Michael Palin Calls Retreat

Scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.


 



Yes, in his misspent youth, Uncle Cephas used to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus.  Yes, and I'm aware how a lot of it could get downright blasphemous.  However, as a lover of documentaries, I couldn't help myself with the minor theme in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with the "Noted Historian" commenting in best documentary manner on the Arthurian legends, only to be cut down in mid-sentence by one of the subjects of his talk, and then having snippets of police questioning his widow, hunting clues, and, in the end, in the midst of a great battle scene, swooping onto the battel field to arrest several of King Arthur's stalwarts. 
Now, Michael Palin, one of the Pythons, has come out to state that his old crew would never mock Islam.  Why?  There are a lot of humorless people out there and they're well-armed.  Apparently, Sir Michael is a good disciple of Bertrand Russell who'd rather live on his knees than die on his knees, and is now living on his knees.  Brave,brave, brave Sir Michael!

So, how do you address a bold iconoclast of yesteryear?
Stick your thumbs in your armpits, flap your arms, and say, "Buck-buck-cluck-AAAAH! Buck-buck-cluck-AAAAH!"

 

Marriage Equality, the Sexual Revolution, and Uncle Cephas

Now that I'm being bombarded by Facebook messages urging me to support Maryland's Question on homosexual marriage, I've decided to speak out.

Uncle Cephas will not stand for normalizing homosexual marriage for three reasons; two secular, one religious.

The religious one's easy.  The Old Testament found homosexuality an abomination worthy of the death penalty (Leviticus 20:13), while the New Testament calls it one of the corrupt fruits of idolatry (Romans 1:26-27).  I know there are many high-minded, "progressive" Christians out there who believe we should be as solicitous for the feelings of practicing homosexuals as we are for those of everyone else (including the chronically bad tempered? violent? thieving?), but between them and the Scriptures, the Scriptures win.

The secular ones are twofold: one is immediate, the other concerns the future.

Regarding the future, we won't know if I'm right or wrong until after I'm dead.  But I suspect that after a generation of young men grows up after being raised by two "daddies" ("fathers" doesn't seem appropriate), a lot of the younger lawyers now arguing so passionately for "marriage equality", adoption by homosexuals, and the like will sympathetically take the class action cases of unhappy young men  and sail off into comfortable retirement after suing the pants off of every institution that made their future clients' tales of growing up buggered an unhappy reality. And, of course, the courts will be clogged with such cases.

But the more immediate reason I oppose the LGBT agenda is one that can't be talked about in mixed company, so I request the ladies to skip a few paragraphs.

Having reached the age when the Doc wants to look at my prostate now and again, I simply can't believe that someone who likes getting the moral equivalent of a rectal exam is healthy; and I can't help believing that whoever gets his kicks giving it isn't more than just a little bit cruel.

Frankly, the whole sexual revolution should've soured long ago.  Back in the Silly 'Sixties and Sillier 'Seventies, we were all assured that utter openness and freedom about sexual matters would prevent marriage breakup, make out children healthier and happier, and be generally good for society and even for the fishes in the sea (well, maybe not them).  However, a generation later, our marriages are failing at a higher rate, and even MSNBC reports that one in four teenaged girls has an STD. We have growing underclasses of all demographics growing up fatherless, and all the social pathologies that follow such a phenomenon.

Now, I doubt that what I say will be taken seriously by very many.  Most modern Americans, in their hearts of hearts, doubt that there will be a real judgment for them after they die, and believe that you only go around once in life and have to grad for all the gusto you can.  Hence, what earlier generations called irresponsibility or even sin will be eagerly pursued until we either go extinct, or have a Reconstructionist or Islamic revolution forcing better behavior.

Unless, of course, God decides to be merciful.

Disturbing Thoughts About "the Religion of Peace"

Recently, 57% of Swiss voters voted to ban the building of minarets in their country. This was neither a ban on the practice of Islam or the building of mosques. Perhaps the reason was that they just didn't like the thought of five daily Azzan disturbing the peace of their cobbled cities and Alpine valleys. Perhaps they thought that the minaret is a sign of Islamic triumphalism rather than the mere practice of the religion.

In any case. Libya's Moammar Qaddafi reacted to the news by saying how hard it would be to build new churches in Muslim-majority countries.

Huh?

Already, few Muslim countries permit the building of new churches. In Egypt and Turkey, Christians (and Jews) are required to worship in pre-existing edifaces, following older Ottoman statutes. In Saudi Arabia, the practice of any non-Islamic religion is forbidden, and can be punished by deportation or even death. Where new Christian movements have arisen, such as Evangelicals in Turkey and the Kabyle region of Algeria, they are required to meet in private homes--although there may be some unlicensed shanties in a couple of Turkish cities used as churches.

While the Swiss electorate's reaction to Islamic inroads in Europe may be extreme, the fact is that the Muslim world is extremely short on tolerance--regardless of what President Obama said in Cairo. At the present time, there are active movements against the Coptic minority in Egypt, while half of pre-war Iraq's Christians have fled. Arrests of Christians of Muslim background are on the rise in Iran, while Pakistan's Christians are subjected to frequent abductions and rapes of their daughters.

Indeed, while many school textbooks laud the toleration of Ummayad Spain and Saladin's Egypt (with no mention of how Dhimmi laws, which made a tolerated non-Muslim's testimony equal to half of that of a Muslim), the Qu'ran and Hadith are replete with commands to subjugate non-believers. Many still take Muhammad's massacre of the Jewish males of Medina and the enslavement of the women and children as normative Islamic practice. The late Samuel Huntington paused to reflect on Islam's "bloody borders"--and recent developments in the south of Thailand showthat the main counterfactual to Huntington's thesis no longer holds.

Finally, Qaddafi's reaction expresses an all-too common Muslim attitude of "Call us a religion of peace, or we'll murder, pillage, rape, and bomb you, and persecute your co-religionists." This is hardly expressive of a sincere desire for cross-cultural dialogue, and makes the Swiss vote all the more understandable.