A boy in Pennsylvania has been charged with "desecration of a venerated object" because he climbed up on a statue of a kneeling Jesus and pretended the statue was fellating him, had a picture taken of the simulated act and posted it on his Facebook page. He is facing a possible maximum of two years behind bars for this.
I was keenly unaware of this law when I was growing up in Pennsylvania, otherwise I would never have claimed to my auto insurance agent that I regularly washed my car in Holy Water and deserved a discount for that, but the authorities there take it seriously. A man was arrested a few years ago and charged under it for urinating on a Nativity display. Whether he relieved himself directly into the manger or merely splashed a few accidental drops on an outlying drummer boy couldn't be discerned from available reports, but he had to face justice under the desecration law instead of merely being jailed for urinating in public.
The fact that the law only protects Christian objects of veneration is apparent from these examples. On the comments that follow the story, which I recommend to you, Christians seem to regard this as merely even-handed justice, whereas free-thinkers are all in favor of giving the high-spirited, fake-fellating youth a pass. There are outliers in the comments section as well; one man complains that the Federal government shouldn't be involved. It's not. Another says the youth should do the same to a statue of Muhammad, and let 1.3 billion Muslims kill him.
I doubt it would take all 1.3 billion Muslims to kill one teenage lad in PA, but just building a statue of Muhammad anywhere in the US would cause sensitive Muslims everywhere to throw rocks at our embassies anywhere they were allowed to have rocks. You wouldn't have to simulate a sex act with it to get a nice bloodbath. Many of the Christian commentators seemed a bit jealous of the Muslims in this regard.
Another person with a keyboard seems to think that if the boy had desecrated a gay flag with a simulated sex act, some liberals would take his crime more seriously. Apparently this individual thinks gay people regard fellatio as an insult. I think we can safely ignore this opinion.
The injustice of merely prosecuting people for desecrating Christian venerated objects may be okay in Pennsylvania, but here in California I bet a similar law would have to take a much broader approach. Many of us have abandoned simple Christian worship in favor of more contemporary adorations. We venerate our cars here in the Traffic State, so if we had a sweet old T-Bird or a Maserati worth more than the median family home in Pennsylvania and someone rear-ended it, making that idiot, who was probably texting or eating sushi instead of paying attention to his driving, spend two years in the pen would serve him right. Likewise if you spit tobacco juice in some billionaire's wallet or drew a smiley face on someone's American Express Gold Card, you should rightfully do time.
But money, cars and Jesus barely scratch the surface of what we have to venerate in this marvelous modern age. A young guy looks at his brand-new iPhone 6 the same way as an old guy looks at his freshly-opened prescription for Viagra. Worshipfully. Drop either one of them on the floor and listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth. And get set to wear handcuffs.
Smoke someone else's medicinal bud of Hindu Kush before he venerates it in his bong and you belong behind bars.
Pointing out the odds of winning to someone buying a boatload of lottery tickets is dry-humping his dreams as surely as telling a Christian Jesus might never have existed. A couple years of chilling in the Big House will teach such a man to respect other people's beliefs.
But the government out here seems to have other things on its mind than keeping its citizens from bashing each other's belief systems, so none of the above is going to come to pass, leaving the Keystone State to carry the torch of making nice around statues of Jesus, while not being particularly protective of other stuff its citizens might regard as sacred. In the silver lining department for the statue and the organization it belongs to, Love in the Name of Christ, which sounds like one of the most piously boring Christian congregations ever roped together to suffer ennui in the name of God on an otherwise perfect Sunday morning, however, its statue is at least for a few days nearly as famous as the most popular statue in PA, the one of Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Museum of Art originally didn't want the Rocky statue because they thought they had a whole bunch of better statues already, but it was forced upon them by the people of Philadelphia, who were just tickled that someone had made a successful movie there. Consider that the archaeologists of the distant future may one day excavate this structure and be struck by the location of the Rocky statue, in the place of honor in front of a whole structure full of more sophisticated objets de art. They may conclude that the figure represents a god worshiped by the ancient people of Philadelphia, a deity of a religion that used Roman numerals to identify its sacred texts long after the Romans were dead, and whose priests demanded of their adherents that they practice the sport of boxing well into advanced old age. They may well argue among themselves whether Rocky actually existed.
So Rocky and Jesus may one day be the subjects of the same debate. But the Rocky statue will never be the object of fellatio-related irreverence. Look at it. You'd need a tall stepladder to even attempt to fake oral sex upon it. And Rocky himself doesn't look like he'd be particularly receptive to giving fellatio.
