Literate Perversions

Helping Boys Become Men, and Girls Become Women: How to Prevent Homosexuality

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The nice folks at Focus on the Family give parents a few pointers on how to keep their little darlings from growing up to be homos. Interestingly, they seem to be a lot more concerned about keeping boys from going down the path of queerness than girls. In the end, I suppose what freaks fundamentalists out is the idea of all their butch, manly men becoming swishy, effeminate faggots with a highly-developed fashion sense; women being fairly irrelevant to your average fundy, dykes aren’t quite so scary. Anyway, here are a few pieces of advice from the Christers on how to raise a “morally straight” child:

3. Recognize that most homosexuals “were not explicitly [so] when they were children. More often, they displayed a ‘nonmasculinity’ that set them painfully apart from other boys: unathletic — somewhat passive, unaggressive and uninterested in rough-and-tumble play. A number of them had traits that could be considered gifts: bright, precocious, social and relational, and artistically talented.” Tip: Discern whether your boy struggles with feelings of “not belonging.” If he does, seek help.

4. The father plays an essential role in a boy’s normal development as a man. “The truth is, Dad is more important than Mom. Mothers make boys. Fathers make men.… Girls can continue to grow in their identification with their mothers. On the other hand, a boy has an additional developmental task — to disidentify from his mother and identify with his father.”

This starts about 18 months of age. The father needs to be there physically and emotionally to affirm his son’s maleness for the remainder of the preschool years (and beyond, especially during puberty).

“A boy needs to see his father as confident, self-assured and decisive. He also needs him to be supportive, sensitive and caring. Mother needs to back off a bit. What I mean is, don’t smother him.” Tip: Single mothers may need to recruit a trustworthy male role model.

Fundy Logic 101

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Now, I realize that critical thinking is kind of unhip, unfashionable, godless, unpatriotic, carcinogenic, fattening, and generally old-fashioned these days. But just when I think my cynicism has been pushed to the limit, there’s always the Internet to lower my opinion of the damned human race. Today I found another item on my list of Reasons I’m Glad I Gave Up the Religion Thang: an interminable, allegedly “humorous” list of 266 straw-man arguments against atheism titled “You May Be a Fundy Atheist If…” The whole thing gets unbearable and tedious really quick. The one below stuck right out at me, though; my brain hurts just trying to parse the logic. [Read more…]

Not-So-Funny Funnies

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As usual, the absurdity of the world is such that the only thing that makes sense is reading the comics:

Some notes on the references:

  • Rosewood, Florida was a black town which was burned to the ground by a white mob, because a white woman alleged that she’d been sexually assaulted by a black man.
  • In 1989, Charles Stuart shot his pregnant wife through the head while driving through a black section of Boston and claimed they’d been assaulted by a black man. The cops came down on the neighborhood, randomly stopping black men and finally arresting William Bennett, a black man with a long rap sheet. When suspicion began to move away from Bennett to Stuart, Stuart committed suicide.
  • Susan Smith was convicted for murdering her two sons by driving her car into a lake. She initially told the police that a black man had carjacked the automobile and drove away with the children, inspiring a hunt for the “killer” before the truth came out.

    • And, of course, we know the story of the “Runaway Bride.”

    This strip, from Matt Bors, says just about everything that needs to be said about the attempts by the religious right to “re-educate us” in the name of the Lord.

You're Beautiful When You're Angry.

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“You’re beautiful when you’re angry.” Five words that are sure to get you a smackdown that will turn you inside out. It’s the ultimate cliché of condescension, especially that of a man brushing off a woman. That it is a cliché obscures its truth and blinds us to how beautiful anger really can be.

Americans almost have as much of a problem with anger as sex. It scares the shit out of us. Like fucking, anger is sloppy and impolite, and mature people make damn sure not to show it. We should keep it inside, like our dirty little secret, the mad relative that’s kept locked in the attic. [Read more…]

To Billy Sunday, by Carl Sandburg

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Billy Sunday: Nov. 19, 1863 - Nov. 6, 1935

Billy Sunday: Nov. 19, 1863 – Nov. 6, 1935

Billy Sunday was a well-known fundamentalist in the early 1900’s, famed not only for his crusading against liquor (and for Prohibition), but for also becoming as rich as Croesus in the process. His sermons were of the classic “fire and brimstone” variety. Carl Sandburg wrote his own fire and brimstone sermon against Sunday and his firey moralizing. Originally titled “To a Contemporary Bunkshooter” with references to Sunday removed to avoid libel, it was only printed in its original form after both men had passed on. In his way, Sunday is stronger than ever, thanks to the modern-day versions of him who have carried his legacy deep, deep into the halls of power; if there is one overwhelming threat to our freedom today, it is the glee with which the wall between Church and State is being demolished, and how some refuse to acknowledge its validity at all. The portrait Sandburg paints of a conman in preacher’s clothing hasn’t faded one bit in the ninety years since it was written. If anything, now that the charlatans run the place, it’s more important to remember what they are.

