Here’s a Picture of Mike Pence’s Team Attempting to Pray Away Coronavirus


Right Wing, superstitious, religious nut jobs; deluded that a completely fictional sky fairy and their worthless prayers will save them. Dangerous, anti-science, religious lunatics threaten the safety of a nation.

Elizabeth Johnston (a.k.a. the “Activist Mommy”) has spent the past day or so talking about her meeting — along with other anti-abortion zealots — with Vice President Mike Pence.

That’s disturbing enough, but it’s even more troubling that she posted this photo of Pence “praying with the Caronavirus Team.”

Dangerous anti-science, religious lunatics threaten the safety of a nation.

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Emanations from the Human Butt Polyp Pat Robertson: Gays Will Force Christians To Like Anal Sex And, Eventually, Polyamory And Bestiality


pat-robertson--a-prophet-for-our-ti

Emanations from the Human Butt Polyp Pat Robertson: Gays Will Force Christians To Like Anal Sex And, Eventually, Polyamory And Bestiality

Right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson tackled the recent controversy over Memories Pizza, which became Indiana’s first business to publicly declare that they won’t cater to same-sex weddings in the wake of the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act this week.

“Most gays, if they’re having a wedding, don’t want pizzas — they want cake,” Robertson told “700 Club” viewers, according to Right Wing Watch. “It’s the cake-makers that are having a problem.”

Still, he warned Christian business owners of all types that gay customers will eventually “make you conform to them.”

You’re gonna say that you like anal sex, you like oral sex, you like bestiality,” he added. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to conform your religious beliefs to the group of some abhorrent thing. It won’t stop at homosexuality.”

Noting that Christian beliefs will “come under assault” until polyamory and polygamy are acceptable, too, Robertson lamented, “It’s a weird world we’re living in.”

The comments aren’t too surprising, particularly given Robertson’s recent history of anti-gay sentiments. In Febuary, he argued that a Washington state judge’s ruling that a florist had discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to provide flowers for their wedding was also indicative of society’s eventual embrace of bestiality.

He asked, “To tell a florist that she’s got to provide flowers for a particular kind of wedding? What if somebody wanted to marry his dog? She’s got to have flowers for that?”

This Week In Right-Wing Lunacy


Paranoia-Rama: This Week In Right-Wing Lunacy

Submitted by Miranda Blue

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

This week, we learn more about President Obama’s secret gay past and Michelle Obama’s poor spiritual housekeeping, find out the real reason for Terry McAuliffe’s victory in Virginia, and are duly warned about the consequences of health care coverage and U.N. treaties.

5. Obamacare Will Force People to “Suffer and Potentially Die”

Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert, Congress’ most creative conspiracy theorists, told the residents of a nursing home in Texas this week that the Affordable Care Act would cut Medicare benefits, causing people to “suffer and potentially die.”

Gohmert’s claim that the ACA “cut $716 billion from Medicare,” repeated frequently by Mitt Romney in his presidential campaign last year, glosses over the fact that the cuts in costs – also recommended by Rep. Paul Ryan – would not affect Medicare benefits .

4. The United Nations Will Snatch Homeschoolers and Kids With Glasses

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee revived consideration of the United Nations Conventions on Persons With Disabilities this week, a year after a right-wing scare campaign managed to prevent the Senate from ratifying the treaty.

Taking the lead in the effort to sink the treaty was Michael Farris, director of the Home School Legal Defense Association, who claimed that U.S. ratification of the treaty would allow the U.N. to “get control” of children with glasses or ADHD and even lead to the deaths of children with disabilities. Invited to testify at this week’s hearing, Farris tried to convince senators that ratifying the treaty – which is based on laws already in place in the United States – would in fact lead to an American ban homeschooling. His only evidence for this fear was a completely unrelated immigration case .

The many right-wing conspiracy theories about the CRPD have been handily debunked by the U.S. International Council on Disabilities, as well as by former Republican senators Bill Frist and Bob Dole.

3. Michelle Obama Invited Demons Into The White House

The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer was shocked to learn that First Lady Michelle Obama hosted a White House event this to celebrate Diwali.

By celebrating the Hindu festival, Fischer warned, the first lady was inviting “demons into the White House,” necessitating a “spiritual cleanse” of the building after Obama leaves office.

Fischer neglected to mention that George W. and Laura Bush had hosted the very same event. He did, however, later in the week provide a helpful how-to on how to rid a home of demonic spirits in case it ever comes to that.

2. Voter Fraud Won the Election in Virginia

Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli thinks that President Obama won reelection through organized voter fraud , so it’s no surprise that some of his supporters were ready to cry “voter fraud” when he lost the gubernatorial election on Tuesday to Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

A full week before election day, Virginia conservative commentator Dean Chambers laid out how he predicted McAuliffe would “steal” the election through voter fraud. Meanwhile, Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber spent Election Day tweeting about how Cuccinelli would need to win by 7 points “to get within the margin of Democrat fraud.” And after the results came in, the white nationalist site VDARE claimed that McAuliffe must have relied on “black voter fraud” because it was not “plausible” that African-Americans would “turn out for New York Irish American Pol running for Governor with the same enthusiasm that they voted for a Black for President.”

In 2008, Virginia officials prosecuted 39 cases of voter fraud out of 3.7 million votes cast, none of which involved voter impersonation, the alleged target of Virginia’s pending voter ID law.

1. Obama Procured Cocaine Through Older White, Male Lovers

We already knew that during his student days President Obama was married to his male Pakistani roommate, the union from which he still wears a secret gay Muslim wedding ring , but we learned today via anti-gay activist Scott Lively that the president’s secrets go much deeper.

Lively linked on his website to an interview between crackpot preacher James David Manning and a woman named Mia Marie Pope, who claims to have been a classmate of President Obama’s back in Hawaii in the 1970s.

Pope recalled how the future president was “very much within sort of the gay community” and “was having sex with these older white guys” in order to procure “cocaine to be able to freebase.”

Thanks to RWW

http://tinyurl.com/pdew673

Religious Siblings Kept Dead Mother, Claimed She Was God


Siblings kept dead mother, claimed she was god
Via The West Australian
Three adult siblings have been arrested after police found they had kept their mother’s body in their house for three years after her death.

