Sometimes I have an idealistic view of our government. I think that the best and brightest have worked their way to the top, and we have intelligent people running our country.
And then I actually hear some representatives say, and I’m brought back to reality. Oklahoma’s State Representative, Sally Kern, is the person this week. Pastor’s wife and homophobe, she is known for saying that homosexuality is “the biggest threat [America] has” and will “destroy our young people, it will destroy this nation.”
Most recently she has created “Oklahoma Citizen’s Proclamation for Morality” which blames “abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse and many other forms of debauchery” for the country’s economic woes.
The problem is, those things were just as prominent when things were going well. And they’ll still be around again when things turn around. But she’s a fundie, so it’s difficult to put that together.
What is their solution? Oh, they can’t WAIT to tell you, praise Jebus:
BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, believers in the One True God and His only Son, call upon all to join with us in recognizing that “Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord,” and humbly implore all who love Truth and Virtue to live above reproach in the sight of God and man with a firm reliance on the leadership and protection of Almighty God; and
BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Holy God, our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment, and grant a national awakening of righteousness and Christian renewal as we repent of our great sin.
Well good luck, but I doubt God, if he exists, thinks much of their resolution. Our economic trouble has nothing to do with some kind of sadistic theistic punishment — it’s what happens when people overspend and get themselves into too much debt. We didn’t need a sky-fairy to manipulate our markets and cause people to default on their mortgages — we can do that just fine by ourselves.
But let’s just pretend for a minute that this is a judgement of God. Instead of hurting people who commit those horrendous “sins,” it’s the single mom with three kids who loses her job and can’t find work. It’s the Christian auto worker who is layed off. The financial crisis is hardest on the poor — those who are most religious. And here I am, a blasphemer and an atheist, and I have more work than I can handle.
How would there be any kind of justice in that judgement? If our trouble is a punishment from God, it would raise a lot of questions about whether he really is “holy” and someone to worship and plead for him to stop hurting people.
But it doesn’t have anything to do with God. It’s just economics. There is nothing that needs more than a natural explanation.
So let’s stop with all the superstitious crap and work on the problem, shall we?
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48 Comments
I don’t think that they fully understand that most of the laws that have allowed this crisis were created and passed by christians. I have also noticed that they fail to read history and any nation that tends to claim to be favored by god tends to fail. This just seems to be another of those attempts to avoid taking responsibility for their screw ups.
Seeing how every law has been passed by a majority of Christians including all the civil rights bills I am confused by your attempted connections just as I am confused by those who think this crisis stems for the passing of a few laws.
Well, except that G Dub and Co were more concerned about money than people (as evidenced by the entire 8 years in office) and allowed the deregulation of Wall Street to a point that crisis was inevitable (seeing as how total free markets are always self-destructive), and that, coupled with an enforcement board too corrupt to catch someone as obvious as Berney Madoff, caused our crisis. Yay, Bushco!
Glass-Steagall was repealed by Clinton, not W. Granted he did nothing to stop it and allowed the Fed to accelerate the collapse, but you can’t hang all the blame on monkey boy…
From wiki:
“The bill that ultimately repealed the Act was introduced in the Senate by Phil Gramm (Republican of Texas) and in the House of Representatives by Jim Leach (R-Iowa) in 1999. The bills were passed by Republican majorities on party lines by a 54-44 vote in the Senate[12] and by a 343-86 vote in the House of Representatives.[13] After passing both the Senate and House the bill was moved to a conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. The final bill resolving the differences was passed in the Senate 90-8 (one not voting) and in the House: 362-57 (15 not voting). The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999. [14]“
And here is a more detailed explanation of the demise of Glass-Steagal:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html
So, I think it is safe to say that people more concerned about money than economic security pushed for the de-regulation that is a major lynch pin in this crisis. Sure, Clinton signed the law in, after is was effectively made useless by the Fed exploiting loopholes. Now, Bush is a good ol’ boy style businessman who comes into office with a VP that is eye-balls deep in his own business dealings. Too bad that they didn’t foresee that their gambling and laissez-faire attitude would result in a crisis.
Or, maybe as Sally Kerns indicates, it’s us “heathen liberals” (who usually support regulation) that caused the problem…
I think these others pretty much answered it for me. The laws allowed people to do the same things that caused the Great Depression.
Except the great depression was caused by the colossally inept actions of the Federal Reserve (contracting money supply). We however are in a recession a natural part of the market economy that is different for a depression which stem from political policies.
