The Antichrist Will Be…

Detail from Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist, Luca Signorelli, San Brizio Chapel.

Detail from Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist, Luca Signorelli, San Brizio Chapel.

The antichrist will be…a homosexual Jew! So sayeth idiot Rick Wiles.

…Wiles said that this sort of “apostasy” is a sign that the End Times are near and warned that the Antichrist “will be a homosexual Jew.”

“What is the spirit of antichrist?” Wiles said. “It is anybody or anything that denies that Jesus Christ came to earth as God in human flesh. That is antichrist. If you deny it, then you are antichrist. And the Jews and Judaism is antichrist. Any Jew that denies that Jesus Christ is the son of God in human flesh, then he is antichrist. Judaism is antichrist. Islam is antichrist. Hinduism, Buddhism, all those isms [are] antichrist because they deny the virgin birth of the son of God.”

Yeah, yeah, only christianity is right, but you all can’t fucking figure out which christianity is right, you all think your particular flavour is right, and the rest are wrong. Nothing new to see here, although I am surprised to see atheism given a pass. I guess we don’t count against all those other isms.

“I personally believe that the Man of Perdition, the one that you call Antichrist, I personally believe he will be a homosexual Jew,” Wiles added. “Watch out for global Zionism taking over this planet through artificial intelligence. There are two things that you cannot publicly criticize now; you cannot criticize the homosexual agenda and you cannot criticize Zionism. Those two are together. They’re driven by the same spirit. And what is coming is a global entity that is going to be Zionism and homosexuality and it’s going to be operated through artificial intelligence and it’s going to be policed through the most high-tech surveillance society that you can imagine. It will be a nightmare.”

Sigh. Seems to me that I see a hell of a lot of public criticism of all things queer; and worse, much bigoted railing and open hatred. Same goes for any and all things and people Jewish. I haven’t noticed the nazis shutting the fuck up lately, or just your garden variety bigots, who are well known for their fear and hatred of Jewish people. So much for that declaration. The christian agenda of attempting to usher in the ‘end times’ is hardly a secret, and you have to have those pesky Jewish people around for that to happen, but it sure doesn’t mean you have to like them, right, Mr. Wiles? As for that ushering in, shouldn’t that really be the business of that lazy ass god of yours?

As for your pretend “global entity”, no, that’s not going to happen, anymore than the terminator showing up at your door. As for high-tech surveillance societies, well, that’s most of the major players, and has been for a very long time. No one loves tech more than governments. That’s not to say that most of them are very good at it, they aren’t. Mostly, they all spend time trying to shift blame and cover up all the mass fuck ups. Surveillance is a fact of life anymore. Well, unless you’re a cop.

“Israel embraces homosexuality,” he continued. “They need to be told, ‘You’re sinners, you’re going to go to Hell, you need to repent, you need to call upon the name of Jesus!’”

I’m pretty sure all of Israel is not a hotbed of queerness, and I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of bigotry and disapproval there too, just like everywhere else.

RWW has the full story.

Scott Lively: The Voice For Authentic Conservative Homosexuals.

All around repugnant, immoral, evil person, Scott Lively has a new shtick in his bid for governor of Massachusetts: he’s going to be the voice of all those nice, properly closeted, quiet, conservative queers, who understand that heterosexuality must remain dominant. Mr. Lively is doing his damnedest to come across as reasonable and tolerant. Not at all the same Scott Lively who once called for the execution of all queer folk, no, no. If you want to read his glurgetastic appeal to “authentic conservative homosexuals”, you can do that at Lively on “Gays”. If you’ve eaten today, you might want to wait a while. In the meantime:

“One of my goals here in this campaign is I want to establish sort of a profile of what an authentic conservative homosexual looks like,” Lively said, quickly making clear that this should not be construed to mean that he would consider “ever endorsing homosexuality, because it’s something condemned by God.”

Lively asserted that “authentically conservative” gay voters are nothing like “the gay progressives,” because the former place “an emphasis on personal privacy instead of gay pride parades cramming it down everybody’s throats.”

Lively said that gay rights activists today are part of a “radical cultural Marxist warfare” movement whereas the founders of the fight for gay rights were simply seeking “the right to be left alone,” which is something he is willing to support because “we should respect people’s right to be wrong, because in God’s perfect timing, he works with every person.”

This is a truly astonishing pile of shit. I don’t believe for one second that Lively has at all softened his views on queer people, he has been utterly virulent in his hate and condemnation of them for decades. He really wants that governorship though, and he’s obviously more than willing to lie his arse off in order to obtain said office. I sincerely hope the people of Massachusetts show Mr. Lively the curb.

Lively declared that as long as gay conservatives “agree that mainstream society should be—and must be—heterosexual,” then society should be willing to accommodate them, especially when faced with the threat that the “gay cultural supremacy being driven by the hard-left progressives” is creating an environment in which “the natural family may actually be facing extinction.”

That is not going to happen. If anything, climate change will get us first, but people are not going to stop breeding. The majority of people on this planet are hetero, and most of them either want or end up with children, and there’s a fucktonne of people on this planet.

