Walpurgisnacht: Witches and devils and spectres oh my!

 

 

 Now to the Brocken the witches ride;

The stubble is gold and the corn is green;

There is the carnival crew to be seen,

And Squire Urianus will come to preside.

So over the valleys our company floats,

With witches a-farting on stinking old goats.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

The Feud With "The Jews" of the Fourth Gospel Was With "The Judeans" Not "The Jews"

As I have observed before, the Fourth Gospel's use of "the Jews" is so stark that on occasion it makes it look like Jesus and his disciples are outsiders and not Jews. And Paul the Jew oddly seems to blame "The Jews" for Jesus' death even though Paul in Romans thought that the gospel was for the Jew first.

An interesting story here suggests the solution is to translate differently:

One example from the New King James Version (NKJV) is instructive: “Then after this, [Jesus] said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again. The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the ioudaioi [Jews] sought to stone you and are you going there again?’” (John 11:7-8) Translating “ioudaioi” above as “Jews” presents an immediate problem. It implies that Jesus – even while called “rabbi” – was not Jewish, but an outsider, along with his disciples. This would include John, despite his insider knowledge of the people and places, customs and nuances of early first-century Israel.

It obscures the fact that John is describing a family dispute – albeit a bitter one – among some of his fellow Jews on whether Jesus was Israel’s deliverer. It implies that the Jews as a people were Christ’s monolithic foe, and perhaps even collectively culpable for his mistreatment and death.

In other words, rendering “ioudaioi” as “Jews” suggests the writer drew an impassable line between Jesus and his earliest followers and “the Jews.”

Clearly he did not. The problem rests with the translation. Ioudaioi here means “Judeans,” not “Jews.”

That the solution is plausible is accepted by the translators of the New King James Version, as the article itself notes, but is not carried through in John for some reason:

Don’t translators see the problem? Actually, the New King James Version (NKJV) translators did. In I Thessalonians 2:14-16, a portion from one of Paul’s letters, they rightly rendered ioudaioi “Judeans.” With this one simple change, they transformed a passage wielded infamously for centuries against the entire people of Israel into one that criticizes a miniscule clique of individuals – likely Caiaphas and his allies – within first-century Judea.

Why no similar corrections for John’s Gospel? Why indeed.

Mollie Hemingway cries sacrilege at Sarah Palin but forgets Luther's view that baptism kills

Mollie Hemingway gets her undies in a twist (here) because she thinks Sarah Palin's baptism joke at the NRA meeting was a sacrilege against the life-giving sacrament:

Sarah Palin gave a speech to members of the National Rifle Association, gathered in Indianapolis this weekend. She said something that struck me as sacrilegious ... [:] "Well, if I were in charge, [prisoners] would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.” ... Does [waterboarding] deliver those who are subjected to it from the devil, as Christian baptism does? Does it give them eternal life, as Christian baptism does? Is it voluntary, as Christian baptism is? It is none of these things. Joking about baptism in the context of this aggressive action suggests that we don’t think baptism is as life-giving or important as it is.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Except that the Lutheran understanding of baptism, as Mollie ought to know, also includes meting out death, and on a daily basis:

Fourthly.

What does such baptizing with water signify?--Answer.

It signifies that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise; who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Since waterboarding is never meant to kill but is a painful experience designed to get the truth out of someone, you might even say it bears a strong resemblence to the intent of baptism as Luther understood part of its purpose.

Sarah Palin may be many things, but in this case no one but a special pleading Lutheran grandstander looking for something to say would look at Sarah Palin's remarks and conclude she meant anything specifically religious by them. Her remarks might have been in bad taste, but it wasn't sacrilege.

After all, Sarah Palin knows an awful lot about bad taste.

The Wise Sayings Of The Imam

The Wise Sayings Of The Imam:

 

"God's sovereignty is the is-is-ought fallacy elevated to a theological dogma. See The Mandate of Heaven." 

