Two gay blokes in bed, each reading a religious tome? You’re having a laugh Author. It’s bad enough you’re implying J +M are “putting from the rough” – it’s another to suggest the LBGQTI community are that dull in the sack!
So?
Thor (praise be to him) is revealed to us in L. Sprague de Camp’s ‘Harold Shea’.
By your faulty ‘logic’ that means that this saintly tome might not be the divine truth.
That is completely unacceptable and shows us all the misguided ways of the unbeliever.
Repent!
@Sparky_shark: who said the were gay? I never saw it that way – I think they are more like tolerating(!) each other from time to time, living on the same earth/in the same house. You have never seen them in a loving posture, right?
@ Sparky. Are they gay? They might be I suppose but, and it’s probably my age, I always look at them like Morecambe and Wise in bed and Mo’s punchline is classic Eric: ” Get out of that!”
Quite a few times, I’ve been told that the bible is the inerrant, divine word of god. I ask, How do you KNOW that? Am told it is in the bible. Which it isn’t, even. It comes from the Chicago Statement of 1978, and was written by MEN! (and a few women) Even if it were in the bible, it would only be circular reasoning.
@Mr. Hoppy, @TB Denmark – you’re right; I’m making a stab in the dark -just always assumed the two fellas who frequently end up in bed together and never seem to associate with anyone of the opposite sex (other than the never revealed BarMaid) and have never, in all my years of following this rather marvellous strip, been anything other than very close to each other? Could it be platonic? Could it be Friends with No Benefits? Hmm. I choose to believe otherwise.
Very clever, as always, though I think there’s a bit of a misstatement. The Qur’an (or Koran) doesn’t say you believe or disbelieve in the Qur’an, but rather in Allah–as revealed in the Qur’an. That may be sort of nitpicky, but if we’re going to stand on certain words, we have to make them all count.
There was a time when it was not that big a deal for two men to share a bed. For example, before shipping out to sea, the narrator of Moby Dick has to share a bed at an inn with Queequeg the harpooner. He isn’t too thrilled about it, but there is no suggestion of anything unnatural.
Well, actually I suppose there is maybe a bit of a suggestion. From the beginning of Chapter 4:
Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife.
Still, the contemporary reader wouldn’t have been scandalized by the idea of bed sharing in and of itself — it was just something that a traveler or a lodger might have to do if he couldn’t afford his own bed.
And that’s how I see Jesus and Mo in this comic — old style roomies who are so out of touch with the sex-obsessed modern world that they have no idea how their living arrangement looks to everyone else.
JB, thanks for that quote from Moby Dick. I had thought of Queequeg myself, but had forgotten the later passage about awakening.
It’s sad that we have become so obsessed with homosexuality that simple masculine affection is now judged as gay. (“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Thank you, Jerry Seinfeld.) In China it was refreshing to see the young male university students hanging all over each other. Maybe there was some gayness going on, but it seemed to me more innocent affection, the way I was with my buddies before puberty and paranoia struck. Gotta say I miss that.
The song “Going Back to Whur I Come From” circa 1942 includes the line “I met a man in Kansas City. He winked at me and asked me if I’d like to step around.” Singing the original now raises the question of whether this was a gay proposition, when in fact it was more likely a come on from a pimp. I’ve heard modern covers of this song where the line becomes “I met a gal etc.” I sing the original version, but change the next line to “He said he’d introduce me to the sweetest gals (replacing “hottest place”) in town.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ9ciodD0kU Enjoy.
BTW, the fourteen dollars mentioned in the song had the buying power of $218.07 today. So it wasn’t quite as trivial an amount as the song suggests, though far from making the singer “rich”.
While we’re off topic on the subject of country humour, I highly recommend another number by Carson Robinson, “Life Get’s Tejus Don’t it.” Well worth a listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnduPDMH24U
For me, Jesus and Mo sharing a bed simply reflects the similar origins of their delusions. After all, both Islam and Christianity are Abrahamic religions, tracing their roots back to the perverted old coot who stood ready to murder his son to show his blind obedience to the voice in his head, and then told everybody to clip their dicks. Only seems proper that the boys would share a bed.
