Old – literally – Blatty objects that a University might allow free thought and not, in his opinion, adequately censor the speakers they bring in to speak to their students, who are clearly incapable of making their own choices despite being old enough to vote and serve in the military. We desperately need to control their access to information or, the next thing you know, they will start thinking for themselves! When that happens, they are likely to ask questions – like how it is the Roman Catholic Church can even consider the expense of such Church legal actions when it has dioceses in  bankruptcy all around the world!

There’s a lot of nonsense being sputtered by the Church in all its forms about religious freedom. Actually, the nonsense in question is a thinly veiled attempt to impose religious indoctrination upon people under the guise of religious freedom – but that’s not what’s religious freedom is at all. The Constitution says that the State shall not establish an official religion. That guarantees us of the freedom to choose to practice, or not practice, whatever religion we like. You might say, it guarantees freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion if that’s what an individual prefers. Despite the non-establishment clause, and the fact that religious are supposed to be bearers of truth and not spin, Churches in America – no doubt sensing their imminent demise – are pushing harder and harder, by any means necessary, to impose themselves on every corner of American life.

What the Catholic Church has never understood about America is that, in America, Universities are about academic freedom, not religious indoctrination. Religious Universities can certainly require students to take some religion classes and whatever other courses they deem appropriate, and students have the right to examine the graduation requirements before deciding to attend a College or University. What a Church cannot do, at least if it wants to receive Federal Financial Aid on behalf of its students, is restrict the academic freedom of its Professors. In short, you can’t teach nonsense, even if it is religious nonsense, and try to pass it off as truth – and it doesn’t matter what William Peter Blatty, Archbishop Dolan, the Pope, or anyone else, thinks about it.

The truth is that as I get older I am becoming more, not less, convinced that beyond a certain age people should have to pass a psychological evaluation of their ongoing cognitive ability before being able to initiate any sort of action that has more impact than the moving of their bowels. I have instructed my wife, who is younger than I, that should I start doing foolish things as I age to gently pull me aside, sit me down, and say, “Honey, when you were younger you told me to not let you embarrass yourself by being a demented ass in public, and that moment has arrived.” Being reminded that I told her that, I will most likely agree. If not, I have instructed her to lock me in a room with my prayer beads and some old movies to watch – but not The Exorcist. One demented ass in a room is more than enough.

The couple in question approached a local non-denomination church that they have attended for a while. Like most church goers, they aren’t weekly attenders but they do go fairly often. When the time came for them to start planning their wedding, they approached the church to start planning. As I mentioned, the couple have a six-year-old child that the groom brought into their relationship. They have full-time custody and placement of their child. The church’s response to their request to be married? The church told the couple they couldn’t marry them because they live together, but if they lived apart for six months or more, then they could be married by that church.

I have said in the past that such responses are completely unrealistic, that such a response indicates complete ignorance of the financial reality of most couples, that even if couples could afford to comply with such asinine requests it was poor stewardship to set up a second household for six months, that such responses are completely ignorant of the reality that at the time of Jesus couples came to live together at the betrothal. In short, there is no justification beyond the church’s power and control motivations for such a requirement. However, when such a requirement means that a child will have its family disrupted for reasons the child cannot understand – actually, nobody can understand why anyone who purported to represent God would inflict nonsensical pain on anyone, so the child is not alone in not understanding – the practice moves from stupid to abusive.

The practice absent children is nothing more than the church seeking to punish people for living into the sexuality God created them with. The problem is that the church is not anyone’s Mommy or Daddy – and even if it was, parents don’t punish grown people as if they were recalcitrant children. If they try, they discover the children simply don’t come around any more.

Hey, wait a minute…

1. I am a grown man. Presumably, so are you. When one grown man enters the home of another grown man he has not met, he introduces himself, makes eye contact, SHAKES THE OTHER MAN’S HAND, and makes small talk for a few minutes. This is so the grown man living in the home doesn’t mistake him for an intruder and shoot his sorry ass under the protection of Wisconsin’s Castle Law.

2. I am a grown man. Presumably, so are you. When one grown man enters the home of another grown man he has already met, he takes a moment to greet the other man, make eye contact, SHAKE THE OTHER MAN’S HAND, and make small talk for a few minutes. This is called, “social courtesy,” and is highly valued. It also ensures that you won’t be mistaken for an intruder and shot under the protection of Wisconsin’s Castle Law.

3. My wife and I have things in our home. They belong to us. I confess I have reached the age where I like to nurture myself a bit. If you feel the need to wash your hands after having sex with my adult daughter and can’t find soap, I would greatly appreciate it if you would resist your rather ignorant temptation to remove my bar of soap from my covered soap dish in the shower, wash your stank covered hands in it, and then – to add insult to injury – not even put it back where it belongs, you ignorant prick. You might ask my daughter where you might find some soap to wash your hands. This helps ensure that I won’t be forced to shoot your ass under the Castle Law just to improve the quality of the gene pool.

I am sure there’s more, but this is all I have at the moment because I have little desire to have a stroke caused by continuing to think about this crap.

Pastor Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina (am I the only one who finds even the town name ironic?) disagrees with President Obama’s support of marriage equality, but he’s not one of those who sits by and just complains, he has a solution! You have to love a guy who doesn’t just whine about a problem, but actually has a solution. No panty-waist he, Pastor Charles has this problem figured out and solved, by God. Here, from his sermon on YouTube, is the solution:

“Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there,” Worley suggests in the clip, reportedly filmed on May 13.

He continues: “Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out…and you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out…do you know why? They can’t reproduce!”

Brilliant! Why didn’t we think of this sooner? If we just isolate the LGBT Community, they will die out because everyone knows that men can’t have babies with men and women can’t have babies with women! God, it’s brilliant!!!!

Ah, Chuck? I have just one question. Since “lesbians, queers, and homer-sexuals” can’t reproduce – either inside or outside of your electrified fence – where do they come from? Surely you don’t mean to suggest that God-fearing heterosexual couples are behind this onslaught of “lesbians, queers, and homer-sexuals,” do you?

Good Lord, wouldn’t that mean that if we didn’t want any more homer-sexuals we would have to round-up all of the heterosexuals and put them behind an electric fence so they couldn’t reproduce? I don’t know how you’re going to sell this one, but I am sure you will be the first one behind that fence – in the name of eliminating homer-sexuality.

Fuck. You were so close to a solution, too.