 

"Dispensationalism is the rationalism of the schoolmen but in evangelical dress."

"If there were only two choices, I'd rather be a bigot than a small it. You're it."

"Mormonism is a religion with one too many 'm's' in its name."

"Whether it's got tits or testicles, it's going to cause you trouble."

"Only a teachers' union would find nothing wrong with making a retired teacher with braces on her teeth the pronouncer at a spelling bee."

"Run for your lives! Even the Christians drive like crap."

"All things considered, I prefer the Old World Disorder to the New World Order."

"The light beer of Lutheranism has five fewer sacraments than our regular beer."

"Forget the Antichrist. Obama is the AntiPaul. He has become all things to all men, that he might by all means enslave some."

"What happens to a doomsday cult when the world doesn't end? It becomes Christianity, then Islam, then Puritanism, then Mormonism."

"Daughters turn their fathers into social conservatives, but sons turn them into foreign policy liberals."

"Respect for our elders is enjoined by our religion not because they often deserve it, but because they often don't."

"America does better when she specializes in marksmen, not Marxmen."

"The first thing to go when a civilization begins to descend into despotism is proportionality. Suddenly all infractions become equal and equally intolerable without exception. The child who innocently draws a picture of a gun becomes the same as the one who brings a real one to school."

"Direct democracy means majoritarian mobs vote to extract money directly from your wallet and transfer it directly into theirs."

"Church and school: two places where the credulous ever go, believing it will improve them. A third is the voting booth."

"In a civilized country they say 'You can't make a purse out of a sow's ear,' in a barbarized one 'You can't polish a turd.' Guess which one we're in."

"The Norwegian Labour Party teaches its young to hate Israel and seeks to make that official government policy, and then they are surprised by the Utoya massacre?"

"If it costs somebody else money, it's not a right."

"Tyranny cannot endure because the tyrant is overcome by his own passions, which rule him."

"Democrats enslave the people to the big government store, Republicans to the discount store."

"The new American dream is four million Muslims headed back to Arabia with a liberal under each arm."

"Rush Limbaugh protests so much against the Republican establishment because the half of his brain tied behind his back is his suffering liberal self which keeps telling him he's one of them."

"Wise men know that human nature is neither all good nor all evil, but a mixture of the two. The problem is that, more often than not, it turns out to be a bad mixture."

"Who isn't a child of his time, except the one living in it?"

"Burial is your last act of recycling."

"Poverty is good because, like a severe illness, it can make you more alive to the world."

"Like vultures, corporate raiders perform a needed function in nature, but they are seldom popular as pets."

"People who will do anything for a job are dangerous because they will do anything."

"I'd be working class, if only I were working."

"Anger moves the evil to get even, the good to get justice, and true believers to expunge it, resulting in neither."

"America no longer declares wars because then it would have to win them."

"My passwords are so secure even I don't know them."

"Many people read and speak a foreign language, but few know and understand the truth even in their own."

"A people whose primary response to everything is emotional is an unpredictable people, which makes them unreliable to the global community."

"America is entirely a phenomenon of Protestantism. It is as unimaginable to conceive of it being birthed from Roman Catholic 'conservatism' as is blood from a turnip. You can't say 'No' to a king without a king saying 'No' to a pope, without a monk saying 'No' to Johann Tetzel."

"If sorrowful toil is the curse of all mankind, why are so many people clamoring for jobs?"

"The times demand self-application, self-restraint and self-mastery when all about us is servitude to backgammon, bawds and the bottle."

"Socialism is not a unique form of evil which has only lately made its appearance, at the end of 'history' as it were. It is simply the clothing worn by tyranny in our time."

"I'm so discombobulated today that I'm spelling it 'discomjimulated'".

"Keynesianism and Christianity are similar because each always has an answer for why it's not wrong."

"If you use less pants, there's fewer work washing them."