The Daily Mail website in Britain reports that the trio, aged in their 50s and 60s, had initially refused entry to police who wanted to check on the elderly mother because they believed she was being abused.

Instead, they found she had been dead for years. Police arrested them after finding the skeleton of an elderly woman at their home in Usa in the country’s south-west, according to Jiji Press.

The Daily Mail reports that the Japanese sisters and brother insist that they have done nothing wrong – and say the reason they wanted to stay with their parent was that she had become a god.

The 65-year-old man and two women aged 59 and 52 are accused of conspiring to abandon a body.

When officers visited the home in order to investigate the possibility that the elderly woman was being abused, the siblings tried to refuse them entry.

One of the sisters told police: ‘There’s no need to let you see her. Get off our property,’ according to Asahi News.

When they managed to enter the house, they found Mrs Ishigai’s body lying face up on a futon – which the siblings said was ‘for religious reasons’.

Urban Legends vs. The Pill: How the Christian Right Uses Propaganda Against Reproductive Rights


Urban Legends vs. The Pill: How the Christian Right Uses Propaganda Against Reproductive Rights
Author image

by Amanda Marcotte

Conservative fundamentalist Christian culture has always had a tradition of showing one face to the outside world and one face to each other, and negotiating how much of the latter can inform the former has always been a complex task. It’s only grown more confusing in the age of the internet. On one hand, the internet makes it very easy for people to create their own media bubble, which means conservative Christians can and often do only consume media made with them specifically in mind. On the other hand, the internet means that it’s easier than ever for outsiders to have access to media materials that are intended for Christian right insiders only, which is the bread and butter for websites such as Right Wing Watch.

The result is becoming a problem for the Christian right. Their insular culture encourages ever more bizarre flights of fancy, competitive demonstrations of misogyny, and making up of their own facts—and then all that is transmitted in a way where outsiders can tune in and expose the inner workings of the Christian right to the outside world. Kevin Swanson of Generations Radio is simply the latest person to fall into the trap of speaking to insiders where outsiders can hear. And outsiders are astounded at what Christian right culture looks like on the inside.

Right Wing Watch has started monitoring Swanson, who used to broadcast in multiple radio stations in Colorado but now prefers to reach out over the internet. They claim to have over a million downloads of their program. And while the official outward face of the Christian right claims to oppose reproductive rights because of “life,” the glimpse that Swanson gives of the internal Christian right culture makes it extremely clear that the objection has much more to do with the belief that women should be uneducated, dependent on men, and servile.

Now Swanson’s show got another round of media coverage for his claim that the birth control pill turns a woman’s uterus into a “graveyard” full of “dead babies”.

I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.

As our own Robin Marty noted, this is the sort of thing that doesn’t really need comment to refute. Still, as she points out, this is ignorance of biology on the level of believing women don’t poop or something: “[E]ven if somehow there were tiny mini babies stuck in your uterus, they would come out when you menstruate since THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF MENSTRUATION.” Swanson is married to a bona fide uterus-haver, who, having only had five children, clearly did not spend her entire reproductive life pregnant. Which, in turn, means some kind of menstrual product probably came into his home at some point. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think Swanson isn’t actually ignorant of menstruation and probably not ignorant of the fact that zygotes aren’t actually miniature babies.

That’s because what Swanson is doing here is something that’s very typical to intra-Christian right culture, which using a lurid urban legend as the basis of a political argument. All cultures have urban legends, butthe Christian right does tend to traffic in more lurid and more political ones. (Think: Satanic messages in rock songs.) Fred Clark claims, in fact, that Christian right culture is rife with propagandistic urban legends.

These other kinds of urban legends can’t really be considered fiction — they’re more like simple lies. Such stories are not told in the hopes of eliciting delight, but usually in order to create or to foster a sense of aggrieved victimhood and resentment.

Such stories, in other words, are propaganda. They are about sowing division, heightening the antipathy between groups or factions. They are about creating and enforcing and sustaining tribal conflict.

Swanson is clearly doing this: Telling an urban legend of vague “doctors” and “scientists” finding teeny-weeny “dead babies” in the uteruses of women that they’re opening up for some unknown reason. The anti-choice movement basically lives off these urban legends, telling themselves lurid, propagandistic stories about everything from what’s supposedly going on in abortion clinics to a laundry list of claims of all the ills that will befall you if you defy the patriarchal God’s orders and use contraception. This “dead babies” thing is a classic example of this.

Of course, nowadays a lot of these urban legends are being passed off in the mainstream as if they were the same thing as arguments, instead of weird stories that Christian conservatives tell to titillate each other. The “dead babies” weirdness stems from an equally absurd anti-choice urban legend that claims that the birth control pill and emergency contraception work by “killing” fertilized eggs; in reality, they work by suppressing ovulation. This propagandistic urban legend—or what Fred Clark would call a “simple lie”—is used to make their opposition to female-controlled birth control sound less misogynist than it is. This bit of nonsense has, sadly, become part of the basis for attacks on insurance coverage of contraception, even though it makes about as much sense as arguing that there are teeny-weeny baby skeletons lurking in the uteruses of women who’ve used the birth control pill.

Dangerous Jewish Baby Penis Blooding Sucking Ritual | Another Infected Baby!


Breaking! Another NYC Baby Gets Herpes From Dangerous Haredi Circumcision Ritual

 

Metzitzah b'peh Chabad closeup

 

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has sent out an alert to medical providers warning them that another baby now has Herpes Simplex Virus 1 that was transmitted to the baby through metzitzah b’peh, the direct mouth-to-bleeding-penis sucking done briefly by haredi mohels after cutting off the foreskin.

