy to accept that the majority does not share your opinion and people are allowed the CHOICE to believe what they want. You made your choice, now stop forcing your (obviously misinterpreted and fucked-up view of) religion on someone else and let them make theirs.

Hell, it’s in the Sermon on the Mount – the very passage Obama cited – it says “judge not lest ye be judged.”

So do it, Christian. Leave the judging to God and live by example, the way Jesus did. He didn’t force his religion on anyone and that is what drew people to him and his teachings of peace and forgiveness and poverty (including that line about it being easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven… Hey, aren’t you very, very rich, Jimmy? Have you even read Matthew?).

And never forget, Jimmy, that the founding fathers were not all Christians (many were Deists) and you can bet your ass that even among the Christians, John Adam’s puritanical New England faith was not the same as George Washington’s Virginia Episcopalian version or any of the Quakers in Pennsylvania or the Catholics in Maryland.

Therein lies the rub, Jimmy. Therein lies the rub.

The beatitudes, by the way Jimmy, since you apparently haven’t read them, you slick fuck, also say “Blessed are you when people insult you” so maybe this will help get you into heaven anyway. Oh, wait, it also says that applies when people “falsely say all kinds of evil against you” so I guess you’re fucked.

(For the record, Dobson does not support McCain and has said in the past he could not support him.)