Yeah, but you lost me when you bashed Nancy Reagan. Keep your writing focused on the subject you're writing about.

Somebody's got a poop fetish, and it's not the hummaseckshuls.

(Somebody besides Vitter, I mean.)

@1, and you speak from the volumes of material you've had published?

If that guy wants to sit in a pile of manure, I won't stop him.

Obama was a frontrunner when people tried tying him to shitty pastor things. Ted Cruz has been a joke practically his entire career.

Now threatening to execute people has got to be against the law. Someone charge the bastard, with something.

@1. Dan was writing about the subject, as in the hypocritical cherry picking of stuff from the bible by those who don't use its pages as toilet paper.

In fairness, Obama's preacher was a close confidant he'd known for over a decade--the minister of the church his family belonged to. However . . . in response to his situation, Obama issues an explanation in the form of a what may be his finest speech ("A More Perfect Union") and what commentators called the most important speech on race in 40 years. The Republican candidates will refuse to criticize this clown for fear of upsetting the Christian right base.

@5- The "shitty pastor" things they tried to tie Obama to consisted of a couple sermons in which Rev. Wright said a couple things that sounded kind of bad out of context but made a whole lot of sense with the adjacent sentences added. Can we say the same here?

"And some people believe the bible is the word of God and stuff and we have to respect their beliefs about biblical morality."

We do? Sorry - count me out. I'm under no obligation to respect those beliefs -- only their *right* to hold such beliefs. The beliefs themselves are asinine, ridiculous, and automatically earn you a seat at the kids table --- shhhh, the adults are talking...

@7, sadly in the US it's perfectly acceptable to exhort people to commit mass murder, it is our national past-time, after all. However, if someone demands the death of a specific person, "kill Joe Blow," then it's conspiracy to commit murder and they can be charged in the good ole cray cray US of A.

you can't ask them about this, because that's "gotcha" politics. or something liberal media something...

Gay is the new white.

@1-
He's not bashing Nancy Reagan, just pointing out that one who subscribes to a literal interpretation of the Bible would be obligated to execute Nancy Reagan as well as homosexuals.

If any Christian Pastor quotes Leviticus to condemn Homosexuality, then they need to quote how blended shirts, shellfish, working on the sabbath, having two crops at once on a farm, watching a pigskin being thrown around on the day of rest, and many more get some death sentences as well, especially the mixed blend clothes.. One thing that the merciless god and the LGBT-ays agree on. They wouldn't be caught dead in a mixed blend shirt..

Slavery is condone in the Bible, besides sexual slavery. I am still waiting for slave raids to Canada, or a nice road trip slave raid to Mexico..

@14: He called her a witch. She's not a witch.

DEAR QUEER NATION (AND OTHER TAXPAYERS): YOU PAID KIM DAVIS'S LEGAL FEES" Read the sick truth, and share it, so we can stop these demented -phobes. Find it at THE PICKFORD WORD blog at MOVIESFORYOURMIND.NET Now let's figure out how to stop them. Please, spread the word about the information in this blog.

At the very least, we can turn every intelligent mind away from going to Liberty University--either online, or on their creepy, god forsaken campus.

http://www.moviesforyourmind.net/the-pic…

Imagine no religion ...it's easy if you try.

@16, she's an adulterer, Raindrop.

@20: With whom?

Nancy was knocked up before she and Ronnie married. Not being a virgin on one's wedding night is a biblical death sentence.

The problem is that NOTHING these guys say will offend their 'base' enough to make them not vote for them. A few crocodile tears, magical 'forgiveness' from Jeebus, and they're good to go.

Meanwhile the Nader/Chomsky/Hipster crowd will proudly not vote because...Che Guevara isn't on the ballot?

Obviously not a Christian as you said, obviously don't understand Christian beliefs. Christians believe (according to the Bible [and it's capitalized because it's the title, journalists should know that]) we are no long under the law of the Old Testament, but the law of grace and forgiveness through Jesus, who fulfilled the law. Saying Christians want to kill all these individuals is like saying Muslims want to kill all non-Muslims. Know your stuff, bro.

