Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Breaking Commandments is OK, if it’s “for the children!”

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Unless, of course, your neighbor is Planned Parenthood, or a pregnant minor seeking an abortion.

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend to one of Indiana’s Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called “crisis pregnancy center” run by an anti-abortion group, one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl’s confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their “other office” (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there. The “crisis pregnancy center” had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The “crisis pregnancy center” staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl’s home and calling her father’s workplace. Our clinic director reports that the girl was “scared to death to leave her house.” They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

The anti-choice movement is setting up these “crisis pregnancy centers” across the country. Some of them have neutral-sounding names and run ads that falsely promise the full range of reproductive health services, but they dispense anti-choice propaganda and intimidation instead. And according to a recent article in The New York Times, there are currently more of these centers in the U.S. than there are actual abortion providers. What’s more, these centers have received $60 million in government grants. They’re being funded by our tax dollars.

A bill has just been introduced in Congress to stop the fraudulent practices of fake clinics, but it desperately needs more support. Tell your representative to take a stand: anti-choice extremists must not get away with this any longer!

Go to: http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/fakeclinics

People wonder why I’m so hard on Christians… the story above is just one example of the things that prompt me to rail against the Christofascist hypocrites who claim the moral high ground.  Again we see that no underhanded deed is evil in the sight of the Lord they claim to follow, if it can be even remotely justified as being “for the sake of the children!” They will toss aside one of the Commandments they claim as the foundation of all human morality (which apparently American Christians will never remember unless they’re plastered on every school and government building in the country), usurp parental rights, and employ mafia-style tactics in order to further their agenda of controlling a woman’s body.  “Family values,” my fat, white ASS!

I’m so glad my tax dollars are supporting groups that consider MY right as a mother to take my teenaged daughter for medical treatment both she and I agree is necessary as secondary to the need for all people to bow to the wishes of this God character, whose “mind” they claim to know - and in whose existence I fail utterly to believe.

I find nothing so depressing and hopeless as the thought of a woman (and in particular a teenaged girl) bearing a child before she’s ready.  At this time in history, it simply should NOT happen.  We have the technology to guarantee that every child born is both wanted and loved… what we don’t have is comprehensive, REALISTIC education; and more sad still, our society has politicized the issue of a woman’s right to choose the number of children she will bear as well as when she will do so, using religion as justification to limit the methods that make it possible.  Shame and fear are the tools employed to keep women in check, which is why it is so important to be open enough in our education and public dialogue to remove the shame associated with our bodies, and to stop falling prey to fear of some sort of divine retribution for standing up for our right to do whatever the hell we want to with them.

Write to your representatives NOW.  These lying hypocrites must be stopped…

FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Atheists Turn the Tables on Christians

Beyond Belief Media and Brian Flemming, the filmmaker who gave us one of the best movies of all time, The God Who Wasn’t There, has launched a campaign to bring the truth to churchgoers.  According to their press release of April 11th:

Hollywood—April 11, 2006. Declaring War on Easter, Beyond Belief Media has launched a preemptive attack on the Christian holiday, the company announced today. “Operation Easter Sanity” has already begun.

Using its documentary THE GOD WHO WASN’T THERE as the chief weapon, Beyond Belief Media is covertly planting DVDs of the film in churches throughout the United States. The popular movie, currently ranked #1 on Amazon.com’s independent documentaries list, is critical of the irrational beliefs of Christians and asserts that Jesus Christ did not exist.

A total of 666 DVDs will be hidden like “Easter eggs” in sanctuaries, church yards and other holy areas by Beyond Belief Media’s national team of volunteers. The DVDs will be slipped into hymnals and other locations where they are likely to be discovered by unsuspecting worshippers.

Some DVDs will be planted by undercover operatives among actual Easter eggs at churches holding egg hunts on Easter Sunday.

“People go to churches to hide from the truth,” explained Beyond Belief Media president Brian Flemming, a former Christian fundamentalist. “At no time is this more apparent than Easter, when Christians get together to convince each other that a man died, stayed dead three days, rose from the dead and then flew into the air above the clouds.

“Our nonviolent campaign sends the message that nowhere in the country is safe from the truth. Wherever Christian leaders are indoctrinating children with 2000-year-old fairy tales, the truth may just find its way there.
“Our ‘War on Easter’ is of course completely without violence of any kind. Christians believe that beating a man to a pulp and nailing him to a cross somehow solves all the world’s problems. Beyond Belief Media does not.”

More details as well as “battle reports” from field operatives are available at:
http://www.waroneaster.org

ABOUT BEYOND BELIEF MEDIA

The mission of Beyond Belief Media is to provoke conversation about the dangers of religious belief.

