In a special Christmas eve address Pope Ratzinger takes time to remind the faithful and hellbound heretics alike that both Yahweh and his only child Republican Jesus hate teh gay. The aging ex Nazi Pontiff also added that nothing threatens world peace quite like reproductive freedom:

Daily News — Pope Benedict used his annual Christmas message to denounce gay marriage, saying that it destroyed the “essence of the human creature.” In one of his most important speeches of the year, the Pope stressed that a person’s gender identity is God-given and unchangeable. As a result, he sees gay marriage as a “manipulation of nature.”

“People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being,” he said at the Vatican on Friday. “They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.” The Pope has said that gay marriage, like abortion and euthanasia, is a threat to world peace.

Yes! It’s not insatiable greed or arms merchants or fundamentalist lunatics or hunger causing good-hearted noble men of honor to fight to the death — it’s a world full of slutty bitches! What else would you expect? They’re just following in Eve’s footsteps …

I guess those times where Yahweh fucked up and created a male and female parts in the same person should just be …what? Ignored? I have no idea and neither does Pope Ratfucker, but that’s no reason to ruin a good Christmas hate.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/zingularity/2012/12/24/nothing-says-christmas-quite-like-religious-intolerance/

Across the military, atheists and humanists are reaching out to support their local communities. Hawaii MAAF Affiliate M*A*S*H* Hawaii with organizer Jacob Milich and lay leader Nick Stenkamp support Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hickam AFB, Schofield Barracks, and Marine Corps Base Kaneohe Bay. They’ve shown their holiday spirit by doing a food drive for local homeless persons and a toy drive for Toys for Tots. These service activities along with their recent convention with Richard Dawkins are raising the bar for local community-building.

The success of this group also shows how a bit of chaplain support can make all the difference. M*A*S*H* Hawaii meets regularly in the Joint Base Pearl Harbor – Hickam chapel. Their November event to feed the homeless was held there. Group members brought food for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, prepared the sandwiches and bags, and then went to hand out the sandwiches. Organizer Jacob Milich says the event was a great learning experience as well and he’s got the knowledge to scale up the event for future food drives.

MAAF provides a special thank-you to the chaplain staff that is providing a location for meetings. That is one of the simple steps chaplains can take to reach out to the nontheist community.

In December, the group partnered with the Hawaii Secular Society to do a Toys for Tots fundraiser and holiday party. About 20 people brought in 60 toys including legos, light sabers, stuffed animals, and dinosaurs. The event had a decidedly scientific bias with a microscope, chemistry set, Rubics cube, and paleontology kit joining the other toys. The toys were brought to a local Toys-R-Us drop-off station for donation and distribution. The coordination between civilian and military groups is a great example that local nontheist groups should always follow. Both communities need each other, and there is strength in numbers.

http://www.secularnewsdaily.com/2012/12/hawaii-military-atheists-celebrate-with-charity-and-service/

For Julie Drizin, being an atheist parent means being deliberate. She rewrote the words to “Silent Night” when her daughters were babies to remove words like “holy,” found a secular Sunday school where the children light candles “of understanding,” and selects gifts carefully to promote science, art and wonder at nature. So when she pulled her 9- and 13-year-olds together this week in their Takoma Park home to tell them about the slaughter of 20 elementary school students in Newtown, Conn., her words were plain: Something horrible happened, and we feel sad about it, and you are safe.

And that was it.

“I’ve explained to them [in the past] that some people believe God is waiting for them, but I don’t believe that. I believe when you die, it’s over and you live on in the memory of people you love and who love you,” she said this week. “I can’t offer them the comfort of a better place. Despite all the evils and problems in the world, this is the heaven — we’re living in the heaven and it’s the one we work to make. It’s not a paradise.”

This is what facing death and suffering looks like in an atheist home.

As so many millions of Americans turn to clergy and prayers to help their children sort out the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, parents like Drizin do not. They don’t agonize over interpreting God’s will or message in the event. They don’t seek to explain what kind of God allows suffering, and they don’t fudge it when children ask what happens to people who die, be they Grandma or the young victims of Newtown.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/atheist-parents-comfort-children-about-death-without-talk-of-god-or-heaven/2012/12/22/4f59531c-4aeb-11e2-a6a6-aabac85e8036_story.html

AUSTIN, TX—A major existential breakthrough was averted Friday when, moments before he had a realization of monumental personal significance, 29-year-old local resident Darrell Gatsas instead turned to God. "He was so, so close to discovering something truly fundamental about himself and his place in the universe, but nope—he went with God," close friend Peter Rankin, 27, said. "For a second there it seemed like he was going to seriously consider the cause-and-effect relationship of his own actions and elevate himself to a new level of compassion and understanding, but then he suddenly changed course and asked God to swoop in and fix everything." Reached for comment, God chuckled to reporters that Gatsas is, indeed, a real piece of work.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-on-verge-of-selfrealization-instead-turns-to-g,28507/