Hey, what’s with the horns on Billy Graham? If you’re a wingnut, you’ll find it’s the liberal press sending a subliminal message.

“Well, the left media continues its crusade of soft propaganda,” wrote conservative blogger John Ruskin.

“This time, the target is Rev. Billy Graham. Yeah, tell me that was an innocent mistake.”

O.K. “Hey John Ruskin, that was an innocent mistake.”

Actually, it wasn’t even a mistake, it was a layout.

Besides, everyone knows Rev. Graham wears his horns the other way, facing front, not to the side.

Excuse me but I have to go now. I just heard there was a tortilla with Elvis on it across town that I need to see.

What happens when a Southern Baptist megachurch congregation starts to question the iron-fisted rule of its preacher? Things get nasty in a hurry.

Rev. Jerry Sutton, is facing complaints that he spent church money on his daughter’s wedding. Oh, and he watched pørn on his church computer and had an affair with a female member of the congregation.

Sutton has served as leader of Nashville’s Two Rivers Baptist Church for 21 years. The megachurch is located just across the highway from the Grand Ole Opry. In 2005 the church hosted the “Justice Sunday II” rally, where then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and others criticized judicial activism to a national audience of evangelical Christians. Of course, that was before the Supremes got down to rewriting the Bill of Rights, etc.

Sutton’s people deny the pørn and affair, which were investigated by the congregation’s human resources staff and found — surprise — to be baseless. As to maintaining secrecy about the church budget and spending church dough on his daughter’s wedding, Sutton’s tools are unrepentant:

The church’s executive pastor, Scott Hutchings defended the church budget and acknowledged that the church paid about $4,300 for a reception for Sutton’s daughter that was open to all church members. He said Sutton personally paid for another separate reception outside the church.

“When you’re pastor, we feel like you have to invite the whole church,” to avoid the appearance of favoritism, Hutchings said.

But what it really seems to be about is that Sutton wants to wield absolute power and brooks no dissent (sound familiar?) among his congregants:

Church trustee Frank Harris has been leading the campaign against Sutton. Two Rivers “appears to have been manipulated from a people-led church to a staff-run church,” Harris said.

“Anyone who voiced opposition to leadership was alienated and lost any ministries they may have had in the church,” Harris said.

Sounds kind of like the United States gubmint. Hutchings put Sutton’s position succinctly: “There has to be submission and authority.”

“Submission and authority” — could be George Bush’s mantra. Maybe if the church thing doesn’t work out for him, Sutton can probably find something in the administration, say in the Department of Justice ….

She died yesterday:

Tammy Faye Messner, whose can-do Christian cheer helped her survive the PTL scandal and forge a second career as a pop-culture queen, died Friday after battling cancer for more than a decade.

She was 65. News of her death at her home near Kansas City, Mo., was posted on her Web site Saturday night.

A family service was held Saturday in a private ceremony, where her ashes were interred, said Joe Spotts, Messner’s booking agent. Spotts said that the family is considering a public memorial service for the coming weeks.

For Tammy Faye, like Elvis, no last name was necessary.

Privette on two occasions allegedly paid the prostitute with checks then reported the checks stolen.

Coy Privette, Tiffany Denise Summers

Rev. Coy Privette, the president of the Christian Action League, a North Carolina ultraconservative Christian political organization based in Raleigh, has been arrested for soliciting prostitution:

Privette, 74, was charged with six counts of misdemeanor aiding and abetting prostitution by renting a hotel room and paying for sexual acts, according to State Bureau of Investigation Agent Kevin Canty. Tiffany Denise Summers, 32, of Salisbury, was charged with six counts of misdemeanor prostitution, Canty said.

And:

Police said officers were investigating a forged check case, which led them to the prostitution charges. Privette on two occasions allegedly paid the prostitute with checks then reported those checks as stolen, officials said.

According to its website, the Christian Action League is:

a Christian public policy organization that addresses public policy and legislative issues from a Christian worldview. The Christian Action League has a full-time presence in the General Assembly of North Carolina and has garnered considerable respect from both the Republican and Democratic parties. The League’s purpose is to assist the church in fulfilling Christ’s command to be the “salt” and the “light” of the earth.

The Christian Action League is funded by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, and it is affiliated with the ultra-rightwing American Family Association.

