Calling All "Serious" Catholics

There's an advertisement in the USA Today today with a huge heading of Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics.

Incredibly Arrogant Hypocrisy
This advertisement that fills up the entire right side of a page, distributed by a group called Catholic Answers Action, lists five non-negotiable issues, as follows:

1. Abortion
2. Euthanasia
3. Embryonic Stem Cell Research
4. Human Cloning
5. Homosexual "Marriage" (their quotation marks, not mine)

I can understand the first three (although I completely disagree). The bible says not to kill, and the Catholic church believes the top three on the list are all acts of killing.

However, buried deep in the remainder of the advertisement are two issues that are "not non-negotiable", or in other words, the two issues are negotiable. Can you guess what the two issues are?

1. Going to war
2. Capital punishment

Huh? Both of those also sound like killing to me. Or at least as much killing as destroying ex-utero embryos to extract stem cells. And why no mention of genocide in Darfur or or the ridiculously high infant mortality rate in this country? These arrogant, self-centered pricks don't care about Christianity or killing at all, they only care about their own version of morality. I can only say that if there is a heaven, and these folks make it in, then there is no God, or He's one stupid deity.

For each of the Non-Negotiable issues, they have a paragraph explaining why. For the two not-non-negotiable issues, they only say the Vatican urges caution on deciding on these issues.

Finally, if their hypocrisy wasn't ridiculous enough, the rationale for number five on the non-negotiable issues list reads as follows:

5. Homosexual "Marriage"
True marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Legal recognition of any other union as "marriage" undermines true marriage, and legal recognition of homosexual unions actually does homosexual persons a disfavor by encouraging them to persist in what is an objectively immoral arrangement.

So, instead of encouraging a life of "gravely immoral" behavior, they would prefer I become a priest and sexually abuse young boys? Perhaps they ought to apply capital punishment to priests that have repeatedly abused children.

Current Knitting
I've almost finished the seventh mitered square of nine for the back. I'm still not sure if I'll be able to complete nine squares with one hank of the yarn. I'll know this weekend.

Readers' Comments/Questions
Regarding the Sasha Kagan scarf in VK, Lucia asks, "I think lining the scarf is a great idea! Are you going to find a shiny silk?"

Judy also adds her question about the scarf, "I haven't seen the Sasha Kagan scarf, but could it be double knitted? that would avoid the 'wrong side'..."

Actually, I took a quick look at the scarf pattern instructions, and it appears that the instructions call for basically knitting two identical scarves and sewing them together back-to-back, thus eliminating a "wrong side".

Also, thanks to Lucia for that great Fox News link about Ann Coulter. It appears she thinks she's above the law.

AuntieAnn writes, "I must repectfully disagree that their request that you change your screen name is indicative of prejudice or discrimination, since they also made the "wench" change her (or his) name. They may be overly sensitive about screen names that have anything to do with sexuality, I'll give you that, but I do have a certain sympathy even there."

I guess your views on what is sexual and what isn't are different than mine. Most under-10's might know that "queer" is a derogatory term, as many kids use it the same way they'd use "geek" or "jerk." If your child saw my name in a fiber forum, and asked you why I called myself queer, it would be an easy non-sexual answer to just say it was as self-deprecating moniker. While my screen name does have a facet of sexuality implied in it, so do screen names like "JohnnysMommy" or "Crochetin-Husband", but I would bet no one would question them.

I have to believe that is isn't the sexuality implied in my screen name that elicits reactions, but folks' visceral reaction to it because of all it implies for them. I asked the moderator of the group to re-examine her ideas about the rationale for asking me to change my user name, I'll ask folks like AuntieAnn to do the same. I think if they're honest with themselves, their ideas do come down to bigotry in some form.