@16 She consulted an astrologer. She's a witch. BURN HER!!!

Sorry, them's the rules.

Gee, Pastor Poopy Pus seems a little, um, theatrical. Ya don't suppose he's a graduate of the Marcus Bachmann School for Overly Dramatic Boys?

Methinks he doth protest too much.

@22: That is not adultery.
@25: Astrologers are not witches.

@16: Ronald Reagan was married to Jane Wyman. He left Jane, shacked up with Nancy. Ronald was committing adultery—and, by biblical principles, common law, etc., SO WAS NANCY. They were doing adultery to each other. Hot, sweaty adultery. Also: Ronnie called Nancy "mommy." Ick.

Well, he's right when he says: WE Are Messed Up

@27 I'll bet the fundies think otherwise. The mythos seems pretty clear on this:

http://www.openbible.info/topics/fortune…

@Raindrop, honey. It's pretty clear you like Nancy Reagan and don't think she should be killed for her sins. A more relevant question for you is, what do you think of the pastor's rant about homosexuality? Do you think it's the WORST sin? Do you think it's super icky, like running pustules? And -please answer this one at least- do you think homosexuals should be killed for the sin of being a homosexual? You strike me as a various curious person, and I'd really like to know how you reconcile what (to me) seem like disparate parts of your personality.

@30, wow! Many many more verses than pertain to homosexuality. Or abortion.

I listened to your links, he never once says to kill people participating in homosexual behavior. Your article is a based on something he never said.

Huhgoodone @33 “Both the Old Testament and the New Testament speak with authority and we otta receive it.” “In fact, Paul in First Romans, speaks of the sin of homosexuality as worthy of death.” And we all know what the authority of Leviticus says: worthy of execution by peers.

If the word of god at the highest level of clarity is that the sin of homosexuality is worthy of death, and we otta receive that authority, what are you concluding other than he thinks we otta receive the authority that the sin of homosexuality is worthy of death? When we receive that authority, how can we think it's a bad thing when people who commit that sin, die? Are killed? Are executed?

@31: That's a pretty silly question: "Do you think homosexuals should be killed?" - considering that I'm a homosexual. I concur with Dan, except that he is still wrong about the Reagans.
Jane Wyman filed for divorce in 1948 and it was finalized in 1949. She filed for divorce over politics with the Screen Actors Guild, and she found him a bore, and had nothing to do with infidelity. Ronald Reagan met Nancy Davis in 1949, well after he had separated from Jane and the divorce was in process.
Unless there's evidence that Ronald and Nancy had sex before the divorce with Jane was finalized, there's no adultery against Jane.

@35, thanks.

raindrop @35, meet Jesus:

"But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery."
(Matthew 5:32)
To use the terms of our dear reverend, this strikes me as "the highest level of clarity". And it's not some obscure old testament verse, nor Paul writing in letters. It's Jesus himself. And he doesn't just say it once. No, this is so important to him that he repeats it again in Matthew 19:9.
So I think it is very clear that, in the biblical-literalist sense, Ronald and Nancy Reagan were engaging in adultery (since, as you have helpfully pointed out, the divorce was not due to adultery). So yeah, anyone who thinks the bible is the literal word of god better go and stone Nancy Reagan. (And that doesn't even cover the astrology).

Ronald Reagen called his wife mommy, and he was President? Great. Weirdos running the world.
I've never read the Bible, even though reared a Catholic. No wonder all those nuns were so fucking down on everything.
And here was I thinking all these years, Jesus was a good guy.
Now that gays can get married, all these freaks are coming out yelling and screaming big time.

Surely for these people, it would be better to just leave it to God to hand out punishments? Gays, adulterers, witches etc, he'll just send them right on down to Hell. No body on earth has to execute anyone, go to human prison.
So you God Mob, time will do the trick. Time and God's way.