For over three decades, Privette has been one of the best known and most outrageous spokesmen for “family values” and Christian extreme right politics in North Carolina. In the 1970s, he was serving as minister at the North Kannapolis Baptist Church when he joined the tide of evangelicals entering politics that included the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. He served in the N.C. Legislature from 1984 to 1992, and has been a member of the board of commissioners in Cabarrus County since 1998.

He and his wife, Betty, have four children.

Hat tip to VRW, LCD, Judy

From the folks who brought you homophobia on a national scale comes this latest — Hinduphobia. Unrelenting wingnut Donald “Wildman” Wildmon has got his panties in a twist because a Hindu — you know, the folks with the dots on their forehead — is giving the opening invocation in the Senate tomorrow. So he is enlisting his legions of zombie-like followers in the American Family Association to pester their senators into putting the kibosh on the cow worshipper.

Rajan Zed, a Hindu chaplain from Reno, Nev., is scheduled to deliver the opening prayer in the U.S. Senate. According to Wildmon (which I could not confirm) Zed told the Las Vegas Sun that he will likely include in his prayer references to ancient Hindu scriptures, including Rig Veda, Upanishards [sic], and Bhagavard-Gita [sic]. Wildmon also alleges that unnamed historians say it will be the first Hindu prayer read at the Senate since it was formed in 1789.

So Wildmon trots out the president of — get this — Wallbuilders (as opposed to, say, Bridgebuilders) to justify opposing Zed’s prayer:

‘What is the message, and why is the message needed? And will it actually communicate anything other than engender with folks like me a lot of questions?’
– David Barton

WallBuilders president David Barton is questioning why the U.S. government is seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god. Barton points out that since Hindus worship multiple gods, the prayer will be completely outside the American paradigm, flying in the face of the American motto “One Nation Under God.”

“In Hindu, you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods,” the Christian historian explains. “And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration [of Independence] when they talked about Creator — that’s not one that fits here because we don’t know which creator we’re talking about within the Hindu religion.”

Huh? OK, so Barton reasons (if we can call it that) that if ignorance of the Hindu religion is not enough, Zed’s prayer should be prevented because Hindus are such a tiny minority in America:

Barton says given the fact that Hindus are a tiny constituency of the American public, he questions the motivation of Senate leaders. “This is not a religion that has produced great things in the world,” he observes.

And while Barton acknowledges there is not constitutional problem with a Hindu prayer in the Senate, he wonders about the political side of it. “One definitely wonders about the pragmatic side of it,” he says. “What is the message, and why is the message needed? And will it actually communicate anything other than engender with folks like me a lot of questions?”

Besides Barton’s obvious inability to use English in a consistent, coherent manner, his message of ignorance and jingoism is a dangerous one. He seems to actually believe that the Constitution will be harmed and the Senate chambers will be permanently slimed by some kind of Hindu mojo, which encourages Wildmon’s attempt to gin up grass roots opposition to some foreign guy saying a prayer to anybody but Jesus.

Let’s just hope that the AFA’s foray into Hindu hatred fares as well as its ineffectual boycott of Ford Motor Co., and Rajan Zed gets to pray to Krishna in front of all those rich white people in the Senate.

Professional homophobes such as the American Family Association, Concerned Women for American, the televangelist Pat Robertson and others raise millions of dollars every year based on the precepts that being gay is a “lifestyle choice” and therefore gay people are willful sinners who are not worthy of equal treatment under the law — and that the gay rights movement is a powerful threat that requires millions of dollars to fight.

However, if the findings in a new poll are accurate, these professional hatemongers have apparently lost credibility on the issue of “lifestyle choice” among a majority of Americans. Via RainbowZine, a new poll from CNN shows for the first time that a majority believes that gay people cannot change their sexuality:

Fifty-six percent of about 515 poll respondents said they do not believe sexual orientation can be changed. In 2001, 45 percent of those responding to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll held that belief. In 1998, according to a CNN/Time poll, the number was 36 percent.

In addition, 42 percent of respondents to the current poll said they believe homosexuality results from upbringing and environment, while 39 percent said they believe it is something a person is born with — a close division that reflects the national debate over the issue.

However, those numbers are greatly changed from the 1970s and ’80s, in which fewer than 20 percent of Americans said a person is born homosexual. In a 1977 poll, the number was 13 percent.

This shift in attitude is limited to within the vast majority of Americans who are not evangelical Christians, and it will unfortunately have no effect on the short-term ability of professional antigay activists to raise millions from their Christian extremist base.