“If the concept of male and female complementarity actually becomes criminalized, and that’s where this is headed,” Lively warned, “we’re going to face some really serious problems.”

No, that is NOT where we are headed, you melodramatic asshole. Some people are now learning about gender, and coming to understand it properly, and expanding on the rigid gender definitions which have defined, and often devastated generations of people. That’s not a threat to hetros in any way whatsoever. Family has become a much larger umbrella, to embrace all manner of configurations, and in many cases, extended families are coming back, which is a good thing, because there’s a lot of support in that. There are a whole lot of children out there who are in desperate need of homes, and assholes like you, Mr. Lively, would stop queer folk from providing those homes. It’s good to remember that you don’t actually care about any people outside of evangelical fringe, and all you want is the power to oppress.

RWW has the full story.

St. Julianus Murdering His Parents.

St Julianus Murdering his Parents, Spinello Aretino (1350-1410). Source.

The other day, I was looking up a fresco by Spinello, and my eye was caught by the painting of St. Julianus murdering his parents. I decided to dig a bit further, it’s an odd tale. Julianus the Murderer morphs into Julian the Hospitaller. To me, the painting is jarring, depicting Julianus as a saint while busy hacking his parents up, but apparently these things don’t bother religious people. His parents must have been very sound sleepers, too, they don’t look a bit disturbed.

According to de Varazze, on the night Julian was born, his father, a man of noble blood, saw pagan witches secretly lay a curse on the boy that would make him kill both his parents. His father wanted to get rid of the child, but his mother did not let him do so. As the boy grew into a handsome young man, his mother would often burst into tears because of the sin her son was destined to commit. When he finally found out the reason for her tears, he swore he “would never commit such a sin” and “with great belief in Christ went off full of courage” as far away from his parents as he could. Some versions say that it was his mother who told him at the age of 10, while others say it was a stag he met in the forest while hunting (a situation used in depicting St. Julian in statues and pictures). [Julian was of noble birth and while hunting one day, was reproached by a hart for hunting him and told that he would one day kill his mother and father.]

Everyone loves a tall tale, and this one seems happily tangled. The story about the stag reproaching Julianus and predicting his future as a murderer strikes me as more than happily pagan in nature, and it probably should have stayed there, because as soon as you start twisting this about to be christian, it becomes a very ugly story indeed.

After fifty days of walking he finally reached Galicia where he married a “good woman”, said to be a wealthy widow.

There’s good luck for you, and a damn fast move, too. ETA: yet another hallmark of christian tales, the wealthy, good woman isn’t deserving of a recorded name. Just window-dressing. She’s the only one in the story who doesn’t do something evil, but the murderer gets to be a saint. Aaand, she doesn’t even get a face in the creepy painting.

Twenty years later, his parents decided to go look for their now thirty-year-old son. When they arrived, they visited the altar of St. James, and “as soon as they came out of the church they met a woman sitting on a chair outside, whom the pilgrims greeted and asked, for Jesus’ love, whether she would host them for the night as they were tired.” She let them in and told them that her husband, Julian, was out hunting. (This is why he is also known as the patron of hunters.) The mother and father were overjoyed to have found their son, as was Julian’s wife. “She took care of them well and had them rest in her and Julian’s bed.” But the enemy went off seeking Julian and told him: ‘I have sour news for you. While you are here, hunting, your wife is in bed embracing another man. There they are right now, still sleeping.'”

The enemy. Right. I guess we all get to assume this would be Lucifer. Or maybe a lesser demon. Might have been a nasty gossip at the local. Who the fuck knows? Now, if it had been me, I would have wanted to check things out for myself, but it seems Julianus was a rather gullible man, who simply swallowed whatever someone said, with little thought involved.

De Verazze continues: “And Julian felt deep sadness and his face drew into a frown. He rode back home, went to his bed and found a man and a woman sleeping in it. He drew his sword and killed them both. He was about to take off and never again set foot in that land, but as he was leaving he saw his wife sitting among the other women. She told him: ‘There are your mother and father resting in your room.’ And so Julian knew, and fell into a rage. ‘The shrewd enemy lied to me when he said my wife was betraying me’, and while kissing their wounds he cried ‘Better had I never been born, for I am cursed in soul and body.’ And his good wife comforted him and said ‘Have faith in Christ Almighty, a stream of life and mercy.’ They had no children… Gold and silver they had a lot… And after seeking redemption in Rome, Julian built seven hospitals and twenty-five houses. And the poor started flowing to him, to Jesus’ Almighty’s love.”

Apparently, Julianus didn’t even bother to use his eyes before he set to murdering, and was quite the coward, to boot, ready to run away. There was no sense of offense, or self-righteousness on Julianus’s part, no passion, he acted more like a simpleton carrying out instructions, and after the murders, a sense of shame and self-preservation landed. “The shrewd enemy”! Oh my.  Julianus wasn’t on the smart side at all, how long does it take to check out a couple of sleeping people, or to go find your spouse? Then this whole fucking thing goes south, with the ‘faith in Christ’ business.

