This post wraps up the superflous exercise I started this morning — exploding the latest antigay jibber-jabber from Judy at Granite Grok.
Amazingly, in the same post she opens with the uninspiring all-caps announcement that she’s never blogged about a more pressing issue, Judy — relating having witnessed in her churchy past the “deconversion” of numerous gays (a phenomenon no more verifiable than the exorcism of demons) — describes what a “miraculous experience” it is to “witness the freedom that comes when someone faces their particular truth about themselves and their upbringing and its influences, etc….only possible with God’s unconditional love and guidance.” That’s right; her idea of a miracle is seeing someone systematically browbeaten out of enjoying exactly the freedom that more people would enjoy were it not for that very godthing she mentions, an “entity” whose love is apparently “unconditional” under the condition that we all be heterosexual.
Similarly, she defends herself at length against the many charges she says have been leveled against her: racist, bigot, homophobe. Basically, her defense is: Uh-uh! She writes:

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This post wraps up the superflous exercise I started this morning — exploding the latest antigay jibber-jabber from Judy at Granite Grok.
Amazingly, in the same post she opens with the uninspiring all-caps announcement that she’s never blogged about a more pressing issue, Judy — relating having witnessed in her churchy past the “deconversion” of numerous gays (a phenomenon no more verifiable than the exorcism of demons) — describes what a “miraculous experience” it is to “witness the freedom that comes when someone faces their particular truth about themselves and their upbringing and its influences, etc….only possible with God’s unconditional love and guidance.” That’s right; her idea of a miracle is seeing someone systematically browbeaten out of enjoying exactly the freedom that more people would enjoy were it not for that very godthing she mentions, an “entity” whose love is apparently “unconditional” under the condition that we all be heterosexual.
Similarly, she defends herself at length against the many charges she says have been leveled against her: racist, bigot, homophobe. Basically, her defense is: Uh-uh! She writes:

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A little over a week ago, I made a number of challenges to Judy Paris, the New Hampshire yammerhead and Granite Grok contributor whose entire sense of well-being seems predicated on convincing the world — through hysterical, barely legible, and systematically misinformed blog posts and letters to the Concord Monitor — that homosexuality is the most dangerous thing to besmirch the world in all of the 6,000 or so years humans have been walking the earth.
I don’t actually care about the answers Judy might give to the questions I asked her, since I know she lacks the cognitive candlepower to respond coherently. I only made my “challenge” in order to highlight the inanity of her claim that I had ducked her by refusing to “debate” her on her co-blogger’s radio spankfest after she’d given me about an hour’s notice not only about her desire to engage me on the air but about the show’s very existence. I gave her a full week to post her answers to my questions, and since she has failed to even try, I’m more than happy to play by Judy’s own rules and declare a nominal victory. Of course, this is akin to bragging about beating a Xanax-popping wallaby at strip chess, but no matter.
But Judy hasn’t been inert, oh no. Just witness her latest bit of screeching, pursuant (by several months, but friggit) to New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch’s signing into law the right for people to enter into civil unions.
Judy, as with all inept but passionate communicators, wastes no time with subtlety:

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It’s been a while since I’ve written about Nathan Bradfield, a proponent of the “The Constitution doesn’t use the phrase ‘separation of church and state,’ so it reflects no such concept” school of “thought” and an unwitting parody of bad creationist rambling about evolution.
Since in most cases a person’s capacity for feeling shame is inversely proportional to his or her wisdom, Nathan is still publicly dipping his toe in the science-oppression waters. He recently wrote a supportive review of another soporific and canted shitburst by the mentally challenged Chuck Colson, the prison-ministry extraordinaire who tries to make the meaningless case that Isaac Newton would be a Christian were he living today because, Colson “argues,” “it was the fundamental presuppositions of the Christian faith that led [Newton] to some of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time.”
Colson’s supposition is silly on its face — one can just as mindlessly (though more correctly) state that it is godlessness itself that engenders religion — and Nathan’s post is really just a glorified link, although he does drop in the strange assertion that “Liberals proclaim that Christianity is not only out of date, but never really existed.” But he excretes an unbelievably foolish yet not-uncommon falsehood in the ensuing comments, where he asserts:

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Most politicans prevaricate, but the G. W. Bush administration has made rank dishonesty its signature. This obviously creates proximate problems resulting from the issues at hand, but also carries the threat of further desensitizing people to the act of lying itself.
Consider the explosion of performance-enhacing drug use among otherwise ethically competent athletes. When they become frustrated at seeing their performances plateau while knowing or believing that their more successful peers are widely doped, it’s far more likely that they will succumb themselves. Virtually everyone who has admitted to using banned substances admits to this process of rationalization.
Here’s a proposed solution to the inexorable spread of lying and cheating in all its forms:

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According to Judy Paris, she and her cohorts are — despite their demonstrated practice of prohibiting dissenting input from appearing on their blog — in no way reluctant to discuss their ideas about this and that even with people who disagree with them. They aren’t afraid of a little heated debate, they say, and Judy in particular claims to have thick skin.
Recently, Judy offered me a 99th-hour (out of 100) opportunity to “meet” her on her friend’s radio show for a chat. She didn’t say what she wanted to talk about, only that I couldn’t use any of Goerge Carlin’s words. I’ve been over the reasons why I declined even though I was aware this would lead her to belch up the claim that I was afraid to take on her ideas.
Well, it’s not difficult to see that this is a lie. Merely by writing on several occasions about the things she has said and inviting her to comment, I have shown that I’m not afraid to engage in a discussion with her. My feeling is that the Internet is a vastly superior medium for the kind of exchange that Judy and I would have, because I have a lot of questions for her and even if she knew the questions in advance and could rattle off the answers from a piece of paper, I don’t think her friend’s show is long enough to accommodate them. Furthermore, it is much easier for those following along to see questions and answers in written form rather than be forced to listen to and sort through an audio file. This, I am fairly sure, is why transcripts of proceedings like Senate hearings and court trials are routinely produced and released.
So, I feel that we should continue this.

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Either that or this list of “Ways To Be A Good Democrat!” merely represents the most laughable example of strawman-building in the ugly history of political crapmongering.
I realize that such lists are often crafted with the tongue of the writer at least angling toward his or her cheek, but my guess is that in this case the blogger actually believes in the utility of the list she has found and posted, even if it may well have been set forth as satire. After all, it’s Republicans, not Democrats, who most often find it necessary to adhere to a rigid set of guidelines in order to identify with their party. I know far more Dems who attend church, reject most tax increases, or favor the death penalty, for example, than I do openly god-free, pro-gun control, or pro-choice Republicans.

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