Missed opportunities...

I see that the awesome Janiece and amazing Chez are both irate at Georgia Representative Paul Broun, who is making an effort to violate the Constitution of the United States with a proposal to pimp the Ten Commandments. Because, I guess, the biggest problem facing Americans today is that nobody appreciates the Ten Commandments enough. I mean, sure, we hear about them all the time, but did you ever stop to think about them?

Did you know, for instance, that the Ten Commandments don't say anything about not using your cell phone in a movie theatre while other people are watching the movie? Seriously, not a single thin word in any of the at-least-three versions; which, if you think about it, would have been a huge trump if Big-G had dropped that in, y'know? People would be sitting there for thousands of years going, "What the fuck is a cell phone... or a movie theatre?" And then all of a sudden, come the 20^th Century, it would have been, like, "Holy fuck! These things are totally in the Bible! But dude--what the hell is a cell phone?" And then at the end of the 20^th Century--"Holy sweet fucking fuck! These are in there, too! And we're not supposed to use them in movie theatres or God will be pissed!"

Seriously, I'd have a hard time being an atheist. A really hard time. It wouldn't have to even be the cell-phones-at-movies thing, either, though obviously that would be nice. "Thou shalt not drive slower than traffic travelling in the same direction when occupying the far-left lane" would have been kind of awesome, though maybe less prognosticatory; there were probably slow drivers in the late Bronze Age Middle East, actually. But you get the idea. God could've really laid down a big one on humanity, and instead it's stuff like, "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." Which, I mean, I'm not even Jewish or Christian or anything and I'm pretty observant about not coveting anybody's ox. I don't even know anyone who has an ox. I don't think they'd be allowed within the city limits without some kind of ox permit, would they? Some friends of mine got a really adorable American Eskimo puppy a few months ago which I kinda-sorta covet, but I'm not sure if that counts because dogs aren't listed and they don't actually live next to me so I don't think they're technically neighbors. And then there's the one from Exodus 34:26--"You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk." Ew. They mean a goat, right? Tell me they mean a goat. And even then, I'm still kinda leaning towards, "Ew."

But I digress, which isn't unusual. No, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with Janiece and Chez, as much as I love 'em both, because I get the sense they prefer the Broun bill to die, while I think it doesn't go far enough. That's right, I, an atheist and civil libertarian, think the Broun bill is too meagre in scope!

I mean, go read the text of the Broun bill itself. All it says is everybody should think about what the Ten Commandments means to them, which, honestly would not take me all weekend, whether you held it in May or some other time. This is the most I've thought about the Ten Commandments in a while, and this is taking me, like, I don't know, twenty minutes and mostly because I couldn't remember what kind of breed my friends' dog was without checking Jessica's Twitter feed and I had to scroll down into last year to find out. (I remembered it was an "Alaskan something," which turned out to be not-quite-right, although there are Eskimos in Alaska.) To be really honest, the first thing I think when I hear "the Ten Commandments" is how awesome Charlton Heston was, especially in Planet Of The Apes (the very first one, not the Tim Burton remake, which was awful, though Charlton Heston was in that, too; I just wish they'd had him punch Tim Roth because that would have kicked ass... wait, no... they should have had him going around punching everybody in the movie, including the director).

The Broun bill doesn't actually call for any action, which I think is pretty lame. I mean, if Representative Broun loves the Ten Commandments so much, why is it all he wants to do is propose that we think about them? Which is all he's really doing. No, to really show appreciation, I think all these Republicans should stand up and... uhm... make a stand.

Now, what's the first thing you think of when you think of Republicans? If your answer was, "Hypocrites cheating on their spouses, usually (but not always) with someone of the same sex, and then lying about it," then you must be somebody who could answer a softball question on national television about what you like to read. Now look at those Ten Commandments again: the seventh... or maybe it's the sixth... depends... anyway, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." And what's "adultery"?

adultery –noun, plural -teries: voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than his or her lawful spouse.

Hell, look at the whole list, and how much do you want to bet there are Republican politicians who curse, have worked on a Saturday, coveted somebody's shit, watched American Idol and generally screwed up the whole list? That thing's harder than a Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. So what I'm thinking is that every Republican office-holder who loves the Ten Commandments so much they'd marry them as long as there wasn't anything "gay marriage-ey" about doing so ought to show their love by resigning during the first weekend in May. Unless they're, you know, Muslim or some other kind of pagan.

Now, you may be saying, "Eric, that's a great idea and I wish I'd thought of it, but why single out Republicans? You know those Democrats are totally skanky and steal hotel towels all the time and are an embarrassment to their parents." Which is all completely true. But we all know that the Democrats are going to Hell anyway, and want to abort grandmothers and surrender to the Soviet Union and all that, besides which aren't they all atheists, anyway? But more importantly, only someone who really, really hates America would violate a bunch of the Ten Commandments and try to run the country in spite of their obvious, sinning malevolence. Therefore, on Ten Commandments Weekend, sinners who love America (conservatives, Republican or Democrat) should show their love by resigning and kissing a flag in a non-idolatrous manner, while sinners who hate America (liberals, if there actually are any, other than Dennis Kucinich, to be found in Congress) should show their hatred by filling vacancies in the Federal judiciary and having a huge orgy/cookout on the Senate floor.

Ten Commandments Weekend is going to be awesome! I'm going to buy my ticket and start working on my toga as soon as I finish this post!