This episode, we talk about Ghana’s new repressive anti-LGBT laws, the Vatican protecting rapists, victims of Nuns seeking justice, and American’s thinking Religions is losing influence. This is an episode you won’t want to miss!
You might have heard the news that Greece has joined the growing list of countries that recognize gay marriage. What you probably didn’t hear was all of the back lash the politicians who passed this legislation have received. It seems the Orthodox Church is not very happy with their representatives, and they have threatened them with excommunication from their little club.
Clerics have called for “immoral lawmakers” to be ostracized from the church, and ecclesiastical authorities on Corfu have announced that two local MPs would be banned from participating in any religious rites.
Aww, isn’t that a shame? Getting disinvited from this little gang of thugs actually sounds like a badge of honor to me. Keep in mind that we’re talking about an organization that has deep ties with organized crime. Just a few years ago, their leader was facing serious charges of aiding and abetting a known criminal.
It seems that the Church’s memory is a little fuzzy. Not long ago, there was a huge scandal involving the Archbishop Christodoulos, who had been caught helping a convicted drug smuggler. He was asked to resign. He refused, and died of cancer a few years later. His colleagues were having just a few legal problems of their own as well:
“The scandal began last month, when Bishop Theoklitos of Thessaliotis resigned after being accused of running a trial-fixing ring; four high-court judges and several politicians were allegedly paid large sums of money to clear the bishop and his associates of charges that included drug dealing and homosexuality (which is illegal in the church)… The scandal quickly spread to the highest levels of the church. Another bishop resigned after he was accused of have secretly laundered $17-million (U.S.), believed to have been earned by selling church property, and banking the money in U.S. accounts. A third resigned over stories of wild sex escapades involving prostitutes. Newspapers ran photos of a 91-year-old bishop naked in bed with a young woman. He has refused to resign… A further eight bishops are under investigation for crimes including smuggling, bribery, money laundering, drug dealing, pedophilia, prostitution and sexual harassment.
So these are the guys telling everyone else that they should be punished for allowing same sex couples to be able to officially be recognized as a couple. A bunch of pedos, thugs, and criminals think they are in a position to judge others. All they demonstrate is how out of touch they are with the rest of society. I hope the people they threatened enjoy a long and storied career in politics. There’s nothing like being despised by the bad guys to remind you that you’re doing the right thing.
I wonder if any of these clowns know they are on the wrong side of history…
Religions long march towards repression continues, this time in the African country of Ghana. When an LGBT group tried to open up a center in their capital city of Accra, religious leaders, working in tandem with politicians, sprung into action. While it is already illegal to have same sex sexual relationships, it seems as though even this restrictive and inhumane law was not enough: now they want to jail anyone who dares to help these kinds of groups in any way.
This gay panic is brought to you by Christianity, which seems to believe that the worst thing on earth isn’t the sexual rape and torture of children, but consenting adults having intimate relations they don’t approve of. Forget about the near constant abuse of underage girls and boys, that’s something the public has no interest in uncovering, despite the fact that it’s a serious problem. How bad is it? Here’s a sample of the kind of incidents that happen with disturbing frequency:
Assistant Commissioner of Police, [name anonymised] … made it known to the press [at name of place anonymised] that… Pastor [name anonymised] admitted having sexual intercourse with the girl without her consent, during police interrogations. […] The victim, a member of the church, who was sick went to the pastor (in his house) for healing prayers. In the course of the prayers the pastor touched the mouth of the girl and all of a sudden, she fell floppy […] The victim woke up after about 15 minutes and saw that her pant was loose, and her private parts soaked with semen, an indication that the pastor had had sexual intercourse with her.
Keep in mind that the study that is being quoted could only rely on reported incidents from newspapers. There’s really no telling just how prominent these kinds of crimes are occurring, but if I know my religious organizations (which I certainly do), then I know that abuse is the norm in and Christian church. In order to get people to either ignore or forget about their perpetual and baffling abuse of their own congregants, religious leaders will often chose a scapegoat to rally their victims towards a common cause. The LGBT community is easy pickings, and so long as their population despises them, they have something that will forever distract their flock from ever uncovering the fact that their sheppards are wolves in disguise.