(7:204) “So when the Quran is recited, then listen to it and pay attention that you may receive mercy.”
So, matching other statements in that book, the “believer” will be punished if he doesn’t “listen to it and pay attention” (as in 6:19) to the “Quran” that’s “revealed” to Mo.
Mo effectively claims that whoever doesn’t listen to him won’t get mercy. Is that not “believing”? Moreover he conveniently refers to his certain statements as “Quran” by simply saying the they are that. Including those that enable him having more wives than anybody else.
DH — Thank you for the links. I’m actually a little surprised you’ve heard modern covers of Going Back to Whur I Come From! When I listen to old songs like that I’m often struck by how different popular music was back then, and what a sharp divide there seems to be between that era and the modern era that basically came in with rock and roll in the 1950s. You almost never hear serious covers of pre-rock popular songs done in a modern style (or at least I don’t). Here’s one though.
People today have gotten amazingly self-conscious about things that they never even used to think about. The younger guys at my health club keep themselves modestly wrapped in towels while changing into their gym clothes or walking to the showers (if they even shower), while the older guys like me let it swing free. I understand that high school kids have pretty much even stopped taking showers after gym class! Things used to be so different, and I wonder what changed.
jb, have you tried to get a background info about the song you linked?
The Constantinople got its name from the Roman Emperor that was the first to convert to Christianity and who made it a capital of the Roman Empire. It remained the capital of the Christian “Eastern” Roman Empire until it was conquered by the Muslim Ottoman Turks in 1453.
The problem with “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” is that even the Turks officially called the city Constantinople until the 20th century. Only then the politicians there decided to force a “Turk” name, as the nationalism was seen as a modern replacement for Islamism and the secularism was introduced in the remains of the former empire (The current developments in the Turkey are Islamism getting the state support again and secularism receding).
The song claims that the name change is “nobody’s business but the Turks'” and promotes the ignorance of history (“why they changed it I can’t say”).
Suppose its just a sign of the times. Someone like Sparky shark makes a mild joke and is immediately portrayed as worse than Hitler, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao etc.
How lucky I was to be raised in the golden era of free speech, good humour and real tolerance.
Rather than the present one, where opinion is now controlled by PO faced progressives, fresh from Orwell’s Miniluv.
JB no, thank YOU for the links. (We start to sound like Chip and Dale, eh.) Both delightful. Loved the dancing, though not a fan of the musical treatment. Much prefer the older styles, as befits my advanced years.
The link to the swimming naked documentary was also delightful. I hadn’t realized that the very idea of young men swimming naked together is now something people deny ever happened. I was sent to the YMCA for swimming lessons when I was about ten. And yes, we all swam naked, even with young female instructors in charge of our training. Nobody seemed to care at all about being naked. What we didn’t like was the sadistic teenagers who would rub our wrists until some dead skin came off, then send us back to the showers to have a more thorough wash before we were allowed into the pool. This naturally lead to me having the cleanest wrist in Fort William (now known as Thunder Bay), Ontario.
I think the reason we were given for swimming naked was that bathing suits were not as sanitary, and I could agree with that, especially if they are worn in the shower. All those unwashed young crotches and bum holes could have an impact on the coliform count for sure.
The sexualizing of nudity is one of my pet peeves about our culture. The fact that Stephen Gough, the naked rambler, is in jail right now for simply waking around without clothes is all the proof I need that Britain hasn’t advanced far since the days when they chemically castrated Allan Turing. Read this if you want to be further alienated from our culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Gough
I just wish I had the guts to walk around naked in support of Mr. Gough. It may seem like a trivial issue to go to jail for, but what isn’t, eh.
In India, the Jains walk around starkers and nobody thinks anything of it, other than that they are religious kooks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
Hey, I wonder whether Mr. Gough’s lawyers considered having him convert to Jainism. Then he could claim nudity as a religious right. Religious rules seem to have a lot of influence in our FUBAR culture, and might even have won him his freedom. The rest of the Jain creed – non-violence, dedication to truth, not stealing, celibacy, and non-possessivenenss – should also shield him from accusations of sexual impropriety or darker, more sexual, motives.
