Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's ... Pigeon Balls?

EUPHRATES PROVINCE, ISIS—We already knew that the fundamentalist Muslims in the Middle East have some strange ideas about sex, from forbidding women to drive (or walk around with their heads uncovered) to female genital mutilation to killing women who have been raped for their "sexual misconduct"—but the latest encyclical regarding pigeon breeding is a prime candidate for News of the Weird. Seems that pigeon breeding is a popular activity in much of the Middle East, but now, senior Muslim clerics affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have banned the practice. Why? "[T]hey claim the sight of the birds' genitals as they fly overhead is offensive to Islam." Seriously. They said that. Has anyone here ever tried to see a bird's—any bird's—genitals? Those who own birds can tell you that the only times those little fuckers show themselves is when they're mating, and even then, you'd have to push aside a bunch of feathers, making the birds none too happy in the process. So the idea that anyone can catch a glimpse of a pigeon's (or any bird's) cock or balls (or, for want of a better word, pussy) when it's flying even ten feet above his/her head is ludicrous—but then, no one's ever claimed that most religious dogma is sane ... The ban on pigeon breeding is just the latest step in asserting more religious "law" over the populace. It was reported earlier this year that 15 boys in eastern Iraq had been arrested, and three of them executed, by Islamic militants, allegedly because the boys' practice of breeding pigeons "stopped them from spending their time worshipping Allah." Now, aren't you happy that all conservative religious leaders in this country want to do is take away your porn careers and keep your kids ignorant of anything to do with sex?