Yup, it's been a long time since I blogged, but I felt this was a good way to get back in the pool.
To the surprise of absolutely no one paying attention, Westboro Baptist Church is planning to bring their travelling hate show on the road to Joplin, MO to make asses of themselves at the funeral of the tornado victims. Fark.com:
On its website, the church says "Thank God for 125 dead," an echo of its common refrain crediting God with having people killed in retribution for the United States' tolerance of homosexuality.
Members plan to be in Joplin on Sunday when President Barack Obama is to visit and may attend at a memorial service for storm victims.
And no, there is no level to which these slime will not ooze. There is, predictably, a completely meaningless and ineffective Facebook page to which people can show their displeasure, not that anything has EVER resulted from a Facebook protest.
A couple of points:
Yes, these people are disgraceful.
No, there's no reasoning with them.
Now that we've established that, a couple more points:
Yes, they are permitted by the Constitution to say and do whatever they want, so long as they break no laws in doing so. You don't have to like it, but...
If you try to infringe on their rights or harm them, they will sue you for damages, because that's how they make their money.
Here's what you, and everyone, needs to do: We need to decide to stop paying attention to these freaks. They THRIVE on the attention, they are deliberately as annoying and offensive as possible precisely to rile you up so that they can purposefully goad you into doing something stupid. They're the taunting bully that runs to the teacher after you lose your cool and gets YOU in trouble for throwing the first punch.
An example: When I was a news reporter in northern Iowa, there was a series of bomb threats called in at Mason City School District by annoying punks who wanted a day off. The local TV station did the smart thing by NOT reporting on future bomb threats that turned out to be without merit (which was all of them, fortunately) so the attention-whoring twerps wouldn't get their kicks seeing their merry mischief on television after school.
Same deal with these vermin: they get off on pissing you off. They are psychologically unbalanced, but it is the collective response they get that keeps them coming back.
I make no judgement on whether they even believe the shit they spout (though I suspect they do). The point is, they've figured out yet another way to make money without being productive members of society, and the more we let them get to us, the longer they'll perpetuate their evil.
"The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. And that, in erotic terms, is the Catholic church in a nutshell." --Stephen Fry.
Almost every one, anyway. See how much concentrated crazy you can spot in this one...
A Baptist Church near Asheville, N.C., is hosting a "Halloween book burning" to purge the area of "Satan's" works, which include all non-King James versions of the Bible, popular books by many religious authors and even country music.
The website for the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C., says there are "scriptural bases" for the book burning. The site quotes Acts 19:18-20: "And many that believed, came and confessed and shewed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts, brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed."
Church leaders deem Good News for Modern Man, the Evidence Bible, the New International Version Bible, the Green Bible and the Message Bible, as well as at least seven other versions of the Bible as "Satan's Bibles," according to the website. Attendees will also set fire to "Satan's popular books" such as the work of "heretics" including the Pope, Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and Rick Warren.
"I believe the King James version is God's preserved, inspired, inerrant and infallible word of God," Pastor Marc Grizzard told a local news station of his 14-member parish.
Hey, Pastor Grizzard, Fred Phelps called...he wants you to quit stealing his act.
Seriously, do these people have two-headed alien babies with gills? These people have a list of holy-roller enemies that boils down to "everyone but us." They're like atheists, only without the cool kid factor.
Today is International Blasphemy Day. Given that my namesake, St. Paul the Wordsmith, was all about letters, I decided to write one to the biggest bloated windbag and media whore at the beck and call of the Catholic Church (whether they want him or not). On that note, a reading from the First Letter of Paul to the Catholic League.
To: Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League From: Paul Lundgren, aka "Cycle Ninja," z-list blogger, reality-based human Re: International Day of Blasphemy
Dear Mr. Donohue:
Like most things on this blog, this missive is going to be random scattered bits of irony, dry humor, exasperation, and just plain outrage, and it might ramble on a bit, but please bear with me. One thing I will promise is that I will drop no foul language, but believe me, it'll be a strain.
I am taking time on this, the International Day of Blasphemy, to call you out on your disgraceful behavior in defending the criminal actions of your church. Your website states, quote,
"And today's brand of anti-Catholicism is more virulent and more pervasive than ever before in American history. While it is true that Catholics as individuals have made progress in securing their rights, the degree of hostility exhibited against the Catholic Church is appalling. Quite simply, Catholic bashing has become a staple of American society."
