Kansas Pastor Wants the US Government to Exterminate Gays

Curtis Knapp, pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas, said that the United States government should exterminate gay people, because God commands their execution.

On Sunday May 27th, Knapp told his congregation about one of my favourite Bible verses, Leviticus 20:13, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death.”

He went on to say, “They should be put to death! ‘Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them, no?’ I’m saying the government should.” You mean the government that is run by people like you, so the difference is what exactly? “They won’t, but they should.” Similar to the North Carolina pastor that wanted to create a giant concentration camp for gays and lesbians, this guy simply to the source for why he hates gay people. It’s not, “We want to defend traditional marriage,” or “They’re damaging society, because they’re AIDS monkeys and they molest children.” No, none of that beating around the bush bullshit. It’s just, “God said so, so I want them dead, and I want the government to do it.”

Fundamentalists can be the most intriguing of people when they are not the most infuriating and outright scary. You can listen to Knapp’s entire sermon here.

This next part of his took the words right out of my mouth, “You say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you, you’re horrible. You’re a backwards neanderthal of a person.’ Is that what you’re calling scripture? Is God a neanderthal, backwards in his morality? Is it His word or not? If it’s His word, he commanded it. It’s His idea, not mine. And I’m not ashamed of it.”

Yes, your deity is a barbarian, a thug, a bully, a jealous and petty child, a psychopath, a genocidal maniac, and so much more. You follow a fictional version of Hitler, and you’re “not ashamed of it.” You are backwards. Your scripture is backwards. Your god is backwards. Your religion is dangerous, and so are you.

These are the kinds of people that want Rick Santorum in office to be their moral crusader. These are the kinds of people, who back in the day, would have been in favour of slavery, because the Bible says so. These are the real things that are damaging society. It’s not the “gay agenda.” It’s not those godless heathens (like me). It’s not the liberal media. It’s these people. The people who promote ignorance, fear, and bigotry. The people that want others dead for not believing in or disobeying the will of their imaginary friends. This is why I have a hard time accepting the idea of “freedom of religion” when their religion is promoting the mass murder of people, state-sponsored nonetheless.

RE: Love Your Neighbor

So apparently, John Christy, the Christian that was on Dogma Debate recently who I wrote about in my most recent post The Christian Listener, has his own blog. I was unaware of this until I got a call from David Smalley about John’s response to the discussion we had on the show.

After thanking us for having him on the show for half the post, he starts off with this:

Smalley kept using Malachi 3:6 as a reference stating, “I the Lord do not change.” Smalley used this claim as the Bible’s support of killing homosexuals and slavery. What he did not read, and I failed to bring to his attention, was the second half of that verse which also states “So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed”.

Looking at the full context of this verse, which John is so big about, we see that what David said was not out of context.

“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.

Always, every time, every single time an atheist quotes the Bible, a Christian will say some variation of, “You’re taking it out of context!” Even if they’re wrong, they will say it, because they will immediately say that we are wrong for “taking it out of context” once you say something from the Bible that they disagree with. “I the Lord do not change,” is not taken out of context. I have seen Christian apologists even quote Malachi 3:6 just as David did to prove similar points.

However, there are verses from the Old Testament where God does change his mind on things, as is clear from Jeremiah 18:7-10.

If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed,and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted,and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.

This could be construed as changing his mind, but if God is omniscient, then he knows what nations and kingdoms will do what he wanted and which ones will not, so it’s not really changing his mind if he knows what is going to happen.

Then Hebrews 7:21 says, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind…”

So God does change his mind from the Jeremiah verses, but also he doesn’t from the Malachi and Hebrews verses. This is but another contradiction in the Bible for people to cherry-pick all the verses that support their interpretations of it.

Next in his post, John says this.

Smalley also avoided my continual usage of Jesus’ statement to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31). This is why a proper contextual understanding of the Bible is so critical to not only bring balance and understanding to God’s word but also to his nature.

Yes, it is true. Jesus did say the greatest commandments are to love God to love your neighbour. So what? It doesn’t mean the Malachi verse was taken out of context.