Oh, it’s fine, so you murdered your parents, not to worry, let’s go build some hospitals. To end the tale, Jesus shows for the icing on the cake, and the reappearance of that oh so shrewd “enemy”:

De Verazze continues: “The enemy conspired again to ruin Julian—disguised as a weak pilgrim, he was let in by Julian with the others. At midnight he woke up and made a mess of the house.” The following morning Julian saw the damage and swore never to let in anyone else in his home. He was so furious he had everyone leave. “And Jesus went to him, again as a pilgrim, seeking rest. He asked humbly, in the name of God, for shelter. But Julian answered with contempt: ‘I shall not let you in. Go away, for the other night I had my home so vandalized that I shall never let you in.’ And Christ told him ‘Hold my walking-stick, please.’ Julian, embarrassed, went to take the stick, and it stuck to his hands. And Julian recognized him at once and said ‘He tricked me, the enemy who does not want me to be your faithful servant. But I shall embrace you, I do not care about him; and for your love I shall give shelter to whoever needs.’ He knelt and Jesus forgave him, and Julian asked, full of repentance, forgiveness for his wife and parents. Some versions skip the second mistake and tell of an angel visiting Julian and announcing to him that he is forgiven.

Some versions of the story have Julianus giving up his bed to a leper, and surprise, the leper is Jesus! I had no idea that a sticky walking stick was an easy way to recognise Jesus. Early christians never could be bothered to come up with their own stories, they built off much older stories, and generally failed to do any editing, so you end up with very sticky messes like this one. The one thing which always does stand out is the complete lack of morality on the part of the players. Personally, I could never have forgiven Julianus for being such a gullible dumbfuck. Let’s see, how does one avoid murdering their parents? Seems easy to me, you just don’t commit murder, especially sneaking into bedrooms and stabbing people in their sleep.

Most of this story is via Wiki, and of course, St. Julianus is revered to this day, all over the place. You can thank St. Agatha and her breasts for this saintly distraction.

The Inquisition Tentacles Are Spreading.

I’ve written about Ralph Drollinger before. He’s one scary lunatic christian, and he wields way too much influence in the current regime. He’s crowing again, over all the “progress” he’s making. It’s as well to remember that Drollinger’s idea of progress is to bring back the inquisition or something like.

Ralph Drollinger, who runs fundamentalist Bible studies for dozens of members of Congress and President Trump’s Cabinet every week, said in a fundraising letter this month that his group “has been blessed by God with extraordinary growth beyond our wildest imaginings in foreign nations across the globe and most notably in former Soviet Bloc countries.”

[…]

We noted last fall that Drollinger is aggressively expanding his operations both at the local government level in the U.S. and in national capitals around the world. His April 4 letter includes some details about the latter:

In the last few months discipleship Bible studies have been established to Parliamentarians in Romania; Ukraine; Fiji; Papua New Guinea; and the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. A ministry is about to begin in Guatemala, and before fall, we expect work to be completed for ministries in the Central and South American nations of Peru; Ecuador; Brazil; Mexico; Uruguay; and Paraguay, as well as in the European city Riga, Latvia.

Work is current an ongoing with partners to establish discipleship Bible studies in Berlin and Bonne [sic]. We are enthusiastically pursuing an opportunity to plant a ministry in the European Union Parliament, a body of 600 Parliamentarians from 26 Western and Eastern European nations who meet two weeks every month in Brussels, Belgium and one week every month in Strasbourg, France.

We thought the Lord did not want us in the Middle East, but to our great surprise discussions are currently underway to establish a ministry in a Muslim majority nation in the Middle East.

[…]

Although Drollinger is quick to complain about news coverage he believes is unfair, his letter says a story published in a German newspaper helped attract new friends. And Capitol Ministries has been gushing about a recent BBC story that the group says “reached more than 1 million readers world-wide.”

I have no idea why people might find Drollinger favourable in any light, but even if you are one of the lucky people who lives in a happily secular nation, this should be worrying. Drollinger is naturally courting regressive governments, but there are always regressive asses in any government, and they are likely to listen to Drollinger. I fail to see the charm, and it’s beyond disturbing that Drollinger is not simply being dismissed. Just to give you an idea of what Drollinger wants to institute, as far as government is concerned:

Drollinger’s April 13 Bible study says it is a “disservice to the country” for public servants to “craft policy that is not somehow rooted in Scripture.” Here are some of the other theological and political positions Drollinger teaches public officials:

Drollinger likes to tell reporters that he doesn’t instruct public officials how to vote, but he makes it clear in his written Bible studies that, for example, Christian public servants are required to support the death penalty and oppose marriage equality.

Drollinger also has very specific views on the role of women: “there is a prohibition of female leadership in marriage, and female leadership in the church.” One of his Bible studies explains what he calls the “unambiguous” difference in responsibilities the Bible gives men and women, saying women’s “primary functions” include homemaking, home management, mothering, teaching younger women, displaying hospitality and dressing modestly.

There’s much more, RWW has the full story.

Behind the Iron Curtain part 3 – Religion

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.

Today’s Czech Republic is one of the most, if not the most, atheist countries in the world. I encountered people both in meatspace and on the internet who “blame” the former totalitarian socialist regime for this. Mostly such people are coincidentally also people who assign to this godlessness all kinds of moral failings of today’s Czechs and blame their lack of faith for exceedingly high divorce rates, crime rates etc.

