Westboro Baptist invades South Florida

December 14th, 2009 • christianity, intolerance
Tags: hatred

The infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, known nationwide for its religion of hate and extreme intolerance, has sent some of its acolytes to Palm Beach County to protest. What are they protesting against? Well, besides hating homosexuals which is their usual M.O., they’ve brought out copious signage to incite hate against our huge Jewish population down here. Outside of New York and Israel, south Florida has the highest population of Jews in the world, so what better place to hate them than in their own backyards? Besides being here to spread hate, I have absolutely what other reason they’d be here for but they’ve got a new gag they’ve brought with them: trampling the American flag. As many of us know, defacing the American flag was a pretty big deal back in the Vietnam era, I personally have no experience with it but it was fairly heinous from what I’m told. In Florida, it is a public crime to desecrate the flag. So, one Hezekiah Phelps was interviewed on the CBS12 news while he was walking all over the flag, openly participating in the crime. The irony in this is the fact that he’s protesting against Jews with an obvious Jewish name. I guess shacking up with ol’ Fred Phelps removes the idea of irony from your memory.

I found it interesting that the Sun Sentinel was not able to interview any of these hate peddlers but CBS12 simply sent a camera crew up to West Palm Beach today and not only interviewed two of them but was able to video all of the protesters — all 6 of them. Seems the Sentinel didn’t think hate against two large portions of their readership would be important to cover.

The Westboro crazies are going to be at Spanish River High School tomorrow in Boca. I’m not sure what time they’re going to be there but I am going to attempt to get down there for some pictures of the insanity in action.

Falwell’s wife writes book, wants him alive again

June 10th, 2008 • christianity, intolerance

Jerry Falwell died one year ago last month and his wife has just put out a new book, surely to be a snoozer. I was just reading this link from Newsweek regarding her new book and how she thinks the world needs Jerry back. Now, I’ve heard of apologists but this thing reads like a religious right significant other apologetic diatribe.

I understand it’s hard to lose a love one, despite whether people like them or not, it’s hard to deal with. Falwell was a media mogul for religious pundits that have gone over the edge. But really, this interview reads like a half-assed “I’m sorry but not really” letter, I especially love this quote from it:

After 9/11 he blamed the attacks on paganists, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians. This has not helped his legacy. Did he mean what he said?
I think it was such a horrible time … I think the whole nation was in shock. In hindsight Jerry would rather have said things a bit differently. But then again, everyone makes mistakes.

Of course he’d say something different because you realize that 9/11 had absolutely nothing to do with feminists (without them you wouldn’t be able to vote), abortionists (because all those unbirthed fetuses made some fanatics hijack planes) and gays and lesbians (I’m sure they had much better things to do than influence fanatics who hate them anyway). No need to apologize for Jerry’s incendiary remarks, it’s been almost 7 years, no one cares any more but he wouldn’t say anything differently and you know it. This one’s good too:

Do you think the “religious right” will be an important factor in November’s election?
I’m not too well bred on this kind of stuff. Jerry didn’t really bring problems home, so I don’t really know a lot about it.

So the movement that Jerry essentially spearheaded and brought to fruition was a problem? The movement that actually made him important was a problem? There’s a shocker. Most of us already knew this stuff but I’m pretty sure you guys talk about this in church and it’s a big deal otherwise, why would a former presidential candidate be so enthralled to write a passage for the book? Here’s a nice quote to directly go against what she just said:

Have you thought about who you’ll vote for in November?
I’ll vote for McCain, for sure.

Not because he’s A. part of the right and B. religion, correct? He’s just an upstanding swell citizen, that’s it!

I know we all read a bunch of contradictory stuff from these bobbleheads but this one just made me laugh from the belly. I wonder who coached her on what to say but didn’t coach her on what to make sense on.

Why be afraid of offending Muslims?

August 1st, 2007 • idiocy, intolerance

I’ve thought about this for the last few days while pondering over something Christopher Hitchens wrote. Should we — whomever ‘we’ constitutes — be afraid of offending Muslims? In the terms of non-theists, should we be afraid of offending Muslims? I do not think so, I mean, we’re busy offending Christians so why stop with Muslims? But more on my thoughts in a moment. The religion of Islam should not be set atop a pedestal for no one to poke fun at or offend its constituents and this is what Hitchens thinks as well. After reading this, I realized that should God or Allah ever be proven to actually exist, Christopher Hitchens would be the most amazing apologetic father that ever lived because he’s such a pompous idiot.