“You’re taking it out of context!” is not an argument unless you can show how it actually has been taken out of context. If someone quotes a person as saying, “I want to kill everyone,” and we look at the actual context of what that person said and what they actually said was, “It’s not like I want to kill everyone, but I am angry,” then that is an example of something being taken out of context. Quoting Malachi 3:6 as, “I the Lord do not change,” is not something that has been taken out of context. Please understand the difference.

The Christian Listener

During the most recent episode of Dogma Debate, we had on John Christy, a Christian listener of the show, for David Smalley and the rest of us to converse with. The segment was supposed to be only about twenty minutes long, maybe forty at the most, but we ended up talking to him for over an hour and a half. A reason for that is because 1) we had a lot to talk about, and 2) he takes forever to say anything.

He was a nice guy. I am not trying to hate on John. I like him as a person. I am not a bigot against Christians, as much as Christians (and some atheists) would like to think I am. I do not like his beliefs. I do not like what he stands for. I do not like the source he claims is his moral compass. There’s a difference. If the Christian can say, “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” then we can say, “Hate the beliefs, not the believer,” which is how I felt about John.

A very big problem I did have with him during the show was how when asked very specific and direct questions, he would employ how it takes forever for him to say anything, which derails the conversation to avoid actually answering the question. While the show was going on, I got comments from listeners who were saying exactly that. When repeatedly asked the same question because he was avoiding it, he just continued to ramble on as if he did not hear a thing (which maybe he honestly didn’t because he was calling in on Skype).

Getting onto some specific points from the discussion.

John claimed that Jesus was breaking the Mosaic Laws, such as when he broke the Sabbath, and this is why we shouldn’t follow those laws anymore. The problem here is that it’s not biblically accurate, which is funny, because John kept saying that we weren’t being biblically accurate, neither was the North Carolina pastor who wanted every gay to be put into a giant concentration camp for them to die off in.

The reason John is not biblically accurate is because Jesus was angered by the Pharisees for not following the Laws of Moses, as is clear in Mark 7:9-13.

And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)—then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother.Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

Jesus is clearly mad that people are not following the Old Testament laws, especially the hypocrites who claimed he was not. Jesus wants us to follow the Old Testament laws of Moses. Jesus wants disobedient children to be executed. It’s right there in black and white.

In response to when I pressured him about this, John claimed that Jesus was a law-breaker, that he broke the Sabbath repeatedly. This is partially true. Jesus was accused of working the Sabbath by the Pharisees, because he ate grain on the Sabbath, which required work. Also, the Pharisees accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath by healing the sick. However, according to an apologetics site, Jesus was not sinning when he worked on the Sabbath.

When Jesus healed on the Sabbath, He was not breaking the Sabbath, but fulfilling it, because one is not at rest when afflicted, oppressed and bound by disease or infirmity. As many scriptures show, God delights in redeeming and restoring the afflicted, and giving them the rest exemplified by His Sabbath. God “hears the cry of the afflicted. When he gives quietness [rest], who then can make trouble?” (Job 34:28–29).

I’m not saying that I agree with the either John or the apologetics site, but it’s funny to see how Christians disagree with each other so much with their interpretations of who Jesus was, what he did, what he taught, and how we should live our lives according to his teachings.

Now the reason John brought this up was because he was saying that the coming of Jesus, that his time here on Earth, was him creating a new covenant and getting rid of the Mosaic Laws, such as stoning gays, disobedient children, people of other faiths, people who work on the Sabbath, and other people for what today would be considered barbaric and for arbitrary reasons. Well, that same article on Jesus breaking the Sabbath has this to say on that.

Had Jesus Christ actually broken the Sabbath, He would have been sinning. But the Scripture says that He “committed no sin” (1 Peter 2:22). Had He sinned, He could not be our Savior. But He, being undefiled and separate from sinners, offered Himself without spot and without blemish to God for our redemption (Hebrews 7:26; 9:14; 1 Peter 1:18–19).

Breaking the Sabbath, according to these Christians, is a sin even today. John did not say that Jesus did not break the Sabbath because he was doing God’s will or because it was a matter of life or death, only that Jesus broke the Sabbath, because he was creating a new covenant for people to live by. I, if I were a Christian, would spin this to say that the new covenant had already been made, so Jesus was still perfect and had not sinned, therefore he could still be sacrificed to God (who is himself…but is also his father…but is also a part of him…who is still separate…and then there’s that Holy Ghost thing…what?) for the sins that he let happen.

