After Christina Anderson was raped by fellow congregationalist Ernest Willis and got pregnant as a result, the pastor of her fundamentalist Baptist church forced her to move to Colorado and read an apology letter aloud to her congregation before she left. Classy.

Ernest Willis is charged with forcibly raping Christina Anderson twice during the summer of 1997, when she was his children’s baby sitter and he was 39. Lawyers for Willis, now 52, say in court documents that he will admit having sex with the girl once but maintains it was consensual.

Ah, the old Polanski defense. Wonder how well it’ll work for him considering Willis’ defense team is also trying to bar Anderson’s testimony that he tried to offer to drive her to get an out of state abortion, and he also offered a “code 3“, effectively a punch to the stomach in the hopes of causing a spontaneous abortion. Why, those sound like the actions of a man engaged in a consensual affair, doesn’t it?

Pastor Phelps claims he helped the police investigation, but he’s obviously a liar since the cops only discovered where Christina was after friends tipped them off that she was living under a different name in Arizona, where she was being home-schooled by other fundy yahoos.

It’s a proud tradition in all Abrahamic religions that girls are to blame for everything. In the Bible, when Aaron and Miriam both complain Moses’ new wife is a foreign chick, only Miriam gets leprosy for her questioning of the prophet. How many females have been tortured, beaten to death, or immolated under the watchful gaze of the Church?

(Update: Ernest Willis was found guilty and sentenced)

You’ve got to admire Bill Donohue – in a rather sick and twisted way – for his unique ability to always “up the ante” of shitty things to say. He’s really an artist of sorts, effortlessly dispatching the truth whenever it seems to be inconvenient, and compensating by making outlandishly false statements, all in a futile attempt to defend what is arguably one of the most corrupt institutions in the world. To defend monsters, one must become a monster.

The latest “Donohism” is a difficult one to top however: he’s accusing the media of improperly reporting the sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children. Most were willing participants, and the real problem was homosexuality:

“The Boston Globe correctly said of the John Jay report that ‘more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.’ In other words, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia,” Donohue wrote.

“What accounts for the relentless attacks on the Church?” he asked in conclusion. “Let’s face it: if its teachings were pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and pro-women clergy, the dogs would have been called off years ago.”

Don’t blame all these priests, says Bill, most were participants who enjoyed what was happening. The real villains were the sodomites, everyone! After all, they wanted to put their penises where God had strictly forbidden it, and we all know if you don’t listen to sky-daddy, he will send a tidal wave after you.

It’s in situations like this I wish I could produce a report that could explain the depth of all the sexual abuse that occurred to both men and women…Oh wait, silly me, it turns out there are a ton of them, with more popping up all the time. Perhaps the most comprehensive of which is the Ryan Report, a difficult and lengthy volume detailing all aspects of abuse of Catholic-run institutions in Ireland. So without needing to trust Billy-boy at his words, we can instead rely on the litany of statistics on female sexual abuse by clergymen. I’ll go out on a limb here and say it was definitely not consensual:

Reported abuse ranged from inappropriate fondling and touching to oral/genital contact, vaginal and anal rape. There were 128 reports of sexual abuse from 127 female witnesses (34%). One witness reported that she was sexually abused in two different Schools. Witnesses described their experience of sexual abuse as either acute or chronic episodes occurring throughout their admissions in the Schools. Witnesses reported being sexually abused by religious and lay staff in addition to other adults, the majority of whom were understood to be directly associated with the Schools. Witnesses also reported being sexually abused by co-residents.

Before you feel entirely too depressed over the fact such stupidity still makes the air on a regular basis, take comfort in the knowledge, so long as people like Bill speak for their churches, the job of demonstrating the poisonous nature of religion is made much easier. Bill is a cruel, stupid brute whose actions undermine the false idea that religion moralizes an otherwise evil creation. In other words, with fuckheads like Bill at the wheel, it’s a lot easier for these morons to careen off a cliff.

When Abraham is an old man, says the Bible, he enters a covenant with God that offers – in exchange for the tips of everyone’s penises in perpetuity – a guaranteed 400 years of misery with the promise of inheriting someone else’s land.

Abraham makes the rather undiplomatic agreement for the sake of his descendants, and proceeds to cut every male’s foreskin with a blade. Most of the men, the vast majority of them slaves, are all adults and the invention of anesthetics is still many moons away.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s probably you should avoid trusting what a senile old man claiming to hear the voice of God tells you. Unfortunately for a 3 month old in Portland Oregon, the Bible has received the greatest publicity campaign in the world, declared by educated and uneducated alike to be the definitive source of all Western morality.

