More coverage of John Hagee’s under-covered views and a tribute to a good sex educator to offset all the bad ones we expose. Also, an interview with David Nolan from Catholics for Choice, here to set things straight about Bill Donohue and the Catholic League.

 

Subscribe to RealityCast:
RealityCast iTunes subscription
RealityCast RSS feed

 

Links in this episode:

The Onion Radio News
Hagee column
Hagee on Hurricane Katrina
Hagee sermon
Sue Johanson retires
This argument’s a gas

 

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, I’ll have an interview with David
Nolan about the Catholics for Choice’s new report on Bill Donohue and the
Catholic League. Also, a review of John
Hagee’s teachings in his reactionary San
Antonio church, a tribute to Sue Johanson, and a
wingnut who has a refreshingly honest understanding of his own inability to
argue a point.

 

Ah sweet! Fellow
podcasting fans, if you didn’t know, The Onion now has satirical news reports
as short podcasts. It’s called The Onion
Radio News. You can subscribe on iTunes,
just like you can with this podcast.

 

• insert
  onion radio

 

The failure of many of us to have the exciting sex lives
we’d like to have is a constant source of humor at The Onion, and usually
hilarious.

 

**************

 

A few weeks ago on this podcast, I did a segment exposing
the politics of Rod Parsley, a minister that’s influential on the McCain
campaign in the same way that Reverend Jeremiah Wright is on Obama’s. You know, in interest of keeping it
fair. And I followed it up with a column
about another powerful minister that’s not getting nearly the news coverage
that Wright is, Pastor John Hagee. Then
I realized, oh yeah, Hagee’s got all sorts of audio out there to clip from so I
can get the word out to you guys on what a scary dude he is, so back to that
subject here on the podcast.

 

Hagee is a scary dude because he’s the head of the Christian
Zionist movement here in the U.S.
that wants the government to make decisions about our relations with Israel to be
decided on Hagee’s interpretation of Biblical prophecies. Yeah.
Well, that’s outside the scope of this podcast, but don’t worry, Hagee
is as obsessed with sex as the rest of the wingnutteria. Here he is in 2006 talking about Hurricane
Katrina.

 

• insert
  hagee 1

 

Yeah, he really thinks god is cruel enough to kill people to
make Hagee more comfortable about that homosexuality thing. Interestingly, this belief lets government
officials who did not do enough about the hurricane off the hook.

 

Of course, the Hagee church practices demon exorcism, and
you can guess about how progressive and feminist a practice that is. Here’s an example of a Hagee disciple church
practicing this.

 

• insert
  hagee 2

 

Yep, witchcraft. You
also can get rid of lust and cancer by casting out demons. Whether or not that works is never
questioned.

 

Some more clips of Hagee being political.

 

* insert hagee 3

 

I like this part, because wingnuts are always trying to
recast religious dogma they’re shoving down our throats as if it were secular
wisdom. But once they think you’re not
listening, suddenly, the interest in science, evidence, or reality goes out the
window.

 

* insert hagee 4

 

Yeah, well I’ve been saying that there was no secular reason
to be anti-sex, and Hagee agrees. I
guess we just don’t agree that the 1^st Amendment and the separation
of church and state should be honored.

 

* insert hagee 5

 

Actually, you can’t duck out into the nurse’s office and get
an abortion in between classes. You can
probably get a tampon, which is probably why Hagee is confused. It’s true that they’ll let any old girl
menstruate without getting her parent’s permission.

 

I like this quip from
Hagee.

 

• hagee
  dishwasher

 

If a man’s hand toucheth a dishrag, then his balls shrivel
up and fall off his body, so sayeth the lord.

 

If we’re going to start exposing the political speech at the
pulpits, all I’m saying is let’s be fair about this.

 

****************

 

• insert
  interview

 

*****************

 

Sad news: Sex education guru and Candian grandmother Sue Johanson
is ending her show "Talk Sex with Sue Johanson". She’s in
her late 70s and the show is on really late at night, so she’s slowing
down a little bit. Still, in her 70s,
Sue has more energy than most of us combined.

 

Still, it’s a sad day. She was fresh, fun-loving and
genuinely interested in helping people, a complete 180 from your average
abstinence-only speaker, who has more than a little glint of misogyny and
sadism going on. For sex educators the
worldwide, she has been a role model.
She understands that you can’t really educate about sex sticking to the
dry biological or safety topics, but you have to really be comprehensive and
talk about fun and play and pleasure, too.
So you could learn anything from how to use a condom on her show to how
to use a sex toy. Watching her was like
getting sex advice from your grandmother, and I mean that in the best possible
way.

 

• insert
  sue 1

 

I could have really used the information in this next clip
in high school. I was terrified of
getting an STD from a toilet seat. There
seemed to be some ironic karmic humor in the idea of a virgin whose prom date
possibilities were iffy getting some vile STD without having any more fun than
peeing usually is.

 

• insert
  sue 2

 

Don’t worry. I did
have a date to the prom. And I did not
get a disease from a toilet seat.

 

Sue also had a lot of relationship and dating advice.

 

• insert
  sue 3

 

When I first saw her show, I was so startled at the
combination of the grandmotherly vibe and the blunt sex talk, I just howled
with laughter watching her show. But
then I got to really listening to her and I thought she was a really great
educator, exactly the sort of person I’d feel comfortable asking anything of.

 

• insert
  sue 4

 

In case you were worried about that.

 

She talked about the pleasure issues and clarified places
where people were confused, but she also covered safer sex issues and health
care. Here she’s talking about the IUD
versus the pill.

 

• insert
  sue 5

 

After last week, with the playing all those scary anti-choice
abstinence scolds that call themselves educators, it’s nice to hear someone who
thinks that your body belongs to you, that pleasure is good, and that sex
should be as healthy as possible. Sue
will probably still be doing some sex education in schools as she’s always
done, but she’ll be a sorely missed presence on TV. We need many more out there like her.

 

************

 

And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. I liked this recent video from a guy ranting
about how global warming and the war are non-issues to him as long as women
have rights.

 

• insert
  ranting ro

 

What’s cool about it is that he realizes he’s got no
argument, so he just farts in the camera.
There’s a refreshing honesty to that, because most anti-choicers have
deluded themselves into thinking they can argue a point.