The Republican National Committee gave nearly $2,000 to a Southern California GOP contributor for meal expenses at Voyeur West Hollywood, a lesbian-themed California nightclub that features topless dancers wearing horse-bits and other bondage gear, according to newly filed disclosure records.
FEC report details lavish Republican spending
Washington Post
March 29, 2010
At one point I walked to the bathroom and pretty much just stopped dead in my tracks to watch two girls simulating oral sex in a glass case. Really understated elegance here.
Customer review of Voyeur West Hollywood
Yelp
March 22, 2010
The person who expensed a nearly $2,000 meal on the Republican National Committee's (RNC) dime at a risque Los Angeles club has been identified as Erik Brown . . . A profile of Brown on another website describes him as Chief Executive Officer at [Dynamic Marketing, Inc.] He is actively involved in a number of conservative groups and his church's ministry [emphasis added].
California consultant tied to RNC's risque expenditure
The Hill
March 29, 2010
Definitely gives a new meaning to the term "Amazing Grace."
However, we can be reasonably sure this incident -- like the many that have come before it -- will be serenely dismissed by Mr. Brown's fellow conservative Christians, on the familiar grounds that the weakness and hypocrisy of any one believer does not invalidate the Eternal Truth of the doctrine.
Conservatives may only speak against fornication and sodomy, but that still puts them one up on the Godless heathen liberals, who enthusiastically embrace it (so to speak) both publicly and privately.
So, at least, goes the argument.
But I recall a counter argument made by one of Christianity's critics (ancient or modern, I can't remember) who warned that the religion's fatal flaw was precisely its willingness to grant the sinner almost infinite absolution as long as he/she is a true believer: whether it's through the ritual of confession and penitance (Catholicism), the doctrine of faith over works (Martin Luther) or the brutal, remorseless logic of predestination (John Calvin).
Ultimately, this counter argument goes, the infinite mercy and forgiveness of Christ (or the irrevocable salvation of the elect) becomes a license for almost infinite hypocrisy and deceit -- somewhat like playing Monopoly with an endless supply of get-out-of-jail-free cards in your pocket.
Over time, such a religion must decline into either an ossified social ritual (a kind of Church of England on steroids) or a primitive cult aimed purely at the attainment of altered mental or emotional states -- a form of addiction.
Or so the argument goes.
Personally, I wouldn't be too quick to write off a religion that has already survived almost 2,000 years, but it definitely looks like the modern American conservative version of Christianity is hellbound and determined to degenerate into both of the alternatives described above -- simultaneously.