[Read more…]

Eschaton

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Via Eschaton, another item courtesy of Mambotaxi. This is an excerpt from Michaelangelo Signorile, who talks about confronting Ratzinger in a protest years ago. It’s always worth remembering that Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition. While the Congregation/Inquisition may have put away their racks and other torture devices, their function is still to enforce orthodoxy within the Church. Pope John Paul II stifled intellectual freedom and dissent in the Church, deliberately appointing only Cardinals who agreed with his traditionalist views. Pope Benedict XVI comes from an authoritarian background, and queers and women are likely to get especially screwed by it. And not in the good way.

A New Pope

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The election of Joseph Ratzinger to the Papacy wasn’t really a surprise, but even in the less than 24 hours since the Cardinals chose him, his ascension has sent out a lot of shockwaves among Catholics and non-Catholics. For people like myself, it was an affirmation of what we already knew: the Church is determined to keep backing away from the progressive reforms it made in Vatican II and enforce a strict, reactive moral view as broadly as it can. My feeling is that this is the worst thing the Church could do for itself right now. Already, the faithful are falling away left and right, and attempts to enforce moralities that run counter to the reality of everyday life aren’t going to bring people back to the Church.

The effect of Ratzinger’s ascension to Pope Benedict XVI on Mambotaxi, one of my friends at PeoplesForum, was immediate, forceful, and poignant. She had already withdrawn from the Church years ago, becoming an agnostic, but upon hearing about the new Pope, she wrote a letter to her local parish and diocese, expressing how final and irrevocable the choice of Ratzinger made the gap between herself and the Church:

Re: Apostasy

Sirs:

I was baptized in Saint Joe’s in 1968, given First Communion there in 1975 and Confirmed in 1982. My parents were Robert E. M___ and Mary Ann B. M___. My three younger brothers were also baptized at St. Joe’s, all of my siblings received First Communion there, we all attended CCD there, and my older siblings were also Confirmed there (we moved to Connecticut the year I was Confirmed).

I write now to ask that I be apostasized and no longer considered a member of the Catholic Church. I drifted away from the Church in my teens and ultimately became an agnostic. As I grew older, I developed fundamental disagreements with the Church and its doctrine, and eventually they became irreconcilable. When I found out in the 1990s that Father Hanley, who had presided over both my First Communion and my Confirmation, had not only molested young boys in my CCD classes but that the Diocese had simply moved him to another parish, I knew that I would not return to the Church that had betrayed my trust.

However, despite this, I never formally requested that my relationship with the Church be severed. Now, however, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has become Pope Benedict XVI. I can no longer be associated with or counted as a member of the Church of Rome when it has so clearly decided to abandon the reforms put in place by Vatican II and Pope John XXIII. Accordingly, I respectfully request that you apostasize me.

Sincerely,

I have never been a Catholic, and no longer believe in any gods at all. But I think that Mambotaxi’s letter says it for all of us, believers or no. If there was any reason to believe that the Church would move towards a moral view that confronts the twenty-first century rationally and humanely, the choice of the Cardinals eliminates it completely.

That Sweet Scent of Our Lord….

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More religious silliness. As if the gullible hordes singing the praises of the

Pope weren’t enough, The Decadent West has an article about a South Dakota couple who are pimping candles that supposedly give out the scent of Christ’s garments. Sayeth the He-Pimp of the “His Essence” candlemaking scam:

“You can’t see him and you can’t touch him,” says Bob Tosterud. “This is a

situation where you may be able to sense him by smelling. And it provides a

really new dimension to one’s experience with Jesus.”

The Decadent West asks a pertinent question about this scam:

What’s the bigger crime: selling this shit in the name of Jesus or a priest

telling some altar boy the only way he can receive Communion is if he drinks it

from the spigot?

Hey, at least little Johnny’s getting a Holy low calorie treat and his daily

dose of protein. For free! “His essence”, indeed.

Consumer Reports: What's the Best Religion?

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Untitled document Courtesy of Fade to Black magazine, the issue of which is the path to Almighty God is finally settled in a scientific, objective manner. As an atheist, it looks like I'm screwed. That's okay, though. I'm used to it.

Christianity
This is by far was the most popular belief among the aborigines people, with more than 2 out 4 preferring it. The concept of a loving god, was easy to understand, since it bore some semblance to their god "Khatimi" , the god of 'big shiny things'. This belief was so favorable among the tribesmen that a few even made a small donation to the Robert Schuller Ministries at the end of their two weeks' trial.

Muslim
Although not very popular it did appeal to a few of the aborigines. Ironically the few tribesmen who chose the Muslim religion soon got into an altercation with those who preferred Judaism. The dispute was over the territorial right of the grass hut in which they were living. The tribesmen who choose the Muslim religion claimed they were in it first.

Atheism
Although ranking high on our scholarly section, this belief was not preferred by any of our testers. The concept of life being meaningless and with no hope of an after life, left most of the tribesmen desponded and depressed, with a few actually needing short term therapy, after the four week trial.