He thinks we should be out offending every Muslim we can find, just like he thinks we should be doing with Christians and this is where he clearly lodges his foot clearly in his mouth. Hitchens is clearly equating Muslims with Christians in terms of extremism and fundamentalism and thinks there’s no reason to be worried about offending anyone. I guess he’s forgotten about the centuries old wars still being waged by Muslims, against Muslims, over their beliefs because another tribe offended them. Or perhaps he’s just playing ignorant of the subject for the purpose of getting on his soapbox. Or did he forget about the beheadings of non-Muslims at the hands of Muslims for simply not being a member of the nation of Islam and thus, were offended? Hitchens needs to stick to pissing off the Christians and worrying about if he should offend them or not. He should read the intelligent and insightful comments on his Slate article.

Personally, I feel the same way Hitchens does to an extent. I can go to Georgia and offend as many Christians I want and the worst I’ll get is called names or perhaps “put in my place” by some God-fearing nutcase. If I went to Iran and did the same thing to some random Muslim I met, I’d probably be shot. Or if I went to Iraq. Or the Philippines where there is a large, fanatical, Muslim population. Or even France where the Muslim population has been booming for the last few years and they’re up in arms for just about anything.

There’s a time and place to pick your fights, Christopher, and you never know which Muslim you’re busy pissing off isn’t carrying and will shoot you without regret. Pick your fights intelligently and do some good or pick them stupidly and do nothing, think about that the next time you want to shout at the rest of us from your ivory tower.

West Palm Beach woman sets to ban books she’s never read

July 11th, 2007 • 1 comment christianity, education, intolerance

Sean Prophet writes about a local woman getting the WPB school board to ban books that she’s never read based on her own personal beliefs. That’s right, beliefs. She’s on public record as having never read any of the books cover-to-cover but I’m going to guess it’s more than that, she’s probably never read any of them at all. She pretty much proves this when she met with the school board’s superintendent about it and couldn’t recite blasphemous passages or page numbers even though she’s required to provide sufficient proof to back up the complaint.

She wants 80 books on topics such as homosexuality, atheism, abortions, and even a book about Richard the Lionheart pulled from the shelves. Yep, she wants a book based on the trials of a noble and respected king, who also happened to be deeply pious, to be banned because she’s not even read the thing. I can imagine that right now, this woman is the laughing stock of her subdivision because she’s clearly displayed her own ineptitude and lack of sense in a very public way. Funny how I bet she skipped over all the books on demonology or the shady past of the Vatican because they have some religious roots. Next week will she want newspapers running recent stories of pastors charged with sodomizing and molesting children pulled from local newsstands because it casts a negative light on her fellow Christians in their time of backsliding. Or what about pastors that fraud and steal from generous contributors?

Not one to aid in his mother’s misguided plight is her atheist son whom she conjectures that he think she’s “pretty stupid.” I’m guessing he isn’t the only one based on this aberrant display of public foolishness. I don’t go to libraries and complain that they have Bibles, Korans, or Torahs on the shelves and demand they be pulled because I’m not the arbiter and controller of knowledge and feel that people are free to read whatever they want. Maybe that’s something she’ll learn too. But somehow, you know, I really doubt that. She’ll probably try and take this to the local court.

RIAA is completely lost in a sea of stupidity

May 22nd, 2007 • chatter, idiocy, intolerance, music

Never one to want to be out of the spotlight, the RIAA — Recording Industry Association of America — is up to their tricks again this week. For years they’ve been heading down a never ending road of stupid moves from suing people without a computer to dead people to newborn babies. This week takes the cake, however. The RIAA has now decided to start suing those who made them rich in the first place: radio stations. They’re going to start suing radio stations over an exemption that allows stations to play music without having to pay royalties. Now the RIAA is clearly biting the hand that feeds. Without the thousands of radio stations across the nation, the execs of the RIAA would not be as filthy rich as they are now. So now the RIAA wants to basically negate the last 50 to 60 years of completely free promotion — and incredibly good sales — by suing radio stations.