When one looks at the actual data though, none of this does fit. Today’s Slovak Republic was under the same regime in the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, yet Slovaks are much more religious. Not to mention Poles, who are almost 90% catholic until today. The crime rates etc. are similar in these countries, only abortion rate is very low in Poland – but only because it is mostly illegal and inaccessible, during the socialist regime when abortion was legal, Poles used it at a rate that was not out of the ordinary for the time.

So my (lack of) religious experiences as a child were not to be ascribed only to the regime, but at least partially they were. It was complicated.

The regime was in fact overtly anti-religious. Priests were poorly paid state employees and private donations to churches etc. were not legal to my knowledge. Being religious was not illegal per se, but it was not encouraged either and there were some obstacles put in the way of exercising beliefs. Like all official religions had to register with the state and there were some specific religions and religious sects that were illegal (like Jehovah’s Witnesses).

My grandfather was a devout catholic asshole on whose grave I do not spit only out of respect for my father. My father became disillusioned with religion early on and possibly as an act of rebellion against it he entered the communist party at the age of 18 and was banished by my grandfather as a consequence. My father is the only atheist in that branch of the family. After I was born and my grandfather became deadly sick, my mother and father took care of him in his last years. Grandfather has obliquely acknowledged the child abuse he inflicted on my father, but he never apologized to him directly, only indirectly by saying to my mother that he wronged him yet he is the only one who cares for him on his sickbed. He died before I was old enough to know him.

So I grew up in an atheistic family and went to public school in a regime that did not acknowledge any religion as true and only reluctantly allowed people to exercise some religious beliefs.

At home, religion was never spoken about and I never felt the need to ask about anything. We had plenty of books and I was an avid reader, so I knew about the existence of religions and mystical figures. I feared the devils from fairy tales despite never believing in their real existence. Similarly I knew christian God also only as a fairy-tale father figure granting favors for good deeds. It was not before ten years of age that I learned that there are still people who really believe in Christianity, including in my family. Until that age I thought it was all over, a thing of the past just like Zeus and Hera. After I learned that my favourite auntie is religious, I was completely flummoxed and to this day I never broached the subject with her.

At school, there was some talk about religion in civics, history and literature classes. In fact a very good overview of the development of religion from polytheism to monotheism in Europe from Classical age through Middle ages to Modern era. I do not remember any overt hostility towards any religion during the lectures, only dry information about them and an occasional argument that proves false some specific claim. Later on I learned that religious parents could send children to a sort of sunday school, but I never knew anyone who did so.

Even the christian creation myth was taught – as a myth. And the gorgeous movie La Création du Monde was aired on TV and I loved it as a child.

All in all in my opinion the regime did a good job informing children about religion but did discourage indoctrinating them with any. However I do not think the Iron Curtain played exquisite or even major role in it because Czechs as a whole were seemingly lukewarm about religion for centuries. Which, again, is a different story.

What Does A God Need With A Government?

Seems there’s a group, or organisation or something called Intercessors for America. So, a bunch of people praying, but praying apparently is not enough anymore, no. People need to vote, because Jehovah needs a government!

“You probably know the midterms are coming up,” Kubal said. “We believe God desires to align His watchmen alongside these candidates. Intercessory activism is not about mixing the role of the church with the role of government to create some form of spiritual nationalism, it is all about proper alignment between God’s people and government … God created government to punish the wrong and protect the right, [but] a government cannot know what is wrong or what is right without the church.”

Erm…so you’re not about mixing up church and government, you’re about mixing up people in the church and government, do I have that one right? Jehovah created government? Huh. Okay, just the Amerikkan version, or all governments? If it’s all governments, which one is best? Perhaps it’s just me, but I think you’re confusing the justice system with government.

“Intercessory activism is the correct alignment between God’s people bringing His values to our government,” Kubal added. “We are in a specific season where we can ask God to move greatly through the authority of our government. This is really important, this is kind of the crux of what I am talking about. In the past few years, we have prayed defensively for protection from our government, but now we are in a season to pray offensively to see great advances of the kingdom of God to be advanced through our government.”

I’ll give you credit for some grand bafflegab there, Mr. Kubal. So Jehovah has to work through the authority of the government? I guess bureaucratic red tape swallows everyone. Once again, I’m struck by the christian vision of a god, such a weak little critter, unable to do one damn thing on its own. From a christian point of view, there’s no fun at all in being a god, just another powerless being adrift on the seas of life. Tsk. I’ll be making offerings to all the art gods later this day, any one of which could whip Jehovah’s poor, powerless arse.

Kubal said that it is imperative that conservative Christians use the elections to connect with candidates with the goal of implementing “kingdom values through relationships to our government” and utilizing “the U.S. government to have His kingdom come, His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Yeah, y’know, I’d think an all powerful god could push its agenda through without having to “utilize” anyone or anything. Interesting that you basically admit that all the intercessory crap is worthless.

The full mess is at RWW, with video.

And a bonus today, in the category of silliest damn prophecy ever: Prophecy: Paramedic Angels Dispatched.

