morality legislation agenda pbs special

[iftsiga]

I expect this to depress me this evening, even if it doesn't cover anything I don't already know.

+It's on PBS stations anywhere, you can look up showtimes in your area. Should be repeated tomorrow many places. It's short, mostly about South Dakota. Apparently there are some web only bits at http://www.pbs.org/now/ ...The interviewer seems to be restraining herself mightily from giving the smug sanctimonious head of the abstinence education movement a slap with a shoe. ++Alas, there are no "desirious of shoe-slapping" confessions at the website, but there are broader things covered than the televised bit was able to do.

Comments

[simmeringhatred.livejournal.com]

"When is it appropriate for personal morality to become government policy?"

If by "personal morality", we mean "unsubstantiated primitive religious superstition", I would say...
Never. Ever. No government anywhere should endorse any religion or religious worldview at all.

Speaking of primitive superstition, I saw the last bit of the Passion of the Christ on TV last night. Wow. Gotta hate those sneering murdurous Jews.
I cant believe how many people were taken in by that giant mess of pious flummery.

[xauenmurph.livejournal.com]

I agree. Specifically, sexual morality being dictated by anyone who tries to use the bible as a model is a huge laugh (as well as frightening). So where do the patriarchs with the big harems fit in? are we stoning prostitutes or just flimsily denying that one was an apostle in those chapters they neatly excised?

I haven't seen TP. So, it's not JUST a nasty bit of sadomasochistic gratuitousness, it's got ugly anti-Semitism too? splendid.

[xauenmurph.livejournal.com]

not to mention all the dashing out of brains of little ones against rocks.

[simmeringhatred.livejournal.com]

Satan is a clever fellow. You think you are using your god given reason and common sense, but really, you have been deceived by the ultimate enemy. It is his words you speak now, the god of this world!

The Passion is everything you could expect and more (at least from the little I saw). The bad guys (the Jews, and to a lesser extent, the Romans) are dipicted in the most cartoonish manner imaginable. Have you seen Commando, with big Arnie? Or the Russians in Rambo 2 and 3? We are talking that kind of careful characterisation, and sophisticated explication of their motives. Oh, and the Devil is transgendered, it seems. It contains all the usual Christian ahistorical horseshit about the ancient world. There were a couple of sops to modern scholarship, like having Jesus both tied and nailed onto his cross (so as not to abandon the wounds of the stigmata and Turin shroud, but also being able to say "well, thats why he didnt fall off, since we accept that nails in your hands cant hold the bodies weight alone") However, since the bible only mentions the nails, that seems to me to be somewhat of an... editorial decision? Something I was assured by the faithful in Ohio was completely impossible in such a "straight from the book" adaptation.
Quick review, based on much careful thought, reading, and having seen 30 minutes of the film: Complete Bollocks.