"True Protestantism protests Luther on behalf of Paul, Paul on behalf of Jesus, Jesus on behalf of The Prophets, and finally The Prophets on behalf of The Law of Moses."

"I'm usually firing on all cylinders, just not always in the right order."

"The politician becomes a statesman by losing for the sake of a principle."

"If you want to see human transformation, go to a graveyard, pal."

"Jesus is at his best as a critic of his own religion."

"The least presentable member of the body of Christ, in a word, stinketh. If not allowed to do its job, which is generally the case in Christendom, the church is rightly said to be 'Full of it'."

"There comes a winter in life after which there is no spring."

"One reason why heaven is such a pleasant place is that it is not densely populated."

"If man is the measure of all things, our contemporaries come up short."

"American National Socialism pacifies the people it robs with the welfare state."

"Patriotism is now the last refuge of the bugger."

"Predestination is a theological conception not unlike fate which is suggested by the inescapability of death and projected onto divinity by the human mind."

"In order to be a good steward of God's gifts, do the opposite of whatever Jim Cramer says to do."

"When you're too tired to cook, just make sure you don't mistake the catfood for the meatloaf."

Civilizational collapse: Neither Baby Boomers nor Millennials have been fruitful and multiplied

Near the peak of the Baby Boom births per 1000 hit 25.0 in 1955, and over the next 22 years collapsed to 15.1 per 1000 women by 1977, a traditional demarcation year for the beginning of the Millennials. No cohort since 1993 has hit or surpassed the 15.1 level, and Millennials since turning 22 in 1999 haven't done any better. Births to Millennials since 2007 have fallen 12% from 14.3 per 1000 to just 12.6 per 1000, the lowest level in the post-war period. Even during the abortion mania between 1973 and 1976 births per 1000 remained higher than they are under the Millennials.

In shouting No! to reproduction is to be found all our other shouts of No!: to economic growth, to educational advancement, to national greatness, to civility and to religion. In the great cultural handoff after the Second World War, we have fumbled the ball and wandered off the field.

If we believed in the future, we would be creating it.

Next stop, oblivion.

Brevity is the soul of wit also in religion

A Jewish friend of mine once said his idea of the perfect [Passover] Haggadah would be: “They tried to kill us. They didn’t kill us. Let’s eat.” ... My parents particularly liked our Easter Sunday dinners after church and the Easter egg hunts were over. We had country ham with all the trimmings, curried eggs, grits, collard greens, biscuits, lemon meringue pie and, of course, all the chocolates from the Easter baskets. Most importantly, it was the time for my father to break out the Bloody Marys and my mother to pour herself a glass of Champagne. The WASP version of my Jewish friend’s description of the holiday might well have been: “They tried to kill him. They didn’t kill him. Let’s drink.”

-- Sally Quinn, here

"But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking."

-- Matthew 6:7

Even The Resurrected Jesus Of John's Gospel Speaks Of Himself In Subordinationist Terms

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

-- John 20:17

And while we're at it, did Jesus ascend between this appearance and eight days later, when Thomas is positively encouraged to touch him, as Mary is not?

And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

-- John 20:26f.

If so, then there are two ascensions, as some teach, or perhaps more accurately, multiple ascensions.

Does your theology have room for people who don't celebrate "Easter"?

One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.

-- Romans 14:5f.

But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.

-- Galatians 4:9ff.

The (First) Council of Nicaea (325) established that the date of Easter would be the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox.

Narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it . . .

. . . or I will draw all men unto me?

You decide:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

-- Matthew 7:13f.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

-- John 12:32

Orthodoxy is my doxy . . .

"Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy."

-- attributed to William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759-1779, by Joseph Priestley, Memoirs (1807, volume 1).