If you haven’t been following international news lately (and who could blame you), you might have missed out on the Houthis rebellion in Yemen, and the horrible consequences of having Muslim fundamentalists running around unchecked in your country. The Houthis rebels are funded by Iran, who uses these proxy fighters to cause chaos, and so far, their plan is working like a charm.
The religious group claims to care about the human rights issue in Palestine, but like most fundamentalist organizations, they simply use the chaos and sympathy as a recruitment tactic, and nothing more. As they gain more and more territory, they have begun to issue religious rulings to anyone they deem an enemy of Islam. This, unfortunately, includes people who have same sex attractions. They’ve been busy sentencing anyone they suspect of homosexuality to prison, with some “offenders” being sentenced to death by stoning. So far, over a dozen men have been condemned to die via the barbaric practice of stoning.
If you think that none of this effects you, consider that their constant attacks on US ships is moving us ever closer to a conflict that could engulf the whole world. Add to that the fact that the Houthis are threatening to destroy critical internet infrastructure, and there could be some pretty serious consequences as a result.
Just a nice daily reminder of just how much religion ruins everything. You’re welcome.
Islam is the world’s most insecure religion. Every other day, they are jailing, or even stoning, apostates and non-believers. Of course, if you start to point out how violent and insecure they are, you get instantly accused of “Islamophobia”, their magic word that’s used to silence any critic. The mere mention of racism is enough to stifle most soft headed liberals who retreat at the idea of hurting anyone’s feeling, or challenging their identity. It’s what has allowed this barbaric religion to continue to abuse and even kill those who oppose their homogony.
Their obvious bigotry has become so open now that Canadian Muslims have decided that it would be acceptable to hold a march AGAISNT gay and trans people. They are billing it as a “Million Man for Kids”. The Alberta Muslim Social Association’s facebook page claims that the organization “…was built to bring families together in a safe and fun atmosphere.” Well, it’s all fun and games until someone in your family isn’t controlled by their Abrahamic faith, or likes someone of the same sex. Then it’s time to destroy them. Just listen to their bullshit mission statement:
As someone once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”, over the past few months, thousands of parents, community leaders and activists from the Abrahamic tradition and others have justly voiced their concern regarding gender ideology and the protection of kids demanding more control and transparency over school curriculums. These concerns haven’t stemmed from a place of hate but rather from the obligation of protecting and preserving our children and future generations.
The good news is that these clowns have had zero success in spreading the word of their hate-march. In fact, if you look at the comments on their page, it’s almost universally negative. If I had to guess, it’s doubtful more than a handful of these hate-mongers are going to show up. If you want to tell these assholes how you feel, don’t be shy! They deserve to know what we think of them.
Ignorance is tragedy, especially when it turns someone into a violent maniac. On Friday, August 18th, Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton was shot and killed after an argument erupted with a customer at her store. The reason for the row? Laura had proudly displayed the pride flag outside of her shop, and this greatly angered Travis Ikeguchi, who decided that the way to resolve this dispute was to include Smith & Wesson into the mix. When the police arrived and demanded he drop his weapon, his 9mm handgun did the talking, and officers responded in kind.
All that remains of this sad, angry man are his hateful social media posts, which spoke predictably of the evils of abortion and homosexuality, care of his faith based upbringing. As for Laura, she was well loved in the community, so much so that film director Paul Fieg wrote about his loss.
“Our wonderful friend Lauri Carlton (seen in this picture) was murdered yesterday in her store @magpi_shop in Lake Arrowhead by a 27 year old man who didn’t like that she had a large pride flag hanging outside of her shop,” he wrote. “He ripped it down and when she confronted him about it he shot and killed her… Lauri Carleton was my friend. She was a wonderful person who did so much for the LGBTQ+ community as well as the community at large. What happened to her is an absolute tragedy. If people don’t think anti-gay & trans rhetoric isn’t dangerous, think again”
These are strong words, but they lack the fundamental element that allows this degree of hate to foment in the first place. You’ll find at the root cause is still religious organizations, and their murderous obsession with making the whole world fit into their narrow world view. It angers me still that everyone always fails to point out the gigantic elephant in the room.