Metzitzah b'peh Chabad closeup

Direct oral suction during ritual Jewish circumcision (metzitzah b’peh) has been documented to transmit herpes simplex virus (HSV) type 1 to newborn males (1-4). In December 2012, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) received a report of a new case of HSV-1 infection in a newborn male infant attributable to direct oral suction.
In total, 12 laboratory-confirmed cases of HSV-infection attributable to direct oral suction have now been reported to DOHMH from 2000 – 2012. Two of these infants died, and two others suffered brain damage (4). In the most recent case, the location of herpes lesions (on the penis), viral type (HSV type 1, which is commonly found in the mouth of adults), and timing of infection (10 days after circumcision) are consistent with transmission during direct contact between the mouth of the ritual circumciser (mohel) and the newly circumcised infant penis. When evaluating an ill infant boy in the weeks following circumcision, providers should inquire whether direct oral suction was performed during circumcision and consider infection with HSV or other oral pathogens. Consult with a pediatric infectious disease specialist for guidance regarding the diagnosis and management of an infant with suspected herpes infection; also, see reference #5 under “References and resources” at the end of this alert.…

 

American Religious Fascists Praise Uganda’s Theocratic Dictatorship


American Religious Fanatics Praise Uganda for Making Homosexuality Illegal
Bad craziness
Posted by Charles Johnson
The far right freakazoids at World Net Daily are praising Uganda’s fanatical Christian fundamentalist president today for making homosexual behavior illegal and for staging a public show of “repentance.”

And American Christian Taliban leaders are pointing at Uganda as a future model for the United States.

Massachusetts pastor and activist Rev. Scott Lively believes Museveni is a model for other national leaders.

‘The Museveni prayer is a model for all Christian leaders in the world. The leaders of the West have declined in proportion to their degree of rejection of God,’ Lively said.

Lively also believes Uganda will rise as a major African power as America continues to decline. He uses Britain as an example.

‘Britain was at its height as a world power when it honored God as the Ugandan president has just done. America’s greatness has similarly diminished as we have shifted from a Christian to a secular-humanist country. But watch now for Uganda to be blessed by God for their desire to be His,’ Lively said. …

Homosexual activist groups have criticized the government of Uganda and Museveni for passing laws criminalizing homosexual behavior. A current bill before the Ugandan Parliament increases the jail sentences for homosexual acts and includes criminal penalties for those who encourage or promote homosexuality. …

Lively said he didn’t agree with the death penalty provision but supports the nation’s strong stance against homosexual behavior.

For another example: American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer is crowing, “It can be done!”

Homosexuality now against the law in Uganda, just as it was for 200 years in the US. It can be done.

Religious Fanatic Slaughters His Family in Moscow


Religious fanatic slaughters his family in Moscow

Religious fanatic slaughters his family in Moscow. 48563.jpeg

The Moscow police investigate the triple murder, which was committed in Eastern Birulyovo on the southern outskirts of Moscow in the evening of November 19th.  The crime was committed in less than two weeks after the massacre in the office of a pharmaceutical company. Igor Televinov, 40, who could possibly be a mentally unbalanced religious fanatic, first killed his nine-year-old son, Alexander, and then six-year old daughter, Anna. Afterwards, the man killed his mother when she came back home from a walk. The man stabbed the three victims to death. Apparently, the victims could not show any resistance, Life News said.

After the murder, the man took the time to write a note, in which he asked to sell the apartment and bury the children with this money, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper wrote.

The man wanted to kill himself in the end, but he also had to kill his wife first. When she came home from work, he met her on the doorstep and said that he had already sent his mother and children to heaven. The man offered his wife to follow them: he slashed the woman’s throat and face with the same knife.

The wounded woman somehow managed to escape from the apartment. All covered in blood, she rushed into her neighbor’s, shouting: “Lock the door!” The women called the police and an ambulance. The wounded woman was taken to hospital, her life is out of danger.

Having entered the apartment, where the tragedy occurred, law-enforcement officers, doctors and investigators saw the following picture. The bodies of the two children and their grandmother were lying in pools of blood. All the victims had their throats slit, their hands were folded crosswise on their chests, the little girl and the murderer’s mother had icons and burning candles put in between their fingers. The dead boy had an icing lamp in his hands, Vesti reports.

The man was arrested; he tried to show resistance to police, apparently staying in an inadequate condition. A criminal case was filed into the “murder of two or more persons” and “attempted murder.”

The man was unemployed. He was sick, he began to gain weight and would rarely go out. His wife worked in a barbershop. The woman was spending much of her salary on medications for her husband

Dire Warning! | Frothing Religious Lunatic Pat Robertson Accuses Atheists!


Dire Warning! | Frothing Religious Lunatic Pat Robertson Accuses Atheists!
Robertson: ‘Miserable’ Atheists Trying to ‘Steal’ Christmas
SUBMITTED BY Brian Tashman

The “War on Christmas” has arrived and the 700 Club is doing all it can to stoke fears that Christmas may cease to exist. Host Pat Robertson warned that “the Grinch is trying to steal our holiday” as “miserable” atheists “want to steal your holiday away from you” simply because they can’t stand the joy of Christmas. “Atheists don’t like our happiness, they don’t want you to be happy, they want you to be miserable,” he said. “They’re miserable so they want you to be miserable.”

Watch:

Related articles

Raving Lunatics | Fawning, Slobbering, Superstitious Catholics Scramble to Idolatry


‘Virgin Mary’ draws hundreds of Malaysian Catholics
AFP
Monday, Nov 12, 2012

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Hundreds of Catholics have gathered in prayer and worship outside a Malaysian hospital after seeing an image said to resemble the Virgin Mary on one of the windows.

Pictures of the image have gone viral among local Christians on Facebook and large crowds have gathered at the Sime Darby Medical Centre just outside Kuala Lumpur.

Those assembled Sunday maintained they can now also see an image of an adult Jesus Christ just two windows away from His mother.

Nearly 100 Catholics were still at the hospital Sunday, lighting candles, singing hymns and saying prayers. Several tourist buses added to the congestion.

Some have come from as far as Singapore, over 300 kilometers (187 miles) away, to see the image on a seventh-floor window, which they describe as a miracle.

“We believe Mary, mother of God, has a message for us, as she is looking down on us and then at a Malaysian flag. We can also see Jesus and He is also moving, they are not static,” Eunice Fernandez, who lives nearby, told AFP.

The 54-year-old housewife dismissed claims the image could be a hoax.

Sime Darby, which is primarily a plantations conglomerate, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Father Lawrence Andrew, editor of Malaysian Catholic newsletter The Herald, told AFP the Church would need to investigate and verify the authenticity of the images and “the experiences of the witnesses.”

