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Marty’s photo of the day #4731: I shot this photo of Bill Clinton back in 2008, and it reminds me of how hypocritical Republicans and a little over half of the Christians in the United States are. In 1998, those people were salivating to impeach Clinton for an affair he had with a consenting adult. […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4595: My dad, Paul W. Essen, died twelve years ago this week. As anyone who has read my book Hits, Heathens, and Hippos: Stories from an Agent, Activist, and Adventurer knows, my father was a born again Christian to the extreme. In fact, he even believed his god wanted him […]
Marty’s photos of the day #4576: This is the Bear Glacier in British Columbia. I use a different picture of this glacier in my college show, Around the World in 90 Minutes, to talk about climate change (that lake wasn’t there 75 years ago). Deb and I had planned on visiting the Bear Glacier again […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4490: I photographed this gorgeous elk on Deb’s and my epic trip to the top of Canada for my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. For many months my wife and I have been planning routes and acquiring new gear to redo that adventure this fall. […]
Whenever I write a rant about abhorrent Christian behavior, I have to add “not all Christians” somewhere in the text or I will get nailed. I was thinking about that this morning as I was reflecting on all the new Christian-based laws that are popping up across America. These laws cherry pick the most hate-filled […]
As someone who has written four novels that some consider blasphemous, or at the very least irreverent, I have to laugh at the entire concept of blasphemy. If the god that is being satirized is real and powerful, why would that god need the help of people to defend itself? As I’ve witnessed with my […]
Goodbye Pat Robertson! I didn’t know you personally, but you certainly affected my life. Because of you—and snake oil salesmen like you—my father was so brainwashed that he once wasted multiple years of his life calling every number in the Crestview, Florida phonebook to tell whoever answered, “Jesus loves you.” Because of the likes of […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3865: The novel I am working on is by far the funniest of the seven books I have written. Despite the humor, I also deal with serious subjects. In one of the adventures, my protagonists travel back in time to stop a Christian missionary, who is abusing native peoples. I […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3846: As has become a tradition, each year around Christmas, I dig into my photos of the great old churches I photographed in Europe. That way Christians can enjoy them for their religious significance, creative people can enjoy them for their artistic beauty, and atheists can enjoy them for the […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3845: As has become a tradition, each year around Christmas, I dig into my photos of the great old churches I photographed in Europe. That way Christians can enjoy them for their religious significance, creative people can enjoy them for their artistic beauty, and atheists can enjoy them for the […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3605: This year, with Republicans holding overwhelming power in every Montana state office, I wasn’t as active about speaking out against their actions as I have in the past. That’s because of the helplessness of knowing these cruel, proudly-Christian people were going to do whatever they damn well pleased, and […]
After right-wing Christians elected Donald Trump, he promptly pulled America out of the Paris Agreement and gutted our country’s environmental laws, setting himself up to become the most prolific slow-killer of all-time. Trump will also be responsible for thousands of COVID-19 deaths because he put his ego and greed over the lives of his constituents. […]
Republicans frequently state that they don’t care about Donald Trump’s behavior; they only care about his results. That sounds innocent enough—until you realize that people made similar claims during the reigns of the worst autocrats in history. Even Robert Mugabe had his fans. Where Trump will ultimately rank among the world’s authoritarian rulers is yet […]
I feel like I should write something about the impeachment of Donald Trump, but we’ve all known how this is going to turn out for months: Impeachment will pass the House on party lines (give or take a few people) and go to the GOP-controlled Senate, where they will fail to convict on similar party […]
When I think about the Christian church I grew up in and compare it to American Christians of today (at least the conservative ones), it is like night and day. The change can be traced back to the 1980s and Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority.” From there, the unholy alliance between Republicans and conservative Christians took […]
So President KKKlueless showed up at the Climate Action Summit, not to talk about our climate crisis and the mass extinctions, human deaths, and wars that will result from it, but instead to walk into an adjacent conference room to give a speech about religious persecution. Yes, this from the Muslim Ban President! In actuality, […]
So Donald Trump instructs the EPA to kiss the asses of oil companies and other corporate polluters, but by God, if a city has too many homeless people he instructs the EPA to pounce! (Not to help the homeless people mind you, but to get rid of them . . . somehow.) To all you […]
Well it happened: Donald Trump has officially offered his thoughts and prayers for this weekend’s mass shooting victims. And as you know, prominent Christians, such as Pat Robertson and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, have publicly stated that Trump was “God’s choice” for president—and millions of conservative Christians have agreed. If Trump was indeed sent by God, […]
Initially my Time Is Irreverent series of novels, where most of the villains are Christians, was a controversial concept. How quickly things have changed. Even after Donald Trump has proven himself to be an unstable, greedy, self-serving, lying, treasonous, hateful, bigoted, criminal, cheating, evil, sack of dung beetle diarrhea, he still has solid Christian support. […]