Ok- keep livin’ that dream if you like…
I don’t think that this is a natural recession because laws pasted in the last 15 years made it easy for people who put their greed ahead of all things to manipulate the market. Some people within the christian religion have made greed a sign of favor from god, thus they pushed those in the government to pass laws that weren’t in the best interest of most Americans but in their favor. In an earlier comment you brought up the civil rights issue and yeah it was christians that passed those laws. Would those laws have been passed if a vast number of Americans not been demanding them? That is one of the difference I see in the two actions. A few truly wanted the financial laws, while a large number of Americans wanted the the civil rights laws.
It’s the same as usual – when things are tough, blame The Other. Just like in Nazi Germany – the difference is only scale.
Wow, Godwin in the second sentence…
I think it’s more that these people blame teh ghey for everything. If you lose your job, it’s the gays. If your wife doesn’t obey you fast enough, it’s the lesbians putting ideas in her head. If you can’t find your keys, it’s because some guy in bottomless chaps and a handlebar moustache has inserted them in a special place for his own particular pleasure. Never mind that it’s probably just that you’re bad at your job, your wife is sick of being your slave and you didn’t check down the back of the couch. Even in the good times, they would blame their champagne being insufficiently fizzy on the waiter being gay, if they were the kind of people who drank champagne. Since they’re more likely to be drinking wheat-based swill under the impression that it’s beer, or maybe some low-quality fermented grape juice, they’ll probably blame its poor quality on gays doing nasty things above the vats, rather than just accepting that sometimes bad things happen, and in american megabreweries they happen a little more often than usual.
Wow, that went off on a complete tangent… sorry.
Haha, I know. Sorry >.<
The point still stands, though.
Well the Jews will be the next to take the blame since everyone know we control all of the world financial systems and were spending the last few decades convincing good x-tian men to become gay in order to cause this financial breakdown.
How can you oppose at the same time illegitimate births and abortion?
How is it that divorce is a thing to blame, but not gender violence?
For the same reason that the bible gives incredible detail on the methods of animal sacrifice, but barely breathes a word against rape, and lets you beat your slave within an inch of his life. It’s a different set of priorities.
Oh, I forgot. Fundies are inmoral people ;-)
Clearly you’re just not trying, Daniel – if you got back into the gay pornography business I’m sure you’d start to suffer.
Actually you’d probably still be just as busy with work. In fact you’d probably have your hands full.
Thank you, I’ll be here all week.
I love how this works so well for, say, Iran or the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Just change a couple words, and…
BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, believers in the One True God and Muhammad, his Prophet, call upon all to join with us in recognizing that “Blessed is the Nation whose God is Allah,” and humbly implore all who love Truth and Virtue to live above reproach in the sight of Allah and man with a firm reliance on the leadership and protection of Allah; and
BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Allah, our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment, and grant a national awakening of righteousness and Islamic renewal as we repent of our great sin.”
It is frightening how similar Islamic and Christian fundamentalists are: both support forcing religion into schools, government, and courts, both support forcing their twisted view of morality onto everyone through religious laws, both think that their One True God has blessed their political ambitions, both want to only permit rights to those people whom they deem worthy, both see to problem in using war/violence to promote their theo-political ambitions, etc.
The reason fundamentalist Christians and Islamists hate each other so much is they are so much alike.
Exactly. This is my complaint as well. I thought we had rights that allowed us freedom of religion. But I guess not at the state level. I guess at the state level they can ram it down our throats all they want. *grumble*
I revise my statement. The Texas Constitution is subject to the US Constitution, and it deals with religion in its Bill of Rights:
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/constitutions/text/IART01.html
I imagine most states have something similar…
She’s so busy pointing her finger at others that she fails to see the ugliness of the hatred and ignorance which spews out of her face.
Planks and motes come to mind. Oh forgive me FSM!
“She’s so busy pointing her finger at others that she fails to see the ugliness of the hatred and ignorance which spews out of her face.”
Thats the whole point of religion.
I knew it… it’s the homo’s fault!!!!
They must have been plotting this for a long time. They’re sneaky you know.
Easy. Keeping women ‘in their place” explains it all. Gender and domestic violence were frowned on some, but in the good old days, wife-beating was kept private as a family matter. Unless it got “too bad”, which implies that there is a level that is “OK”.
Anti-abortion-choice people are very seldom out there helping and providing sex education, birth control, and vasectomies. In fact, I bet you can hardly even imagine that, it’s so contradictory to the way most of them are.
When you look at them with the explanation that they do not want women having sex, or being sexual, except when it is in marriage and followed by pregnancy and having a baby because that is “their place”, it all becomes so clear.
Their lack of interest in providing birth control to prevent the need for abortion, their lack of interest in harsh punishment for men who provide the sperm, their belief in any “punishment” at all: all clearly shows their hatred of women being sexual without forced pregnancy, disease or fear, and their extreme punitive nature.
