Which Sin Makes the Best Baby Name?

In their research of the all-time worst baby names, the folks at Ancestry.com located babies named after every one of the seven deadly sins - except gluttony. The most popular sin-based baby moniker was Pride, followed distantly by Lust. A sampling of actual names they uncovered:

Lust Garten
Greed Sister Mancini
Avarice Sullivan
Sloth Washton
Wrath Gordon
Envy Burger (Shouldn't these folks have gone with Gluttony?)
Pride Saint
Greed McGrew
Pride Saint
Lust T. Castle

I can't wait until the Pope's seven new deadly sins start to appear in the baby-name rosters. Note to Angelina: Morally-Debatable-Experiments Pitt is pretty catchy.

Pictured: my own baby, who was named after a saint, but only because "Envy Burger" was taken.

You Know How I Know You're Gay?

"Masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he’s watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body." - From the tract
"Porn Again Christian" by Mars Hill Church pastor Marc Driscoll.

Better yet, here's the cover image, which leads one to the conclusion that masturbation is both gay AND suicidal:



Good times!

Buddha in the Supreme Court

The Sociological Images blog takes a critical look at racial stereotypes in political satire, including the baffling, maddening recent cover of the National Review depicting Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as Buddha.

The comparison of the magazine cover to the original icon is particularly eye-opening...

Stephen Baldwin the Baptist

What was it I was saying about reality TV and religion? Whatever it was, forget it: I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here has taken reality-TV religion to new extremes. Above, watch Evangelical spokescelebrity Stephen Baldwin preach the word to The Hills' Spencer Pratt, who knows that Jesus answers prayers because Jesus introduced him to Miley Cyrus. (Seriously.) Below, Stephen spontaneously baptises Spencer, who compares sin to eel sperm and his baptism to "a ten-year bath with lots of bubbles."



For more, check out Gabe's astute commentary on Religion Dispatches.

Doonesbury Does the Bible (But Not Very Well)

This past Sunday's Doonesbury strip comparing the Old and New Testaments has some Jewish leaders demanding an apology. Trudeau's take is oversimplified at best, offensive at worst, but to play devil's advocate: the 17-year-old in the comic strip isn't supposed to be a Biblical scholar. She certainly sounds like a real teenage kid, earnest and uninformed, talking about religion. The problem, as I see it, is that this is a Sunday strip, meaning that it's not in the context of story. There's no "before" and "after." Trudeau opens up a can of worms and tries to toss it off with a chuckle -- disappointing for a satirist with an admirable history of tackling cultural issues head-on.

Benjamin Weiner at Religion Dispatches suggests using this as a "teachable moment":

Christians, if you haven’t already, please take some time to recognize that the division of your scriptures into “old” and “new”, with a panting demiurge presiding over the first and a Guevarist lovegod community-organizing his way through the second is a false dichotomy, and a dangerous and frustrating one, at that, when it is used as a thumbnail sketch of Jewish-Christian difference. Your “old testament”, what we call the Tanakh, portrays a God of manifold characteristics—from the friend and confidant of Abraham and, yes, the ferocious goader of the wilderness, to the ironic moral conscience of Jonah and the mystical whirlwind of Job—that have served as the basis for kaleidoscopic articulations of Jewish theology.

Why is TLC Afraid of Religion?

This Thursday, the new season of one of my guiltier pleasures, What Not To Wear, premieres on TLC. The gimmick of this particular episode is that they're doing a makeover on a former child star. And that child star is...



Mayim Bialik, a.k.a. lil' Bette Middler, a.k.a. Blossom! Now, having gotten a sneak preview of the episode, I can tell you that Mayim Bialik is the most likeable guest in the show's history. She's unabashedly brainy (she has a PHD in neuroscience!), down-to-earth (she won't buy tops she can't nurse her baby in), and sweet (she donates the standard new-wardrobe money to charity and foots the bill herself). Also, she doesn't own a single pair of pants.

That's right - no pants. Now, I've seen an embarrassing number of episodes of What Not to Wear, but I have never, ever seen someone on that show who doesn't own at least one pair of jeans. My first thought was that Mayim was just quirky, but out of curiosity, I did some research...

...and learned that, yes, Mayim Bialik is a Conservative Jew, bordering on Orthodox ("Conservadox," as she puts it). She keeps Shabbos, keeps kosher, and follows family purity laws. And presumably, her wardrobe of below-the-knee skirts and long sleeves conforms to Jewish laws of modesty.

So why doesn't the show bother to mention this? It's not like they're afraid to get personal: when discussing her wardrobe, Mayim talks candidly about nursing, weight loss, and body image issues. And it's not a tangent; her religious beliefs directly affect her choice of clothing, both the "old" wardrobe and the new one TLC helps her select. But never once do they mention religion at all: she's just a kooky girl who loves her skirts.



My guess is that the network was afraid of alienating viewers, particularly the Heartland mamas who live vicariously through "What Not To Wear"'s NYC shopping sprees. Maybe they thought that showing Mayim as a conservative Jew would make her too different, not enough girl-next-door.

This isn't the first time that TLC has side-stepped the central issue of religion. Jon and Kate (of "Plus Eight" fame) are active churchgoers, and their conservative Christianity is the reason that Kate didn't selectively reduce her mega-pregnancy in the first place. In their books and on their website, the Gosselins talk about Jesus obsessively. But we never see them doing it on the show.



A counter-example is 18 Kids and Counting, the TLC show about the Duggar family. With the Duggars, it's impossible not to talk about religion; as leading members of the uber-conservative "Quiverfull" movement, they believe in strict, non-maninstream gender roles and behavioral codes (not to mention having dozens of babies as a form of Evangelism). The Duggars chat with the cameras about God's role in their lives, explain why kissing before marriage is sinful, and visit the Creation Museum.

So, in this basic cable version of reality, there are two kinds of religion: extreme and nonexistent. Even though religion is a part of most Americans' lives, it's somehow taboo to show day-to-day religious practices -- or even mention them! -- when it comes to "normal" reality TV stars. Given the premium on shock value on reality TV these days, it's hard to believe that anything is off-limits -- but there you have it.

The Road to Hell is Paved with Gelato

The above advertisement (for Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano) is currently under investigation by the UK Advertising Standards Authority for blasphemy. As Ad Freak put it: "A good rule of thumb when you're trying to figure out if your ice-cream ad is blasphemous: If it could be mistaken for the cover of a fetishistic, nun-themed adult movie, you've crossed a line."

Personally, I find the ad more confusing than shocking; are they implying that eating gelato a "gateway sin," leading otherwise chaste religious authorities to start madly breaking their vows? Or that if you're going to sin anyway, you might as well pack a few extra calories in afterwards?