It’s getting increasingly difficult to find arguments against marriage equality, and as religious groups get more and more desperate, they continue to try to swing everyone’s opinion back to their homophobic camp.
The latest in this disaster porn is a group called Faith2Action, a typical ‘family values’ group that tries to hide their bigotry under the guise of their religion. They have a ton of videos about how the government is trying to make Christianity illegal by not allowing some of these douchebags to continue to discriminate against same-sex attraction for no other reason than “the Bible wants me to”.
I’ll let the video speak for itself: I don’t think I need to make fun of people this ridiculous, do I?
Lying is thirsty work, don’t you know!
The problem with most bigots is they have no idea what being a bigot entails. When you’re spoon-fed a bunch of bullshit lies your entire life that one can ‘respect’ a human being while still denying them the same rights as you, you’re bound to be confused when everyone is constantly pointing out that the things you say and do are unacceptable. Man, that must get annoying, right?
Take dead-on-arrival presidential ‘candidate’ Marco Rubio’s recent statements to the press expressing his own frustration for being called out as the bigoted piece of shit he is:
I respect people who disagree with me on certain things, but that means they have to respect me too. Just because I believe states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot. Just because we believe that life, all human life, all life, all human life is worthy of protection in every stage of its development doesn’t make you a chauvinist. In fact, the people who are actually close minded in American politics are people who love to preach about the certainty of science in regard to our climate, but ignore the absolute fact that life begins at conception.
There’s a lot to unpack in that one statement: his false equivalency of comparing climate science with anti-choice rhetoric notwithstanding, the notion that denying your fellow human beings the same rights as everyone is a pretty clear sign of bigotry. Just as denying women the right to terminate unwanted pregnancy because of your unscientific view of conception does make you a chauvinist, suddenly claiming climate scientists are close minded and pro-lifers are the open-minded bunch (you know, the same asshats who ‘respectfully’ bomb clinics because they think their imaginary friend wants them to) shows you just how profoundly out of touch with reality this man is. Of course, that’s become the Republican narrative as of late, and these people are still confused as to why the American public is rapidly abandoning them. You know, there was a time when Republicans used to listen to facts, before they started to get too unpleasant…
Rubio can try to use double-speak to his heart’s content: it doesn’t really matter. Just like being over-saturated with ads has made most Americans immune to their influence, the same inoculation is happening against this sort of language tricks. People are becoming tired of the same reality-denying narrative that out of touch, rich white men (and their occasional exotic pets) are trying to shove down our throats. We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.
If you don’t know who Scott Lively is, he’s the monster who authored The Pink Swastika, a book I’ve derided in the past for its pseudo-historical claim that Nazis were a secret gay organization intent on destroying heterosexuality. It ranks about as high as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in terms of historical verisimilitude.
In March of 2009, Scott and a posse of other Evangelical Christians traveled to Uganda, and gave a series a talks about ‘the gay agenda’. They covered the typical tropes, such as baseless accusations of gays sodomizing teenage boys, therapies to covert them back to being straight, and said gays had an evil social agenda. The conference was widely attended, and a few months later, helped inspire Uganda’s ‘Kill the Gays Bill’.
Since March 2012, a group called Sexual Minorities Uganda sued Lively under the Alien Tort Statute (which allows U.S. courts to hear human-rights cases brought by foreign citizens for conduct committed outside the United States) In this case, individuals claiming that Scott’s hateful rhetoric has caused the suffering and death of countless individuals. Pepe Julian Onziema, the Advocacy and Policy Officer at Sexual Minorities Uganda, had this to say:
Coming face to face with the man who has caused us so much pain is important to me. We want him held accountable for the escalating homophobia and persecution in Uganda. This case is about making it clear to people who have exported their hate agenda to Uganda that their actions have a very real effect on us and they must stop.
A federal judge is now reviewing his motion to dismiss the case.
While he claims he has only the best intentions for gays (believing they need to be cured of their condition), he continues to try and blame every conceivable calamity on them. He’s recently accused gays of causing the “great Flood that supposedly brought humanity once again to an evolutionary bottleneck no species could survive (it’s called “minimum viable population sizes, and trust me, that number isn’t 5 people), hinting another may come if we continue to give gays the same rights as everyone else.
So, is it hate speech or not?