Bluntly speaking, you deserve it. Your church has no claim to morality of any kind anymore at all. The crimes committed under the steeples of your church all over the world are what are truly appalling. But the cover-ups, the papal edicts ordering the cover-ups, and the consistent, system-wide, organized reaction of the church to protect its reputation first, minimize the financial damage second, and make amends--maybe--third is inexcusable and make me want to barf. You have no excuses anymore. You are not a model of piety and morality, you are an ironclad example of how NOT to do morality.
(And that bit about "securing their rights" is a real howler--when was the last time any Christian-based church in this country had any right to bitch about lack of rights? Maybe the Mormons, but still--being taken seriously and having immunity from criticism and mockery is not a right, dimwit--it's an earned privilege. Oh, and ask a gay person in this country about the actions of your free-to-marry parishoners in passing laws that are biased against gay rights, and then use that line about your rights--you'll get an earful. In short, burn that strawman, it doesn't apply.)
Now, back to morality: let's cite one single example that is all-too-predictable: I am a native of Fort Madison, IA. A few years back, I personally received a notice from the Diocese of Davenport informing me that I had such-and-such time to file notice that I had a claim in a class-action suit against the diocese in a sex-abuse-by-priests scandal. Gee, imagine that. And I recently learned that my own home town is the site of such a scandal.
Two lawsuits claim (Rev. James) Janssen abused boys under the age of 14 at St. Joseph Parish in Fort Madison, where the priest served as assistant pastor from 1961 to 1967.
Not me, personally; before I was born, even. But my home parish! Your church has for centuries built up the trust (read: blind obedience) of its followers from birth, and then betrayed them over and over and over again. You deserve all the scorn and "Catholic bashing" you get, many times over.
And you, sir, deserve your own personal amount of it for your shameless defense of the church. Or I should say, for your shameless attacks on the perceived enemies of the church. You know, those people who correctly cite the church's crimes and have the audacity to hold the joint responsible for them? Even during the shameful revelation of the abuses taking place in boarding schools in Ireland, you poo-pooed the abuses those boys and girls (now men and women) had gone through. When was the last time you suffered any real hardship, sir? Or is it because of your own unhappy childhood that you have taken this task upon yourself?
Regardless of your motives for maintaining your post with such vigor, let me give you a brief insight into how the public perceives you...You are nothing more than a self-appointed mouthpiece for the most obviously corrupt church in the world with the exception of the Church of Scientology. You are a vile buffoon with an unfortunate-but-appropriate resemblance to Karl Rove whose sputtering would be absolutely laughable were it not for the fact that the bile belching from your ugly mouth reflects your sincere attempts to un-ironically justify the worst kind of crimes against humans--crimes that leave physical and mental scars for lifetimes--simply because they were committed by Catholic priests and therefore, it's all fine and dandy.
The Church of Scientology does the same thing. L. Ron Hubbard was famous for stating, "Attack, never defend." Well, look how well that works. If there is a strategy more guaranteed to fail than that, I'd like to hear it.
Your Catholic league bears several similarities to the CoS, by the way. You constantly rant about your membership of 300,000+ individuals, but you and you alone are the only member we ever hear of. That makes me seriously question the veracity of your figures. Or, again like the C of Sci, how you arrive at those figures. You, too, have an unfailing belief that everything Catholic is good by definition, and that anyone who says anything bad about the church--even if true--is bad-if-not-evil by definition. Here's the real deal, skippy: you are an insecure little nobody of a human being with all the inherent scariness of a de-horned pufferfish. Take away the prickliness, and you have no substance at all. You, sir, are a loathsome insect.
And if you haven't noticed, the egg sac which spawned you is not exactly thriving. USA Today, among many others, documents the decline not only of the priesthood, but of the dues-paying membership. There are all kids of scientific reasons, but here's my own (unscientific) take. As with most things in life, it's all about the Internet. Seriously.
