by Scott Kaelen
This is God’s declaration that no man who sustains a severe genital injury will be accepted into Heaven. Deuteronomy 23:1 is one of many verses from the Bible that lend weight to showing how petty God really is, and this is the deity who all Christian Soldiers have chosen to follow. Not only are atheists, homosexuals and suicides not getting admittance through the pearly gates, but neither are the soldiers who fought, killed and died (in the name of their God, or not) during all those countless wars, especially if they sustained a genital injury.
Many who perished in the historical holy wars probably died from sword-thrusts to the groin, and likely lay not only in agony, but also in mortal fear (if they’d read their holy book correctly) during their final minutes of life.
But it’s not just yesterday’s soldiers to whom the words of God apply, it’s also to all of the Christians serving in today’s Armed Forces, because, after all, God’s words are eternal, right? Nowadays, many deaths are caused by IEDs, road-side bombs, grenades and the like, and we all know what damage such devices can do, especially in regard to the Deuteronomy 23:1 quote.
But God doesn’t care. He isn’t interested in any excuses. Those soldiers, he thinks, should just have paid closer attention and covered themselves a bit better. No Heaven for those suckers, regardless of how strong their faith was.
Suicide is seen by Christians as a sin because it is first and foremost the murder of a human. Murder is a sin, ergo so is suicide. And yet, when someone commits suicide there are so many Christians willing to judge them, to call them out posthumously and shout about how they won’t get into Heaven. But when a soldier dies in war, whether he’s killed one enemy or a thousand – or, indeed, none – he is branded a hero by the self-same Christian hypocrites.
If I hear of a person having committed suicide, my reaction wholly depends on who they were, whether I knew them, liked them, and, if so, whether I considered them a good person. If I liked them, I’ll see it as a terrible shame that they took their own life, especially based on my atheistic assumption that, no matter how bad life may get, it just can’t trump death.
DOES GOD DEFEND HOMOSEXUALITY?
The following Bible excerpt contains male genitalia mutilation, same-sex acts, and a heavy sprinkling of coveting (but absolutely no begetting.)
Deuteronomy 25:11–12: When men strive together, one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.
Two men engaged in nefarious but mutually-consentual goings-on, possibly naked but certainly with their secrets on display, are caught during a sordid smiting session when one of their wives bursts into the room. The men pretend to be engaged in a wrestling match, but the wife is no fool. Shocked beyond words, she marches up behind the man holding her husband and snatches him by the testicles (trying desperately not to notice the hairy, quivering buttock crevice above) and begins to squeeze those sweetmeats like a ball of dough, and not in a nice way.
God’s law concerning such a situation is quite clear: if two men are caught wrestling one another (read: rumpy-pumping), and the wife of one catches them at it, and in her anger grabs the stones of her husband’s so-called opponent and begins to grind them in her fist like a pair of Baoding exercise balls, then her husband should take a conveniently-placed limb-remover (read: meat cleaver in the bedroom) and chop her hand off. Furthermore, the cheating husband should not feel pity for his wife as she writhes on the floor, screaming in a growing pool of her own blood.
Worth mentioning here is the 10th Commandment, which states: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s … manservant … nor his ass.
The cheating husband is caught coveting both of the above, although it remains unclear whether his lover is also his neighbour. Such small-print is probably immaterial in the grander scheme of religious doctrine. Besides, being homosexual isn’t a crime; the crime as described in the 10th Commandment is non-gender-specific adultery.
The Old Testament God does not seem to be anti-gay; if anything, he has a tendency of tilting more in the direction of pro-gay. But don’t bother trying to explain that to Donald Trump or any other unmitigated bigots and disingenuous Christians in this sorry world.
CHRISTIANITY & HOMOSEXUALITY
Being heterosexual, I won’t pretend that two men together sexually doesn’t unsettle me. I’d rather not chance upon seeing it in action, so to speak, be it on media or in public … and Heaven forbid me ever witnessing it in private! That being said, if I’m disturbed by seeing a coupling of men on television, I’ll just ride the storm until the scene has passed, and get on with the remainder of the show without grumbling. In public, I’ll just turn my glance away.
I say live and let live, as long as no one is being harmed (and of course the term ‘harm’ is a big umbrella.) If a gay man isn’t preaching homosexuality from the pulpit, if he’s not teaching our children that homosexuality is the right way to be, then he’s not getting in my way at all.
To expand on my stance, I’m no stranger to defending gays and lesbians against bigoted and hate-mongering Christians and Muslims. I’ve been there, because homosexuality and atheism are equal sins in the words of the holy books, so I will defend them to the hilt (no disgraceful pun intended.)
And now there’s an elephant in the room: gay children of staunch, god-fearing parents. When such kids are constantly being told by their parents that they’re demonic sinners who are going to Hell, those kids are better off without their despicable parents. Get away from that oppression, is what I say; you’ll probably go on to live a much better life beyond the umbrella domination of your Christian parents. It’s not your fault you were brought into the world by indoctrinated, hate-filled fools. But good on you for resisting the same indoctrination they fell folly to.