I don’t often get trolled, but when I do, it’s usually something epic. Take this “Marcus” character for instance: he commented on an article I wrote about a ridiculous book written called The Pink Swastika, by a religious fundy who claims Hitler and his thugs were actually a gang of ‘homofascists’, intent on corrupting the world with their ‘gayness’. This revisionist history completely ignores the fact that some 100,000 gay men and women were executed in concentration camps, although I’m sure such a shitty historian probably doubts the reality of Hitler’s Final Solution as well.
I’ll let Marcus explain why this piece of shit book isn’t a total fabrication:
The Southern Poverty Law Center IS a hate group. Hitler’s Brown shirts were exclusively homosexual. You fascist neopagans only attack the religious to divert attention from the fact that you share Hitler’s Marxist views. Nothing you say can erase Hitler’s own words and policies. Just because Hitler was a national socialist instead of being a communist doesn’t change the fact that he persecuted Christians, Jews, the elderly, the deaf etc. long before the Night of the Long Knives and that he used tactics now seen in Occupy and the public sector unions and the Nazi party in NY and CA, which are groups populated primarily by angry queers. The fact is, Hitler persecuted the Jews and Christians because of their objective views on morality, views which stand contrary to post modernism, subjective morality and savage pre-enlightenment practices such as euthanasia, eugenics and the final solution to the human condition- industrialized mass murder. Ya’ll are accusing the majority of being secret Nazis when your Nazi buddies are in public view, announcing their views which mirror your own. No wonder you try to convince yourselves of lies on [sic] teh interwebs when your entire “worldviews” are wrapped up in a lie so contradictory to the truth. Your tiny socialist brains can’t handle your hypocrisy.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, in case you were wondering, is an organization that’s been fighting white supremacists and anti-gay hate groups since 1971. Calling them a hate group is like calling the Red Cross an invading army.
Now, if you’re trying to make any sense of the rest, there’s something fundamentally important you have to consider: the American right thinks communism is fascism. The confusion has multiple sources: first, it seems as though most Americans are unfamiliar with their own respective political spectrum. They are also seemingly confused by the fact that Hitler’s political party had the word ‘Socialist’ in it.
As for this strange tactic that the ‘Occupy’ movement was somehow inspired by Hitler, it would do well for this uneducated moron to read a little history: Fascism is in fact anti-union, and believes a strong relationship between government and business leaders is necessary in order to achieve self-sustainability and to ensure that businesses maintain a high degree of profitability. Fascism rejects individuality and favors a strong national identity. Adherents are unquestioningly patriotic (sound familiar?), and view violence as a means of preserving their national vitality (kinda like sending drones to kill civilians, no?).
Of course it’s not difficult to imagine that this Marcus fellow is an angry, bigoted man with zero understanding of history or political movements. But he also represents the new face of American Fascism: one that is unaware of its own identity, blinded by a conflation of terms and ideologies, and motivated primarily by the same forces that inspired those brown-shirts to mold the world in their terrifying image. When Sinclair Lewis said when fascism came to America, it would be “wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution”, he failed to understand the ones carrying that flag would be totally unaware of the consequences and significance of their own actions. Driven primarily by their own hatred of others, American Fascists are in denial about themselves. They accuse others of being communists for even the slightest hint of socialism, and then do everything in their power to hand over the keys to their country to the rich Oligarchy, promising them Christianity and the repression of homosexuals. If that doesn’t sound at all familiar to you guys, then I suggest you hit the library. Clearly, Marcus never has.
Ok, I’ll admit I think the Twilight series is terrible, but is it evil, sinister, or sick and twisted? It reads more like the kind of book you might expect a desperately lonely fat high school girl to write, with the added murderer/rapist fantasy thrown in. While you can argue about the merits of the story, you can’t argue with the sales figures: Stephanie Meyer’s series has sold over 116 million copies worldwide and has been translated in 38 languages. You may not like it, but you cannot deny its popularity.
It’s that very popularity which seems to anger the patriarchal, domineering man known as Mark Driscoll. The head of Mars Hill Church is convinced that isolated incidents of vampire-related assaults and sex-orgies are undoubtedly caused by impressionable teens reading a book with the words ‘per se’ used over 100 times.