As others have pointed out, the Internet has been the death of the Church of Scientology. I believe it will be so for the Catholic Church, as well. Not in the sense that an institution that massive will EVER become extinct (although I live in hope). However, once all of the mysteries and secrets are out in the open, good luck trying to sell the usual sales pitches to get people with even a modicum of critical thinking skills to swallow it.
Taken in that context, it doesn't surprise me at all that the church is investing a lot of resources in Africa. You have a population that is suffering massive deprivations from HIV/AIDS, and the corresponding despair and desperation that goes with it, and is inarguably far behind other parts of the world in Internet infrastructure, let alone access. Combine those with a tradition of witchcraft and shamanism, and the church is exploiting an easy market.
What is also not surprising is the fear-mongering. A Catholic bishop in Africa has made the outrageous claim that condoms come pre-infected with HIV. (Last I heard, he was still on the job). Your pope's cynical idiocy and vapidity on the subject have already been torn apart. And yet, people will believe them, because of the inherent superstitions of the population, superstitions which go back centuries.
But you can't keep it up forever. Information is the enemy of superstition. The more people who are able to see how utterly ridiculous are your church's beliefs, how callously indifferent to human feelings are its doctrines, and how disgracefully cynical are its actions in the real world, the more people will reject them.
And again, your actions are helping bring that day about. Your comedy routine of stepping on the rake to make the end of the handle whack you in the puss is contributing to the amount of derision your church deserves. Remember, this is your church's fault. Point fingers all you want, we'll keep laughing, and encouraging others to do the right thing and leave.
In short, keep up the good work!
Sincerely yours,
Paul Lundgren Ames, IA
PS: The same Constitutional Amendment that gives you the right to practice your religion as you see fit is the same Amendment that gives me and many others the right to call you on your baloney. Remember that.
PPS: I'll say hi to Penn and Teller for you when I'm in Vegas next spring.
"The Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Florida, made the news last week when its pastor replaced the megachurch's 10 Pepsi vending machines with 10 Coke machines. The pastor felt that Pepsi was far too supportive of—can you guess?—"the gay lifestyle."
What I found most remarkable about this story wasn't the stupidity—more on that in a moment—but the fact that a single church in Florida has 10 soda-pop vending machines. Ten! You would think the good Christians at Bell Shoals could make it through an hour or two on a Sunday without a cold can of corn syrup.
And psst... Bell Shoals? Coke supports gay rights, too. Your best gay-hatin' soda-pop option may be ZamZam Cola. It was a subsidiary of Pepsi, true, but that was before the Islamic Revolution. Made in Iran, ZamZam Cola is the most popular soft drink in Saudi Arabia, and I'm guessing the good folks at ZamZam don't like the gays any more than you do. But if the "soft drink of the Hajj" doesn't appeal to you, Bell Shoals, how about asking your parishioners to go without soda pop for an hour a week?"
I think if your church is so obviously taken over by greed, what's a little gluttony to go along with it?
I've been doing some branching out recently from my usual blog sites (Pharyngula, The Daily Dish, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, etc.). And I've found a couple of gems.
Angie Jackson, blogging as Angie the Anti-Theist, or ATAT for short (apologies, George Lucas) is a very smart, funny young lady whose grandmother was a cult leader. In fact, she has a book coming out soon (excerpt here) that sounds grimly fascinating. It's the kind of cult where they believed in faith-healing and children died because of it. Angie's only been a non-irrationalist for a couple years now, tops, but she's already got game in the writing department. Angie, welcome, and keep it up.
Also, one of my favorite targets for contempt--the "Church" of Scientology--has a stupendous counterpunch: Ask the Scientologist. It's written by a couple of long-term CoS members who have come to their senses. And like me with the Catholic Church or Angie with her grandmother's cult, there's nothing like a former member to tell you what's really going on.
"The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable."
"Note to Bill Donohue: Yes, I've confused the virgin birth with the Immaculate Conception. So sue me, motherfucker."
Oh, you better watch out, Dan; Donohue claims to have 300,000 members of the League of Extraordinary Catholics at his beck and call. Never mind the fact that it's probably just him and his equally prudish wife, and the 300,000 figure was pulled out of his ass. The man is an apologist for the worst crimes of the Catholic Church, and should be laughed at whenever possible.
