What’s in a kiss?

I’m just getting back into blogging again after a wee break, but one story I missed commenting on was the apparent “protest” against Russia’s anti-gay laws that occurred when two Russian relay winners kissed on the podium. Both quickly denied that this was a protest, or anything of the sort, they were just pleased to have won.

Even so, whether intentional or not, it shows the hypocrisy of such laws, as strictly speaking this arbitrary Russian law would appear to say that any such kissing is illegal only if the parties involved enjoyed a kiss too much. I mean two French guys who are old friends meet and you’ll see more mouth on mouth action than in a Swedish porno, does that count? :??:

Elsewhere a Swedish athlete who painted her fingernails rainbow colours (apparently this was an actual protest) got told off by the IAAF (these are the same types who cosied up to Hitler and the Soviets in the 80’s, good too see they ain’t changed much!). So now it would seem Putin is censoring the colour of women’s finger polish, I wonder if he’s ever seen 1984.

I’m somewhat sceptical of mainstream religions for many reasons but one of them is this apparent hypocrisy over issues such as gay rights. Granted the bible does idly mention its disdain for “that sort of thing”, twice…in passing. However I also recall the bible goes to great lengths to discuss the evils of greed, how one should help thy neighbour, the virtues of charity and good will towards others, how the rich who aren’t charitable are going to have a hard time getting into heaven, and the evils of usury. And were talking pages and pages of the bible here, not one or two little footnotes.

And while, like homosexuality the bible is a little non-specific as to what does and doesn’t count as usury, its not difficult to conclude that what many city traders get up to on a daily basis (short selling, commodity price speculation, etc.) has to count as usury. And we have good evidence of the enormous hardship such activity can create, from causing companies to fail, wiping out people’s pensions and savings, driving up food prices for the very poorest on the planet, etc.

And of course there’s the many wars nations start with one another, flying in the face of Christian doctrine. Yet religions worldwide seem to ignore these inconvenient little facts, doing or say nothing about the crimes of the financial markets and governments against the church, but instead go gay bashing to make up for it.

I mean do they honestly think on the day of judgement when they stand before god and he points out that, say our Republican voting bond trader has broken nearly all ten of the commandments, thou shalt not covent thy neighbours goods, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not worship a false god (these guys clearly worship money above all else!) at the very least….indeed I’d throw in thou shalt not commit murder (G. W. Bush and Tony Blair’s war in Iraq), thou shalt not coven thy neighbours wife (on grounds that they’ve screwed most of us over enough for it to count as adultery :b) and bearing false witness (as much share speculation consists of essentially trying to drive the price a certain way, this has to count as “bearing false witness against thy neighbour”). I mean is the plan at this point to shrug one’s shoulders and say to god, we’ll at least I ain’t gay or nothin!

In short religion, particularly the Christian types seem to adopt a policy of “selective blindness” to a host of pretty serious crimes against their faith from the rich and powerful, but will quite happily pick on some hapless minority group to compensate for it, how very Christian of them!