@36: You're most welcome.

@37: It's not adultery if you're divorced from the previous spouse.

@ 34 ..but jesus never called for anyone to be put to death..or rather if you gonna kill someone you better be blameless.. ' he is is without sin, cast the first stone.. and then adding can no one condemn you ?..then neither do i '

raindrop @40,

Yes, for biblical literalists and for Catholics, it is.

Not currently in US law of course, but the context is sin according to the authority of the old and new testaments.

@42: Not necessarily. A biblical divorce has the right of remarriage with God's blessing. More here. So it boils down to whether Jane and Ronnie's divorce was biblical.

reverend dr dj riz @41,

That’s why these fundies don’t pay much attention to Jesus at all. He was anti-legalism, and while he acknowledged the terribleness of divorce/adultery he was anti-stoning. So the fundies focus on Leviticus (utterly legalistic) and Paul (somewhat legalistic) instead so they can extract rules to obey and prove that they are more biblical than other people who don’t obey them and they will go to heaven while the insufficiently-biblical go to hell.

It’s pretty twisted, and they use the motte and bailey (thanks, Eudaemonic!) effectively to keep outsiders from really grasping what’s going on. If you pushed this guy publicly he’d probably say something about forgiveness, but if you were a fly on the wall in his bible study group you’d realize how far off the rails he really is.

Other tenets of fundies: women must obey their husbands as if they were god; children (at least girls) require no education beyond bible-reading, homemaking and survival skills; infants must be beaten with plumbing line to teach them to fear god; child marriage has no downsides and has many upsides; women must not vote; Geoff Botkin’s descendants will take over New Zealand and make it a theocracy within the next 200 years; raising people from the dead is a sin; seeking medical care is rejection of god’s love; and homosexuality should be punishable by public stoning.

Obviously not all fundies believe all these things, but yeah, some do. They also know that not everyone is receptive to these ideas, so they are careful to keep them in the motte. In the bailey they declare that god clearly states that homosexuality is punishable by public execution (and that god is love and forgiveness). In the motte they complain that the anti-religious-freedom secular state prevents them from carrying out god's law but it will all be better in New Zealand once it is run by Botkin.

raindrop @43:

That doesn’t add up.

If Nancy Reagan was kicked out by her hypes and because she committed adultery, then the divorce was biblical (and she was an adulteress).

If Nancy Reagan and her husband divorced for any other reason, she is an adulteress if she had sex with another man while her ex was still alive.

raindrop @43,

Your link proves that Nancy Reagan is an adulteress.

Case 1: Her husband divorced her because she committed adultery. The divorce is biblical; Nancy Reagan is an adulteress.

Case 2: The divorce was for any other reason. The divorce is unbiblical; Nancy Reagan is an adulteress.

@46, well, we can only pray then that the good Lord made an exception and graced Ronald and Nancy's holy matrimony with his blessing in 1949.

Better, that she will enter heaven with god's grace even though she (like the rest of us) doesn’t deserve it.

Even better, that god doesn’t actually care about anyone’s sex life or eating habits.

Even even better, that there is no god, that this is the only life we get and that we need to spend it being the best, most compassionate version of ourselves we can. Which does not involve worrying about other people’s sex lives.

@35"Unless there's evidence that Ronald and Nancy had sex before the divorce with Jane was finalized, there's no adultery against Jane."

Uh Patty was born seven months after the wedding between Ronnie and Mommie.. Nancy Reagan was known as someone who put out in Hollywood, she ain't no virgin when she married Ronnie, but then again, he was over 40 and she was over 30, they would be in psychiatric hospitals if they didn't sleep around if they didn't get some booty calls..

@27 "Astrologers are not witches"

Leviticus 19 verse 31

"Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God."
i.e. don't go around god's back with false idolatry. What do you think is Astrology? How is it different than Tarot Card Reading?