They’re still struggling to place more blame on lack luster music sales on people downloading music — legally or otherwise — instead of realizing that the largest portion of consumers with the most money (humans ages 13-40) in their demographic are completely unhappy and unsatisfied with the choices they’re being offered today. This is the sole reason that indie labels and formerly unknown genres, such as emo and metalcore, are thriving. These offer the consumer something new to listen to and enjoy without all the overhead and politics of supporting Big Music. Do you think it’s pure chance that bands like Fall Out Boy or HIM are so incredibly popular because they’re incredible musicians? Hardly. It’s because the people with the money skyrocketed them into the spotlight by sheer buying power and word of mouth alone. This is also why bands and genres you’ve never heard of will have millions of profile views on sites like Myspace, it’s all word of mouth and grassroots viral marketing not manufactured music and personas.

When are they going to learn that business models are changing and they have to adapt and adopt, not sue and subpoena. Most Fortune 500 companies that deal with music and artists have adapted to the changing marketplace, so why is the RIAA so against it? Techdirt offers a very funny yet serious opinion on this new wholly deplorable tactic.

Being nude is a loss of dignity?

May 6th, 2007 • 3 comments christianity, confusion, intolerance

As I was reading through my feeds tonight, I saw that Sean Prophet had posted up an interesting piece on a photograph of 18,000 nude participants in Mexico City’s Zocalo Square and how the Church sees it as a loss of human dignity. From a photographic standpoint, getting this many people together for a single shoot is simply amazing. I know from shoots I’ve been on in the past, getting one person (the model) to cooperate is difficult enough let alone another 17,999 people. But this is not what struck me as truly amazing.

Older people and clergymen see it as an offense against the Church itself and a deplorable act for people to be publicly seen nude. Gasp! I then remembered a quote from Genesis:

2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Adam and Eve were not shy about their nudity. It’s not like they were the only ones around either as God had just created beasts of the earth and beasts of the air just before he created Adam. Now, here’s Adam and Eve sitting around, stark naked in front of a whole host of animals and they do not care and I highly doubt the animals cared either. So is the Church saying it’s okay to be nude around animals but not other humans? The Bible is filled with passages of various people being very nude:

1 Samuel 18:1-4
The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. … Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.

Isaiah 20:3-4
And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

Mark 14:51-52
And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

I randomly selected these three passages, there is no rhyme or reason to their order. According to the Bible, it’s quite alright to be naked if you want to be. It does not matter if it’s in front of men, slaves, or even prophets. So how is being nude a loss of dignity in any sense? Biblically, it’s okay. Societally in Mexico, it’s not okay it seems. So if the Bible is the word of God as scribed by men, aren’t the clergymen committing blasphemies by charging people with being less than dignified or ridiculing them by pointing fingers when they see someone naked? When did prudishness become bedfellows with the Church?

Historically, people were not so bothered about being nude around each other. In Rome, it was quite accepted and encouraged. This is true of much of ancient Italy itself from the Romans to the Spartans to the Cretes and Minoans. Native and Meso Americans were frequently nude in public religious rituals and elsewhere. I even think original baptisms as performed by John the Beloved required you to be nude as to cleanse not only the spirit but the entire body of past transgressions. Ben Franklin was even a proud supporter of “air baths” and nudism in general. So when did society deem being nude was deplorable? I have no idea really but I’m sure it had something to do with the Puritans and other fundamentalists.

Mojoey sure went through hell for Hemant’s book

April 29th, 2007 • atheism, chatter, intolerance

Hemant‘s book I Sold My Soul on eBay was released recently and generally, reviews are positive. However, his eye was caught — as was mine — by Mojoey’s interesting day at the airport while in possession of Hemant’s book. Hemant gleefully outlines the rather bizarre day Mojoey recounts.

Funny what happens to a guy with an Atheist book but people keep quiet (believe me) when you walk around with books emblazoned with the words “The Devil”, “Satan”, “Lucifer”, or “occult”. I do get the occasional odd stare but no one ever outright asks “Are you a Satanist?” so I could come up with some witty retort. It makes me wonder why people are seemingly more afraid of those who outright state “there is no God” than people who seek to destroy that God and their religion completely. Maybe the “great” Satanism scare of the 1980s was too much for the masses?