Speaking of, Smalley also tried to get an answer out of John on this one. Jesus was a sacrifice to God for the sins that God was fully aware were going to happen. God knew that Adam and Eve were going to sin by eating from the Tree of Knowledge. John responded to this by going around the question and speaking for a really long time without really saying anything that had anything to do with the question.

Here is the difference between Christians and atheists. Christians, when faced with the tough questions, will make excuses and/or go around the question itself. Atheists will straight up answer that question.

Another thing he claimed was that Christianity does not command the murder of people for things such as homosexuality, fornication, adultery, working on the Sabbath, etc. This is why he thought, when we played the audio of it, that the North Carolina pastor was being biblically inaccurate for what he said. However, nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus, or anyone for that matter, say that the laws of Moses have been voided, and it is all the more clear that Jesus himself wants us to follow those laws with how he quoted them himself. If he did not want us to follow these laws, then it would be just another contradiction added to the mountain of contradictions found in the Bible.

My favourite part of the interview, the part where you just want to facepalm so badly, is when John said this.

I’m not even allowed now to have my own opinion to myself. I don’t go out and attack homosexuals. I disagree with the Westboro Baptist Church, you know. But I can’t even just think that it’s sin in my own life. Now I have to conform to what society believes, otherwise, I’m gonna be in trouble. I’m gonna lose my friends…

Bigots should be ostracised. Why is the KKK ostracised? Why is it considered a hate group? Because it is! Soon NOM and other anti-gay groups and people will be seen as the same, and they should be. Persecuting others for their sexuality or their gender or their race is not acceptable. Thinking that they are inferior, that they are going to hell, that they are going to be eternally punished because of something that they can’t control should be frowned upon for so many reasons.

However, Christians are not persecuted in America. Christians are not banned from holding public office in several states. Christians are not misrepresented in the media. Christians are not told that less than half of all Americans would vote for them. Christians are not legally allowed to be discriminated against in the workplace. Atheists are. Gays are. No Christian can say they feel persecuted in a country where 80% of the population are Christian.

Tea Party vs. Tea Party

As most of my followers around the interwebs know, I live in Texas (unfortunately), and the primaries for US Senate in Texas are right around the corner. Watching the GOP primaries unfold makes me laugh (when it doesn’t make me cry), because it shows the kind of in-fighting and identity crisis that the GOP is experiencing in this political climate.

Currently, the top contenders for the Republican primary seat that is being left vacant by retiring Senator Kay Baily Hutchinson (the key figure who killed the DREAM Act, so good riddance) are Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who is being backed by Governor Rick Perry (you know, the guy who held that giant prayer rally in Houston), and former state solicitor general Ted Cruz, who is being backed by former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, both of whom (Perry and Palin) are Tea Party favourites. Both sides seem to be trying to call the other side moderates and that their candidate will cause the most disruption in Washington DC in order to win Tea Party support.

A spokesman for Ted Cruz’s campaign said, “…conservatives are supporting Ted Cruz over David Dewhurst to take our country back from go-along, get-along moderate politicians.” I watched a political ad today attacking Dewhurst, where they quote-mined a bunch of news articles in order to make it seem like he’s a moderate somehow. The problem with this is that Lt. Gov. Dewhurst is one of the most conservative politicians in Texas (which is a bad thing).

Now it seems that Dewhurst will win the Republican primary over Cruz. Once there, he will be going up against the Democratic candidate, which is expected to be former Texas House Representative Paul Sadler. Knowing Texas, the Democrats will lose unfortunately.

However, what it’s come down to is that conservative Americans have moved so far to the right that calling someone a liberal is overdone. They made liberal such a dirty word in America that they are moving along to the next thing: moderate. It’s bad to be a moderate. It’s bad to reach across the aisle. It’s bad to work with others like grown adults do. It’s bad to compromise, because we would rather see America suffer than have to work with those damn Democrats. We would rather kick and scream and whine to get what we want, and if we can’t get it, then no one can have anything.