Both Reagans were very non religious. They may won the Fundamentalist Christian vote in President Reagans' election wins, but neither went to Church.. They made excuses, but neither spent many Sundays at Church...

Relying heavily on Astrology to plan one's life, as Nancy Reagan did, is pretty blasphemous

Wow, I had never heard of Kevin Swanson before but that guy has one of the strongest "anonymous rest stop cocksucker" vibes I've ever seen.

Okay I was going to say you guys can stop now with the trying to convince raindrop but at some point the beating over the head with Bible verses went from tedious to genuinely entertaining. Carry on.

Another note, why this faux-eweeeewness over Ronnie calling Nancy "mommy" as a term of endearment? Isn't that a bit hypocritical from the creator of whatever "floats-your-boat" HUMP! film festival? Why does "mommy" from a straight man to a straight woman give you the willies, but "daddy" from a gay man to a gay man in a "bear/cub" relationship not? It's also not that uncommon. Don't we remember our own grandparents sniping each other with those pronouns?

Why is Nancy Fucking Reagan even a thing? She was a power hungry asshole like her husband. Among the other shitty things they did, their indifference contributed to the deaths of thousands at the beginning of the AIDS 'epidemic,'

Fuck those assholes.

Yes Alison @49.

This stuff beats me down today. Such horrible things to say to or about anyone.

@raindrop.

I really don't think anyone has a problem with Ronnie and Nancy getting it on before marriage, or adultry, or calling each other "mommy and daddy." I think the point always comes down to this: people like this preacher are awfully fond of pulling out certain bible verses to condemn the gayz like you, sir, but then ignore the really inconvenient parts of the bible themselves. You know IOKYAR.

I myself call my personal boy toy Papi. I have been known to call a hot woman, "ay mamacita." However, I don't wave the bible around or say that the Gayz need to be killed because I refuse to live my life according to the prurient opinions of unwashed bronze age goat herding men.

This is an extraordinary claim not really backed up by the video. There's more than enough wiggle room with context here that we're not shown, he could be saying anything.

Well I agree with Pastor Swineson on one thing. It IS inappropriate to carve happy faces (or anything else) on open sores. People with sores need bandages and maybe some topical cream.

fetish @59,

Only because you’re assuming that he is not well-known for supporting the death penalty for homosexuality. It’s a pretty loud dog-whistle.

The guy is pretty clear that stoning people for homosexuality is biblical in a way that applies today, post-JC; and he supports Uganda’s death penalty for homosexuality.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ke…

@58 - of course - my point was when tangential commentary is woven in to make a point that disparages a former First Lady unnecessarily, it should be called out.

Why raindrop? Is a former First Lady somehow above the laws of God, which is what Dan was trying to pin point.
How if you going to follow two thousand yr old rules , it has to be applied right across the board.
And as Rujax @ 55 pointed out, where was this First Lady when some deep compassion was called for?
She deserves no special treatment. All equal in the eyes of God.

raindrop @62, if we all agree that not being a virgin on your wedding night is nothing disparaging, why are you saying that Dan is disparaging her?

He’s just pointing out the hypocrisy. If you’re going to get all Levitical Outrage, why single out gays? Jesus never said anything about homosexuality but he spoke out regularly against adultery.

Rachel handled the Swanson idiocy well as usual by linking it to presidential candidates that attended the "freedom of religion" lunacy.

I have seen a LOT of wingnut religious wackoism in my day but Swanson was the worst by far even worse than Phelps if that is possible. The only thing I regret about seeing it is my bedtime was close by and that SURELY was not a good thing with which to fall asleep. So, instead, I tried to get that puke out of my mind and think of all the hundreds of thousands at gay pride rallies my partner and I have seen all over the country, think too about you and the the Rachel's of the world and the millions of artistic, creative and noteworthy human beings who have contributed so much to our culture and the world. Swanson is a bad man with a bad very bad message, hurtful especially to those who do not have the emotional ability to oppose those toxic excuses for humanity. Worse to think that any one of those Republican candidate idiots could even get near the oval office sends a chill down my spine.

