The Official Michael Kuhl Website

Truth is a constant search. To say “I’ve found it!”, then sit on that spot and look no more is to deny one’s own humanity. To demand that others sit there with you is an attempt to strip them of their humanity.

Here are a couple of facts:

1) There is NOT a mosque being built on Ground Zero. The crowd is up in arms about a community center blocks away, next to a mosque that has been there for over 30 years.

2) What IS being planned for Ground Zero is a 55,000 square foot underground retail mall, because the real way to honor the heroes and dead of 9/11 would be licking Cinnabon frosting off our fat, bloated fingers before trying on a $150 pair of Abercrombie jeans.

When a belief system makes such a strong pronouncement as “there is only one way to God and it is this”, and then condemns any other belief system to the fires of hell, I become very nervous. In that are the roots of tyranny, no different from Islamic fundamentalism.

My mother is Jewish. My father was a Christian Scientist. Already there is comedic potential, but wait, it gets better. Why the marriage didn’t last I can only guess…

When I was five years old I had rheumatic fever. My grandparents on my father’s side were visiting at the time, and remaining true to their firmly held Christian Science beliefs they attempted to heal me through prayer. I remember my grandmother calling the mother church in Boston, and putting me on the phone with someone who tried to correct the error in my thinking that was allowing the illness to take hold.

At a certain point, my mother had enough, and demanded that I be taken to a hospital. Once there, I died.

Not for long, and I was successfully resuscitated, evidently. But for a period of time I was legally dead. I don’t recall any white light, no tunnel. I think I may have smelled bacon….

The point is that a belief, a religious doctrine, held as an absolute, literally killed me.

I know that the obvious response from some standpoints is that it was the wrong belief, however it was no less firmly held. Perhaps more. They were willing to let a five year old child die because of it. The funny thing is they viewed it as their failing, that if their faith had only been stronger they would have successfully healed me.

I will not argue the legitimacy of the the Bible and Christianity, but I will also not argue the legitimacy of the Qu’ran and Islam, the Torah and Judaism, or the Tao Te Ching and Taoism. I believe each, and a host of others, has validity, and that each has been touched by the Divine.

It is only when these ancient texts are subjected to the strangle hold that is fundamentalism that they become somewhat dangerous. A belief that holds itself as an absolute and sole truth is just one very small step away from the decision to see the others as invalid, inferior or threats. From there the perceived need to eliminate them is a product of human, not Divine, nature. Because for whatever these volumes contain, it is subject to human interpretation, and when a human mind is convinced it has Divine justification there in no end to the horrors it can bring about.

The Bible has been through a lot. Translation after translation, each claiming superiority over the other. Translations of texts that come from a time when the human mind was much more metaphorical in nature than it is now. Any attempt to interpret metaphorical thought with a literal mind is doomed to failure on some level.

Nobody has a problem with same sex paying the bills, doing housework, watching tv together, arguing about money, talking about your day, deciding whether to cook at home or order food or stealing the covers. All activities that any married people I know, myself included, spend most of their married time engaged in.

No, the argument against same sex marriage rests entirely in same sex sex. It’s all the people who oppose gay marriage can think about. Two people with matching naughty parts rubbing up against each other, all sweaty and nasty.

As soon as we can stop letting THOSE filthy minded perverts make the decisions for the rest of society there is no barrier to same sex marriage.

There have been several cases of asexual reproduction documented in komodo dragons. I think that  God has been attempting to send Jesus back for a long time, but in all  of the confusion inherent in creating everything and keeping the entire cosmos running amid the constant chatter of people whining about their lives, begging for their team to win, and screaming for the destruction of things they don’t like he forgot what species to send.

The messiah has returned hundreds of times, people! He’s just a nine foot long, 150 pound voracious lizard with toxic saliva.

Praise the Lord!