Neverending Tales of the Christ Weary:
Here's the thing about that Missouri pharmacist at a local Target who refused to fill a woman's prescription for emergency contraception: if you can't do your fuckin' job, then move out of the way and let someone who can do it step behind the counter. A pharmacist is there to do the doctor's bidding, answer your questions, and alert you if something might be unsafe. That's it. John Aravosis lists other potential conflicts-of-conscience that Target may be tacitly approving by allowing the pharmacist to "exercise" his religious beliefs against a customer who had a prescription from a doctor.

In addition, how about this: if your religion prevents you from doing your job, get another goddamn job. If a Kashrut-abiding Jew is given a job as a McDonald's food taster, McDonald's would fire him the second he said he couldn't put in his face the McBigfuckin' cheeseburger or any meat with "special sauce" on it. Unless said Jew alerted McDonald's up front. Then McDonald's would be idiotic to hire him. And Mayor McCheese would weep with shame.

And by the way, someone oughta ask Target product designers Isaac Mizrahi, Michael Graves, and Todd Oldham what they think about it.

See, the Rude Pundit has said before, "freedom of religion" is also "freedom from religion." In other words, on your own fuckin' time, you can worship your Jesuses (whatever flavor of Christ you worship), you can be Allah-rific, you can pretend you understand the Kabbalah, you can get all nekkid and dance around yer goddess fire. There's your freedom. Enjoy. But you start to tell me shit like "I won’t fill it. It’s my right not to fill it" when it's your fuckin' job to fill my prescription? Then you (and any company that supports you) is engaging in a discriminatory practice as sure as a Denny's refusing to seat black people.

And until they open up "Scrips Fer Jesus" stores where God's druggists can do his will, just shut the fuck up, suck it up, and gimme my drugs.

The Rude Pundit continues to receive tales of the Christ weary from around the great American landscape. If you have one you wanna share, send it to: rudepundit@yahoo.com. Herewith are a couple more (cleaned up for clarity), and, as ever, the Rude Pundit does not vouch for the truthfulness of them.

From Nic: "My parents, upon finding out that the parochial schools that matched our religious flavor were all full up, shipped the fruit of their loins to Batshitfuckinginsanecult School. That school was run by Pentecostals -- you know, the kind that like to act like they are dropping into a K hole of Jesus.

"Imagine the confusion wrought on my little Catholic boy mind, when I figured out that I was the idolator they were talking about. Things went from bad to worse when the school decided that pre-k through sixth graders should sit though a three-day long presentation on the book of Revelation. My third grade mind couldn't take it, I lived in fear that my unsaved family would be tossed into the lake of fire while the pious looked on shaking their heads sadly. All the pre-k and kindergarten kids were crying because they were scared shitless -- in retrospect this was tantamount to child abuse.

"For years I interanlized the guilt of being Catholic and prayed for redemption -- my parents told me not to mind the religious message and just get good grades -- because it really is a great place to get an education'. But I was brainwashed. Little did I know that two short years later I would realize my deepest fear.

"In the spring of my fifth grade year I had to accept the fact that the devil was inside of me. The signs had been there all along: not too good at sports, always impecably dressed and a taste for theatre -- I was a dreaded homo. That was it -- game over, express ride to the lake of fire. I spent the next 10 years of my life in a suicidal funk. The only thing that saved me was that I had access to the Johnny Walker but no sleeping pills -- and if i was going out it was going to be just like Marilyn Monroe.

"I was lucky. The kid that beat me up in my freshman year of high school to prove that he hated gays died of HIV complications 15 years later."

From Craig: "So, after lots of good years of not really believing in no supernatural being except for a GREAT! Orange Barrel Sunshine trip in 1972 when 'GOD' spoke to me through side two of the Abbey Road album, I was ready to give up drinking but it wasn't ready to let go of me.

"So, got a month's supply of antibuse and started going to AA where I kept hearing 'Let Go, Let God' but I didn't really trust the motherfucker since he seemed to have such a sick sense of humor and might turn me into a homo if his 'will be done.' But fuck it, everybody was doing it, so I got into it and started every day asking Big Daddy to keep my sorry ass sober. I liked it. God was my buddy, but it was a private thing, and I was still very proud to boast that the last time I went to church, I fucked the preacher's daughter. The funny thing about that was the drunk dumbass thought that I was fucking his wrinkle-assed WIFE! But that's Christian-folk for ya.

"So, after a couple years in AA and NA, I got to know this shithead named Rick who had been going to meetings regularly, but went out and got drunk one night, totaled his car and paralyzed himself from the waist down for the rest of his life. All of us do-goodies used to tote his limp ass to meeting after meeting, up and down church steps, but he was one pissed-off bitch about his fucked-up situation.

"So, one day this old drinking and doping buddy of mine who had found Cheezus told me an amazing story about this friend of his who was the wife of an Allman Brothers band member somehow, who lived near him in Love Valley, NC. Apparently, the coked-out bitch ran her Porsche into a tree one night and was, yep, you guessed it, 'paralyzed from the waist down.' But, God is a GOOD God! This Jesus freak church that they all now belonged to spoke in tongues and laid hands on her and, Glory, Glory, the crazy bitch got up and walked!! Can you believe it?! You better believe limp ass Rick believed it when I stupidly told him about it and he literally spit out the words, 'Can you get them to see me?'

"So, I arranged a meeting between the Jesus freaks, my old buddy, the miracle lady, and the wheelchair bound zit-faced Rick. We all joined hands around Rick. My daughter, who was 8 at the time, was drug along for good luck. She looked at me with bewildered unhappiness as the freaks began to speak in tongues, 'Shibolith, shibolith, blah, blah blah, hisssss, hissss, shibolith, shibolith, rah rah rah!' They thanked the Lawd with great surety as they encouraged Rick to get up and walk, as they all had felt the Holy Spirit enter his severed spinal cord.

"So, Rick, trembling and shaking like a twenty-five dollar washing machine, pushed himself up off of that wheelchair and crashed and burned faster than God smote the Philistines, or whoever. We helped him back into his wheelchair as he sobbed and pounded his sickly white fist into the chair, over and over and over and over, and over. The freaks just smiled beatifically and told him to just be patient, that they had all felt GAWD move into him. I grabbed my little girl, got the fuck outta there, and apologized to her for doing that to her.

"That night, Rick sliced his numb legs viciously with a razor blade, and bled his poor aching heart to death. Fuck him, but I went to his wacked-out Seventh Day Adventist funeral, anyway, but I'm glad I did because there were a lot of some of the good-looking drug addict chicks there, and I got to act all stoic and all.

"So, now, thanks to not having taken any LSD in over 30 years, I know that god is a figment of somebody's fuckin' imagination."

Suffer the little children, man, and so suffer all of us.