Category Archives: news

Lies of the Devil Talkers

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Pastor Manning is once again misquoting the Bible to bash gay people.
Pastor Manning is once again misquoting the Bible to bash gay people.
Let’s all heave a big sigh, because Pastor Manning and his church sign are at it again.

This week the sign says, “When the homos bullied the poor and needy in Sodom like they do in Harlem, Jesus fire and brim-stoned them,” and then cites three Biblical passages: Ezekial 16:48-50, Leviticus 20:13, and Genesis 19:24-? – the last one is cut off, as it doesn’t quite fit into the lit up part of the sign.

The first thing to note about these Bible verses is that all of them are in the Old Testament, where Jesus does not appear, as he hadn’t been born yet, and is not the person speaking. One could argue that it might not have been the intent of the Pastor to imply that Jesus is being quoted in those verses, but given the context of why this sign is saying this particular message now (which I will get to), that argument is wrong. So, the first lie in the sign is the notion that Jesus said anything about homosexuals at all. Jesus did not at any point at all in the Bible.

So, what do those verses actually say? Continue reading Lies of the Devil Talkers →

Good news, and good news

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So often what I wind up putting in Friday Links is bad news, outraging news, and so forth. The Tonight Show rounds up real news anchors to read things we’d all like to hear about on the news for a change. I’ve Got Good News and Good News:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Meanwhile, the ASAPScience guys finally settle the question, which is better for health reasons, drying your hands with paper towels or an air blower. Paper Towel vs Hand Dryers:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

And those scientists who built the small underwater robot that mimics swimming motions to maneuver and not scare off sea life have made some improvements: Octobot uses webbed arms to swim faster. There’s a short video in the story!

Homo devils in space!

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A pair of bigots.
A pair of bigots.
In case you didn’t already know that neither Pastor Manning nor Pastor Driscoll are even slightly acquainted with logic, the last couple week’s revelations will make it crystal clear.

I’m not even sure where to begin. Pastor Manning’s most recently posted youtube video explains how NASA’s Voyager spacecraft proves that homos are perverts, with a long digressive rant about rectums. Pastor Driscoll’s supporters have been trying to distance themselves from recently unearthed postings on the church’s forums in which Driscoll explained that god created each woman as a special home for a particular penis.

You can’t make this crazy stuff up!

Continue reading Homo devils in space! →

Rough, manly sport, part 5

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I’ve written many times before about my own ambivalent relationship with football. And, as we enter the second week of the regular season, my enthusiasm for my Seahawks is high after our great opening game, but my deep misgivings about the league and the institution have me at a low, and not just because of the case that everyone has been talking about this week.

First, let’s talk about Michael Sam…

Continue reading Rough, manly sport, part 5 →

Of course there’s more to the story

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It happens all the time. Authorities take some action which is clearly out of proportion to whatever has allegedly happened. Other people report on the incident, generating a lot of negative publicity. In response to the calls from the public, the authorities explain that there is more to the story. Those authorities then tell us that there is more “information” they neglected to mention before, and they spout of a story that sounds like a six-year-old’s excuse for why they didn’t break that lamp whose broken pieces they are standing over. Other people then repeat the excuses from the authorities as if said excuses were independently verified facts. Those of us who raised concerns about the original action are told to let it go, because “there’s more to the story.

Of course there’s more to the story. There always is. But like all things in life 95% of the “more” is either pure b.s. or irrelevant… Continue reading Of course there’s more to the story →

Weekend update: wolf in sheep’s clothing edition

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(Source: musingsfromunderthebus.wordpress.com)
(Source: musingsfromunderthebus.wordpress.com)
Mars Hill Church, a cult-like evangelical megachurch/ denomination headquartered right here in the Emerald City has had a really, really bad summer. Scandals about lead Pastor Mark Driscoll plagiarising most of the content of several of his books, the church spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy one of Driscoll’s books onto the New York Times best seller list, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for specific disasters overseas, then sending only a few hundred, raising millions of dollars for a Jesus Festival that was supposed to happen last weekend, but was simply never scheduled or organized, ordered members to shun other members who raised questions and taking further action to defame said former members, threatening legal action against former members based on spiritual covenants signed by the former members, suing former associate pastors who try to find work in other churches under non-compete clauses in employment agreements, and so on, and so on.