“It could be private revelations. We have to make sure they are not imagined but real apparitions,” he said.

Catholics make up a sizeable minority in Muslim-dominated Malaysia.

Delusional Religious Crazies Claim to Have Stopped Terrorists


Jacobs Claims to have Thwarted Numerous Terrorist Attacks
Submitted by Ariella on Friday, 11/9/2012 1:15 pm

Self-proclaimed “prophets” Mike and Cindy Jacobs of Generals International continued to spew their predictions about terrorism, natural disasters and economic turmoil on their show God Knows. Jacobs—who previously alleged that she helped avert bombings—revealed that she along with other prophets were having dreams in 2011 about a looming terrorist attack, and explains that their visions were confirmed by the events in Benghazi.

Mike Jacobs contended that there were even more terrorist plots, but that they had been thwarted by “the prayer cover that has been placed over the United States by various prayer groups and individuals praying.”

Watch:

1 Not-So-Simple, Pretty Funny Question for the 73% of White Evangelicals Who Will Apparently Be Voting for Romney


By Frank Schaeffer

1 Not-So-Simple, Pretty Funny Question for the 73% of White Evangelicals Who Will Apparently Be Voting for Romney
A question that deserves an answer before election day.

According to polls 73 percent of WHITE evangelicals will be voting for Mitt Romney.

If the polls are correct here’s the question I’d like to ask evangelicals using their own style of language/concerns/theological thinking as applied to their choice:

What’s the explanation for the fact that white American Evangelicals made the allegedly philandering lying ignorant braggart lapsed Roman Catholic Dinesh D’Souza their anti-Obama hero, embrace a pro-choice Mormon bishop who promoted abortion and Planned Parenthood in MA, are working to elect a job-destroying tax-avoiding lying flip-flopping-tell-anyone-anything-they-want-to-hear Swiss bank account collecting draft dodger running with a disciple of the God-hating, Jesus-mocking hater-of-the-poor Ayn Rand, for their presidential candidate and look the other way as a crazed ultra-Zionist many Israeli Jews fear billionaire casino owner who is being investigated for allegedly making billions off the dirtiest Chinese gambling Communist Party-controlled outfit in the world funds the enterprise, at the very same time as Franklin Graham sold his ailing father Billy’s soul and denied core evangelical theology by taking Mormonism off the Billy Graham organization’s list of cults in order to help the Mormon pagan-ritual-performing, Trinity-denying, casino-money-grubbing billionaire-coddling, earth-destroying global-warming denying Mormon bishop win respectability for his dead-Jews-baptizing-polygamy-rooted-reality-denying-interplanetary Masonic lodge-embracing faith in an election against an exemplary modest faithful husband good father compassionate smart black evangelical Christian President whose major accomplishments include saving the economy, ending a war, killing our greatest enemy, giving health care to children and the poor and the “least of these” and who has tried to reduce the number of abortions by helping women escape poverty in a reenactment of the lesson of the parable of the Good Samaritan?

Go figure.

Pastor Sodomizes Boy


Pastor Sodomizes Boy

Religious Sex Abuse

Clergy Sexual Abuse

Priests Sexual Abuse

Gay Man Enslaved By Sadistic Christian Cultists


NORTH CAROLINA: Man says church confined him because he was gay

SAM JANE WHALEY WORD OF FAITH FEL

Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, led by Sam and Jane Whaley,

has been accused of enforcing extensive control over members.

 

Written by Michael Gordon

 

A 22-year-old man has accused his former Rutherford County church of holding him for four months against his will while he was physically and emotionally abused because he is gay.

Michael Lowry filed a complaint in February against Word of Faith Fellowship Church, a nondenominational Christian congregation in Spindale that has made national headlines with some of its practices.

In a statement given to a sheriff’s department investigator last week, Lowry said he was kept in a church building from Aug. 1 to Nov. 19, 2011. He said he was knocked unconscious during his first day of confinement.

Lowry’s former pastor, Jane Whaley, said Sunday that all of his allegations are “lies.”

Whaley said Lowry was not held or beaten. She said the church only learned that he was gay when his family did – after watching a news report by an Asheville television station Thursday.

Lowry said he first told his family and church leaders of his sexual orientation when he was 15 or 16. That set off years of harassment and abuse, he said, as church members tried to expel the demon that they believed caused his homosexuality.

A Hickory advocacy group has called for a federal investigation.

Brent Childers, executive director of Faith in America, said in a statement that Lowry’s case is “the most disturbing I’ve encountered” in the six years he’s worked with the group. The nonprofit addresses what it describes as “the harm” caused gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people by “misguided religious teaching.”

If Lowry’s account is accurate, Childers said, “there’s no question that these actions constitute a hate crime.”

Last week, a friend of Lowry who is also a former church member filed charges against four Word of Faith members after a confrontation near the church, court records indicate. The four, all listed under the church’s address, are part of the Word of Faith security team and were charged with false imprisonment and misdemeanor stalking.

DA investigating

Rutherford County District Attorney Brad Greenway said the case is being investigated and it’s too early to say if it will reach a grand jury.

“We’ll continue to investigate, talk to some other people, and then make a decision,” he said Sunday.

Sam and Jane Whaley started Word of Faith in 1979, and the couple have been running it continuously since 1985. Jane Whaley says the church now has 750 members. It operates from a 35-acre complex, 65 miles west of Charlotte.

Church leaders also run several businesses and the church is politically active. A decade ago, Sam Whaley gave the opening prayer in the U.S. House at the request of then U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, an Asheville Republican.

Word of Faith has also been accused of enforcing extensive control over its congregation.

Former members interviewed by the Observer in 2000 say they were told where to live, where to work, what to read, how to dress or even when it was OK to have sex with their spouses.

Lowry says many of those controls continue today.

Word of Faith also practices “blasting,” a form of hands-on, high-pitched, screaming prayer, a ritual that has landed it on “Inside Edition” and YouTube. The church, according to its website, also doesn’t celebrate “pagan holidays” ranging from birthdays to Christmas.

Word of Faith was investigated twice in the late 1990s for its treatment of children, and later sued the local Department of Social Services in connection with what is now referred to on its website as “the persecution.”