Christian intolerance among MySpace clones

March 24th, 2007 • 8 comments christianity, intolerance

So I came to work this morning and as usual, I started reading my normal Atheist blogs. I then came across this lovely post from The Friendly Atheist about a site called HisHolySpace.com (HHS) which is exactly what it sounds like: a Christian Myspace rip off. Now, since I work for a large web hosting company, I see these all the time and all of them fail in way or another so what sets this one apart from the rest? Christianism, that’s what!

Just going through the registration process is painful enough but then you have extremely backwards thinking and double standards going on. Take the tidbit of information on the first page alone:

HisHolySpace.com is an online Christian Community that is structured on the Core Essential Doctrines of Christianity. The Bible itself reveals those doctrines that are essential to the Christian faith. They are as follows: (1) the Deity of Christ (2) Salvation by Grace (3) Resurrection of Christ, and (4) the gospel. These are the doctrines the Bible says are necessary. Though there are many other important doctrines, these four are the only ones that are declared by Scripture to be essential…

I never realized that Christ was a deity, Jesus Christ was merely a person and a prophet not a deity. Making him into a deity would mean people would worship him and go against the Ten Commandments. Worshipping Jesus as a deity goes directly in opposition of Exodus 20:3 :

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

And since when has the resurrection of Christ been a core doctrine of Christianity? When I went to church, I must have slept through all those sermons because I don’t remember it at all. I also missed where the reverend at hand said his resurrection was essential to the understanding of the Christian ethos. It only gets more interesting:

A non-regenerate person, or a false religion, will deny one or more of these essential doctrines.

Just wow. How narrow-minded and intolerant. I guess they think that Kabbalism is a false religion too, just don’t go telling some intelligent, well-learned Rabbis that.

HisHolySpace.com separates itself from other online religious community sites, by only allowing those religions that follow these Core Christian Essentials, to be promoted on the site. Anyone from any religion is welcome to join HisHolySpace.com. But if your religion and/or your beliefs fall outside the realm of the above-mentioned Core Essentials, and it is your intention to promote your religion and/or beliefs on HHS, you may be in violation of the site rules, which could result in the cancelation of your membership.

I guess you can join if you do not believe in the Christian “core doctrines” but don’t ever say that or you’ll be kicked off! Saying “anyone from any religion can join” and following it with “if your beliefs fall outside our narrow scope, your account will get cancelled” doesn’t really mean everyone is welcome and you promote tolerance. Let’s get into the site itself and how backwards it continues to be.

Case in point: Rank User. I have no idea how often this is actually used on MySpace as not only have I never used it, I don’t know anyone that has in the two years I’ve been on MySpace but anyway that’s beside the point. On HHS, instead of ranking users, apparently you get to JUDGE them. Excuse me? Doesn’t judging someone (something Christians are taught not to do) usually carry a negative connotation in any social circles? I just don’t understand “Christians” like this. I was raised devout Presbyterian and if my mother ever found out I was judging someone or prejudicing against someone, I was in huge trouble because it’s against the Christian ethos as laid down in the Bible. But apparently, the people behind HHS have no problems whatsoever in welcoming judgement against its’ users and they more than welcome you to do it. I guess their version of the Bible says this is OK. Then you have such atrocities as “Add to Congregation” instead of “Add to Friends” or “No Gossip IM” instead of “Instant Message”. I mean, No Gossip IM? What is this, a Communist regime? I understand trying to seperate yourself from the rest of the clones but come on, who’s going to buy this drivel? Everyone, including Christians, gossip and no one can truthfully deny they do not do it.

Even though I’m not a Christian, I find this highly offensive. I think even if I was a Christian I would never visit this site and continue using the sinful and tempestuous MySpace because at least they know what goes on and they do not try to cover up. It seems they want to actually push Christianist values down your throat instead of trying to cultivate and market a healthy Christian image. I haven’t made a Satanist MySpace clone so I can use it to my own evil ends and make people feel like they need to repent after logging off. It just seems that in many parts of the country, especially in the South, people are being taught Christianist values instead of the old Christian values that have been taught for the last 2,000 years. They have all of the outward trappings of a Christian but once you get them to open up, you find out it’s all a thin veener and there’s a regular ol’ sinner underneath there that really has no idea what they believe or why they “believe” they’re Christian. Is this how we want our children to start progressing through life? As one dimensional robots, devoid of any humanity or self-understanding?

I just don’t understand this at all.