Christianity’s same sex marriages

This article from the 8/24/08 edition of the Colfax Record indicates that Christianity once had same-sex ceremonies akin to marriages:

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century), and the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiated in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.

Fascinating stuff. The article provides quite a bit of detail. This was the first I had heard of this. It does present a challenge to the claims of contemporary Christians who abhor homosexual marriage because the concept of marriage has "always" involved one man and one woman.

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Missouri May Allow Pharmacists to Just Say No

Need the pill? If you live in Missouri, and your pharmacist disagrees with your doctor about your reproductive needs, you're stuck. No recourse. That is, if an amended bill passed in the House makes it to law this week. According to this,

The amendment is similar to "conscience legislation" passed in other states that protects pharmacists who object to dispensing birth control medication.

Let your legislators know whether you think personal medical decsions should be up to doctors and patients, or churches acting through politicians.

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Fair To A Fault: Secularist Chastised For Bashing Religion In School

The next time someone says to you that religion is under attack by the courts in the schools because of the separation clause, consider this high school history teacher who has been found guilty of insulting Christians in class.

James Corbett, a 20-year teacher at Capistrano Valley High School, was found guilty of referring to Creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense” during a 2007 classroom lecture, denigrating his former Advanced Placement European history student, Chad Farnan.

The problem with this is that, basically, Mr. Corbett only told the truth, and appears to have talked almost exclusively about Creationism, not Christianity. The judge made the immediate connection between the two, however. U.S. District Court Judge James Selna's claim that he can find "no secular purpose" in Corbett's statements is either thick-witted or disingenuous---it would seem to be a teacher's job to point out to students something that is, well, idiocy. However, I expect an appeal on this, because it is also clear that the judge in question has something of a bias here. But it's instructive---rather than take the idea of Creationism as what it has lately been packaged, namely Intelligent Design, and examine it as a claim of "science" as its advocates insist it is, Selna understands immediately that this is a bogus proposition. That, in fact, Intelligent Design is a religious idea in a new wrapper. Corbett's dismissal of Creationism can only then be an attack on religion. Which, by the letter of the law, is a violation of the separation clause. Those who advocate against secularism and insist religious ideas have no defense in this modern state should look at this as an example---not in their favor, because it still won't allow for the introduction of religion into public schools---of the fact, oft-stated, that the Constitution requires even-handed exclusions. Secularists can't even say nasty things about a bogus idea that has only association relevance to religion. You can't even bring it up to say it's wrong. Personally, I do think this is a bit idiotic, but---what's that old phrase---it is fair to a fault.

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What’s the count?

What's the count? Image by Erich Vieth No, not the balls and strikes! I'm talking about the number of advertisements you'll find in a baseball stadium (click on the image for a much bigger and clearer image). I was recently invited to go to a Cardinal baseball game for a work function. I was amazed at the number of ads. There had to be more than 100 large ads visible from the seats. And I'm only including static ads, not the videos they pump out on the big screens.

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Pornography parity

I had no idea that pornography was this popular in America. People in the U.S. are voting with their feet, according to an article on pornography published by cracked.com:

A new pornographic video is being created every 39 minutes in the U.S. [I]n hotel chains that offer in-room X-rated content alongside major Hollywood releases, porn movie rentals represent 55 percent of the overall pay-per-view usage. . .

In 2005, there were approximately 425 films released in Hollywood, including a Star Wars prequel and a Harry Potter movie, with domestic grosses of $8.597 billion. That's very impressive. In 2006, the cumulative grosses for porn videos in the U.S., leveraging video sales, rentals, mobile phone content and Internet revenues--came out to... $8.65 billion.

You'll also find that adult sex terms are wildly popular on search engines. The search term "Obama" overtook the adult sex search terms for only 23 minute during the entire year, and that was on election day. Fascinating stuff.

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