Whaley said the church has been exonerated of all allegations.

Lowry was born into Word of Faith, and his parents and two brothers remain members.

He said he hoped to be trained by the church to become a minister. But there was a problem: Lowry said he has known since puberty that he was gay.

He had always been active in the church, but said he became increasingly uncomfortable living under constant scrutiny and watching how children were disciplined.

About six years ago, when he said he told his family and Jane Whaley he was gay, Lowry said he became a target of those same methods.

Lowry: ‘It was jail’

His dissatisfaction with the church had deepened by summer 2011. On Aug. 1, 2011, he said he was taken by church members to the Word of Faith complex and placed in a building with other men and boys having trouble at home.

“The doors were locked, it was jail,” he said. “You weren’t allowed to speak to your family. Many of the men had wives and children but they weren’t able to communicate with them.” Blastings were common, he said.

Also on Aug. 1, according to court records, Lowry took a shower at the church, during which his handlers accused him of masturbating. He told investigators that he was roughed up and eventually knocked unconscious.

Lowry said he was allowed to leave in November when he made it clear to the church “that God is telling me it’s time to go. I don’t want to be told what to do anymore.”

Jane Whaley says Lowry stayed in what amounts to a dormitory, not because he was confined but because he’d been thrown out of his house by his parents.

Church: Lowry was free to leave

Those who stayed there were free to come and go, she said. Because of his behavior, Whaley said, Lowry was eventually asked to leave.

Asked why Lowry would lie, Whaley said he had been talked into filing his complaint by former church members who held grudges and had even threatened her life.

She said the church believes in “strong prayer,” of laying on hands. That prayer is useless, she said, unless the subject takes part.

“We want to serve Jesus,” she said. “We don’t want to be hypocrites. If this church is not for you, people leave.”

When Lowry left, he moved in with relatives in Michigan. He is now staying at an undisclosed location with a friend, he said, to avoid church harassment.

Lowry said he came back to Spindale last week to follow up with his complaint and to visit the church and other sites from his past “so I could realize there was nothing to fear.”

Nancy Burnette of Boiling Springs, who met Lowry in January and has since become his friend, said Lowry has often expressed frustration at the pace of the investigation. She said she called the department herself, urging investigators along.

Rutherford County Sheriff Chris Francis could not be reached for comment.

Thursday night, the Asheville television station ran its report on the case.

Friday night, Greenway and sheriff’s investigators talked with Lowry for about three hours.

The investigation has been slowed, the district attorney said, because Lowry had been hard to reach after moving out of state.

Gordon: 704-358-5095

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/22/3613469/man-says-nc-church-confined-him.html

Jews Must Be Converted | American Right Wing Nuts’ Hate Fest


Jews Must Be Converted: FRC Vice President
Submitted by Josh Glasstetter on Thu, 09/13/2012 – 12:25pm

Bad news for Eric Cantor. He’s speaking tomorrow at the Values Voter Summit, but he’s apparently still going to hell. Let me explain.

Jerry Boykin is the Executive Vice President of the Family Research Council and Tony Perkins’ right-hand man. FRC is hosting the far right conference that the House Majority Leader, who is Jewish, plans to address tomorrow.

Boykin, much like Bryan Fischer, has a penchant for saying exactly what’s on his mind – things which others know not to say, even when they’re thinking the same thing. While you may know Boykin from his prolific Muslim-bashing, he also has some interesting things to say about Jews.

In a 2009 speech on “Why We Must Stand with Israel,” Boykin spoke out against pastors who say that “the Jews don’t have to come to know Jesus,” complaining that those pastors were “destroying the efforts” to lead Jews to Christ:

Last year, Boykin said that “one of the most disgusting things I hear is for people to call Hitler the extreme Right” because he was “an extraordinarily off the scale leftist.” He then lamented that “many Jews in America, for example, can’t identify with the Republican Party because they’re called the party of the Right, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.”

Boykin also said that President Obama is creating a Hitler-sytle Brownshirt army to force Marxism on America. And in 2003, then-Lt. Gen. Boykin said that the U.S. was fighting a war “in the name of Jesus,” prompting a rebuke from the ADL and President Bush.

To be sure, the Religious Right hasn’t always had the best relations with American Jews. Jerry Falwell sparked a controversy in 1980 when he said that God “does not hear the prayers of unredeemed Gentiles or Jews.” He was speaking at a press conference in defense of the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who had proclaimed that “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”

More recently, however, Religious Right leaders have been careful to stress Judeo-Christian values and avoid explicit attacks. Boykin, however, doesn’t have any use for such niceties.

Yet Boykin was able to meet recently with Mitt Romney, and he has three speaking slots during the conference. He’s even leading a panel on Israel with his good friend Kamal Saleem. Saleem, who is considered to be a fraud, describes himself as a former terrorist who “completed his first bloody terror mission into Israel for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) at the age of seven.”

All of this makes me wonder if Cantor’s folks did their homework before agreeing to speak tomorrow. Perhaps something will come up, and he’ll have to decline FRC’s invitation, much like Ann Romney and Cardinal Dolan have done. We’ll find out tomorrow.

Religious Nutcase Kirk Cameron Causes The American Taliban To Drool


Kirk Cameron: “God IS the Platform”
The Christian Taliban movement
Wingnuts

Today’s moment of right wing religious fanaticism comes from former child star Kirk Cameron, who says, “one of our parties is wondering whether the name God should be in the platform,” but according to America’s founding fathers, “God is the platform!

The crowd cheers this line in a very disturbing way.

Palin: Obama Seems To Want To Go Back To The Days Of Slavery


Palin: Obama Seems To Want To Go Back To The Days Of Slavery

by Liz Colville

Sarah Palin went on Heinity on Thursday to do some sort of to-the-core-of-the-earth analysis of something Obama-related, god knows what, but perhaps hugs? (Hannity describes it as a “sort of bit of information,” which is the closest any conservative has come to admitting how flea-sized this incident is.) And the gist was Sean Hannity asking Palin what all “this” “means.” Something something, Obama’s hug of a guy, “class warfare” and attempts to help the broke suggest that the president is “bringing us back” to the era in which blacks were considered to be 3/5 of a person. It’s true, this — wanting equality, supporting others who do — is a true replica of slavery, you can’t even tell the two apart.

