“Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning Born of the one light, Eden saw play Praise with elation, praise every morning God’s recreation of the new day.” — Cat Stevens/Eleanor Farjeon

Sometimes you need the lime wedge before you take the tequila shot. Sometimes you need it before, after, and then again a few minutes later. That happened when I stumbled upon a news story that a friend stumbled on yesterday. It seems someone in the Texas state legislature really doesn’t like transgender kids.

Of course, that’s not the way they would describe it. They would say they are looking out for children. The story in question references a bill that has been proposed before the state legislature. It seems they want to remove kids from their parents if they get a gender reassignment. They consider that tantamount to child abuse. See, I told you that you needed that lime wedge.

I can’t hardly decide where to begin on all of this. Should we take this on its merits or should we address the strategy behind it? The person (I’m not dignifying them by name) knows this has no chance in passing. So, why bother? Well, they are making a political statement and a social one as well. They also want to distract us from what is really going on in the legislature. They hope we will expend our energy defeating this monstrosity of a bill and ignore the real stuff they are trying to do.

Texas has done this for years. They take real issues like education, infrastructure, and the energy crisis and throw them on the backburner for wedge issues only a few care about deeply. Most of the time it is a bill allowing a three year old to bring a semi-automatic machine gun to daycare or having women that seek abortions drawn and quartered. You’ve seen them before. They are the type of bills that make you wonder if a majority of Texans are just stupid, mean, or if they are breathing at all.

However, this gets to the heart of what is inside the typical conservative. There isn’t much going on upstairs and what lies inside the chest is black indeed. I get the discomfort. We have a few students on campus that are transgender. It can be hard to deal with how you address them or what to talk about with them. I get discomfort on that level.

However, this is where the ignorance rolls in. Transgender people don’t go down to the local Walgreens, take a pill, and then become what they want. They don’t get cut from the basketball team, put on a dress, and then try out for the girl’s team. Yet, this is how this bill and others that have actually passed state legislatures seem to think about the process of reassigning your gender.

Parents aren’t demanding their kid change genders and they aren’t buying hormones on the street corner to get it done. This involves doctors, mental health professionals, and maybe church officials and pastors if they are religious. It involves deep reflection, soul searching, and numerous intermediate steps. Parents and children willing to go through with it deserve much more than what they are getting. It takes courage for a parent to let go of what they thought they had to allow their child to become the person they feel they need to become.

So, at the end of the day it is difficult to imagine what is more detestable in this case. Is the thought process itself the most obnoxious thing? Is the ignorance about the process of becoming transgender the most obnoxious thing? Is the hypocrisy of citing a loving and benevolent God while completely ignoring the love that he taught us to show the most obnoxious thing? It could be all of those, but it could be the simple truth that they want us talking about these things while they rob us blind behind our back.

Learning absolutely diddle squat from the Hitler Festivities hosted by Sean Spicer, North Carolina Republican state representative Larry Pittman just compared Abraham Lincoln to Hitler.

No damn freekin’ kidding, y’all.

As a sophomore letterman on the Facebook Debating Society, Pittman dropped this jewel when a commenter reminded Pittman that gay marriage is now the law and that Pittman should “get over it,” instead of wasting time repeatedly trying to re-introduce it to ban it.

Pittman’s response: “And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort (of) tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional.”

By the way, Pittman is the pastor of Ridgecrest Presbyterian Church in Stanly County.

Hitler: everybody you disagree with is just like him.

Tennessee is not the best educated place on earth.  I get that.  But, holy hell, this is whacky.

First, Tennessee passes a law that says a child born through artificial insemination is the “legitimate” child of the mother’s husband.  I kinda suspect they they did not have good thoughts when passing that law, like maybe taking the first step toward recognizing that all babies are legitimate. But, I think they passed it so people would quit having sex.

Now they have change their mind.

Tennessee Republican (start cringing now) State House member Terry Lynn Weaver from Nashville now wants to repeal that bill.  Last week, she filed HB1406 which would repeal the idea that children born through artificial insemination are “legitimate,” because nothing is more loving and Christian that marking an innocent child as “illegitimate” the moment it is born.

Terri Lynn Weaver is a gospel songwriter and singer.  Yikes, listen to Momma Prays. As I listened, I was afraid she was gonna break out in yodeling any minute an there ain’t nothing worse than cowboy yodeling. On top of that, she sings but she doesn’t listen to what she’s singing.

Weaver is extremely concerned that lesbians who have children through artificial insemination are a horror so we need to punish innocent little babies.

Y’all, I hate these people. God forgive me, I do. I try hard to hate the sin and not the sinner, but I can’t. So, today I am awarding the Illegitimate Gospel Grammy Award to Terri Lynn Weaver of Nashville, Tennessee.

Thanks to Mike for the heads up.