Sunday Facepalm: All Ya Need Is Nice.

thirddrawerdown.com.

Star Parker, yet another conservative idiot, has decided on her defense of guns in the wake of the last school shooting. Those darn students weren’t nice enough to the shooter! We don’t need gun control or any sort of reform, no. What we need is niceness! We are all responsible for every dude walking around with a growing grudge, a tantrum, and a gun. You betcha. As to blaming the students:

“Well, not necessarily one individual student, but we can call for gun control if we want to as a nation, we can call for more federal laws if we want to as a nation, but usually when you’re faced with tragedy, you first check yourself,” Parker said. “We have forgotten how to just look inwardly. We’ve become such a nation of victims that we’ve forgotten to say, ‘Wait a minute, what could I have done?’”

[…]

“Well, perhaps said ‘hello,’ perhaps said ‘I’m sorry to hear your dad died,’” Parker said. “This is a very small community of people we’re talking about. This is not the responsibility of Washington, D.C., or the NRA. This is the responsibility of people that are closest to someone to be able to look them in the eye as an individual. So the challenge of this whole nation of victims is that now it’s not about us anymore, it’s about somebody else, our problems are somebody else’s fault. Well, no, actually, this is a very small community, someone must have saw his sadness, someone must have known his dad died.”

Ms. Parker didn’t listen to the students talking. Ms. Parker certainly didn’t listen to Ms. Emma Gonzalez, who pointed out, strongly, that they knew that kid. They knew what he was like. They knew his desire for violence, his propensity for cruelty. They did speak out, they tried to tell people, they tried to warn people, but no one listened well enough to what they had to say, and now a lot of kids are dead. Sometimes, reaching out to a person can make all the difference in the world, but simply being ‘nice’ isn’t enough to reach anyone. If you’re going to extend ‘nice’, it needs to go further than that; and there are people you can’t reach in any way. The shooter in this case was primed to go off for years, but it was ignored by everyone except the students. The students wanted to know why people like his neighbours ignored him wandering around with a fucking gun. How about you answer that one, Ms. Parker? I would have loved to see you walk up to a kid wandering about with a gun and be ‘nice’ to him.

[…]

“Well, they expelled him probably because he was acting out,” she said, “and he was acting out probably because he didn’t have any friends—you know, whoever sat next to him in class, they’d better not be the ones who are protesting out there today.”

They expelled him because he was a danger to others, you fucking idiot. Sitting next to someone in class does not make you friends, and friendship is not a one way street. Christ, I loathe conservatives.

The whole mess and video is at RWW. In other, depressing news, the Dominionists of the Theocalypse have descended on CPAC, all of them staying at the Trump Hotel to sing their praises to the Tiny Tyrant. You can read the whole sorry thing here.

Another NO: Religious Tax Exemption.

Focus on the Family has posted a tax return on its website that declares that it is a church, but has not filed the return with the government.

Focus on the Family has posted a tax return on its website that declares that it is a church, but has not filed the return with the government.

I’m just about to head out for chemo, but this caught my eye, and this should be a huge, furious NO NO NO – no more tax exemption for religious anything. Most ‘churches’ have more money than 10 gods combined, this is not something they need, especially when they constantly violate the rules of the exemption. The latest to join in the tax free haven religion provides is Focus on the Family, James Dobson’s little hate group.

…The IRS’s master database of tax-exempt organizations, last updated on February 13, also indicates that Focus is listed as a church that is not required to file a 990.

Focus on the Family declaring itself to be a church is puzzling. While the Colorado Springs-based organization has somewhat softened its image since it was led by the firebrand Dobson, it remains active in political debates and advocacy (even in a nominally nonpartisan way). A “social issues” section on the group’s website currently features information on a supposed threat to bathroom safety posed by transgender people thanks to LGBTQ activists fighting in politics, churches and popular culture, and contains an update on “cultural issues in the courts.” In June, Focus invited Vice President Mike Pence to speak at an event celebrating its 40th anniversary, where he promised the group it had an “unwavering ally” in President Trump.

Gail Harmon, an attorney who has advised nonprofits on tax law for more than 30 years, said that she had never before seen a nonprofit organization declare itself a church. “I just found it shocking,” she said.

“There’s nothing about them that meets the traditional definition of what a church is,” she said. “They don’t have a congregation, they don’t have the rites of various parts of a person’s life. There’s a whole system for what a church is.”…

You can read the whole thing at RWW.

Raising A Government For A Nonexistent God.

Capitol Ministries' February 13, 2018 fundraising dinner at the World Ag Expo.

Capitol Ministries’ February 13, 2018 fundraising dinner at the World Ag Expo.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has joined Ralph Drollinger in his quest to raise the Jehovah government, not just here, but globally. Granted, this effort will go much further here in Amerikka than elsewhere, which is bad enough. It seems the department of agriculture has now turned into a giant “hey, cough up money for gawd! We have to get this religious reich going!”