Smee, that axe you keep grinding never seems to get any sharper.
Could you please point out where, in this thread, Sparky-shark is portrayed as “worse than Hitler, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao etc.” I must have miss that, and I didn’t notice any of those names. In fact, I don’t see any criticism of Sparky_shark on this thread at all. Just discussion of the question he raised.
Ya think maybe you are just a tad, what’s the right word here… reactive. 🙂 Chill, mate. Have another beer on me,eh.
DH: I hadn’t realized that the very idea of young men swimming naked together is now something people deny ever happened.
Well, only this summer I was at a campingsite, with my wife, her sister, our son, and his daugther (regrettably his wife couldn’t come).
We all had lots of fun in the swimming pool.
Our granddaughter befriended some other children, and we ended up as heavy-duty pool wardens (to our delight!)
Some 40 years ago, my in-laws had a dog that loved to go to the beach. My mother-in-law wanted to join us, and it took her less than 10 minutes to decide that she would try without bathing suit. Another 5 minutes, and she was hooked.
Nowadays we regularly visit an FKK (nudist) site in former DDR.
Their history overview mentions that before “die Wende” (Germany’s reunification)
swimming naked was the rule.
The photos of young Angela Merkel as one of a group of youngsters recently got some attention, but they were really just some summertime common snapshots —
most amazing feat is that someone went over a zillion of those and managed to pick her in some!
Darwin H, you said to Smee “Chill, mate. Have another beer on me,eh.”
Very Canadian. I lived in Montreal to age 40, then the next 20 years in Florida. I might have said that once. Now I’d say, “take a frickin’ pill”. Ah, time stands still for no one. I’m visiting Montreal next week…. I’ll try to drink a Trois Pistoles and a Beau’s Lug Tread… and think of you. 🙂
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
March 27, 2007
Two gay blokes in bed, each reading a religious tome? You’re having a laugh Author. It’s bad enough you’re implying J +M are “putting from the rough” – it’s another to suggest the LBGQTI community are that dull in the sack!
can’t possibly respond to that without immediately satisfying godwin’s (amended (by me)) law of trump analogies.
So?
Thor (praise be to him) is revealed to us in L. Sprague de Camp’s ‘Harold Shea’.
By your faulty ‘logic’ that means that this saintly tome might not be the divine truth.
That is completely unacceptable and shows us all the misguided ways of the unbeliever.
Repent!
@Sparky_shark: who said the were gay? I never saw it that way – I think they are more like tolerating(!) each other from time to time, living on the same earth/in the same house. You have never seen them in a loving posture, right?
@ Sparky. Are they gay? They might be I suppose but, and it’s probably my age, I always look at them like Morecambe and Wise in bed and Mo’s punchline is classic Eric: ” Get out of that!”
Quite a few times, I’ve been told that the bible is the inerrant, divine word of god. I ask, How do you KNOW that? Am told it is in the bible. Which it isn’t, even. It comes from the Chicago Statement of 1978, and was written by MEN! (and a few women) Even if it were in the bible, it would only be circular reasoning.
@Mr. Hoppy, @TB Denmark – you’re right; I’m making a stab in the dark -just always assumed the two fellas who frequently end up in bed together and never seem to associate with anyone of the opposite sex (other than the never revealed BarMaid) and have never, in all my years of following this rather marvellous strip, been anything other than very close to each other? Could it be platonic? Could it be Friends with No Benefits? Hmm. I choose to believe otherwise.
The koran is irrefutable proof
Presented by an illiterate goof
That any thing goes
islam sucks and it blows
A silly contradictory spoof.
And therein lies the first books of circle logic BS.
OH, Quoran
Very clever, as always, though I think there’s a bit of a misstatement. The Qur’an (or Koran) doesn’t say you believe or disbelieve in the Qur’an, but rather in Allah–as revealed in the Qur’an. That may be sort of nitpicky, but if we’re going to stand on certain words, we have to make them all count.
There was a time when it was not that big a deal for two men to share a bed. For example, before shipping out to sea, the narrator of Moby Dick has to share a bed at an inn with Queequeg the harpooner. He isn’t too thrilled about it, but there is no suggestion of anything unnatural.