Orthodoxy means not thinking

By 2050 ... [t]he whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Phil Jenkins says some silly things about the Gospel of Mark

Here:

It’s obvious to assume that Mark, a skilled and thoughtful writer, did not mean to end the book thus, and that an original ending has been lost. But that is where the story gets puzzling. If we assume the standard theory of the composition of the gospels, then Mark wrote about 70. Perhaps a quarter century afterwards, his book was used by both Matthew and Luke, who incorporated virtually his whole text, and it is clear that neither author knew any other or fuller ending. If an ending was lost, it vanished very early indeed, if it was ever written. At least by the second century, various editors added their own conclusions to satisfy what they felt to be the gaping hole at the end of Mark, and one survives in the KJV as Mark 16.8-20. ...

If it really was meant to end at 16:8, Mark may be the greatest anti-Christian, anti-Jesus movement, tract ever written. It could scarcely have been so highly regarded as it was, still less accepted as the basis of other traditions. ...

It’s very likely indeed that the next scene would have been something very much like John 21, with a Resurrection appearance (a) to Peter (b) in Galilee. If the ending of Mark’s gospel actually did exist and then was lost, this is presumably just what it would have looked like. (Rudolf Bultmann was one famous scholar who argued this).

-------------------------------

First of all, Mark is not a "skilled" writer. His Greek is everywhere clumsy, as John C. Meagher noted long ago, may he rest in peace. The almost laughable uses of kai, euthus, and gar represent just three examples well known to students of Mark's style, if it can be dignified as style. Mark has some facility with Greek as a second language, and evidently is using it to communicate to a special audience of similarly situated individuals, perhaps in Rome.

Matthew and Luke "incorporated virtually his whole text", but not in the verbatim manner this suggests. Those authors frequently change details of Mark's content, and improve upon his Greek significantly. This means they are correcting Mark as much as they are using him.

The absence of a proper ending which then fails to show up in Matthew and Luke indeed shows the early absence of the ending, but it is also another reason why Matthew and Luke felt the need to write their own compositions. They believed Mark to be inadequate, and inadequate on a number of levels. Luke especially shares this attitude about the inadequacy of the previous accounts with which he is familiar, and presumably "John" would not have written his account subsequent to the Synoptics if he thought they were adequate, else he had not departed from them so radically.

The use of Mark as architecture for composition by Matthew and Luke pays respect to Mark, it is granted, but was Mark really "so highly regarded"? The dearth of early manuscript evidence for Mark speaks against it. A highly regarded gospel would be copied more often from the beginning, and more copies would survive from that time than do.

Finally, the suggestion that what we have at the end of John, as hinted at by the Gospel of Peter, constitutes what is missing from Mark is plausible. However, students of the Fourth Gospel know that John is not a unity either. The prologue, the story of the woman caught in adultery, and the final chapter all look like additions, which means that the narrative ending we are looking for in Mark has its basis only in material which is itself mainly the phenomenon of later editorial activity, some of which was not canonized. Not firm ground to stand on.

Progressive taxation is a Christian heresy

Progressive taxation is a Christian heresy based on a loose interpretation of Luke 12.48b, as if it justified charging one rich man 33%, another 35% and still another 39.6%, while charging one poor man 10%, another 15% and a third 25%:

Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required;

Literally ripped from its context and mangled, the passage is made to teach something completely at odds with the apocalyptic setting of the chapter (which mirrors Matthew 10), its coming Son of Man figure (vss. 8, 10, 40), its urgency about the end of the world and the judgment which comes with it (vss. 20, 28, 40, 46, 49f., 56) and especially its call to repentance.

The latter consists of liquidation of assets, distribution of same to the poor (vs. 33), and utter dependence on God (vss. 24, 27, 29-32). It doesn't matter whether one has much or little when answering the call to come and follow. The price is always the same: everything you've got. That is the sense in which those with much have much required of them, but it is also the sense in which those who have little have little required of them. Nevertheless it is all required, whether much or little. 

