Religion
« Previous EntriesDavid Davis: Massive Fuckstain.
Thursday, August 21st, 2008I’m sure you have heard of this story by now but since new information has popped up I thought it would be good to go over it again for the class.
Davis Davis is the principle at a high school in Ponce De Leon, Florida. Heather Gillman was a student that went to him for help. Heather was being harassed by other students for being a lesbian and thought Davis could help her. Instead he went on what can only be described as a witch hunt, outing her to her parents, ordering her to stay away from children and suspending any of her friends that showed any support for her.
According to U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak “He went so far as to lift the shirts of female students to insure the letters ‘GP’ or the words ‘Gay Pride’ were not written on their bodies.”
What the fuck?
With the backing of the ACLU Gillman sued the school and won. Davis has since lost his gig as principle at the school but he remains a teacher there. What really caught my attention about this case was the response from the school board’s lawyer when asked if there was a policy against wearing clothing that supported gay rights in the school district.
As has clearly been shown at Ponce de Leon School in September of this year, the types of clothing and symbols your clients seek to wear to school will likely be disruptive and interfere with the educational process. Also, said symbols were used and can further be used by select students to show participation in an illegal organization as defined by the School Board
Again, what the fuck? An illegal organization?
During the trial Davis had to take the stand and some of his quotes will no doubt amuse you:
The principal went on to admit that while censoring rainbows and gay pride messages he allowed students to wear other symbols many find controversial, such as the Confederate flag.
Davis also testified that he believed rainbows were “sexually suggestive” and would make students unable to study because they’d be picturing gay sex acts in their mind.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this guy?
Now that the quick review is over let us jump forward to the more recent news.
This is the headline on Yahoo: Fla. town backs ex-principal in gay student case.
“We are a small, rural district in the Bible Belt with strong Christian beliefs and feel like homosexuality is wrong,” said Steve Griffin, Holmes County’s school superintendent, who keeps a Bible on his desk and framed Scriptures on his office walls.
I have no idea how there are still parts of the world that act like this, let alone in my own country.
Fags Unite!
Monday, March 31st, 2008No, I’m not bashing here.
Because I am a fag, and proud of it.
Don’t worry, guys, I still like the ladies, but I’m going to proudly call myself a fag.
Why, you ask? Because I am, and so is anyone else who opposes Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. According to the Phelps clan, that is. It has nothing to do with homosexuality any longer. In Phelps’ eyes, a ‘fag’ is anyone not a member of his congregation.
This past weekend Topeka, Kansas was the scene of the first annual Million Fag March, a peaceful protest against Phelps and his cronies. The motto of the protest is that freedom of speech works both ways. Fred Phelps may have the right to picket when and where he pleases, and so do the rest of us.
While I believe a peaceful protest against the WBC is a valiant and wonderful idea, I have to question whether or not it will serve the purpose intended. While Fred Phelps and his family are nothing but an array of vile creatures, this protest may give them attention that they do not deserve.
I’ve always been a proponent of ignoring the WBC and its idiocy. The more attention given to them, the more of the spotlight they monopolize. What they want is media attention, and anything done to attract that attention is welcomed by them. Even protests against them. Especially protests against them.
Fred Phelps is an old man who’s probably going to be dead sooner than later. Depending on whatever religion you follow, he’s either going to burn in Hell or come back as a retarded squirrel. Or just not exist, if you don’t believe in an afterlife.
Once he’s gone, that Church is not going to have the momentum to go on like it has been. I don’t think his daughter, Shirley, will be able to garner the same following as he has and the ‘movement’ will die.
Let nature take its course.
Hey, Fucking Prayer Cures Diabetes!
Saturday, March 29th, 2008Being diabetic, I’ve got to say, I’d like to know what Dale and Leilani Neumann know that I don’t. Maybe they’re on to something? Maybe I can stop taking twenty goddamn pills a day? Maybe I can eat cake?
Oh, wait:
“Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin says Madeline Neumann died Sunday, and an autopsy determined the cause was diabetic ketoacidosis, which left her with too little insulin in her body. The chief says she had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness.”
Here’s the story if you’re so inclined
According to the Associated Press, these fuckwits kept praying right up until 11 year old Madeline stopped breathing.
I can take religious people and their beliefs. Really, some of my best friends and closest family members believe in some Imaginary Man in the Sky. Great– that’s fine. If faith gives you comfort, I’m all for it. Personally, I find my comfort in my belief in myself, my love for my family, perhaps (just perhaps) some harebrained Zen mumbo-jumbo, and occasionally at the bottom of a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey, but that’s just me.