It got so bad that former members staged protests after Driscoll said all the charges were coming from anonymous people. And an evangelical interfaith cooperative that Driscoll co-founded kicked out Driscoll and the entire Mars Hill organization. Numerous evangelical conventions and similar events where Driscoll had been a lead speaker have suddenly removed him from the schedules and/or removed all mention of him from their web sites. 21 former Mars Hill pastors lodge formal charges against Mark Driscoll, and now the New York Times is reporting that Mark Driscoll Is Being Urged to Leave Mars Hill Church.

As I said before, all of these transgressions are serious problems. But all of these these things are merely symptoms of a deeper issue. Mars Hill claims to follow the teachings of Jesus, and Jesus had something to say on this issue: “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” (Matt 7:16-17)

When an organization is producing this much unethical and immoral behavior, it isn’t a matter of just one bad person. Even though I firmly believe that Driscoll is a narcissitic bigot and con man, he isn’t the only problem. He’s the leader of this church, but that doesn’t explain the financial shenanigans, lies, and violations of law at the National Organization for Marriage. Or the lies told by Save America. Nor the crimes against humanity and related actions by evangelical leaders such as Scott Lively. Or scamming tax-payers for millions in tax breaks for a creationist museum.

The evangelical fundamentalist theology is inherently hateful, fearful, and toxic. One of the evangelical movement’s central tenets is that in god’s eyes everyone isn’t merely imperfect, but infinitely wicked. And rather than seeing god’s love as infinitely merciful and compassionate, they see god as being so consumed by wrath at sin that only by killing his own son could he even consider being merciful.

They have scripture they quote to rationalize this belief, but other Christians read those same scriptures and come to a different conclusion. Evangelicals hold their fellow humans (and often themselves) in utter contempt, ignoring Jesus’ teachings about compassion. When you combine that with the anti-intellectual, anti-modernist mindset of most fundamentalists, it is no surprise that so many of their leaders and institutions are corrupt, because the followers are infinitely susceptible to being hoodwinked.

Shootings

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Ahmed Said (upper) and Dwone Anderson-Young (lower) were murdered, execution style, together.
Ahmed Said (upper) and Dwone Anderson-Young (lower) were murdered, execution style, together.
On the night of May 31st, two young men, Dwone Anderson-Young and Ahmed Said, spent an evening dancing at a gay bar, then were seen together later at a nearby pizza place. Dwone was the great-grandson of jazz legend Ernestine Anderson. Ahmed’s family immigrated more recently from Somalia. Dwone was less than two weeks from graduating from the University of Washington and already had a job lined up at Microsoft. Unfortunately, not many hours after they left the pizza place together, in the wee small hours of June 1st, they were both murdered on the street, not far from Dwone’s home.

The motive for the crime was unknown at first, though robbery was immediately ruled out. Neither young man was linked to any gang and neither had a criminal record. They were both openly gay and well-known in the neighborhood. While there are gay gang-bangers, they tend to be deeply, deeply closeted.

Witnesses placed another young man, one with a rather long and violent criminal record, near the scene…

Continue reading Shootings →

They will know you are Christians by your misspelled death threats

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So, the author of Awkward Moments (not found in your average) Children’s Bible was scheduled to appear at an Atheist Alliance of America Conference near Seattle, until he received a rather scary pair of death threats in the mail:


Do I have your attention now? You think your so safe to hide behind a fake name to spread lies about God and attacking Christians? You aren’t.