Accordingly it is complete nonsense to suggest that such a Jesus has anything to say to us about taxation. He doesn't imagine the world will even last long enough to develop the immanentized utopia of liberal dreams. But even if he had, who would fund it? Certainly not his disciples, who would have no jobs to tax, having left all to follow him. If Christianity is anything, it is renunciation of the world, not this uneasy truce we see living out its years everywhere. 

What's almost worse than this perversion of history is progressive taxation's theocratic hypocrisy. The liberals who advocate progressive taxation often seem to find nothing wrong with scaling the wall separating church and state to pluck this bon mot for their cause while at the same time decrying every conservative who does the same in support of traditional morality, for example. The reason liberals do it surely is sinister, trusting to the simple God-fearing folk of the country who wouldn't dare to raise any objection to the teaching of their master, nevermind it isn't his teaching. 

The real error of progressive taxation is its unequal treatment of people under the law, which makes the law an ass. Time to end it.

The price of American citizenship should be the same for everyone.

Never believe the polling data: true believers tend to over-report

As with American Christians who lie about how often they go to church, Muslims don't tell the truth about praying five times a day.

From the story here:

[T]he research comes to us via Phillip Brenner. He's a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He's conducted several studies that explore this contrast between what people say about themselves and their actual behavior.

One technique he uses is to track what people tell their diaries. ...

What he finds ... is that people tend to be reporting that they pray more than they actually do. And this finding is very similar to the finding that Brenner made a couple of years ago when it comes to church attendance in the United States. And people in the United States say they go to church but large numbers actually don't.

And what's interesting is in both places the people who are over-reporting their religious behavior have something in common. Here's Brenner[:]

The similarity between these two places is that it is the people who think that religion is important, it's important in their daily lives. Those are the people who are over-reporting. And those are the people who are over-reporting church attendance in the U.S. and those are the people who are over-reporting prayer in Turkey, Palestine and Pakistan.

So Rod Dreher's had another crisis: How many is that now?

The Methodist turned Catholic turned Eastern Orthodox lost a sibling and turned . . . to a therapist, at the age of 46 or so, and after all that.

Christianity does attract a certain sort of person. Its founders were peculiar too. Who knows. Maybe you have to be quite nuts to found a religion.

I suspect this isn't the last time we'll hear that Rod Dreher has had another crisis, but I do hope it is. 

The story is here.

There is no ethic of the kingdom of God

"There is for Jesus no ethic of the Kingdom of God, for in the Kingdom of God all natural relationships, even, for example, the distinction of sex (Mark xii. 25 and 26), are abolished."

-- Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (London: Charles Black, 1954), p. 364.

Christians do not believe in the historical Jesus

Bart Ehrman, here:

The overwhelming majority of Christians do not, and never did, believe in the historical Jesus — despite what they may say or think. Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher of the imminent destruction of his world. That’s not whom Christians believe in. They believe in the God Christ. Had Jesus not been proclaimed God, nothing like the Christian faith would have emerged. And we would not have our form of civilization.

The graveyards are full of indispensable people, and others

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

-- Genesis 3:17ff.

The Good King, Asa of Judah

And in the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel reigned Asa over Judah. And forty and one years reigned he in Jerusalem. And his mother's name [was] Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom. And Asa did [that which was] right in the eyes of the LORD, as [did] David his father. And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. And also Maachah his mother, even her he removed from [being] queen, because she had made an idol in a grove; and Asa destroyed her idol, and burnt [it] by the brook Kidron. But the high places were not removed: nevertheless Asa's heart was perfect with the LORD all his days.

-- 1 Kings 15

Incidentally Joel Miller, Martin Luther included the Pericope Adulterae in his German translation of the Bible, along with James

See for yourself here and select the edition of 1545.

"Wer unter euch ohne Sünde ist, der werfe den ersten Stein auf sie", eh Joel?

-- Johannes 8:7

Anti-protestant silliness on the Pericope Adulterae from Joel J. Miller

Joel Miller here on John 7:53ff., the favorite New Testament cudgel of liberals everywhere:

"[W]hat should we make of the faith of all those Christians that lived before this reconstruction [which excludes the pericope from John], including great exegetes like Augustine or Chrysostom, or pastors who led the church before even the canon (let alone this imagined reconstruction) was settled?"