All the conservative christian lunatics are in on this, stumping away god and guns and every other evil.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and former Rep. Michele Bachmann were the featured speakers at a Tuesday evening fundraising dinner for Capitol Ministries, the group that sponsors weekly Bible studies for members of the House and Senate and President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Also offering testimony on behalf of this “special type of ministry” was Rep. Jeff Denham, whose relationship with the group goes back to his days in the California legislature. The show was emceed by Frank Sontag, a Los Angeles-based Christian radio host who voices the audio versions of the written Bible studies that Capitol Ministries publishes every week.

Hundreds of people packed an event tent at the massive World Ag Expo in Tulare, California, the heart of the state’s agriculture industry, to hear Perdue, Bachmann and Capitol Ministries’ founder and leader Ralph Drollinger. Tulare is a reliably Republican area of the state, now represented in the U.S. Congress by Rep. Devin Nunes, a local boy from a farm family. At the event, tables were sponsored by wealthy farming families and an array of agriculture-related businesses, along with Bank of America and local branches of Wells Fargo.

[…]

Some sponsors may be supporters of Capitol Ministries’ mission of encouraging public officials to embrace conservative Christianity. Some may have bought tables based on personal and professional connections to Capitol Ministries board member and event host Rob Hilarides, who heads a dairy operation in the area. Some may appreciate Drollinger’s teachings that “God is a capitalist” and that because of excessive environmental regulations in the U.S., “the economic benefits God intends from private property ownership have been greatly diminished.” And some may have given to express support for the Trump administration’s rollbacks of regulations governing their industry.

Perdue told Capitol Ministries’ sponsors that he is “the beneficiary” of their “investment,” saying he hoped the Capitol Ministries fundraiser would become an annual event. Perdue talked about how God had guided his life and career moves, from the time God told him to give up his veterinary practice and go into agribusiness to his election as Georgia’s first Republican governor. Like Bachmann, Perdue gave an altar-call-like pitch for people to give their lives to God.

[…]

Drollinger is on a mission to recruit public officials at all levels of government to his conservative version of Christianity and his particular fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Part of Drollinger’s pitch for his ministry is that Religious Right groups have spent too much time lobbying public officials to change laws. Capitol Ministries focuses instead on “the most influential component in the legislative process: the people who make the decisions and create the statutes.”

Drollinger says he doesn’t lobby, but he does instruct public officials that the Bible mandates adherence to right-wing policy positions on a wide range of issues, including environmental regulation, the death penalty, abortion, LGBTQ equality and more. He says it is the government’s job to quell evil and punish sin. He teaches that care for the poor is meant to be a job for the family and church, not the government, and that entitlement programs have no “biblical authority.” And he says that once “righteous” people hold positions of power in government, they should hire only other “righteous” people.

Drollinger’s efforts should wake everyone up, they are terrifying, and unfortunately, effective. He has a great deal of influence on capitol hill, and like most christian lunatics, his views are that the way things were in Medieval age are splendid, and we should go right back there. He has no use whatsoever for christians who go all Jesus, or think things like compassion and care have a place in life:

Drollinger is not particularly open to other interpretations of scripture. He has called Roman Catholicism “one of the primary false religions in the world.” He has written that liberal Christians are “simpletons.” In a September 2017 Bible study, he wrote that the Social Gospel, a major strain of American Christianity in the 20th century, is a “perversion” or “corruption” of biblical teaching, and “not Christianity whatsoever.” As for Christians in Congress who do not share his conservative theology and right-wing politics, Drollinger wrote, “I believe the biggest deception on the Hill today is this: the religion of the Social Gospel proffers itself as being ‘Christian’ when it isn’t even close to being biblical.”

Last July, Drollinger warned public officials, “Do not be deceived by syncretistic ‘prayer breakfasts’: God only hears the prayers of leaders and citizens who are upright, who live righteously through faith in Jesus Christ.”

This is a man who is fully in favour of an inquisitorial government, in spite of his hate for the catholic church. He’s very much an inquisition and crusades kind of guy. The article at RWW is in-depth and link heavy, lots of important reading there. If liberal/moderate christians find such efforts to be repulsive, you have to stop being milquetoasts on the sideline, shaking your heads. You need to stand the fuck up, and put this effort down. Time to roar. Naturally, all us godless/religionless folk need to roar our faces off, too. This all starts with awareness, so go read, become aware, and start yelling.

The full article is at RWW.

What A Load of Shit.

Dozens of protesters have gathered outside a London cinema to protest against the cancellation of a screening of a film advocating therapy to "cure" people from being gay.

Dozens of protesters have gathered outside a London cinema to protest against the cancellation of a screening of a film advocating therapy to “cure” people from being gay.

This is a larger River of Shit than what’s been pouring from me the last two weeks.

The British anti-LGBTQ group Christian Concern is getting some press this week after a London theater cancelled a screening it helped organize for a new movie focusing on people “who are emerging out of homosexual lifestyles.” The movie, “Voices of the Silenced,” was promoted in an email this week by the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice, the parent group of the “reparative therapy” organization NARTH.