The popularity of supernatural soap operas has inspired some real-life demonic trends. Overreaction? Tell that to the kids biting, cutting, drinking blood—sometimes while having sex—and sinking deeper into the occult:
Driscoll then proceeds to use isolated examples of weird assaults to draw a connection between teen obsession with vampires and the general degradation of society. Maybe you could make the case that print is dead, buried by the likes of Meyer and the 50 Shades of Grey guy, but this idea that everyone who reads this book will turn into a demon possessed monster is so ridiculous, it actually hurts my brain.
The problem with the occult is that it doesn’t actually exist. Oh sure, people will often pretend sinister, demonic stuff is happening, but because all that shit is totally made up, no one actually buys into it. The only ones who do are gullible Christians who think Satan is real and possessing people. The rest of us think all this crap is about as genuinely scary as Halloween (the other thing these whackjobs are also scared about). What do you expect from people who take their nonsense literally?
It was only a matter of time before Uganda – oblivious to international pressure – would pass their notorious ‘kill the gays’ bill. Claiming homosexuals pose a ‘serious threat’, the government has decided to pass the law by the end of December. The speaker of the Cabinet, Rebecca Kadaga (seen above waving a fucking Bible, what else?), said this would be a Christmas present for her constituents. This barbaric bill is divided into two parts:
‘Aggravated homosexuality’ is defined as gay acts committed by parents or authority figures, HIV-positive people, pedophiles and repeat offenders. If convicted, they will face the death penalty.
The ‘offense of homosexuality’ includes same-sex sexual acts or being in a gay relationship, and will be prosecuted by life imprisonment.
So, it’s either the death penalty or life imprisonment, depending on just how ignorant the prosecution is. Kadaga even suggested that the whole of Africa, a continent in the grips of religious revival, should pass similar laws to needlessly torture, imprison, and murder individuals whose only crime is to have same sex attractions.
American Evangelicals must be jumping for joy at the thought of all the anti-gay shit they keep spewing is being taken seriously by some people.
You could easily replace the word ‘segregation’ with ‘marriage equality’, and echo the same argument modern bigots are using to try and justify their homophobia. They talk of freedom from tyranny, ignoring completely the fact that it is their hatred and intolerance which creates the inequity that so characterizes tyrannies.
The good news is the man in this video, George Wallace Jr., would eventually change his mind after an assassination attempt and being born again. He would even make history by appointing two African Americans in his cabinet (which in Alabama has yet to be surpassed even today). So, even the most ardent bigots can sometimes change their minds. Sort of gives you hope, right?
I know the big news story today is President Obama being re-elected, but I hope this bit of news doesn’t get buried under all the brouhaha: it seems as though the tiny state of Maryland has legalized same-sex marriage by approving “Question 6″ on the ballot. Now, before you celebrate this victory, you should know a few important details:
Establishes that Maryland’s civil marriage laws allow gay and lesbian couples to obtain a civil marriage license, provided they are not otherwise prohibited from marrying; protects clergy from having to perform any particular marriage ceremony in violation of their religious beliefs; affirms that each religious faith has exclusive control over its own theological doctrine regarding who may marry within that faith; and provides that religious organizations and certain related entities are not required to provide goods, services, or benefits to an individual related to the celebration or promotion of marriage in violation of their religious beliefs.
Can you imagine any civil rights legislation that still protected religious institutions from their blatant racism? I know I should be happy for gay couples finally getting the same rights as everyone else, but I can’t help but feel like this toothless referendum further legitimizes institutionalized homophobia. It’s no different than allowing churches the right to deny interracial marriages, since those too are specifically condemned by the Bible (remember when Lot’s daughters rape him in order not to have to take on foreign husbands?). I realize this was a necessary concession, but we should recognize the major barrier to marriage equality is still religion, and we shouldn’t be afraid to call it like it is.
Get ready to shit your pants laughing. Hey, how are these ‘actors’ going to feel in 10 years when they realize they were in such a bigoted ad? Could you imagine starring in a commercial in the 60s condemning interracial marriages? Hey, I know times are tough, but surely paying the mortgage isn’t worth that fucking stain on your character.
Paid for by this mysterious entity.