(Spelling errors from the original letter, signed “God’s Little Helper”)

While there is a photo of the first letter at the linked site, the second letter is in police custody. According to the author, while the police agreed the first letter was creepy and they strongly advised that he take precautions to protect himself and his family (including suggesting he hire a bodyguard), the first letter didn’t rise to the level of an actionable threat. Even though it quoted a section of Deuteronomy that included the phrase, “Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself.” The threatening letter also said, “I’ll see you up in Seattle next week. You wont see me.” But apparently that doesn’t constitute, under state law, a threat.

Apparently, however, the second letter did.

I want to point out that his book does not, in fact, contain any lies. The book’s text is lifted straight from the Bible (or in some sections, from the writings of such Christian luminaries as Pat Robertson and Ken Ham) and the children’s book-style illustrations adhere faithfully to that text. The whole point of the book is that these are passages from the Bible that are almost never taught in any Christian school or church. They are very disturbing, or at least uncomfortable, passages.

According to one of the other articles I read on this, a substantial number of the book sales have been to Christian teachers and pastors who use the books to get their congregations to read these more challenging passages of the Bible, and more importantly, discuss them.

Folks like “God’s Little Helper” either are so unfamiliar with their own holy book that they aren’t aware that the text is literally coming out of the Bible, or they’re angry because they think the passages are being distorted somehow.

In any case, even though the conference offered to hire some off-duty police and military personnel to serve as body guards and security, the author decided to cancel his appearance. As he said, he can’t ask other people to put themselves at risk to defend his own lack of belief. On the other hand, a lot of attendees at the convention decided to wear badges that bore the name of the author, as a sign of solidarity.

Proving they’re braver than the person sending anonymous death threats through the mail.

Leopard’s spots and sheep’s clothing, part 2

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“Mars Hill Church” cartoon © David Hayward - See more at: http://nakedpastor.com/
“Mars Hill Church” cartoon © David Hayward – See more at: http://nakedpastor.com/
I’ve written a few times about Mars Hill Church, a local megachurch that has one of its many worship centers just 8 blocks from my house. This week, several people were tweeting or re-blogging this post: Are Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church sick?, which sums up many of the problems plaguing the church and its lead pastor. It’s gotten so bad that an evangelical organization that Mars Hill’s pastor founded has kicked out the pastor and his church: Acts 29 Network Removes Co-founder Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church From Membership.

On the one hand, good for these folks for taking a stand. However, I should point out that the driving impetus appears to be things such as:
Continue reading Leopard’s spots and sheep’s clothing, part 2 →

Anti-gay organization twists bad metaphor into hyper-pretzel

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Jeremy Hooper over at GoodAsYou.Org explains the new argument the haters are urging their supporters to use: Ruth Institute (former NOM affiliate): Same-sex marriage is as much of a wedge as interracial marriage bans.

The argument they are pushing is: “allowing same sex couples to marry is exactly the same as prohibiting interracial couples to marry.” If you don’t read that closely, it sounds like they’re finally agreeing with one of our arguments, but look again (and go look at the confusing graphic that accompanies the meme they’re trying to get their people to post everywhere).

Because interracial marriage bans prevented people from marrying who they wanted to merely because the color of one half of the couple’s skin didn’t match the other was bad. Most everyone agrees the interracial marriage ban was bad. And the Ruth Institute agrees. But, they say, allowing same-sex couples to marry is just as bad because it prevents straight women from marrying gay men if they want to. And so forth.

That’s literally their argument.

Which is wrong on so, so many levels. Allowing my husband and I to legally marry does not prevent any gay person (closeted or not) from entering into a marriage with a straight person if they want. It doesn’t. If they want to do that, they can. I don’t know why they would want to, but they can.

Allowing someone to do something doesn’t prevent other people for doing it.

The closest you can get to any “logic” in this argument is that if marriage equality is not available anywhere, it increases the odds that people will be closeted, and it makes it slightly more likely that unsuspecting straight people will get married to closeted gay people, and probably suffer a lot of heartache later on.

I think Jeremy is right: desperation is making them lose their minds.

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