Well, what should we make of the faith of all those Christians that lived with a Gospel of John without the passage, including the readers of:

Papyri 66 (c. 200) and 75 (early 3rd century); Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (4th century), also apparently Alexandrinus and Ephraemi (5th), Codices Washingtonianus and Borgianus also from the 5th century, Regius from the 8th, Athous Lavrensis (c. 800), Petropolitanus Purpureus, Macedoniensis, Sangallensis and Koridethi from the 9th century and Monacensis from the 10th; Uncials 0141 and 0211; Minuscules 3, 12, 15, 21, 22, 32, 33, 36, 39, 44, 49, 63, 72, 87, 96, 97, 106, 108, 124, 131, 134, 139, 151, 157, 169, 209, 213, 228, 297, 388, 391, 401, 416, 445, 488, 496, 499, 501, 523, 537, 542, 554, 565, 578, 584, 703, 719, 723, 730, 731, 736, 741, 742, 768, 770, 772, 773, 776, 777, 780, 799, 800, 817, 827, 828, 843, 896, 989, 1077, 1080, 1100, 1178, 1230, 1241, 1242, 1253, 1333, 2193 and 2768; the majority of lectionaries; some Old Latin, the majority of the Syriac, the Sahidic dialect of the Coptic, the Gothic, some Armenian, Georgian mss. of Adysh (9th century); Diatessaron (2nd century); apparently Clement of Alexandria (died 215), other Church Fathers namely Tertullian (died 220), Origen (died 254), Cyprian (died 258), Nonnus (died 431), Cyril of Alexandria (died 444) and Cosmas (died 550) ?

What were those Christians, chopped liver?

"Rather than a collection of texts written in and for the church and recognized as valid by that church, biblical books and even minute passages now become arbitrated by scholars."

Well, no. The above collection of texts without the pericope is arbitrated as valid by scribes, who presumably were themselves Christians. But apparently their voices don't count as the voice of the church to Joel Miller.

"If the church doesn’t validate the text, who does? In this instance, scholarly consensus is consulted to 'uncanonize' a portion of generally received scripture."

Sorry, no. The absence of the pericope suggests churchmen "uncanonized" it long before contemporary scholars did. Martin Luther did nothing different. Joel Miller just doesn't want to face it.

"Sola Scriptura becomes queer indeed when ideas from outside Scripture are determining what goes into it."

Well, if some extra-Biblical principle was at work excluding the pericope from the manuscript evidence, it pre-dated the Reformation by a thousand years and was operating in scriptoria funded by churches all over the place. What's with the anti-protestantism, Miller?

"[I]nerrancy becomes equally queer when ... Christians have been hearing a bunk passage read from the lectionary and expounded from the pulpit for centuries."

Just because there are obvious suspect passages like John 7:53ff. and the famous 1 John 5:7f. and Mark 16:9ff. based on the manuscript evidence doesn't "bunkify" the rest of John, 1 John or Mark anymore than the selectivity exercised by lectors in churches for 1,900 years has.

No one suggests Matthew 10:23 isn't original to Matthew just because it's avoided by the church like the plague.

Mobsters Know Why Sodomy Is Wrong, How Come You Don't?

"Analyze This" 1999

Ben: Okay. Do you have marriage problems?

Vitti: No.

Ben: Then why do you have a girlfriend?

Vitti: I do things with her I can't do with my wife.

Ben: Why can't you do those things with your wife?

Vitti: Hey. That's the mouth she kisses my children good night with. What's the matter with you?

Franklin Graham Defends Vladimir Putin's And Russia's Ban On Gay Propagandization Of Minors

And rightly so.

In Decision Magazine, here:

In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.

h/t Pete Wehner (!)