Well, actually I suppose there is maybe a bit of a suggestion. From the beginning of Chapter 4:
Still, the contemporary reader wouldn’t have been scandalized by the idea of bed sharing in and of itself — it was just something that a traveler or a lodger might have to do if he couldn’t afford his own bed.
And that’s how I see Jesus and Mo in this comic — old style roomies who are so out of touch with the sex-obsessed modern world that they have no idea how their living arrangement looks to everyone else.
JB, thanks for that quote from Moby Dick. I had thought of Queequeg myself, but had forgotten the later passage about awakening.
It’s sad that we have become so obsessed with homosexuality that simple masculine affection is now judged as gay. (“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Thank you, Jerry Seinfeld.) In China it was refreshing to see the young male university students hanging all over each other. Maybe there was some gayness going on, but it seemed to me more innocent affection, the way I was with my buddies before puberty and paranoia struck. Gotta say I miss that.
The song “Going Back to Whur I Come From” circa 1942 includes the line “I met a man in Kansas City. He winked at me and asked me if I’d like to step around.” Singing the original now raises the question of whether this was a gay proposition, when in fact it was more likely a come on from a pimp. I’ve heard modern covers of this song where the line becomes “I met a gal etc.” I sing the original version, but change the next line to “He said he’d introduce me to the sweetest gals (replacing “hottest place”) in town.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ9ciodD0kU Enjoy.
BTW, the fourteen dollars mentioned in the song had the buying power of $218.07 today. So it wasn’t quite as trivial an amount as the song suggests, though far from making the singer “rich”.
While we’re off topic on the subject of country humour, I highly recommend another number by Carson Robinson, “Life Get’s Tejus Don’t it.” Well worth a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnduPDMH24U
For me, Jesus and Mo sharing a bed simply reflects the similar origins of their delusions. After all, both Islam and Christianity are Abrahamic religions, tracing their roots back to the perverted old coot who stood ready to murder his son to show his blind obedience to the voice in his head, and then told everybody to clip their dicks. Only seems proper that the boys would share a bed.
jveeds, reading Quran disproves your statement:
(7:204) “So when the Quran is recited, then listen to it and pay attention that you may receive mercy.”
So, matching other statements in that book, the “believer” will be punished if he doesn’t “listen to it and pay attention” (as in 6:19) to the “Quran” that’s “revealed” to Mo.
Mo effectively claims that whoever doesn’t listen to him won’t get mercy. Is that not “believing”? Moreover he conveniently refers to his certain statements as “Quran” by simply saying the they are that. Including those that enable him having more wives than anybody else.
Debating whether Jesus and Mo are gay is like debating if an elf having sex with a unicorn is beastiality.
godsless: Love your comment!
Same here, Mr Hoppy. I’ve always thought of Morecambe & Wise.
DH — Thank you for the links. I’m actually a little surprised you’ve heard modern covers of Going Back to Whur I Come From! When I listen to old songs like that I’m often struck by how different popular music was back then, and what a sharp divide there seems to be between that era and the modern era that basically came in with rock and roll in the 1950s. You almost never hear serious covers of pre-rock popular songs done in a modern style (or at least I don’t). Here’s one though.
People today have gotten amazingly self-conscious about things that they never even used to think about. The younger guys at my health club keep themselves modestly wrapped in towels while changing into their gym clothes or walking to the showers (if they even shower), while the older guys like me let it swing free. I understand that high school kids have pretty much even stopped taking showers after gym class! Things used to be so different, and I wonder what changed.
jb, have you tried to get a background info about the song you linked?
The Constantinople got its name from the Roman Emperor that was the first to convert to Christianity and who made it a capital of the Roman Empire. It remained the capital of the Christian “Eastern” Roman Empire until it was conquered by the Muslim Ottoman Turks in 1453.
The problem with “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” is that even the Turks officially called the city Constantinople until the 20th century. Only then the politicians there decided to force a “Turk” name, as the nationalism was seen as a modern replacement for Islamism and the secularism was introduced in the remains of the former empire (The current developments in the Turkey are Islamism getting the state support again and secularism receding).
