Exactly how is anyone supposed to be able to prove their virginity?

Greetings.

Jewish date:   19 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath Behar-Beḥuqqothay).

Today’s holidays:   Day 34 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Feast Day of Philip and James (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Frank Zappa (Church of the SubGenius), Discoflux (Discordianism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Don't let the climate deniers drown out science”.

Topic 1:  “Who Can Mock the True Catholic Church?”  By now everyone who is not living in isolation from civilization probably has heard of the Catholic sexual abuse scandal, the real scandal being not that individual priests did something horrible, but that their higher-ups knew about it and covered it up rather than stopping it.  At this point, it is very easy to attack the Roman Catholic Church in general and assume it is 100% horrible and evil.  This article correctly notes that despite everything that has gone wrong, there are still priests and nuns out in the trenches (so to speak) out to do actually helping people, e.g., by helping the poor and downtrodden.  The transgressions of some Catholic clergy does not mean the rest are guilty.

WARNING:  THE NEXT TOPIC IS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH.

Topic 2:  “The virginity industry”.  (Submitted by Barry.)  Islam forbids premarital sex, which is the usual among Abrahamic religions.  However, unlike Jews and Christians, Muslims will kill women who are discovered to have prematurely lost their virginity.  This has led Muslim women to have their hymens repaired to cover their transgression, compounding one sin with another.  What your humble blogger is puzzled about is how is any man really knows that the woman he is marrying is a virgin or not.  In some cases it may be evident, e.g., he gets a disease only transmitted sexually from her. However, I have heard that the spilling-of-blood-from-the-hymen test is not perfect, and it is not simply that women have sometimes managed to cheat.  Like any other part of the human body, the hymen can be damaged (non-sexually).  Furthermore, I have heard that by the time people usually get married these days (as adults, rather than the Arab practice of child brides), the hymen has already deteriorated, thus making the test in question return even for a genuine virgin a false negative.  Relying on this test would thus seem to be a good way to commit unjustified homicide.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “Put ur monee in the bowl 4 Jeeesus!”:

This cat apparently thinks he/she is a televangelist.

Peace.

Aaron