We need the oval AND the Congress. We need to make inroads in the states. It's a tall order but our side needs to get our people out to vote! Otherwise all of our gains through often the courts will be expunged. As Michaelangelo Signorelli says "It ain't over!"

How stupid we must look to the developed nations who think 1/2 of us are just plain nuts!

does Kevin Swanson remind anyone else of Seinfeld? Maybe Kev is just the sheltered cousin who takes Jerry's handmedown jackets. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

@64: Indeed, Dan's pointing out hypocrisy - and there are so many ways to add color to that argument. The Reagans, and a lot of it deserved, is delicious fodder for such Dan to use, and he has been for years. However you can do that creatively without being disparaging or disrespectful to Nancy, who's now in her mid-90's and hardly ever makes an appearance. It's time for him to choose someone else.

I don’t see where he’s being disrespectful or disparaging to Nancy at all. He’s being disprespectful and disparaging toward hypocrisy.

Try this exercise: this is an alternate universe. Dan loves Nancy as much as he loved Ann Landers. Reread the post. Does it still make sense?

Raindrop, age does not immune one from the wrath of God. She'll know soon enough what her real punishment is. Being used as an example by Dan, is nothing to what is In store for her.
And me. I too, am an adulterer.

@68: Dan wrote:

And for the deaths of witches. And for the death of Nancy Reagan too.

Yes, I understand how he used Nancy as the subject for the hypocrisy but he could have easily selected any Hollywood or political celebrity, just about. So, yes, we're quibbling over style at this point. But for those that just scan articles, as we all do, those startling words do stand out and are therefore disrespectful.

Raindrop, Dan doesn’t think Nancy Reagan should be executed.

Kevin Swanson however thinks that you and Dan and I should all be executed, but gives Nancy a pass even though the same set of rules that called for our executions would also call for hers. But he likes Nancy Reagan so he doesn’t apply the rules to her.

We aren’t actually surprised that Kevin Swanson isn’t calling for the public stoning of Nancy Reagan because that would be insane. The thing is, calling for our execution is insane too.

Right, nobody is calling for executions. Swanson went on to talk about repentance - but that was "conveniently" left out of the clip for this article. Fire and brimstone is always balanced by salvation. So what's really new here?

There seems to be a common denominator with fundamentalist pastors and the media - they are both deliberately provocative to get people upset so that they can underscore their points.

The trick here raindrop is them that commit adultery, they can just repent between each bout. Yeah sorry Lord.
Gays don't want to repent. They got nothing to repent for. Nobody has been hurt here. Orientation is not a choice. Adultery is.

I understand how he used Nancy as the subject for the hypocrisy but he could have easily selected any Hollywood or political celebrity

How would that have been any more respectful? Is it her age, her conservatism, or her status as a widow that you think should recuse her from being the object of criticism or satire?

Swanson went on to talk about repentance - but that was "conveniently" left out of the clip for this article. Fire and brimstone is always balanced by salvation. So what's really new here?

Anyone even passingly familiar with Christianity already knows repentance is an important part of the mix. Leaving aside, for a moment, that repentance requires knowing (or believing - not a volitional act, btw) that what one is doing is wrong, and/or having reason to believe that the admonishment at hand is credible ... Fire and brimstone is one thing; it matters not if what they believe about the afterlife isn't true. But Swanson has publicly voiced support for the Ugandan policy, an actual law with actual repercussions (and, at least in principle, actual executions).

Of course, you're mixing up your arguments. This is supposed to be the thread where you agree that this sonofabitch is execrable while concern-trolling about Dan being mean to poor Nancy. The other thread is where you downplay the importance of tacitly supporting those in your base who support execution of gays (unless they repent, natch) because the economy, or some such some such.