June 27

Update on an item at the end of this post, which displays Justice Kennedy's words on 6/26/15.

Comments from your blogger:

If you encounter any conservative Christians who state that Friday’s Supreme Court decision allowing same sex marriage in all 50 states violates their religious principles, do your best to relieve them of their ignorance.

To wit: in response to Friday's Supreme Court ruling, two Tennessee lawmakers are drafting a “Pastor Protection Act” to provide legal protection for pastors when they will be forced to perform same sex marriages against their will. I heard on an NPR news report a Christian conservative who said he is now in fear that his pastor will be locked up in jail for refusing to marry same sex couples. All of this is simple fear-mongering, of course, because there is no law that requires a pastor to marry anyone, gay or straight. Pastors may refuse to marry partners of mixed race, or couples who have lived together before marriage, or couples he/she just doesn’t like. No part of the Supreme Court’s decision allowing homosexuals to marry applies to churches at all. Religious institutions only have dominion over matrimony (a holy union as ordained by God), not the secular act of marriage (the legal authority of each state). When a pastor performs a holy rite of matrimony, he/she still has to complete the state (secular) paperwork, which must be handed back over to the state authority, or the marriage is not legal. There is nothing “legal” about a church wedding as a stand-alone. Laws of marriage apply only to state-sanctioned unions.

When/if that same conservative Christian says that he/she has views on marriage that are in accordance with the Bible, dispense this information on other aspects of “Biblical” marriage:

1. No divorce allowed –
I Corinthians 7: (10)... "A wife must not separate from her husband. (11) But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife." Yet many Christians opposing same sex marriage are on their second or third wives/husbands. Pastors who marry anyone who has been divorced are thus in violation of scripture.

2. Non-virgin brides shall be stoned to death –
(For a woman who is found not to be a virgin on her wedding night) Deuteronomy 22: ...(20) "But if this charge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin, (21) then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in Israel, by playing the harlot in her father’s house; thus you shall purge the evil from among you."
   
3. Childless widow must marry her brother-in-law & produce children –
Matthew 22:24..."Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ " If your Christian buddy is unwilling to do that, he/she is in violation of this “Christian” principle.

These are biblical rules of marriage. There are numerous other examples, of course. Ask your Christian buddy to join in prayer with you, and pray together that he/she be delivered of this gross ignorance.

But I digress. Back to what you came here to see:

Something for Charles,
our sock fetishist:

Silhouettes:

You gotta have art:
Kama Sutra Project
Malika Favre

Our celebrity guest, Jake Miller

Dateline June 26, 2015
Justice Anthony Kennedy