As much as I trash religions, I'll give them their due when they get it right. NPR:
"Just a few weeks ago, even liberals were predicting that the Episcopal Church would back away from allowing openly gay men and lesbians to become bishops. Ever since 2003, when the church elevated Gene Robinson to be bishop of New Hampshire, it's taken fire from conservative Anglicans around the world. Three years ago, leaders tried to tamp down the anger by promising a moratorium on consecrating gay bishops.
"And we did that for a time — for the last three years — and that time is over," says Susan Russell, a priest in Pasadena, Calif., and president of Integrity, a gay rights organization in the church. Russell was at the church's general convention in Anaheim, Calif., on Tuesday when it voted overwhelmingly to allow gay men and lesbians to become priests and bishops."
I don't see what the big deal is. Lesbians aside, the Catholic Church has been doing that sort of thing for years...
OK, no more snark, I promise. As you might expect, not everyone greeted the news with flowers and pastries:
"The conservative wing of the Episcopal Church walked out last month and is creating its own rival church, leaving liberals in the vast majority....
Russell acknowledges this was a risky move, particularly because Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, warned the Americans not to endorse gay bishops or same-sex blessings lest the second-largest Christian church in the world be split in two. But Russell says the U.S. church is independent, and no foreign province can tell it what to do."
Good for them.
Of course, you can't, in the words of Dan Savage, convince a knuckle-dragging bigot that homosexuality is a natural, harmless variation from the norm. Because that would be looking at the evidence rather than the Bible. And we can't have that, now, can we? At any rate, at least we know who the haters are.
And I could get all nuanced over the sentiment of, "well, now, some of those people might have conscientious objections to gay priests and blah blah blah." Not any more. This is the 21st century--you know better. No excuses for bigotry. Own up to it; you'll get at least a token of respect that way.
I don't care for the whole "fish-on-car-bumpers" stuff. It's like the whole "MY dad can beat up YOUR dad" crap from the dreaded playgrounds of my unhappy childhood. However, I WOULD like to have this as a tattoo...
Recent documents have come forth showing that Donald Rumsfeld deliberately manipulated that Christian fanatic of a president of his into going into war with Iraq. Now, it turns out Bush left the president of France scratching his head, too...
"[There] are new accounts emerging from France describing how former president Jacques Chirac was utterly baffled by a 2003 telephone conversation in which Bush reportedly invoked fanatical Old Testament prophecy – including the Earth-ending battle with forces of evil, Gog and Magog – in his arguments to enlist France in the Coalition of the Willing.
“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins,” Bush said to Chirac, according to Thomas Romer, a University of Lausanne theology professor who was later approached by French officials anxious to understand the biblical reference. Romer first revealed his account in a 2007 article for the university review, Allez savoir, which passed largely unnoticed.
Chirac, in a new book by French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, is quoted as confirming the surreal conversation, saying he was stupefied by Bush’s reference to biblical prophecy and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”"
Wow. Just...wow. No wonder the right-wingers hate the French...they can smell bullshit when exposed to it.
Keith Olbermann recently had Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, to talk about this. Gaddy basically says what us freethinkers have known all along--you can quote-mine the Bible to justify any position you want to take (except the fact that there is no God, but that's another discussion).
California's Supreme Court is expected to rule on appeals to Prop 8 tomorrow morning. And what are some gay-rights advocates doing?
"Gay marriage supporters are holding a prayer service on the eve of the California Supreme Court's expected ruling on the legality of a voter-approved ban on same-sex nuptials.
The group Marriage Equality USA plans to hold the interfaith event Monday night at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
On Tuesday morning, the state's high court plans to rule on a series of lawsuits seeking to overturn Proposition 8."
*Sigh*
The only good thing this does, IMHO, is help cut the rug out from under the religious bigots by showing that homophobia doesn't have to be a pre-requisite for being religious.
But it reinforces this notion that prayer does something, anything, other than waste time and energy that could be spent elsewhere. It doesn't. I'm not even going to go through any time and effort to research whether there have been scientific studies done on the question. If someone else can show me CONCLUSIVE proof that it works, the burden of proof is on you.
It's a token argument, anyway. Gay marriage is the way of the future. And I side with Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller when he says to those who say if we allow gay marriage, then polygamy must be next...I hope so. Otherwise we're not a free country.