I gotta tell ya, though, when you start thinking your Imaginary Man in the Sky is going to cure your kid of an incurable fucking disease, so much so that your way to deal with watching her suffer and grow increasingly ill is to just get more people to HELP you pray (because, clearly, your Imaginary Man in the Sky must be deaf or something if he can’t just hear you), you’ve clearly missed the boat somewhere.
However irrational I may think faith is, I’ll never knock anyone’s belief so long as, (A), they aren’t trying to shove it down my fucking throat, and (B), they aren’t using it as an excuse to harm someone else. Which, unfortunately, is usually the problem with most religious extremists (and even not-so-extremists).
The Neumann’s have two other girls, 13 and 16, which, thankfully, since the above story was written, the authorities have taken away from them. Which, considering the fact that diabetes tends to be, oh, I don’t know, fucking genetic, is probably for the best.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be sitting in a dark corner, by myself, rocking and mumbling incoherently. I’m gonna see if I can get rid of this stupid diabetes by chanting.
Is It Fair?
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008I read a few news stories earlier today about a group of Buddhist monks in Thailand who were using the internet social networking site Hi5 to lure women back to the monastery for sex. Some reports said they were raping these women, other reports say it was consensual so I’m not going to draw any conclusions about that.
I am going to predict, however, that these monks are going to be representative of the whole religion in the eyes of the unforgiving public. It seems like a trend nowadays that if someone who holds religious office does something immoral, the entire religion is blamed for it.
Take the Catholics, for example. The whole Catholic priest pedophilia scandal rocked the world when it was brought to light. Ever since the first allegations of this came out, the entire Catholic faith was put under a microscope and every single Catholic priest was under suspicion. I was raised Catholic, spent some time as an altar boy, went to a Catholic University and I can tell you first hand that I never witnessed any sort of misbehavior by a priest. I was never molested, nor did I hear of any other child I knew being molested by a Catholic priest.
In college I spent a lot of time with the Franciscan order of Friars. These were some of the most decent, moral men I had ever known and have known to this day. Never did I see one act innapropriately toward anyone else.
This same type of stereotyping is going to happen with the Buddhists now that this incident has come to national attention. Since the media likes to sensationalize everything, this is going to become a major scandal and the Buddhists are going to be treated as unfairly as the Catholics.
The reason it’s unfair is because members of any religious order who commit acts of immorality are singled out. There are a lot of sexual predators on this planet, but they’re not stereotyped like Catholic priests are because they come from all walks of life. There are literally thousands of registered sex offenders in the United States alone, and only a handful of those belong to any religious order. It can be safe to say that there are more sex offenders that belong to a particular race (whether that be Irish, Black, Hispanic, Polish, or whatever ; I’m not singling out an entire ethnicity because I’m arguing against stereotyping here) than there are Catholic priests who commit these offenses. There are probably more lay Catholic sex offenders than there are offenders in the clergy. But that doesn’t make national headlines because it’s not sensational enough.
Shawn Lonsdale - Murdered?
Friday, February 22nd, 2008I was going to write a blog about this, but I found an excellent post regarding the death of Shawn Lonsdale on another site. I’m posting the link and the contents.
http://dreamsendweb.com/2008/02/19/suspicious-death-of-scientology-critic-shawn-lonsdale/
The following was taken from the blog “Dream’s End” which can be found by clicking on the above link.
For a brief time, Shawn Lonsdale, 39, was a fixture outside Scientology’s infamous Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida (the hotel in which Lisa McPherson died under the “care” of Scientologists). He was filming what he called a pseudo-documentary and stood for hours at a time gathering footage. He also posted frequently on various anti-Scientology discussion forums and was a well known activist.
He endured death threats and smear campaigns. He worked for a brief time in his younger days as a male prostitute, and flyers with this information were posted all over town. He was undeterred by these tactics. You can read more about him here. You can also see Lonsdale featured in a BBC documentary about Scientology, including a scene in which uberhandler Tommy Davis rushes onto the scene to make sure that reporter John Sweeney knows about Lonsdale’s minor criminal convictions. The link takes you to a compilation video of what Sweeney endured in filming his documentary. Lonsdale’s bit starts at around 2:45.)
And now, one week after the most widespread anti-Scientology action in history, he is dead from what police are calling an “apparent suicide.”
« Previous Entries