Some of the exchange:

Hannity: Bleebloopityblahblah?

Palin: He is bringing us back, Sean, to days, uh — you can harken back to days before the Civil War when unfortunately too many Americans mistakenly believed that not all men were created equal.

What a thing. What a day. Palin goes on to say (WARNING: CRAP ENGLISH FOLLOWS):

Palin: And it was the Civil War that began the codification of the truth that here in America, yes we are equal, and we all have equal opportunities, not based on the color of your skin. You have equal opportunity to work hard and to succeed and to embrace the opportunities, god-given opportunities to develop resources, to work extremely hard, and to, as I say, to succeed. Now, it has taken all these years for many Americans to understand that — that gravity, that mistake took place before the Civil War, and why the Civil War, had to really start changing America. What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back to before those days when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin. Why are we allowing our country to move backwards instead of moving forward –

Hannity: Whu–

Palin: — with that understanding that as our charters of liberty spell out for us, that we are all created equally.

Incuriouser and incuriouser! Whatever could this white lady be talking about? That welfare encourages people historically deprived of opportunities to continue to not have them? That rich people are more sensitive than others and poor people should be considerate of that? That health care saves people’s teeth from falling out, which causes them to be too elitist? Please let us know, if you know. [Media Matters]

Jewish Superstitious Penis Blood Sucking Ritual Kills Another Baby


Jewish Superstitious Penis Blood Sucking Ritual Kills Another Baby

Family Of Dead Baby Killed By Bris Stonewalls Cops, Health Department

Maimonides Medical Center Brooklyn

An infant died at Maimonides Medical Center on Sept. 28 from herpes contracted from metzitzah b’peh performed during a bris milah, circumcision. But the family of the dead boy is refusing to cooperate with the investigation into their son’s death.

Maimonides Medical Center Brooklyn

Family stonewalling authorities after newborn dies from herpes contracted in ritual circumcision Sources in Orthodox Jewish community say baby’s parents were related to herpes-infected rabbi who did circumcision By Simone Weichselbaum And Reuven Blau • NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

An infant died at Maimonides Medical Center on Sept. 28 from herpes contracted during a ritual circumcision.

Authorities are being stonewalled by the family of a newborn boy who died after contracting herpes through a controversial religious circumcision ritual, the Daily News has learned.

Multiple sources in the Orthodox Jewish community said the 2-week-old boy’s parents were related to a herpes-infected rabbi who conducted the circumcision according to tradition — using one’s mouth to remove blood from the wound.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office is investigating the death and trying to identify the rabbi, or mohel, but family members have not been cooperative, sources said.
“You guys are barking up the right tree,” a law enforcement source said of word that the mohel was related to the boy. “But we don’t know yet who did what.”

City health officials have criticized the religious practice, saying that putting the open wound into contact with the mouth of the rabbi carries “inherent risks” for the infant.

The unidentified infant died at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center last Sept. 28. An autopsy listed the cause of death as “disseminated herpes simplex virus Type 1, complicating ritual circumcision with oral suction,” according to a spokeswoman for the city Medical Examiner.

Mayor Bloomberg Tuesday vowed to work with the Orthodox Jewish community to prevent future tragedies.

Rick Perry Embraces Sadistic Anti-Choice Fanatics


Rick Perry Joins the Heartless Anti-Choice Fanatics

Via Charles Johnson

It’s horrifying to hear almost all the GOP presidential candidates proudly saying that victims of rape or incest should be forced to give birth to an attacker’s child. There’s nothing that makes the utter heartlessness of this fanatical agenda more evident, and now Rick Perry (who previously supported rape/incest exceptions) has announced that he’s a monster like the rest of them: Perry changes stance to oppose all abortions.

CNNTexas Gov. Rick Perry revealed a hardening in his stance on abortion Tuesday, telling a crowd in Iowa that he opposed abortions in all cases, including when a woman had been raped or the victim of incest.

Previously, Perry had not opposed the procedure in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother’s life was threatened.

Responding to a question about the change in position, Perry said, “You’re seeing a transformation.”

Perry told the crowd at his campaign stop that the decision came after watching a documentary on abortion produced by former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

“That transformation was after watching the DVD, ‘The Gift of Life,’” Perry said. “And I really started giving some thought about the issue of rape and incest. And some powerful, some powerful stories in that DVD.”

Perry said a woman who appeared in the movie who said she was a product of rape moved him to change his mind about abortion.

“She said, ‘My life has worth.’ It was a powerful moment for me,” Perry said.

Quotes from the The American Taliban


Quotes from the The American Taliban

“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”

“Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”

“Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t answer to the name Mohammed'”

Bailey Smith

“With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”

“Yes, religion and politics do mix. America is a nation based on biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.”

Bob Dornan (Rep. R-CA)

“Don’t use the word ‘gay’ unless it’s an acronym for ‘Got Aids Yet'”

David Barton (Wallbuilders)

“There should be absolutely no ‘Separation of Church and State‘ in America.”

“Sodomy is a graver sin than murder. – Unless there is life there can be no murder.”

Fob James (Governor of Alabama)

“Behind this judicial wall of separation there is a tyranny of lies that will fall… I say to you, my friends, let it fall!”

“A good butt-whipping and then a prayer is a wonderful remedy.”

“If you got to castrate your miserable self with a piece of rusty barb wire, do it.”

“Hear the word of the LORD, America, fag-enablers are worse than the fags themselves, and will be punished in the everlasting lake of fire!”

“You telling these miserable, Hell-bound, bath house-wallowing, anal-copulating fags that God loves them!? You have bats in the belfry!”

“American Veterans are to blame for the fag takeover of this nation. They have the power in their political lobby to influence the zeitgeist, get the fags out of the military, and back in the closet where they belong!”

“Not only is homosexuality a sin, but anyone who supports fags is just as guilty as they are. You are both worthy of death.”

Gary Bauer (American Values)

“We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There’s a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody’s values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe.”

Gary North (Institute for Christian Economics)

“The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship.”

“This is God’s world, not Satan’s. Christians are the lawful heirs, not non-Christians.”

