Tuesday will mark four years since Christopher Hitchens died.

You can read plenty about his career here and it’s always a pleasure to listen to him talk. My favorite is where he shreds Jerry Falwell:

He was a prolific writer too, whether it was exposing Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger or religion. He also supported the Iraq War and never backed down. There’s something to admire about that.

The quote below is from god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. It was one of several atheist books released during the time, along with Sam Harris’s The End of Faith and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Christopher Hitchens is easily the best (and most tolerable) of their little group.

Anyways…

Nothing optional–from homosexuality to adultery — is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash.

And that reminds me: whenever I hear Rick Perry ramble on about homosexuality, I wonder if the bathroom tiles still hurt his knees or if he’s gotten used to it by now.