A quick look at the comments from Christians on the War On Easter site illustrates that while they are happy that their brand of proselytizing is protected by the First Amendment, the Beyond Belief Media volunteers doing the same is somehow more along the lines of “a hate crime.”

Calling bullshit on delusional thinking is a hate crime?  Wow… we’re living in fuckin’ Bizarro World!

I support the War On Easter.  And for good measure, I’ll also take this opportunity to say I deny the Holy Spirit!

However, the most heinous of my sacrilege and blasphemy is the following admission:  Marshmallow peeps are GROSS!!!

Friday, March 03, 2006

Robertson Gets the Boot from Religious Broadcasters’ Board

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy!

Robertson Loses Seat on Religious Broadcasters’ Board

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (March 2) - Christian broadcaster Pat ‘The Assassinator’ Robertson, criticized by some evangelicals for comments about Venezuela’s president and Israel’s prime minister, lost a bid for re-election to the National Religious Broadcasters’ board of directors.

Robertson, founder of the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, was one of 38 candidates for 33 board seats during the NRB’s recent convention. The group represents mostly evangelical radio and TV broadcasters.

NRB President Frank Wright said there was no broad effort to distance the group from Robertson. But “there was broad dismay with some of Pat’s comments and a feeling they were not helpful to Christian broadcasters in general,” he said in Wednesday’s Washington Post.

See the link for more…

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Lovin’ the Sheeples!

Normal Bob Smith has put faces to the folks whose hate mail is laugh-out-loud and piss-your-pants hilarious.  Check out The Sheeples!  Here’s one of my favorites:

Yeah, the First Amendment only protects speech as long as it’s not offensive to Christians… at least in the utterly delusional world in which they must live to continue believing. Heh.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

The Bible Tells Me So

Ran across this on one of the History Channel boards, and had to post it here as one of those examples of biblical justification for denying human rights to someone…

When the good Reverend Dr. Wilson was contacted requesting permission to publish his sermon, he replied:

AUGUSTA, January 8th, 1861.

Gentlemen:--I confess to an honest reluctance in allowing the publication of the sermon, a copy of which you politely request. It was not written with a view to wide circulation, nor was it prepared with exclusive reference to the present unhappy agitations of the popular mind. You are aware that it is the closing discourse of a series upon “Family Government,” intended for my own church, and for immediate effect at home. But, still, its discussion may be the means of doing a service to my slaveholding brethren throughout the State, by promoting intelligence upon a momentous subject of practical interest to them and the whole world. It is surely high time that the Bible view of slavery should be examined, and that we should begin to meet the infidel fanaticism of our infatuated enemies upon the elevated ground of a divine warrant for the institution we are resolved to cherish. My sermon is, therefore, placed at your disposal. (emphasis mine)

Joseph Wilson’s full sermon here: http://docsouth.unc.edu/wilson/wilson.html

I am sure that you will bear with me while I take another step in this great argument, and show how completely the Bible brings human slavery underneath the sanction of divine authority, upon other and stronger grounds. Indeed, my text compels me to take this course--for, if our domestic servitude be essentially different from that to which the Apostle’s exhortations refer, we do but beat the air with empty sounds when we endeavor to apply them to the masters and servants who compose the christian congregations of this section of our country. If Paul, or rather the great God, speaking by his inspired lips, meant to confine his evangelical teachings to a state of things wholly unlike that under which we live, then this portion of Scripture is to us a dead letter, and can have no influence upon our consciences or conduct. If we preach from it at all, therefore, it must be employed for the practical benefit of hearers now as much as when the Ephesian church opened their ears and hearts to its reception. And, in truth, in the suggestions of this very thought, there is a remote scriptural plea to be found for the divine sanction of slavery.

And further:

Does this great, beneficial, civilizing institution of slavery live beneath the light of His face, with no fault to be found with it upon the part of His infinite holiness, except when and wherein it may suffer abuse at the hands of the parties concerned? Surely the Bible is clear enough upon this point to satisfy the most sensitive conscience. Light cannot shine with greater brightness than does the doctrine of the sinlessness--nay, than does the doctrine of the righteousness--of an institution, which, besides being sustained and promoted by a long course of favorable providences, besides being recognized as a prime conservator of the civilization of the world, besides being one of the colored man’s foremost sources of blessing, is likewise directly sanctioned by both the utterance and silence of Scripture.

Well… that plan for controlling the darkies didn’t work out very well for the bible-thumpers of the 19th century; nor did their attempt to similarly keep the girls in their place in the 20th.  And they’re in for one hell of a fight in the 21st century, because most of us don’t give a flying fuck WHAT their buy-bull says about the homos… or anyone else for that matter.  It’s embarrassing enough to have to admit that such a large number of our adult citizens consider the myths of ancient goatherders to somehow be “true,” without allowing their fairy tales to hold any sort of sway or influence in public policy.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.—Voltaire