>P.P.S. Today's Good News Alert: Not all religions look skyward.
The really dangerous ones do -- the Abrahamic Big Three. <
The Buddhists have a history just as nasty, but they had the good luck or good sense to pick on a bunch with no written culture, and do them but good. The "hill tribes" of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos were formerly known as the "quite pleasant farmland tribes" of Southern China before a bunch of organised Buddhists decided that animism was completely beyond the pale and had a good go at wiping them out.
In general, my experience of the religious types is that they can often be very decent people, but they don't half *lie* a lot. My guess is that they're subconsiously used to the idea that good people can tell self-evident falsehoods about eg. the age of the planet earth and get away with it. In all the few dealings I've had with (broadly defined) fundamentalists, I've always experienced them radically rewriting the story of events, usually to their own advantage. Burroughs also noticed it and noted that you should always get in writing when dealing with a holy joe, as his word doesn't mean shit when he's got Jesus Christ on his shoulder, whispering to him that it's OK to screw you.
I have to side with Carl on "effete"; to assume it has anything to do with being gay (indeed, to assume it's a slur) is basically to assume it means "effeminate" and we shouldn't co-operate in this illiteratism. My parents spent good money ensuring that I grew up to be regarded as effete (on a good day, foppish) and I'm damned if I'm going to be cheated out of my patrimony in this way. Egad!
dd
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