When the boy’s mother – indoctrinated since childhood as to the benefit of reading this vile tome- decided to follow the same covenant Abraham made with God, she did so in much the same fashion. 29-year-old Keemonta Peterson circumcised her child, and after he cried in agony for 2 hours as the blood continued to flow out of his body, her malfunctioning maternal instincts finally kicked into high gear long enough to call the hospital and avoid him death. By the time he arrived, the child was listed as critical. The doctor testified the pain for the baby would have been immense.

He has since luckily recovered, although no details have emerged as to the condition of his penis. The mother is facing charges, and must now visit her children under supervision. Where did all of this misery begin? Did it start in her childhood, as the ludicrous concepts of religion were drilled into her impressionable brain?

I’m glad her lawyer didn’t try to argue endangering your child is a form of religious expression, like some people. It seems as though we’ve humored the nonsense of faith for so long we’re shocked people act on it. People like Keemonta may be crazy, but they got helping getting there.

Is anyone really surprised by this headline? Considering the fact that the Catholic Church has always exploited the fact there exists a statute of limitation for child rape, it’s really no surprise they are fighting a number of bills that would eliminate this convenient legal loophole. What worried them the most is the fact that victims could now sue offending priests retroactively, and this has the Church shitting bricks.

Michael C. Culhane, spokesman for the Connecticut Catholic Conference, testified last year that changing the rules retroactively was not fair. “We therefore request that any changes be prospective and not have any retrospective effect,” Culhane said in 2010.

So not fair! Think about all those molesters that could be brought to justice after they were so careful not to get caught in the time allotted. It’s almost like giving someone a cookie and then taking it away before they get to take a bite. Oh the humanity!

Bye asked Culhane why no other institution, beyond the church, had any problem with the bill. Culhane said he did not know why.

I think I can venture a guess: the systematic cover-up on every level of the church would make many high ranking officials also culpable of these crimes. It’s more than just the abuse going on: it’s also the effort of the Church to shield these evil men from prosecution, and this is what the Church fears.

Now I’m aware reading the news can give you a false perspective about the world, since they typically report unusual and shocking news. With that in mind, it’s hard to not feel like you’re surrounded by religious nutjobs when one of them kills her son by asphyxiating him because she thought he was possessed. It kind of makes you feel like the whole world is a little messed up.

Prosecutors formally filed charges Tuesday against 31-year-old Latisha Lawson including two counts of battery and three counts of neglecting a dependent for the alleged abuse of her two children in November 2009…

On December 21, authorities interviewed Lawson’s daughter, who confirmed she and her brother had been given the olive oil and vinegar because their mother thought they were possessed. The 10-year-old reportedly said that she immediately vomited afterward but that Jeziah King died as he was spitting out the mixture. She also alleged that Lawson put his body on a bed and had her pray over him before moving the body to a closet. According to her, Lawson placed the body in a plastic tote when they moved out of that apartment and kept him with them.

How do some people get this creepy? Moving your decomposing dead 3 year old son around in a plastic tote bag has got to be one of the most gruesome moves in the history of bad moves.

I’ve got 10 bucks that says that no one was quite aware of just how crazy and demented this woman was specifically because of how devoted and religious she appeared to be. I’ve lost count of how many times mental illness has been covered up by religion. If believing in an invisible imaginary friend isn’t considered insanity, what hope do we have to properly identify it?

I’ve said many times I think the word “fundamentalist” is misplaced; not because it’s inaccurate, but because it misses the point when talking about adherents. The word “originalist” seems more apt, since the people who qualify as fundamentalists are merely those who have taken the old school approach to their religion. The rest of the world behaves in a sane matter because they have ignored passages of their holy books generally regarded as unacceptable or down-right insane.

Take the obsession of “Originalist” Mormons when it comes to the fear of God. They believe submission to God begins with mental conditioning including torturing babies to get them to fear authority. I wish I was making this shit up:

Water torture of babies is one way some members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints instill fear of authority, a former member testified Wednesday.

“It’s quite common,” Carolyn Blackmore Jessop said. She was a witness for the B.C. government in the constitutional reference case to determine whether Canada’s polygamy law is valid.

“They spank the baby and when it cries, they hold the baby face up under the tap with running water. When they stop crying, they spank it again and the cycle is repeated until they are exhausted.”