He looks like he's just gotten some.
I was keenly unaware of this law when I was growing up in Pennsylvania, otherwise I would never have claimed to my auto insurance agent that I regularly washed my car in Holy Water and deserved a discount for that, but the authorities there take it seriously. A man was arrested a few years ago and charged under it for urinating on a Nativity display. Whether he relieved himself directly into the manger or merely splashed a few accidental drops on an outlying drummer boy couldn't be discerned from available reports, but he had to face justice under the desecration law instead of merely being jailed for urinating in public.
The fact that the law only protects Christian objects of veneration is apparent from these examples. On the comments that follow the story, which I recommend to you, Christians seem to regard this as merely even-handed justice, whereas free-thinkers are all in favor of giving the high-spirited, fake-fellating youth a pass. There are outliers in the comments section as well; one man complains that the Federal government shouldn't be involved. It's not. Another says the youth should do the same to a statue of Muhammad, and let 1.3 billion Muslims kill him.
I doubt it would take all 1.3 billion Muslims to kill one teenage lad in PA, but just building a statue of Muhammad anywhere in the US would cause sensitive Muslims everywhere to throw rocks at our embassies anywhere they were allowed to have rocks. You wouldn't have to simulate a sex act with it to get a nice bloodbath. Many of the Christian commentators seemed a bit jealous of the Muslims in this regard.
Another person with a keyboard seems to think that if the boy had desecrated a gay flag with a simulated sex act, some liberals would take his crime more seriously. Apparently this individual thinks gay people regard fellatio as an insult. I think we can safely ignore this opinion.
The injustice of merely prosecuting people for desecrating Christian venerated objects may be okay in Pennsylvania, but here in California I bet a similar law would have to take a much broader approach. Many of us have abandoned simple Christian worship in favor of more contemporary adorations. We venerate our cars here in the Traffic State, so if we had a sweet old T-Bird or a Maserati worth more than the median family home in Pennsylvania and someone rear-ended it, making that idiot, who was probably texting or eating sushi instead of paying attention to his driving, spend two years in the pen would serve him right. Likewise if you spit tobacco juice in some billionaire's wallet or drew a smiley face on someone's American Express Gold Card, you should rightfully do time.
But money, cars and Jesus barely scratch the surface of what we have to venerate in this marvelous modern age. A young guy looks at his brand-new iPhone 6 the same way as an old guy looks at his freshly-opened prescription for Viagra. Worshipfully. Drop either one of them on the floor and listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth. And get set to wear handcuffs.
Smoke someone else's medicinal bud of Hindu Kush before he venerates it in his bong and you belong behind bars.
Pointing out the odds of winning to someone buying a boatload of lottery tickets is dry-humping his dreams as surely as telling a Christian Jesus might never have existed. A couple years of chilling in the Big House will teach such a man to respect other people's beliefs.
But the government out here seems to have other things on its mind than keeping its citizens from bashing each other's belief systems, so none of the above is going to come to pass, leaving the Keystone State to carry the torch of making nice around statues of Jesus, while not being particularly protective of other stuff its citizens might regard as sacred. In the silver lining department for the statue and the organization it belongs to, Love in the Name of Christ, which sounds like one of the most piously boring Christian congregations ever roped together to suffer ennui in the name of God on an otherwise perfect Sunday morning, however, its statue is at least for a few days nearly as famous as the most popular statue in PA, the one of Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Museum of Art originally didn't want the Rocky statue because they thought they had a whole bunch of better statues already, but it was forced upon them by the people of Philadelphia, who were just tickled that someone had made a successful movie there. Consider that the archaeologists of the distant future may one day excavate this structure and be struck by the location of the Rocky statue, in the place of honor in front of a whole structure full of more sophisticated objets de art. They may conclude that the figure represents a god worshiped by the ancient people of Philadelphia, a deity of a religion that used Roman numerals to identify its sacred texts long after the Romans were dead, and whose priests demanded of their adherents that they practice the sport of boxing well into advanced old age. They may well argue among themselves whether Rocky actually existed.
So Rocky and Jesus may one day be the subjects of the same debate. But the Rocky statue will never be the object of fellatio-related irreverence. Look at it. You'd need a tall stepladder to even attempt to fake oral sex upon it. And Rocky himself doesn't look like he'd be particularly receptive to giving fellatio.
He looks like he's just gotten some.
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