Writer Hannah Simpson took the thoughts right out of my head in her commentary on the NBC News site:

“My first reaction was to laugh at its blatantly false slogans that dismiss lots of natural variation. It’s “biology” indeed, if only taught from the six days of creation.”

She was talking about what she calls a “Magic Fool Bus” that is touring parts of the United States spreading an anti-transgender message with the following phrases inscribed on its sides:

“It’s Biology: Boys are boys… and always will be. Girls are girls… and always will be. You can’t change sex. Respect all.”

Yes, it’s Mythical Eden Biology 101, I was thinking as I lay in bed this morning.

The people behind this campaign, “the notoriously anti-LGBTQ National Organization for Marriage (NOM) along with the International Organization for the Family (IOF) and CitizenGo,” have overlooked the fact that there is nothing natural about human beings anymore. The human biology of today is the result of myriad forms of natural and, more so, unnatural variations thanks to the myriad chemicals we’ve been breathing in, eating, drinking and otherwise absorbing since the days of the Industrial Revolution.

But, hey, maybe the adulteration of human genetics started with that apple in the Garden of Eden. Blame it on the serpent! Blame it on Satan! It was all downhill from there.

Which — allow me to digress for a paragraph — reveals a fundamental flaw in the simplistic minds of the people behind the Magic Fool Bus campaign. They blame serpents and devils for the state of the world, and then try to behave like nothing has changed in the genetic makeup of mankind since Eden days.

Of course, NOM and company are fooling no one except, perhaps, other fundamentalists and certain redneck types. The vast majority of people see their message for what it is: hate speech, and an attempt to sow seeds of discrimination. Simpson puts it this way:

“If taken seriously, this hate speech could empower a parent to treat their child’s queer identity as a lifestyle choice that they can overrule; embolden a transphobic person to physically assault a trans person; and normalize the fear and rejection many trans people are already subjected to.”

And that’s exactly what NOM and their crew want. They want everyone to reject trans people, if not assault them.

But those of us who understand how karma works know the campaign of hate will bounce right back at them, and that the vast majority of people who see or hear about the Magic Fool Bus see it and the people behind it for what they are — because any time you carry signs around invalidating the existence of other people, you are invalidating yourself as a kind, brotherly love sort of person. You are essentially saying: “Look at me, everybody! I’m a stupid bigot and a hypocrite, and I am proud of it!”

I’ve pointed to one article here about this campaign, but there are dozens on the web today, along with others about a similar campaign in Spain that has met legal challenges.

Enough said . . .

Speaking of fundamentalists, I sometimes wonder about their attempts to reconcile suffering and death with Christianity, and shake my head when they cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

To me, it’s pretty obvious why their (imaginary, mythical) God has forsaken them, but even in times of great pain, many Christians won’t face up to the obvious flaws in their belief system (in my theosophical opinion).

An example of this failure can be found in an opinion piece by Peter Wechner on the New York Times site. It was the promising headline that grabbed my attention: After Great Pain, Where Is God?

As somebody who cursed the God Conceived by Christians after the death of my boyfriend several years ago, I figured Wechner’s article would show some degree of spiritual evolution and, perhaps, reveal that Wechner has come to a more transcendental understanding of the nature of things.

And he almost does, sort of, but only within the context of Christianity, which he clings to like a child to a rubber pacifier, unwilling to look at the world through anything but the lens of Christianity:

There is also, for me at least, consolation in the conviction that we are part of an unfolding drama with a purpose. At any particular moment in time I may not have a clue as to what that precise purpose is, but I believe, as a matter of faith, that the story has an author, that difficult chapters need not be defining chapters and that even the broken areas of our lives can be redeemed.

I’m not criticizing him. I’m just somewhat baffled by Christians who flatly refuse to look at some of the other spiritual schools of thought on this planet, even when all signs from above suggest that they should. They have eyes to see, but they don’t really want to see, i.e. if a personal god never replies to you, that’s because there is no personal god. Duh . . .

But there is truth is out there (and it’s no coincidence that the song My Sweet Lord by George Harrison just started playing on the radio station I am listening to).

To anyone wrestling with the question reportedly posed by Christ to God on the cross, I urge you to look to books like the Bhagavad’Gita for answers. And to Theosophy, which lays out a contemporary banquet of food for thought highlighting the “perennial wisdom underlying the world’s religions, science, and philosophies.”

Enough said for now . . .

About Sunday Reads posts: This is a weekly feature giving us all a chance to point to an article or two or three that we found interesting in the preceding week, or the morning of. They can be offbeat, humorous, weighty commentary, whatever. So, if you have any recommendations, please point to them in the readers’ comments section below.

— Jillian

Photo: The Fall of Man by Peter Paul Rubens. (Source: Wikipedia)