It’s typically done by fathers and it’s called “breaking in.”

Yes, you read right: these religious nutbags are using waterboarding on babies. Babies for fuck sakes!

The story came out during a trial to determine the legal status of polygamy in Canada. Now I’m actually of the opinion it should be legal (why the fuck should the government decides what constitutes marriage anyway), but it’s tricky when you’re taking about Fundamentalist Mormons who force young women to marry older men against their will. The truth is for the most part, polygamy is used by members of the FLDS churches as a way of controlling and subjugating women.

Don’t you just love religion?

A Portland, Oregon man identified only as G.B. has yet to see a penny of the $900,000 suit he won for being molested by Rev. Thomas Laughlin. The Church isn’t actually to blame for this: his lawyer charged him over 870k for his services, and G.B. hasn’t even received the remaining $23,000 that was left over. So basically, while this poor man tries to survive off $400 dollars a month from his disability payments, his piece of shit lawyers got away with robbing him blind.

The story of what happened is fairly complicated (so I won’t go into it), and is a testament to the fact there are blood sucking lawyers (no offense to fans who do this as a profession) out there, often with far too much leeway into what they can charge and how they control settlement monies.

Some local attorneys are upset because this story will only hurt their reputation. Considering how bad it is now, I’m not sure there is anything they can do to convince us they are anything but parasites on our society, exploiting naïve or powerless individuals who don’t have the same understanding of the law they do.

It seems no one cared the entire reason for the suit was for G.B. to benefit from at least some financial compensation for his terrible ordeal. Everyone was too busy trying to “get paid”. Can you have a bigger ethical “fail” moment (apart from the actual molestation, that is)?

Need further proof human beings use religions to justify their own sick desires and fantasies? Take Simon Antony Jacobs, in North Sydney, who was recently arrested after it became known he sexually assaulted 2 boys repeatedly during the 1970′s and 80′s. One of the victims, 11 years of age at the time, confronted Jacobs during the abuse, saying the Bible seemed to take offense with the whole “man lying with another man” passage (that’s the “hate gays” one). Jacobs assured him since they weren’t trying to make babies, it was all good in the hood.

Were there any signs Jacobs may have been acting inappropriately? Well, his church shuffled him around a few times, which makes me think they knew exactly what was going on:

A spokesman for the Anglican Church said Jacobs had worked as a CEBS leader at Christ Church, St Ives, ”in various roles” from 1971 to 1981. In 1982 he moved to CEBS at St Swithuns in Pymble but left in 1984.

”The record is unclear, but at some point, possibly after leaving Pymble, a note was made that he was not to be issued with a leaders warrant, which he would have required in order to move to leadership in any CEBS group in another parish,” the spokesman said.

That doesn’t sound suspicious at all, does it? Yes, religion is truly the moral framework of society, don’t you agree?

NOTE: It says in the article that he’s being accused of “buggery“. Is that just simply sodomy? Can any of you Aussie fans clarify this for me?

You know the tired argument that without religion, human beings are incapable of making proper moral judgements? Here’s another great example of just how stupid and wrong this belief is: A New Zealand man was given a 3 year jail sentence for sexually abusing his daughter from the ages of 5 to 11. The really fucked up thing (beyond him not getting a jail sentence at least as long as the abuse) is he would make her pray for forgiveness every time he sexually abused her.

His daughter said she lost all respect for the church, God and the Bible as a result of her father’s offending.

“He was supposed to be Christian but look at all the evil he was doing.” She said he looked like a monster to her. He would make her pray with him for forgiveness after the sexual abuse, but she knew she had not done anything wrong.

“I wanted Dad to say what he had done but he just lied and never took responsibility.” She told the court how her life had deteriorated.

If he did something fucked-up because of religion, then trust me girl, he IS a Christian. They have a long and colored history of abusing women; it was called the Inquisition, and it’s still a gigantic shit-stain on their history they would rather gloss over (it’s not likely to show up in Sunday School discussions). It’s just unfortunate for them the whole thing lasted over 4 centuries. Kinda makes hiding it a bit “tricky”.

What really scares me about religious rubes is how they tend to justify improper or evil actions through their religious convictions. Because he was convinced a God spoke directly to him, who knows what kind of crazy reasoning this man was allowed to conjure up in his own mind. And what’s up with him making his daughter pray for forgiveness? Did he blame her for his temptation, or did he think this was a test from God? Just more proof belief in a higher power has no bearing on morality. Will our sectarian counterparts ever “get it”?