KY county clerk Kim Davis’ lawyers have announced (and the Vatican, when reached for comment, declared they would “neither confirm nor deny”) that Pope Francis met with her to offer her support in her battle against doing her job, thanked her for her courage and told her to “stay strong”.

If true, and considering the Pope also took time in his very short visit to meet with the Little Sisters of the Poor to offer support for their legal fight against the ACA (because they don’t want to allow insurance companies to provide contraception to their employees, even those who don’t share their religion), it certainly casts the “new, progressive, liberal” Pope in an interesting light.

Just finished “The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution” by Jonathan Eig

Summary judgement: a capably-written book, oh so VERY dry and limp, but the subject matter is important as hell and (IMHO) deserving of better.

Just as important to the history of the Pill as the contribution of Sanger, McCormick, Pincus and Rock was, the role of the Catholic Church in opposition to any form of pregnancy prevention whatsoever is crucial to understanding the state of birth control today. Religious objection, back then and now, was and is the ONLY reason birth control is considered in any way controversial, and the only reason this country has any trouble covering what should be standard, freely-available services in its healthcare plans. That, to be completely honest, I find disgusting beyond belief (no pun intended).

Today, September 23rd, is the beginning of the apocalypse (in case you weren’t paying attention), according to some people who are so arrogant that (a) they believe the supreme deity of the universe is speaking in a coded language only they are privileged to understand and (b) they believe themselves so important, there is no possibility the most climactic moment of the history of the universe might happen while they are not around.

I’ve never heard a prophet make a Rapture/Apocalypse prediction that doesn’t fall squarely within their lifetime. Ever wonder why that is? Ever thought how egocentric that is? And doesn’t that explain a lot?

Anyhoo… if anyone has seen a plague of locusts on the horizon or a river of blood replacing the otherwise normally hemoglobin-deficient Mississippi, let me know. Send me a message if half the cattle in Egypt suddenly breaks out in boils. And if anyone hears an apology from the erstwhile prophets of the end times for causing unnecessary panic, then DEFINITELY let me know ASAP: having any of those people actually admit they were wrong would be a surer sign of the apocalypse than anything they could have predicted by reading entrails.

Instead, MY prediction is this: over the next few days we’ll hear multiple explanations about why the prophets weren’t really wrong. Most failed prophets of the end times resort to a few tried and true tropes: the end times did actually happen, but they were metaphorical or “spiritual” (see Harold Camping), the end times were averted thanks to their prayers and intercession (YOU’RE WELCOME, SINNERS), or they start stretching the definition of common words to accommodate their prediction. For the latter, see the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their definition of end times, which started after multiple failed predictions by saying that the end of the world would definitely occur in 1914, then changed to saying that the end times would BEGIN in 1914, then changed to saying that the end times would begin within a generation of 1914, then that it would happen at some point during the entire lifetime of people who were born in or before 1914, and these days (as those people are dying) off it’s changed to “anyone who understands what happened in 1914″. In a hundred years they’ll still believe it, but it will be “in the lifetime of anyone who has a 1, 9, or 4 in their birth year.” And so on forever, until the Sun explodes in 5 billion years and someone can finally say “SEE!? I WARNED YOU!” as they evaporate.

But I think the excuse we see will be the typical one: we predicted that the End Times would happen, and they actually HAVE started (can’t you SEE all the SIGNS?) but everyone is too blind to see it yet. I remember that argument from when I first started getting interested in religion over 30 years ago, and I can guarantee that the people who used it fervently back then have an excuse for why nothing has happened YET, but definitely WILL ANY DAY NOW. Because there was an EARTHQUAKE and a METEOR and there are WARS AND FAMINE and there is TURMOIL and THOSE THINGS HAVE NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE IN HISTORY.

Live for today and stop worrying about the End Times, folks. If they come, it will be because we brought them about ourselves, because we were fighting about whose interpretation of the supreme command to love each other is correct. And if there’s one thing I won’t abide, it’s an ironic death.

I have been very uncomfortable with the speed at which some of my otherwise progressive and open-minded friends on FB, G+ or other social media have jumped into mocking Rowan County clerk Kim Davis for her looks, or engaging in slut-shaming her for her marriage history.

I think calling out her previous marriages is definitely relevant to the discussion, but not because it means she’s a “slut” or a “whore” (as some of the posted photo memes have said: I’m not even going to link to them), but rather because it shows that she has been willing in the past to take advantage of the religious freedom guaranteed to her by the Constitution, as well as her Christian privilege, in order to obtain a marriage license in spite of the fact that many other people have religious objections to her getting one. But now, when she is in a position of authority to make a similar decision for other people, she is not willing to extend that same freedom and privilege to others. She has the right to not approve on a personal level, but the problem here is using her position of government power to deny the license (and also forbid her employees from granting it).

THAT’S the hypocrisy involved and why her multiple marriages are relevant to the conversation; that does not and MUST not (if we don’t want to be hypocrites ourselves) translate into slut-shaming. We don’t know why she got divorced; would you feel good about yourself making fun of her multiple divorces if you found out they ended because she was being abused?

Whatever the reason for her divorces, she was able to get divorced PRECISELY because laws are secular in nature and should never be subservient to religion or the religious conscience of the person in government with the authority to enforce them. That she is not willing to extend that same right to others is the hypocrisy in this case: we would not call a person showing up at her office to get their fourth same-sex marriage license a slut or a whore, and we should show her the same respect.

As to how she looks: you may or may not find her attractive, but that is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Let’s have some empathy though, and realize that non of us are supermodels: if you were in the news tomorrow because of a civil rights issue you felt passionately about, would you want people on Facebook discussing the merits of your issue and the arguments you’ve made, or the size of your gut?

Let’s be better than those we criticize. Let’s be better than previous versions of ourselves.