Gary Potter (Catholics for Christian Political Action)

“When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil.”

George Bush Sr. (President of the United States)

“I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”

George W. Bush (President of the United States)

“I don’t think that witchcraft is a religion. I wish the military would rethink this decision.”*

“God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.”

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

“This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.”

*Comment about Wiccans in the military

Henry Morris (Founder, Institute for Creation Research, died 2006)

“When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.”

J. B. Stoner (White Supremacist) (1924 – 2005)

“We had lost the fight for the preservation of the white race until God himself intervened in earthly affairs with AIDS to rescue and preserve the white race that he had created…. I praise God all the time for AIDS.”

“AIDS is a racial disease of Jews and Niggers, and fortunately it is wiping out the queers. I guess God hates queers for several reasons. There is one big reason to be against queers and that is because every time some white boy is seduced by a queer into becoming a queer, means his white bloodline has run out.”

James Dobson (Focus on the Family)

“Those who control the access to the minds of children will set the agenda for the future of the nation and the future of the western world.”

“State Universities are breeding grounds, quite literally, for sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV), homosexual behavior, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, alcoholism, and drug abuse.”

“Today’s children… They’re damned. They’re gone.”

James Kennedy (Center for Reclaiming America)

“The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ.”

James Watt (Secretary of the Interior)

“We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.”*

*Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan Admin. Responsible for National Policy regarding the Environment

Jay Grimstead (Coalition on Revival)

“We are to make Bible-obeying disciples of anybody that gets in our way.”

Jerry Falwell (1933 – 2007)

“We’re fighting against humanism, we’re fighting against liberalism…we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today…our battle is with Satan himself.”

“AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah’s chariotters.”

“The Bible is the inerrant … word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.”

“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”

“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”

Jesse Helms (Senator R-NC, 1973-2003)

“The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian.”

“All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction.”

“Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade-school classes that teach our children that cannibalism, wife-swapping and murder of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior.”

“Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches.”

Jimmy Swaggart (Jimmy Swaggart Ministries)

“The Media is ruled by Satan. But yet I wonder if many Christians fully understand that. Also, will they believe what the Media says, considering that its aim is to steal, kill, and destroy?”

“Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest.”

“Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it…Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.”

John Ashcroft (Attorney General)

Civilized people – Muslims, Christians, and Jews – all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.”

John Whitehead (Rutherford Institute)

“The [Supreme] Court, by seeking to equate Christianity with other religions, merely assaults the one faith. The Court in essence is assailing the true God by democratizing the Christian religion.”

Joseph McCarthy (1908 – 1957)(Senator, R-WI, 1947-1957)

“Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between Communistic Atheism and Christianity.”

Joseph Morecraft (Chalcedon Presbyterian Church)

“Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody’s pseudo-right to worship an idol.”

Joseph Scheidler (Pro-Life Action League)

“I would like to outlaw contraception…contraception is disgusting – people using each other for pleasure.”

Kay O’Connor (Kansas Senate Republican)

“I’m an old-fashioned woman. Men should take care of women, and if men were taking care of women today, we wouldn’t have to vote.”

Keith A. Fournier (Catholic Way)

“We need a legal strategy which protects the rights of those of us who hold Christian convictions which will afford us the opportunity to contend once again for the mind of this culture.”

Laura Schlessinger

“I want to coin a phrase here, and I don’t mind help. What would be the communication version of “ethnic cleansing?” Because that’s what in particular the homosexual activists try to do.”

Lester Roloff (1914 – 1982)(Texas Homes for Wayward Youth)

“Better a pink bottom than a black soul.”*

*Roloff opened a chain of homes for “wayward” youth in the state of Texas; he was later jailed in 1973 and again in 1975 for child abuse due to the punitive punishment techniques used in his homes. He was then specifically given permision to re-open his homes by Governor George W Bush.

Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin

“George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God.”

Pat Buchanan (Presidential Candidate)

“Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free.”

“There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The “negroes” of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours.”

“Rail as they will about ‘discrimination,’ women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism.”

Pat Robertson (Christian Coalition)

“The Islamic people, the Arabs, were the ones who captured Africans, put them in slavery, and sent them to America as slaves. Why would the people in America want to embrace the religion of slavers?”

“Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It’s no different…More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.”

“When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals – the two things seem to go together.”

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”

“You say you’re supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense, I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.”

“I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that’s the way it is, period.”

“[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers.”

“[Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism –everything that the Bible condemns.”

Paul Cameron

“I think that actually AIDS is a guardian. That is I think it was sent, if you would, about forty years ago, to destroy Western civilization unless we change our sexual ways. So it’s really a Godsend.”

“Homosexuality is a crime against humanity.”

“Causes of homosexuality include: ‘sex with animals'”*

“Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.”

*Paul Cameron was discharged from the American Psychological Association, the Nebraska Psychological Association, and the American Sociological Association due to his unethical practices and biased research regarding Homosexuals; however his work is still referenced by many fundamentalist organizations as credible.

Randall Terry (Operation Rescue)

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”

“Our goal must be simple. We must have a Christian nation built on God’s law, on the ten Commandments. No apologies.”

“I don’t think Christians should use birth control. You consummate your marriage as often as you like – and if you have babies, you have babies.”

“When I, or people like me, are running the country, you’d better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we’ll execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed.”

“There is going to be war, [and Christians may be called to] take up the sword to overthrow the tyrannical regime that oppresses them.”

Jerry Vines (Southern Baptist Convention)

“They would have us believe that Islam is just as good as Christianity. Christianity was founded by the virgin-born son of God, Jesus Christ. Islam was founded by Muhammad, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives, the last one of which was a nine-year-old girl.”

Rick Santorum (Senator R-PA, 1995-2006)

“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [Gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything!”

Robert Simonds (Citizens for Excellence in Education)

“As the church watches from the sidelines, the ungodly elect atheists and homosexuals to school boards and legislatures to enact policies and laws that destroy our Christian children and discriminate against Christian families.”

“Atheistic secular humanists should be removed from office and Christians should be elected…Government and true Christianity are inseparable.”

