Normally I Stand Up For Texas, But...

By the way, I just thought I should let all of you cultural studies majors and all of you religious people know that if you live in Texas and you want to abuse your daughter you can pin her on the floor and hurt her for a few hours and if you're a Christian or something you can tell the cops it was an exorcism and the state supreme court will let you go scott free. Oh, and, as a lawyer, I can tell you that the court's claim that this case is really "a dispute over religious conduct that would unconstitutionally entangle the court in church doctrine" is h*******t.

Does This Mean...There Is A God?

I'm not sure if this is proof of God's existence - or proof that God is truly dead - but Anton LeVey's "Black House," for decades the San Francisco headquarters of LeVey's Church of Satan, has now been supplanted by a really fucking ugly condo duplex.

Why You Shouldn't Wash Your Penis

A Uganda study has shown that men who wash their penis directly after sex run a significantly higher risk of HIV infection. Apparently the sooner after sex one washes, the higher the likelihood of infection. According to the study, men who washed more than 10 minutes after sex are significantly less likely to be infected with HIV.

Sexual Torture Preferred Means Of Eliminating HIV-Inducing Witches In Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is presently facing an AIDS catastrophe, accounting for 90 percent of HIV infections in the entire Oceania region. HIV diagnoses have risen there by around 30 percent every year since 1997, leaving an estimated 60,000 people living with the disease in 2005. The source of the disease's prodiguous rise in PNG is clear: the rampant practice of witchcraft among local women. Although a high level of sexual violence perpetrated against Papa New Guinea's female population has been identified as a major source of the HIV epidemic, presently a preferred method of combating the disease among PNG's population is sexual torture of the predominantly female witch community. One source estimates there have been more than 500 such attacks in PNG during the past year.

Witches Precipitate Rise In HIV In Mozambique

A community of practicing witches--mainly elderly women--are believed to be associated in the rise of fatal cases of HIV and AIDS in the African nation of Mozambique. Those identified as witches are frequently "kicked out of their families" and shunned by the community. Authorities have further linked a string of violent killings in Mozambique with practitioners of witchcraft, claiming that the murders have been perpetrated in order to sell human remains for use in rituals. Although Mozambican authorities do not yet have a handle on the situation, locals have contained practitioners of witchcraft in their communities by means of lynchings and arson. One man accused of practicing witchcraft is pictured above, standing next to his burned home.

Lindsay Lohan An Episcopalian!

My mother is going to be happy enough to cry: earlier this week, Paparazzi photographed Lindsay Lohan going to an Episcopal church! Episcopal churches are part of the mainline Protestant tradition in America and are historically related to The Scottish Episcopal church, a mainstream Christian sect in Scotland in full communion with The Church of England. After so many years of my being enamored with Catholics and Mormons, my mother is going to be so psyched about this one. Lindsay may be Irish, but she's no papist!

French Satanists Burn Churches, Reclaim Druidist Sites

Police in the west of France are pursuing a group of Satanists they suspect were involved in the burning of a 16th century church in the area. The Chapel of the Cross at Loqueffret near the remote tip of Brittany was burned Saturday to the point of collapse. Police found the letters "ABM" spraypainted on the walls of the destroyed church, which police suspect signify Aryan Black Metal, a Satanist movement which has links to heavy metal music, paganism and far-right politics. Gendarme Philippe Davadie, one of a 15-member team investigating the attacks, voiced his suspicions that the church was destroyed in order to reclaim a sacred Druidist site upon which the church was built.

Southern Baptists Neglect San Antonio's Taverns, Re-Elect Moderate President

The Southern Baptist Convention convened in San Antonio, TX this week, and yesterday the Convention re-elected the Rev. Frank Page, an apparently moderate leader amongst the candidates, for the convention's presidency. As Page spoke of his commitment to putting a more loving face on the Convention's agreed doctrinal rules and drew the line at compelling Baptist seminaries to fire staff that speak in tongues, the Convention's 10,000 delegates dissappointed San Antonio's dining industry by ordering very few cocktails.

Is Mitt Romney Satan?

Americans United for the Separation of Church And State has requested that the IRS investigate Bill Keller Ministries, a St. Petersburg, Florida religious organization, which posted a message online encouraging people to "stay home" rather than voting for Mitt Romney, "since if you vote for Romney you are voting for satan!” Keller’s ministry is a non-profit entity with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Federal tax law states that organizations holding this status may not endorse or oppose candidates for public office.

R.I.P. Jerry Falwell

The Reverend Jerry Falwell was pronounced dead today at Lychburg General Hospital in Lynchburg, Virginia after being found unresponsive in his office at Liberty University this morning. Founder of the "Moral Majority" and one of our times' most flamboyant opponents to modernism in all of its forms, Falwell held himself out as a segregationist, a homophobe, an enemy of secularism in schools, a millenialist and apocalypse-heralder, a proponent of South African Apartheid, and a crusader against pornography and the Teletubbies. Although Falwell lost his fabled case against Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flint (precipitated by Flint's publishing of a fake Campari add purporting to quote Falwell as recounting his first sexual experience--with his own mother in an outhouse), Falwell prevailed in a case the SEC prosecuted against him for allegedly issuing unsecured bonds fraudulently on behalf of his church. Falwell founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1971. His Thomas Road Baptist Church of Lynchburg presently counts its membership at 24,000. Falwell, never shy about making outrageous public statements, was fond of claiming that God is a Republican. With regard to Falwell's passing, of this much we are certain: the political dialogue in our nation will not be the same without him.

U.S. Gov't Agrees to Engrave Pentagrams On Military-Issued Headstones

A high priestess from a Wiccan congregation in Barneveld, Wisconsin and her fellow plaintiffs have reached an agreement with the federal government, by which the government is adding the "Wiccan pentacle" or pentagram to the list of the 38 religious emblems the government previously allowed to be placed on headstones. These emblems included those of several rather uncommon faiths, for example Sufism Reoriented, Eckankar and Seicho-No-Ie

Americans United for Separation of Church and State represented the plaintiffs. Rev. Barry W. Lynn, AU director, was pleased with the agreement, saying, "This settlement has forced the Bush Administration into acknowledging that there are no second class religions in America, including among our nation's veterans."

First Politician In American History Self-Identifies as "Non-Theist"

About a month ago, Representative Pete Stark (D-CA) became the only present member of Congress, as well as the first major American politician, to self-identify as a member of the single most-reviled group in our nation: people who do not believe in God. (I know what you're thinking, but Deism and Freemasonry don't count.)