A 2016 trailer for the movie, produced by the UK group Core Issues Trust, compares those who advocate “ex-gay” therapy and their allies in other fields to enslaved Jewish people in the first century:

‘Voices of the Silenced’ remembers the Jews ripped from Jerusalem in AD 70 and brought to Rome to quarry stone and build the Colosseum. They were now the property of their masters. Filmed in seven countries and over 50 locations, our exploration compares the cultural captivity of the Jewish slaves in towns destroyed by the Vesuvius eruption in AD 79 with that faced by those silenced in the 21st century, people under an imposed state orthodoxy which reaffirms the ancient idea of pansexuality.

Oh, go fuck yourselves. Or someone else, then perhaps you could mind your own damn business. If someone wants to play at being hetero, there’s nothing stopping them, it’s not against the law, y’know. That does not cover up your blatant attempts at trying to squash all queer folk down so far you don’t have to think about them.

You can read the full story at RWW.

Anti-Clericalism in Medieval Persian Poetry.

Standford Lecture Handouts.

The above reads:

Better be a beggar than king, better practice vice

And perfidy than be a bigoted, pious puritan;

Better make love with many mistresses in the street

Than make piety and abstinence in public show.

– Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī (d. 725/1325)

I couldn’t agree more.

The dominant attitude of the anti-clerical rhetoric in Persian poetry is permeated by criticism of judges, lawyers, aesthetics, spiritual advisors, and authority figures of that nature. This is one of the reasons that makes this poetry still relevant. A lot of people today can’t read Milton, because anti-clericalism is no longer part of the normal vocabulary. In the West, we live mostly in a secular society, so the conflict between clerics and anti-clerics does not exist. But that is not the case in the Middle East at all, which makes this conflict very relevant.

Dr. Leonard Lewisohn is Senior Lecturer in Persian and Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies of the University of Exeter where he teaches Islamic Studies, Sufism, history of Iran, as well as courses on Persian texts and Persian poetry in translation. He specializes in translation of Persian Sufi poetic and prose texts.

This is fascinating, and I learned a great deal. The lecture is below, and the Stanford Lecture Handouts for Anti-Clericalism in Medieval Persian Poetry are here.

Via Medievalists.

Couriers of the Incremental Apostasy.

The Couriers of the Incremental Apostasy.

The Couriers of the Incremental Apostasy.

David Lane, anti-LGBTQ Christian-nation activist, and pro-Trumpist, was extremely upset over CNN’s new year’s coverage. I think there were people having a good time or something. He wrote a rather long email to supporters, most of detailing the horrible effects of that there reefer madness, which can be read here. At the bottom, there’s this bit:

America was seduced in the last half century, not by the Communists, but by Secularism. Unelected and unaccountable judges have nullified a once Biblically-based public education and culture. CNN is a co-conspirator to the mortal sin affecting America. As a result of secularists replacing a Biblically-based culture with Secularism, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, et al., are no longer advanced as patriots, but decried as backward racists. Their stature is disparaged by fanatical anarchists, such as Black Lives Matter, who deal in the currency of brutality and dissension. Perversion and cultural deterioration are now abetted by spiritually antagonistic network executives and media elites.

Hmm. Everything I can find on Lane has him listed as an evangelical christian, so what’s mortal sin doing in there? That’s a distinctly catholic concept, I know, I heard it about it often enough growing up. At 60 years old now, I have racked up quite the list of mortal sins.

Oh, these people with their biblically-based bullshit. (Marcus has an interesting post up today about the replacement of theology with social Darwinism). Why do you never hear them talk about Jefferson’s happy desecration of the bible into something he felt was palatable? There was never a biblically-based culture here, but there was an attempt at that whole ‘freedom of religion’ business. That’s why there’s never been any official religion in America, unlike other countries which do have an official religion. Secularism was always the culture base here.

Let’s look at that list of people: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and…Robert E. Lee? Excuse me? How did he get into the presidential lists? I guess you have to get in at least a sideways defense of slavery. Oh yes, that’s right, slavery is biblically justifiable.

The people who make up Black Lives Matter, and their allies, are not anarchists, and they aren’t the ones who are brutal, oppressive authoritarians all dressed up in storm trooper gear, with military hardware, you evil fucker. There’s absolutely nothing at all wrong with dissent. America is nothing but one whole long history of dissent. What about the ‘founding’ revolution? The fact that people were revolting (also known as dissent) seems to get skipped over, time and time again. Your “founding fathers”, those thieves and murderers, started out the colonies due to religious dissent, and those dissenting people almost immediately found themselves the subject of dissent by a slightly different flavour of religious people. And so on. Jesus Fucking Christ, this whole mess called ‘America’ is nothing but one long argument.

Perversion and cultural deterioration is in the eye of the beholder, Mr. Lane. From where I sit, people learning to be accepting of those who have always been with us, rather than carrying on a long tradition of bigotry, hate, and oppression, is a good thing. That’s progress. That’s being socially forward. That’s putting the civil in civilisation. Being inclusive is not the same as “spiritually antagonistic”, it’s recognising that not everyone on the planet believes as you do. But there’s little worse than that to you fanatics, is there? I am so damn tired of seeing the word elites tossed around as if it means something. You never ever stop working, for one second, to bring about your theocracy, where you get to be the ruling body, the ultimate judge, the elite. So it would be nice if you would at least shut the fuck up about that. Oh yes, and as to your “unelected” judges, yeah your pos judges, like Gorsuch weren’t elected either. Might want to have a care there, because if you advocate for elected judges only, things might not go your way. Actually, that might not be a bad idea.

