Without digressing too much into matters of my mental state however, I shall forge on with the train of thought that I briefly alluded to a mere paragraph ago.

I watched an old episode of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit” last night from season three. It was called “family values” and the objective was to lay to rest the notion that the “traditionally accepted” nuclear family comprising of one man, one woman and offspring; was the only acceptable form of a family.

In their own inimitable way, they did a wonderful job of laying waste to the conservatives of our world have touted as being the only acceptable kind of family unit.

It would be surprising if anyone with a differing viewpoint was swayed, however compassionate and compelling the evidence though…

They canvassed various scenarios:

• a lesbian couple raising children
• two married couples who cohabited and had an all encompassing communal love
• “normal” marriage
• a “gay converter” (who apparently used to be gay – and in reality still is, he wasn’t foolig anyone)

They took views from people on both sides of the fence, and for mine, it did more than just highlight that we are a society that consists of many varied lifestyles, choices, beliefs, relationships, creeds and sexualities; it gave rise to some feelings of deep anger.

The anger was borne of the extrapolated consequence of the fact that there are some sections of society who deem it appropriate to discriminate against people based upon their sexuality.

Fear not dear reader, this isn’t going to turn into a gay bashers bashing rant, though that will form a pivotal point of the hypothesis that I will eventually meander around to.

I am straight (much to the disbelief of people in some of the establishments I frequent) and would probably class myself as being around 0.5 on the Kinsey Scale – the only reason that I wouldn’t be a 1 is because the thought of homosexuality is just a little too messy for me to get off on it (that and a lack of sexual attraction to men) though the notion of balls slapping together during double penetration has some kind of drunken kinky appeal – but enough of that.

Even though I personally find the thought of sucking another mans cock unappealing, does it mean that I should be outraged at the thought of two consenting male adults to whom it does appeal; offensive?

Of course it doesn’t.

Fuck me, I am kind of envious that it is something that doesn’t appeal to me – imagine those nights on the piss with your mates when none of you picked up and all ended up back at someones house playing Playstation or Euchre or just dribbling shit into the wee hours.

How much better would it be if you were all bi and could just fuck one another before retiring?

Anyway, that isn’t my point.

My point centres on two issues:

• hypocrisy
• intolerance

I will make some assertions here:

- I have never met an atheist who:

• is homophobic
• opposes polygamy
• believes that morality is defined by sexuality

- Conversely, a large percentage of the Christians I know:

• are homophobic (thank you Leviticus)
• oppose polygamy (except for the Mormons if they count as Christians)
• believe that morality is defined by a sun god and a dusty old book

To wander off for a moment…

The primary issue I have with organised religion is not the concept of an old bearded man who sits up there in the sky:

• casting judgement
• exhorting his followers to commit acts of vileness
• demanding obedience and obsequiousness
• sanctioning bigotry
• encouraging the abdication of responsibility
• giving his minions the desire to attempt to cast scientific though back thousands of years
• threatening all those who use reason to disbelieve with an eternity of sodomy in hades

… and everything else that one could argue a deity encourages in feeble of mind…

My primary issue with organised religion is that; without question; it engenders hypocrisy.

This has always been my foremost concern – probably because I was raised a Catholic, but that is a tale for another day.

Without meandering too much further, this hypocrisy can be illustrated in no better way than in the issue of tolerance/intolerance.

The push to repress homosexual men and women does not come from the secular portion of society, it comes from the theistic portion.

It is based not upon the teachings of “Jesus” with whom many of them (men included) claim to have a “personal relationship“, nor on any of the “teachings” of the new testament, rather it is based on the anachronistic diatribe of the old testament, particularly Leviticus.

I wont go into it here, @Monicks has already posted a superb article on it here – but the point is that the outrage shown by modern day Christians toward same sex attrition and unions is based upon the ramblings of uneducated, superstitious peasants.

It isn’t because these supposedly moral people who follow the teachings of a man who paradoxically said advised both:

“If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also” (Luke)

and

“I come not in peace, but to bring a sword” (Matthew)

… choose to discriminate based upon sexuality, or indeed discriminate at all:

It is because they bleat constantly about tolerance of their beliefs, their “faith”, their religious views and how terrible it is that they aren’t allowed, in a secular society, to foist them without restraint upon others; yet refuse to offer other people the same sanctity that they themselves seek.

They demand “religious tolerance”, so long as it refers only to their particular flavour of fairytale.

Whilst we live in a supposedly secular society, you can’t buy take away alcohol in some states in Australia on “Good Friday” because the Christians want us all to sacrifice something for their beliefs.

Every year, we hear some Christian religious leader on television and radio bleating about how “Christ has been taken out of Xmas”.

We hear Christian political leaders droning on and on about how marriage is the “sacred union between a man and a woman and needs to be respected”.

The leader of the Catholic church in Australia, a certified bigot, Cardinal George Pell refuses to give communion to gay Catholics and yet demands respect for the “Christian traditions” of Easter and Xmas (despite the fact that they were plagiarised from the pagans) by secular and non Christian society…

Is there a pattern here?

Do unto others only as I wish to do unto them, so long as it fits in with my rigid and antiquated, arcane belief structure and doesn’t contravene the contradictory teachings of superstitious peasants from many thousands of years ago, despite what we now know about morality and science.

It annoys me greatly that people are capable of demanding respect for their “faith” – something that they have chosen to immerse themselves in despite all logical evidence to the contrary, yet refuse to respect people based upon the sexuality that they were born with; and to play devil’s advocate; that their god created them with.

It is the “do as I say, not as I do” mentality, the inherent hypocrisy of so many religious types that annoys me more than their illogical belief structure, their fear of their own mortality.

What annoys me more though, is the damage that this hypocrisy has on innocent, moral, decent people who are merely living out a life in accordance with the way that genetics and evolution designed them.

My final word on the matter is:

If religious types want secular society to respect and tolerate their beliefs (which it has been for hundreds of years), then they need to reciprocate and begin tolerating others.

They could do a lot worse than following the example of @FatherBob.