Christianity blows a lot about homosexuality, almost exclusively singling out the “G” part of the ever-increasing “LGB” acronym while scarcely referencing the remaining parts (I believe it’s currently reached LGBTQ; I’m waiting for them to include monkeys, robots and aliens.)
Only a Christian who has read and who follows every teaching in their holy book will see homosexuality as a sin, just as they’ll see atheism as a sin. If a Christian says these things are not sins, good on them, but that’s a cherry-picking Christian, and such picking and choosing of what is or isn’t relevant is just as annoying (and potentially as dangerous) as following every word of the Bible. Well done for not pointing a bigoted finger, but why are you even bothering to call yourself a Christian at all? It should be all or nothing, surely, when it comes to following the doctrines of your God?
And please don’t tell me it’s mainly about Jesus, not God, and that Jesus was all about love. He wasn’t. And let’s not forget Miss Magdalene.
In Mark 7, Jesus had a go at the Jews by accusing them of not following the commandment of God - ‘commandment’ meaning not only the words Moses wrote on the stone tablets (including the ones he destroyed in a tantrum), but everything God said in the Old Testament - but what does Jesus’s so-called ‘new covenant’ do? It apparently negates pretty much any part of the Old Testament, or at least the parts any given Christian wants it to negate. Jesus shows his hypocrisy, and I put it to you that the majority of Christians throughout history and the present day have indeed followed his lead in that regard.
During a big chunk of Mark 7, Jesus has quite a go at the Pharisees. Here’s what he says to them in verses 8–9:
“For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.”
What then are all Christians of today doing if they’re not rejecting the word of God? It seems to me that God doesn’t play much of a vital role in Christianity at all; if he did, the Old Testament would be relevant.
You may think I’ve digressed from the point; not so, for Mark 7 gets better, and highlights Jesus’s opinions on anything sexual outside of heterosexual marital sex.
Mark 7:21–23: For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.
Read it again if you missed the point. I’ve quoted the King James version, but the New International version changes the list to: sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.
Do you see it now? Let’s brush aside the fact that ‘folly’ is considered ‘evil’ by Jesus, and look at ‘sexual immorality’. What, then, was considered ‘immoral’ by Jesus? We could come to the answer by reflexively acknowledging what, during the time of Jesus, was considered to be ‘moral’; the answer is short: marital sex. And since same-sex marriages weren’t legalised until recently, that narrows it down even further.
But what do we in the 21st century consider immoral? Some people wrongly compare homosexuality to paedophilia and rape (except for where it is combined with either or both of the others); the latter two are undoubtedly and rightfully considered immoral by modern standards, but society is slowly accepting homosexual acts as acceptable, insofar as they are mutually consented.
There was a time when child prostitutes were as common as adult prostitutes; sometimes they were ten years old or less. To most of us today that’s sick, but at other times and places throughout history and across the world, it was and still is another story. That’s mainly because of the societies in which they occurred, which were mostly ran by men who practically forced such lifestyles to exist.
We’re an evolved culture in the 21st century First World, or at least we should be. But where does that leave homosexuality? As long as it isn’t forced or coerced onto someone who does not want it, it should be allowed to be acted upon by those who wish to do so with one another. A similar argument can not be made for rape or paedophilia.
Incest between adult family members, while entirely undesirable for many, is also still an act that occurs in the dark corners; indeed, it was practically lauded in the Old Testament – you don’t need to look further than Lot and his daughters for proof of that. Should incest be accepted and allowed? What makes it any better or worse than homosexuality? What about incestuous homosexuality between adults? I’m not advocating it, but consider the notion if you can cast aside your socially-inherited aversions for a moment. Preconceptions change from one generation to the next, after all. What makes one right and another wrong? Food for thought.
Forget about God or Jesus; those guys are not great sources for what is or isn’t sexually moral. When it comes to homosexuality, incest, rape, paedophilia and prostitution (and other elements considered as deviating from the norm) there are many areas we could or should now accept in our enlightened way of thinking, but there are also obvious areas where we must draw the line and say No. To me, the most obvious of these are:
Committing sexual acts on children.
Committing sexual acts on animals.
Committing sexual acts on dead bodies.
Committing sexual acts on individuals against their will.
Committing mental coercion with malicious intent.
MUHAMMAD’S CURSE
In the hadith, Muhammad the prophet of Allah ‘cursed’ a young orphan girl for smiling at him, by saying to her, “May you not advance in years!” When confronted about this, Muhammad went off on a typical religious tangent, saying how he was, after all, only human and could be pleased or displeased, yadda yadda, and how anyone he wrongly ‘cursed’ would be rewarded on the Day of Resurrection.
Muhammad later went on to marry a nine year old girl named Aisha.
To me, Muhammad’s ‘curse’ claim is nothing more than the mutterings of a man who has been caught out. The problem lies in the fact that the orphan girl mistook his words as being a curse, when they were more likely a compliment instead; a compliment from a paedophile to a girl on the cusp of puberty.