There is nothing rational in being against abortion choice and being against contraception and sterilization. The irrational hatred of women being sexual without being mothers is necessary to explain that irrationality.
Marriage of gays shows up marriage as the government-sanctioned license that it is, and kinda strips away the “sacred” bit. It stops letting people be quite so fuddled and muddy about mixing up church and state, and they don’t like that. Besides being “sacred”, marriage is also “women’s place”. Their whole notion of marriage is being turned upside down and going to hell! And that’s what you’ll hear them saying is happening to the world!
This would not be a problem. Fundies traditionally have absolute no problem with collective punishment. If someone is wicked, God is entirely justified in making an entire country suffer. Who are we to question His righteous anger?
Collateral damage.
I’ve come to understand why many Christians seem to be quite accepting of–even enthusiastic about–collateral damage in American wars overseas. “Thousands of civilians have died? Sad but unavoidable.”
The reason: their God is the all-time grand-master of collateral damage. He routinely orders the slaughter of entire tribes or nations, sparing not even the livestock. He flooded the entire world, killing every infant alive, in order to judge the guilty. You will never find a judge with as blunt an instrument as what God uses. I actually talked to a Christian who thought AIDS was God’s judgment on gay people, and when I asked about children who are born with HIV, or the millions of AIDS orphans in Africa, she shrugged and said it was “unfortunate”.
So it’s okay if plenty of innocent people are hurt in one of his judgments, which explains why good people lose their jobs in an economic judgment on a nation.
Also, collateral damage doesn’t matter to most Americans as the thousands of civilians who died in wars overseas didn’t look like us (well, at least not like most of us), didn’t worship our god, and didn’t live within a stone’s throw of us.
1) “…which blames “abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse and many other forms of debauchery” for the country’s economic woes.” Well, the (Roman Catholic) Church is guilty of causing (or forcing) abortion, illegitimate births, and child abuse (and other forms of debauchery). And some of the rest too. Who else is busy here?
2) “… that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Holy God, our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation”. Is God now in the debating team?
“And here I am, a blasphemer and an atheist, and I have more work than I can handle.”
I know what you mean. I just landed a >70k job myself about a month ago, and the guilty schadenfreude I feel when I hear street preachers talking about their flock’s hard times is very, very hard to repress.
I shouldn’t feel good about it. It’s cruel to enjoy the misery of others – even when some part of me feels that many of them deserve that misery for being insistent, belligerant asshats.
But the preachers are the ones that deserve the fiscal trouble, and they aren’t the people hurting. The belligerant asshats in question are the ones getting up to 10% of their members’ income in tax-free donations. Their “hard times” are barely palpable compared to that of their congregation.
So yes, the schadenfreude is there, but it isn’t even justified.
This is illustrative of the religious philosophy I can totally do without – “everything happens for a reason.” Things are bad all over > God has a reason > God is teaching and/or punishing a whole population > Because he is watching and he judges and interferes > and some people aren’t “on the team, God judges the whole team and finds us unworthy.
So just, all the sinners or “slackers” should righten up so god still loves us best and makes everyone prosperous again.
Freaks me out that some people think that’s how it works. There is no god, “he” is unconcerned. When we were prosperous as a nation, there were still “sinners.” When we were in a recession, there were still “sinners” and we became prosperous. Like tunnel vision. I use the word sinners to describe “the usual ills of society” as described by fundamentalist Christians and other uptight people. I care less about how they excuse the collateral damage – “why does your god let good people starve and etc.?” I don’t care what they have to say. The worst little inkling of religion still holds god responsible for the management of everything. It’s not up to us except to find out what he has designed for our “purpose” or discover why we are being “punished” and can’t find a path to success, only to become deluded (or feel better) only when Christ has taken over. Your life is still in the shitter, religious people aren’t exempt from totally bankrupt morals such as greed and hypocrisy. God favors me, that’s why I get to live in a McMansion and not worry about anyone else unless they’re bringing the team average down and then I have obvious entitlement to hassle them for their unseemly behaviors. That’s the main thing.
There is no personalized or national attention or favor or disfavor from some supernatural place. That concept bugs me more than anything.
If you’ve lamented the slipping morality of America while snorting cocaine off a male hooker’s back during the filming of “Jesus Camp” you might be a Republican
Hahahahahahha! I love this one.
And the last sentence in the article says it:
“So let’s stop with all the superstitious crap and work on the problem, shall we?”
I should be a theist, being able to blame your failings on everyone but yourself must be a load off.
Yeah, I think they do that. Satan, and not their own hatred or lousy diet or misogyny or overpopulation or the way they treated their children….