Charisma News’s Steve Strang also jumped on the CNN=evil bandwagon, copying Lane’s nonsense about weed, and adding a bit:

There almost certainly won’t be any further consequences. The reason is that morally debased Time Warner—which owns CNN—and CNN president Jeff Zucker are couriers of incremental apostasy as they pump sensuality, self-indulgence and promiscuity into the nation as it falls into moral anarchy.

Apostasy can’t happen fast enough for me, to hell with this incremental business. So, let’s see if I have this one right: CNN is evil, but grab ’em by the pussy is perfectly moral and good. Got it. Oy. You can read the whole mess at RWW.

Speaking of CNN, Alex Jones is frothing at the mouth over them too, in a more specific way. He’s targeted one Brian Stelter as the face of all evil. Apparently, this CNN correspondent runs everything, and he’s going to ruin everything for everyone. I don’t have television, so I don’t watch CNN and don’t have a clue as to who this person is, or why he’s the sudden target of Jones’s ire. Okay, he’s a 32 year old media correspondent.

While discussing the controversy swirling around Michael Wolff’s new book “Fire and Fury” on his show today, Jones compared Wolff’s smile to Stelter’s and speculated that the two are somehow related. This sparked a bizarre rant against Stelter in which Jones told his viewers that Stelter “wants to control every aspect of your life because he knows he is a cowardly, degenerate sack of anti-human trash.”

Oh, similar smiles! I guess you don’t get better evidence of evil intent than that.

“He runs your kids, he runs the schools, he runs the banks—this guy. This spirit. This smiling, leering devil that thinks you can’t see what he is. He is your enemy, period, all the narcissistic devil-worshiping filth. I see you, enemy. I see you, enemy. Enemy! Enemy! You are my enemy and I swear total resistance to you with everything I’ve got. Disingenuous, fake, false, broke-back, twisted, a defiler, a betrayer, a back-stabber. A devil,” Jones said.

Jones continued, “You will pay. You think I don’t see your face, scum? You think I don’t see you, Stelter? I see you, you understand me? I know what you think of me and my family. I see you right back, you understand that? You understand that, Stelter?”

My, my. That’s a hyperbole overdose and a half. Since this seems to come down to faces, let’s have a look at them:

Screengrab.

Yeah, it’s not hard to decide which face I would gravitate towards, Mr. Jones, and it wouldn’t be yours. You can see the video and read the whole thing at RWW.

Just Say No, Minnesota.

A fine example of christian “logic”.

Michele Bachmann is slithering back into the political scene. Maybe. Just say no, people. Michele was on Jim Bakker’s glurge-fest last week, saying she was considering running for Franken’s vacant seat:

Bachmann said that she has “had people contact me and urge me to run for that Senate seat” and that she is asking God if doing so in His will for her.

Bachmann said that she would be willing to run in order to take godly principles into the Senate but is concerned that she will be unfairly attacked by Washington insiders because “the swamp is so toxic.”

Uh huh. None of this is new, and it’s just amazing how you can sit there and opine on the toxicity of that Washington swamp, given that your hero was supposed to have cleaned that all up. Guess that wasn’t one of the miraculous “accomplishments” of the Tiny Tyrant.

“I trust in a big God,” Bachmann said, asserting that she “was supposed to run for president” in 2012 in order to make the the repeal of Obamacare the central issue of the Republican platform. “I feel like I was wildly successful … I didn’t win, but I moved the debate. So I didn’t shed a tear when I left the contest because I felt like, you know, I fulfilled the calling that God gave me.”

A “big god”. Right. I guess everything has to have a ‘big’ appended to it now. I wish this bit of idiocy would die. All I can think about now is Honeycomb Cereal…

Honeycomb’s big…yeah yeah yeah!
It’s not small…no no no!
Honeycomb’s got…a big big bite!
Big big (taste/crunch) in a big big bite!

That almost works if you use ‘god’ instead of Honeycomb. Oh look, Michele thinks she was single-handedly responsible for  the republican upset over healthcare! My my, some people might think that to be a tad arrogant. You didn’t move a thing, Michele. All anyone wanted was for you to shut the fuck up. Pretty sure people still want that.

“So the question is am I being called to do this now?” she added. “I don’t know.”

You don’t know? How is that possible? Your BIG god doesn’t have a BIG answer for you? Lazy slacker god. Or perhaps you aren’t praying enough, Michele. Go away and pray. Please.

Bakker eventually piped in to express his concern about the nasty nature of politics today, saying that “right now, they want to kill the president of the United States and if they could put a contract [out on Donald Trump]—which they probably already have—they would do so.”

Oh FFS, get off this theme already, Jim. It’s dead. Over. Gone. The stupid is too much to bear. You assign every possible evil to this nefarious ‘they’, ‘they’ get away with everything, but y’know, here in gun central, no one can get a contract going. Uh huh. At some point, you need to make an effort to be somewhat coherent, else you’ll even start losing the seriously gullible.

There’s video at RWW.