There’s one very important lesson to be learned from the New Testament’s account of the life of Jesus Christ.

No, not that hippy communist “Love thy neighbor” “Blessed are the peacemakers” “Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” bullshit that nobody cares about these days.

I’m talking about the value of solid legal representation.

Do you really think that if Jesus had gone before Pontius Pilate with a crack team of lawyers backing him up that those trumped-up charges of blasphemy would have stuck? I mean, even a kid fresh out of law school would have argued that crucifixion is way too harsh a penalty for a first-time offender!

Luckily, many of Jesus’ modern-day followers have seen the value of a law degree and have been suing the living shit out of people in his name.

For example, there are the upstanding Christians at the Thomas More Law Center, who recently filed a lawsuit against the Democratic Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm. What did she do to inspire this lawsuit?

She put up a petition on her official website.

This petition allowed proponents of embryonic stem-cell research to send a message to the Michigan state legislature, telling them that they agreed with Granholm’s efforts to ease state-level legal restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research.

According to the Michigan “pro-life” advocacy groups that the Thomas More Law Center sued on behalf of, the fact that Granholm, a long-time supporter of embryonic stem-cell research, didn’t include a petition for opponents of embryonic stem-cell research to use to contact the state legislature meant that she was discriminating against pro-lifers.

Or as lawyers for the Thomas More Law Center phrased it:

Just like Granholm’s 2006 petition encouraging President Bush to cap oil company profits in order to lower gasoline prices drowned out the voice of oil company executives and folks who support higher gas prices.

So how did Governor Granholm react to this lawsuit?

In a remarkable display of courage, she took the petition off the website. I’m sure it was more effective than adding a full page of petitions that reflected every possible personal opinion on embryonic stem-cell research, ranging from pro, con and conflicted ambivalence to “only if they are taken from aborted gay babies and used to create a new race of genetically modified super-soldiers to fight the War On Terror”.

At least now government-funded websites won’t be used to promote one side of a controversial issue like embryonic stem-cell research!

Sometimes lawsuits on Jesus’ behalf show up in unexpected places, like Maryland’s Montgomery County. Montgomery County, just north of Washington D.C., is one of the most affluent and well-educated counties per-capita in the United States. The folks that live there voted for both John Kerry and Al Gore over George W. Bush by an almost 2-to-1 margin. In addition to Bethesda and Silver Spring, the county includes the town of Takoma Park, a nuclear-free enclave of hybrid-driving, gay marriage-supporting, Bush and Cheney impeachment-urging hippies known as “The Berkeley Of The East” and “The People’s Republic Of Takoma Park”.

While most of Montgomery County seems more like Oz than Kansas, for the last three years there’s been an ongoing legal battle between the Montgomery County School Board and a range of advocacy groups represented by the conservative Christian legal group the Liberty Counsel.

Since 2004, the school board has been trying to revise the curriculum for the human sexuality portion of it’s 8th and 10th-grade health classes. The current sex-ed lessons, which by Maryland state law students must get parental permission before taking, do not mention sexual identity or homosexuality.

A 2005 U.S. District Court ruling blocked the school board’s first attempt at a revised curriculum that discussed those topics because it featured the following in the “Facts and Myths” section:

Even a homo-loving atheist like me can see how that might run afoul of the First Amendment, even though it’s 100% accurate. Damn you, Founding Fathers!

The school board took their courtroom defeat in stride, and earlier this year approved a second attempt at introducing the concepts of sexual identity and tolerance to their sex-ed curriculum without mentioning religion. This, of course, inspired another round of legal action from the same advocacy groups who opposed the 2004 plan.

According to Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum and The Family Leadership Network, students exposed to the new sex-ed lessons would face an increased risk of gender confusion, teen suicide and contracting sexually-transmitted diseases, and that students who object to homosexuality would be stigmatized as “homophobic”. In addition, a group called Parents And Friends Of Ex-Gays And Gays claims that because the new curriculum declares that “sexual orientation is innate and a complex part of one’s personality” that it discriminates against “ex-gays”.

If you’re wondering what the fuck an “ex-gay” is, they’re the folks who claim that if gay folks just pray really, really hard, Jesus can magically make them love the pussy. Or the cock, if they’re one of them lesbians. Or at least shove them back into the closet until they freak out, realize that they’re living a lie and resume being gay folks. They’re also the folks that claim the existence of “ex-gays” means that homosexuals choose to be gay, and thus don’t deserve those pesky special rights like marriage.

However, not all of Montgomery County thinks that students should be taught that homosexuals have chosen to become suicidal, disease-ridden sex fiends, as groups like Teach The Facts have sprung up to advocate for the new sex-ed curriculum.

One of the dangers of suing on behalf of Jesus is that someone might try and sue right back. Pavel Mircea, a Romanian man currently serving a 20-year jail sentence for murder, recently filed a lawsuit against God. Pavel claimed that when he was baptized he entered into a contract with God, and that God was in breach of that contract because he accepted Pavel’s prayers but didn’t protect him from Satan. Or as Pavel phrases it:

Apparently a big stone tablet with “Thou Shalt Not Kill” carved on it doesn’t cut it for some folks.

However, once again God seems to have the better lawyers, as Pavel’s case was thrown out when Romanian prosecutors declared that God has no legal address, and thus couldn’t be taken to court.

So the next time someone disputes your interpretation of the Constitution by saying “You’re not a lawyer”, remember to shout back “Well, neither was Jesus!”.

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You probably know already that Scarleteen is one of the few places on the web where young folks (or old ones, really--they don't discriminate) can go to get sound advice and information about sex and sexuality, the kind of stuff they don't teach in school any more.

So if you can, spare a few bucks to keep the place up and running.

Bitch_PhD cross-posted this over at her place, because she thinks Scarleteen is fabulous and wishes the web had existed when she was a kid.