Let’s modernise Muhammad’s words. The translation into English of what he said is, “May you not advance in years!” That same sentence could be heard today as, “Well, aren’t you a sweet, little thing? I hope you always stay as young and beautiful and underdeveloped.”
Of course, modern First World men (and I do not include Muslims in this generality) are able to separate the sweetness of a pre-pubescent child from the sexual appeal of a post-pubescent young woman merely by the implementation of personal and social ethics and morals. But that has not always been the case; in earlier centuries in England it was common practice for a man to wed a girl at the turn of puberty, and as we all know, the onset of puberty in a girl can begin as young as nine. Consummating the wedding was a very real occurrence.
This means that what we call paedophilia today was for thousands of years widely accepted as common practice. The modern way of thinking has recognised that a girl between the ages of nine and twelve (when the majority begin puberty) is still too mentally underdeveloped, if not physically, to engage in sexual intercourse. In fact, modern law makes it illegal to have sexual relations with anyone under the age of sixteen, though in many earlier cultures a sixteen year old female or male would already have been classed as an adult for a couple of years, if not several.
This was the case in 7th Century Arabia, when a girl became an adult at the onset of puberty. Such was the world then. The lessons came early and came hard. And the men of that time took full advantage of it… because it was men who passed the law in the first place. A nation of paedophile males hiding behind religious doctrine, and a nation of oppressed and brutalised females brainwashed by those same doctrines into accepting such oppression as normal and acceptable.
Can anyone sincerely say that the situation with Islam has changed for the better over the last fourteen centuries?
THE PRICE
From the poetry volume DeadVerse
by Scott Kaelen
I dreamt I was a Muslim;
I’d been one all my days.
Moreover, I was a woman,
my beauty cloaked beneath a veil.
Dominated and servile,
I stayed inside the house,
leaving only when bidden
by Husband mine – the alpha male.
With face free from the hijab,
I cooked and cleaned and prayed,
a fresh breeze upon my cheek,
but ever in reach – my silken jail.
We had a strong-willed daughter
who found some wayward friends.
They called her worship of Allah
a false endeavour, of no avail.
Today arrived mujahideen,
and we donned our darkened cowls.
Hand in hand, Mahala and I
were led outside, our minds assailed.
Our loyalty was put on trial
by men with scimitars.
One by one they questioned us;
I swore my faith had never failed.
Beside me, my girl trembled,
but hissed defiantly,
Yaqta’ ‘omrak, kol kharrak!
and then she died, her head impaled.
With a cry I awoke, an equal,
my gender not condemned,
my shade of skin irrelevant,
but an echo remained – Mahala’s wail…
To my daughter’s room I stumbled,
right up to her bedside.
Her pallid skin in moonlight bathed,
in sleep, she sighed, her breath so frail.
DID GOD LOSE HIS BALLS?
Did God lose his balls, or is he simply not there?
Call it the Deluge if you like, or call it the Great Flood or the Local Flood, it’s all semantics. According to scripture, God, in 2300BC, was sickened by the wickedn
ess of mankind and sent a flood to devastate the world. At that time in human history there were a mere 20 million people worldwide. That’s less people than currently live in the Greater London area of England. That’s seven and a quarter billion less people than are on the planet today. Why then, if God supposedly exists, has he not since been sickened by humanity’s continuing acts of depravity and barbarism, especially when such acts have been multiplied a thousand-fold by the critical increase in population? Why has he not acted since the Great Flood? It’s not because he’s lost his balls, nor is it because he’s become apathetic, nor is it due to him having turned his back on his so-called creation and gone off to some other parsec of the universe. The reason he hasn’t shown his face since the Deluge is that he simply is not, nor ever was, there.
And don’t come back at me by saying that all natural disasters are sent by God or Allah or Yahweh; they are not, and I don’t see a Third Testament or a New Quran decreeing any modern disasters as being divine. That’s because such a book wouldn’t receive the same credibility as did the now-ancient Abrahamic holy books.
GOD LOVES
(IF ONLY IT ENDED THERE)
Shall we have a look at the varying levels of what God’s followers say about him? Because even Christians will admit that the differences between them can be extreme.
• “God loves…” – This is the relatively harmless level. When you’re having a hard time, people at this level will say things like: “I’m praying for you,” or, “God loves you.” They’ll tell you: “They’re in a better place,” or, “She’s at peace now,” when someone you care about dies. If you’ve done something sinful, they’ll say, “I’ll pray to God for your forgiveness,” or, “Jesus died for our sins, all you have to do is love God in return.”
• “God judges…” – This is where God-fearers have slipped a level deeper into their indoctrination. These people are less able to form rational thought processes. Their knowledge of the Bible is limited to what other Christians tell them. On the subject of homosexuality, they’ll say, “Those boys shouldn’t be doing that; God doesn’t like it,” or, “That’s frowned upon in the Bible, you know?” On the subject of suicide, they’ll say: “Oh, poor woman, God won’t let her into Heaven now,” or, “He killed himself; he’s going to Hell.”
