You have been taken into custody by unknown ruffians, blindfolded and drugged and whisked away.  You believe you have been transported by airplane a long distance, but your memory is failing you right now.

Your memory fails at present because you’ve been stripped, doused repeatedly with water and kept standing in a 50-degree (F) room where the lights are always on and there are no windows, only bars on the door.

It is impossible to know when you last slept because it is unclear when the drugs wore off.

There is constant shouting at you and there are wails heard from elsewhere in the building where you are kept.  If you tire or slump, batons straighten you.

You are roughed into a room where you are blindfolded and strapped to a 12 inch wide board.  A plastic bag is put over your head and water is poured into the bag as your feet are elevated.

You are alone and completely isolated.  There are no questions you may ask — THEY ask the questions.

This is what the present administration believes is Constitutional and is arguing for in Congress.

Now, picture something altogether different.

Picture two pairs of lips greeting in sweet kiss.  More than a peck but less than the full throated, wet tonguing of the throes of passion.

The kind of kiss you can kiss in front of your mother and 13 year old cousin, but still convey deep affection.

The kiss at the end of a marriage vow, before the happy couple parade together back down the aisle.

Imagine the lips belong to two women or two men becoming married.

This is a travesty and the present administration is adamantly and rabid opposed to such behavior and so argues in Congress.

Why, do tell, do we call these men and women Christians?

What is there about these two things that get such different reactions from the committed religious right?

How do we explain the fact that Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson and James Dodson and all the rest are not waving the New Testament at our Born-Again president and demand that he treat our prisoners better than Pontius Pilate treated Jesus?

Upon what theological underpinning does a Christian stand when he/she condones torture?  Of any kind on any one at any time?

I don’t think Jesus said that one must break a few eggs to make an omlette.  Or that the ends justify the means. 

Have we truly become the beast we oppose?