The song claims that the name change is “nobody’s business but the Turks'” and promotes the ignorance of history (“why they changed it I can’t say”).
J&M gay? http://www.jesusandmo.net/comic/gays/
Suppose its just a sign of the times. Someone like Sparky shark makes a mild joke and is immediately portrayed as worse than Hitler, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao etc.
How lucky I was to be raised in the golden era of free speech, good humour and real tolerance.
Rather than the present one, where opinion is now controlled by PO faced progressives, fresh from Orwell’s Miniluv.
JB no, thank YOU for the links. (We start to sound like Chip and Dale, eh.) Both delightful. Loved the dancing, though not a fan of the musical treatment. Much prefer the older styles, as befits my advanced years.
The link to the swimming naked documentary was also delightful. I hadn’t realized that the very idea of young men swimming naked together is now something people deny ever happened. I was sent to the YMCA for swimming lessons when I was about ten. And yes, we all swam naked, even with young female instructors in charge of our training. Nobody seemed to care at all about being naked. What we didn’t like was the sadistic teenagers who would rub our wrists until some dead skin came off, then send us back to the showers to have a more thorough wash before we were allowed into the pool. This naturally lead to me having the cleanest wrist in Fort William (now known as Thunder Bay), Ontario.
I think the reason we were given for swimming naked was that bathing suits were not as sanitary, and I could agree with that, especially if they are worn in the shower. All those unwashed young crotches and bum holes could have an impact on the coliform count for sure.
The sexualizing of nudity is one of my pet peeves about our culture. The fact that Stephen Gough, the naked rambler, is in jail right now for simply waking around without clothes is all the proof I need that Britain hasn’t advanced far since the days when they chemically castrated Allan Turing. Read this if you want to be further alienated from our culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Gough
I just wish I had the guts to walk around naked in support of Mr. Gough. It may seem like a trivial issue to go to jail for, but what isn’t, eh.
In India, the Jains walk around starkers and nobody thinks anything of it, other than that they are religious kooks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
Hey, I wonder whether Mr. Gough’s lawyers considered having him convert to Jainism. Then he could claim nudity as a religious right. Religious rules seem to have a lot of influence in our FUBAR culture, and might even have won him his freedom. The rest of the Jain creed – non-violence, dedication to truth, not stealing, celibacy, and non-possessivenenss – should also shield him from accusations of sexual impropriety or darker, more sexual, motives.
Smee, that axe you keep grinding never seems to get any sharper.
Could you please point out where, in this thread, Sparky-shark is portrayed as “worse than Hitler, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao etc.” I must have miss that, and I didn’t notice any of those names. In fact, I don’t see any criticism of Sparky_shark on this thread at all. Just discussion of the question he raised.
Ya think maybe you are just a tad, what’s the right word here… reactive. 🙂 Chill, mate. Have another beer on me,eh.
DH:
I hadn’t realized that the very idea of young men swimming naked together is now something people deny ever happened.
Well, only this summer I was at a campingsite, with my wife, her sister, our son, and his daugther (regrettably his wife couldn’t come).
We all had lots of fun in the swimming pool.
Our granddaughter befriended some other children, and we ended up as heavy-duty pool wardens (to our delight!)
Some 40 years ago, my in-laws had a dog that loved to go to the beach. My mother-in-law wanted to join us, and it took her less than 10 minutes to decide that she would try without bathing suit. Another 5 minutes, and she was hooked.
Nowadays we regularly visit an FKK (nudist) site in former DDR.
Their history overview mentions that before “die Wende” (Germany’s reunification)
swimming naked was the rule.
The photos of young Angela Merkel as one of a group of youngsters recently got some attention, but they were really just some summertime common snapshots —
most amazing feat is that someone went over a zillion of those and managed to pick her in some!
Darwin H, you said to Smee “Chill, mate. Have another beer on me,eh.”
Very Canadian. I lived in Montreal to age 40, then the next 20 years in Florida. I might have said that once. Now I’d say, “take a frickin’ pill”. Ah, time stands still for no one. I’m visiting Montreal next week…. I’ll try to drink a Trois Pistoles and a Beau’s Lug Tread… and think of you. 🙂