RFRA ROFL: MORE WRECKAGE FROM THE INDIANA CRACK-UP.

Some of the libertarians are getting very worked up over this Indiana thing. Makes sense; after all, the real issue behind all the cake-and-florist agitation is public accommodations as a civil rights issue and, as you may remember from Rand Paul's spirited if temporary stand against the Civil Rights Act, libertarians have never fully accepted the justice of making white people do business with black people, so making straight people do business with gay people must seem to them a gruesome flashback.*

Timothy P. Carney, for example, has thoroughly melted down at the Washington Examiner, doing a better impersonation of Carol Newquist from Little Murders even than David Brooks:

Religious liberty is the terms of surrender the Right is requesting in the culture war. It is conservative America saying to the cultural and political elites, you have your gay marriage, your no-fault divorce, your obscene music and television, your indoctrinating public schools and your abortion-on-demand. May we please be allowed to not participate in these?

Gays, abortion, jungle music -- the injustice never stops.

But no. Tolerance isn't the goal. Religious conservatives must atone for their heretical views with acts of contrition: Bake me a cake, photograph my wedding, pay for my abortion and my contraception.

This will make a great schtick for pride parades: Big Gay puppets lumbering down Fifth Avenue hissing BAKE ME A CAAAAKE!

But for sheer entertainment value you can't beat the religious maniacs. The Anchoress claims she's been busy with some holy shit and after a brief Indiana post scuttles back to it, but in between riddles us this:

There is a staggering amount of hysteria and outrage being spewed about Indiana’s RFRA by many of the same people who — just mere weeks ago — were spewing in hysterical outrage about the nation’s growing so-called “rape culture”, and this despite disputed claims that 1 in 5 women are raped on college campuses, and a highly dubious accusation of gang rape on a college campus.

See, you and your gay friends are all liars. Rape liars!

Rape, of course, is an indisputably heinous act; because it forces a woman to engage in something she does not want to do, it must always be roundly decried and despised by all sane people.

That's kind of a strangely mild description of rape, isn't it -- "forces a woman to engage in something she does not want to do"? Makes it sound like dusting, or going to her boyfriend's office party. Eventually we see why Thee Anch portrayed it thus:

But, that being the case, what shall we make of the fact that, for the most part, the very same entities who (disputed “rape culture” claims aside) quite rightly insist that a woman should never, ever be forced to engage in acts against her will, have pivoted toward Indiana to demand that “other” people be forced to engage in acts against their wills?

Should governments, or new agencies, or pundits for that matter, really be positioning themselves over people and telling them that if they do not submit to what is demanded of them — and engage willingly — then they will be forced to take it, and like it?

 This is the real War on Women: dusting, rape, and gay cakes.

Doubtless someone will say, “these two issues are not at all the same.”

Wow she's pyschic!

I’d argue that to the people being shoved down, they look exactly alike. 

I’m going back to my project. Comments remain closed.

SLAM! When she comes back, watch out for the spraying hot chrism.

UPDATE. Normal comments policy is, when we delete a troll, we also delete comments in response, but I must say those comments are still pretty funny out of context, so carry on and good job all around.

UPDATE 2. * That's why Ramesh Ponnuru is so calm about the nearly-even split in public opinion over this issue. In the context of the fake story these guys have been pushing -- evil libtard homos versus Christianity -- this would be a disturbing result, since it would suggest America is divided over "religious liberty." But in view of the real goal -- which is to trim back our traditional understanding of civil rights -- it's actually an advance.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   I thought yesterday's First Things article -- about how, thanks to 50 Shades of Grey, BDSM will lead followers to the Church, thereby reversing the usual pattern -- would be an anomaly. But now I see it's becoming a wingnut-Christian trope, executed today by Mollie Hemingway, who I guess is the new The Anchoress. At least Hemingway starts with a perfectly entertaining review of the film; she finds the sex scenes "pretty tame" and names other BDSM-themed stories she prefers, which as a former Catholic I appreciate. But then:

Anyway — if, as a character written by G. K. Chesterton said, “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God,” let’s ponder what women who are into this awful literature are seeking.

Ugh, that quote again -- and I might have known it was Chesterton, that's how the more high-class God-botherers always announce themselves.

I want to say this before the days when such statements are branded hate-speech worthy of re-education camp...

And the same goes for ridiculous persecution fantasies.

...but a hell of a lot of women would, if forced to choose, prefer to be in a loving committed relationship with a dude than get successively better office jobs on the way to the corner office.

Also, they'd rather go to heaven and lounge on clouds all day than go to your liberal-secular schools. Thereafter Hemingway just spools out the usual bullshit: Girls who try to make something more of themselves than dutiful wifemothers end up bitter hags with frozen eggs; men are boycotting marriage because of bitter hags with frozen eggs; women don't want feminism, they "want to be lost in a relationship, completely submitting to a man who is dangerous enough to need rescue but loving enough to notice what makes them beautiful," etc. Well, one good thing may come of this; in future, Jesus-friendly films like God's Not Dead will have a lot more nudity, and missals may come with bodice-ripping illustrations and Fabio on the cover as Jesus.

•   I don't usually pimp books here, mainly because I'm sub-literate, but I can say this about Dead is Better, by my wife's friend Jo Perry: If you liked my own neo-noir Morgue for Whores (and if you haven't read that, what's stopping you), you'll probably like this. Actually, that's not a pre-condition -- Dead is less grimy and sleazy than my novel, which surprisingly does not make it less interesting. The narrator is a dead guy, murdered, and he's just getting the hang of the afterworld. He figures out how to locomote in his new "frictionless" plane of existence, and even to hitch rides in cars, pretty quickly, but he's slower to make sense of what he's learning about the people he left behind in meat world -- and of the dog, also dead, who appears to have adopted him. Murder, mystery, redemption -- all that. Oh, and very sharp writing. Have a look.

•   It's become de rigueur for conservatives to defend Scott Walker's college performance -- we Charlie Pierce fans call this "the C-plus Augustus maneuver." Jonah Goldberg ups the ante and defends Walker's punt on evolution. Goldberg calls it "Darwinism," a popular schtick among the brethren, and says no fair you're trying to make us look dumb:

To borrow a phrase from the campus left, Darwinism is used to “otherize” certain people of traditional faith — and the politicians who want their vote.

Same thing with those citizens whose Constitutional right to treat epilepsy with leeches is mocked by them there pointy-heads. Then Goldberg gives his own I-din't-come-from-no-monkey speech on grounds of moral grandeur:

Beneath the surface, the salience of evolution as a political football is ultimately about the status of man. Are humans moral creatures whose actions are judged by some external or divine standard, or are we simply accidental winners of an utterly random contest of genes?

A God that works through evolution -- why, it's too fantastic to even contemplate, just like universal health care. How I'd love to see the big courtroom scene in Inherit the Wind re-written for Goldberg -- especially if they replaced Brady's Bible citations with quotes from Animal House and "he who smelt it dealt it."