But, they also have the burden of being born evil. They have no worth. Therefore, they need saving and redeeming. And in the dark night of their alone time, they wonder, “What’s wrong with me? Why does God seem to love everybody else except me? Why can’t I hear Him? Why is my conversation with God so one-sided? What do I do? Why do I still feel bad? Why do I not have the peace that passes understanding?”
I am learning, by reading this site, that some people do not have these doubts. Some of them stay out of mental hospitals, or bomb buildings, or kill someone because God told them to do it, or kill doctors, or force women to have children they don’t want, or post walls of post to this site….
The christians who don’t have doubts, the absolutely certain ones, watch out for them…. what they might do to people if the laws weren’t enforced…. scary, chilling, frightening.
but if God didn’t do it that means that we have to take responsibility for our own actions. we wouldn’t want to do that, not when there’s such a good excuse for all our problems that isn’t our own fault.
By fundie theology, God does not reward good deeds (except for submission), and punishes bad ones. So, the safe path is to accept Jesus as savior and then lie down and do nothing else until you die.
I’m so embarrassed to be living in Oklahoma right….I’ve got to get out…
Hell, I’m from Oklahoma…and currently living in South Carolina. So, officially, I’ve lived in two states that have elected officials who don’t have enough brainpower to turn on a light bulb. It’s my fault; my gayness (gaiety?) caused Sally Kern to act a fool and incited Mark Sanford to go hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Arizona seems to be equally bad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtzJhTfQiMA
Appalachian Trail or Argentine Tail
Hahahahaha! What, no headline?
“No South Carolina Trial for Governor Fail with Argentine Tail on the Appalachian Trail”
Take me with you, brother!
Again more proof of an Evil God.
The poor that prays the most gets punished while the rich that has no time for prayer gets rewarded. Maybe the poor did not pray enough.
Interestingly, I am Atheist and I do not get punished.
The financial crisis is threatening what material wealth they hold dear. See, this is how it works. It’s god’s will until it affects you personally, and then when you’ve prayed to Jesus as much as you could and you still can’t afford your big house and maybe your other house, and your giant trucks, or to have your hair coiffed real big and frosty at your standing appointment at the beauty parlor, and those golf clubs you saw in a magazine, then you just have to look around and see who is pulling down the average and hassle them!
See, some people think they are blessed and that’s why they have such a comfortable life, and economics is an invisible force that has little to do with it. Threaten to take what they have and rather than think consistently there, that god is singling them out for punishment, they seem to think we’re on a team all of a sudden and it’s the stragglers of faith, the gays and the whatever sin that’s not oh, greed and vanity. Pull your weight by having hetero married sex, each and every, so we’ll all be safe from whatever that thing is that’s sucking all our jobs and money down the toilet. Eco blah blah blah. God’s just pissed is all.
I have to admit, this really triggers me. It was greed that destroyed the economy – and this started in earnest with the christian right and the repubs. Like when Nixon got his little head together with Kaiser and started the incredibly corrupt system of HMO’s so that a few people could get wealthy on the misery of others by minimizing health care. And things got worse when the religious people got involved in the 80’s. It’s incredible to me when christians lump together being gay with child abuse and rape too – as if it’s the same thing! A loving relationship between two consenting adults is beautiful. Forced sex or sex with a child (who cannot consent) is sick. Sex between consenting adults is not immoral – never was, never will be. In fact, I’m not sure how sex got all tied up with the concept of morality. To me, morality is about being kind, generous, loving, respecting the earth, animals, people, etc. Sex has absolutely nothing to do with morality. It’s religion that has twisted sex into something sick and perverted – something to feel guilty about. This is what creates sexual deviants, in my view. So for a religious fundie (and this one sounds particularly evil to me if you’ll excuse the religiously loaded term) to say that gays are responsible for the economic breakdown, it’s not just ridiculous. It’s scary, sad, and overwhelming to me because there are so many people who agree.
Janet Green: Do you know why christians link child abuse with homosexuality? Because the mayority of real child abusers are christians. Look in the FBI website and most sites dedicated to fight against child porn. You’ll found that some of the characteristics to look in a pedo are: man, white, straight, religious fundamentalist (mostly protestant), important member to community, respected, … In other words beware of the pastor/preacher of your local church literaly, more than the strange lonely man that probably is an ex con living in the street!!! I met a woman in myspace where she is fighting adainst pedos. She was the wife of a preacher. He raped at least two of their three daughters. She accused him. when she claimed to him for it, he answered her with a biblical verse when it said what he did was good. The church people went against her to the point she had to move out of the state. The preacher was arrested but never went ot prison, he was given only like some clases or something, nothing more. The worst of this he managed to manipulate their daughters. And they resulted the type of victim that protect at all costs their perpetrator. Yes to this day they defend him. So the real child abusers came from the fundamental christians community.
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