“We’ll take away their power and their money. Money comes from students. We’ll break their backs by taking 24 million kids out of the public schools.”

“Raising your children under Americanism or any other principles other than true Christianity is child abuse.”

“You do not have the right to be wrong, regardless of what any man-made or demonic charter says.”

“Democracy originated in the mind of a rational being who has the deepest hatred for God.”

“Do you realize that the only thing that gives democracy existence is sin? The absence of democracy is perfect obedience to god.”

“The best way to insure the earth is never over populated is for sensible and righteous governments to clear all forms of atheism and heresy.”

Ronald Reagan (1911 – 2004)(President of the United States)

“For the first time ever, everything is in place for the Battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.”

Roy Moore (Former Alabama Judge)

“If they want to get the Commandments, they’re going to have to get me first.”*

“Worship With Your Vote”

Rush Limbaugh

“Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.”

“If you commit a crime, you’re guilty.”

“There is only one way to get rid of nuclear weapons… use them”

Star Parker (Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education)

“Anybody that believes in separation of church and state needs to leave right now.”

Tony Evans (Promise Keepers)

“The demise of our community and culture is the fault of sissified men who have been overly influenced by women.”

William Rehnquist (1924 – 2005)(Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court)

“The ‘wall of separation between church and state’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.”

Michael Savage (Savage Nation)

“Oh, you’re one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How’s that? Why don’t you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it.”*

*Statement made on live national television

Religious Death Dealers


Six Die After Evangelical Churches Tell Them to Stop Taking HIV Medication
//
According to Sky News, evangelical churches in four British cities have been claiming to cure HIV through faith healing. Three undercover reporters entered the Synagogue Church of All Nations, told pastors that they were HIV positive, and all were informed that they could be healed.

The healing process involves the pastor shouting, over the person being healed, for the devil to come out of their body, and spraying water in their face.

Pastors also told the reporters posing as HIV patients that they should throw away their medication after the healing because they had been cured.

If it occurs to you that this might be dangerous, you will be saddened but not surprised to learn that at least six people have died after being told by these churches to stop taking their HIV medication. I applaud the efforts of Sky News to investigate this atrocity. I don’t think America’s corporate media would dare to do something like this. I sincerely hope British authorities prosecute the hell out of these churches.

 

Religious Psychopathy: William Lane Craig Claims Animals Unaware of Pain


William Lane Craig: Animals Aren’t Aware of Their Pain

By , About.com Guide   November 22, 2011

Did you know that no matter how much pain an animal might experience, they don’t actually know that they are in pain? So it’s really all good — it’s God‘s will that animals be able to absorb all the punishment and pain we can inflict on them. At least, that’s the position defended by William Lane Craig in his attempt to “solve” the problem of evil and suffering in animals.

Needless to say, his “defense” here is not only a complete failure, but also reveals the extent to which Craig’s theology is morally vacuous.

So Christian theologians of all stripes have to face the challenge posed by animal pain. Here recent studies in biology have provided surprising, new insights into this old problem. In his book Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, Michael Murray distinguishes three levels in an ascending pain hierarchy (read from the bottom up):

  • Level 3: a second order awareness that one is oneself experiencing (2).
  • Level 2: a first order, subjective experience of pain.
  • Level 1: information-bearing neural states produced by noxious stimuli resulting in aversive behavior.

Spiders and insects–the sort of creatures most exhibiting the kinds of behavior mentioned by Ayala–experience (1).  But there’s no reason at all to attribute (2) to such creatures. It’s plausible that they aren’t sentient beings at all with some sort of subjective, interior life. That sort of experience plausibly does not arise until one gets to the level of vertebrates in the animal kingdom.

But even though animals like dogs, cats, and horses experience pain, nevertheless the evidence is that they do not experience level (3), the awareness that they are in pain. For the awareness that one is oneself in pain requires self-awareness, which is centered in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain–a section of the brain which is missing in all animals except for the humanoid primates.

Thus, amazingly, even though animals may experience pain, they are not aware of being in pain. God in His mercy has apparently spared animals the awareness of pain. This is a tremendous comfort to us pet owners. For even though your dog or cat may be in pain, it really isn’t aware of it and so doesn’t suffer as you would if you were in pain.
Source: Reasonable Faith (via: Pharyngula)

There’s just all kinds of evil contained in the above. First, William Lane Craig is lying that only humanoid primates have a pre-frontal cortex — yes, we can say that he is lying because this is a simple factual question that can be easily resolved by anyone who cares enough to do a few minutes of research.

Second, even if it were true that only humanoid primates have a pre-frontal cortex, that would still allow for a lot more than just humans experiencing “Level 3,” which means that while the scope of the problem is narrowed it definitely isn’t solved. William Lane Craig, however, doesn’t address this.

Third, even if an animals lacks “self-awareness,” how does that entail that an animal doesn’t suffer from pain? It doesn’t — and it’s precisely the sufferingthat’s at issue. The entire problem that William Lane Craig is pretending to solve — and he really is only pretending here — is how there can be so much animals suffering in a world created by his god.

Craig’s “solution” must be able to demonstrate that for all the pain experienced by animals, they don’t really “suffer”. But he never comes anywhere close to even trying to do that. Even if he were successful in showing that no animals experience pain quite like humans do — and he doesn’t even accomplish that — it wouldn’t show that they don’t suffer to an extent that creates a problem for his theology.

Fourth and finally, consider the implications of Craig’s position here: if animals are never aware of being in pain regardless of how much pain they are experiencing, what justification can there ever be for any laws against animal cruelty? Chain up your dog outside in the winter and let it starve! Torture kittens and bunnies! There’s no act of cruelty against animals, no matter how terrible, that can be condemned under Craig’s theology. So even if we ignore all the above and pretend that his argument is completely successful, it would also successfully justify the worst treatment of animals.

But remember, William Lane Craig is the same theologian who has presumed to tell all of us that when Hebrew soldiers followed God’s instructions to commit genocide, it was the soldiers themselves who “really” sufferedand not all the men, women, and children who were brutally slaughtered. If he can be so callously dismissive of the suffering of infants and children, it should be no surprise that he’d be in denial about the suffering of animals.

William Lane Craig: Poster Boy for how Religion Causes Psychopathy.