The Tea Party is eclipsing, if not taking over, the Republican Party, and conservatives are becoming more and more conservative in response to claims that even the most conservative of them are moderates, which they are not. It’s a race to the right, and the losers are the American people, especially those that stand in their way. While the Tea Party is fighting itself to see who is the most conservative, it is creating an atmosphere that is extremely hostile to liberals, gay, religious and ethnic minorities, women, the poor, and anyone who is not a white, straight, male, Christian conservative.

Michelle Malkin: Bigoted Anti-Bigots?

Michelle Malkin is a conservative blogger and political commentator that often appears on Fox News and other media outlets to spout off conservative lies and propaganda, and she very recently published an op-ed article titled “Bigoted Anti-Bigots” for the National Review Online.

First off, the title. Now, she’s referring to the LGBT movement, calling it the “gay-marriage mob,” claiming that they are “guilty of the very ugly bigotry [they claim] to abhor.” It’s the common saying of, “It’s intolerant to be intolerant of the intolerant,” which is an unintelligible sentence, at best. It is not bigoted to be against the bigots who want to oppress you. If that were true, then blacks and women were being bigoted towards whites and men when they were fighting for their right to be treated equally. I am sure Martin Luther King Jr. and Susan B. Anthony were great big bigots in their times.

When saying that gays and liberals are being hypocritical bigots, Malkin is referring to the recent controversy over boxing champion Manny Pacquiao for “being true to his Catholic faith.” This is because in a recent interview with Examiner’s conservative contributor Granville Ampong, he supposedly mentioned Leviticus 20:13 when asked by Ampong about President Obama’s recent new stance on gay marriage. In his original post, Ampong made it highly suggestive that it was Pacquiao who brought up the Bible verse. It was presumed even more after an actual quote from the boxer where he said, “It should not be of the same sex so as to adulterate the altar of matrimony, like in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah of Old.”

After the USA Today, the LA Weekly, and the Village Voice all reported (in that order) about the original interview, saying that Pacquiao quoted Leviticus 20:13 because of Ampong’s suggestive writing, Ampong wrote another article titled “Biased writers grossly twisted Pacquiao’s view on same-sex marriage,” where in it he blamed the writers from the USA Today and the other news sources mentioned for his terrible writing style, all without correcting his initial post.

Manny Pacquiao has since apologised for the confusion, and has said that while he is against same-sex marriage, he does not think that they should be put to death as commanded by God in Leviticus 20:13, even though he also said that God’s law should always come before man’s. So yes, Granville Ampong is a terrible journalist, Examiner needs to have more oversight of what their writers post, and Manny Pacquiao is still (only partially) a bigot for being anti-gay marriage.

Michelle Malkin, being everyone’s favourite conservative, took the side of Ampong in all this nonsense in order to blame the “politically correct bloodhounds” that are, of course, “backed by George Soros,” the right’s least favourite billionaire. I do not know what it is about conservatives, but nearly every time there is something happening in the media that they disagree with, they always try somehow to blame George Soros for it. Just because he’s rich, is not a conservative, and funds progressive causes does not make him the Anti-Christ. Calm the fuck down, people.

It is interesting, or more so mind-boggling, how Malkin is blaming the “left wing media,” even though the USA Today is not liberal or left-leaning at all, the LA Weekly is most certainly not liberal, and the Village Voice…okay, that one is. It seems that anything to the left of Fox News is, of course, part of the giant leftist conspiracy to turn your kids gay and America into a socialist state (not that there is anything wrong with that).

Near the end of her article, she says that the “bigoted anti-bigot brigade” is targeting poor, defenseless people like Rush Limbaugh, Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and Catholic healthcare providers, among others, because they “refuse to conform to ‘progressive’ values.” Yeah, such a terrible thing progressive values are, like thinking that women should not have their healthcare denied to them because of someone else’s religion, that workers should have the right to unionise and not have their salaries slashed while giving tax breaks to millionaires, that gays should be treated equally for a change, and that bigots, actual bigots like Michelle Malkin, should be called for it.

My personal favourite part of the op-ed is when Malkin says that the “left wing media” is “shamelessly [demonizing] religion in the name of compassion.” So something that says gays should be put to death, along with many other people for completely arbitrary reasons, does not deserve to be demonised?

Update 19:56: A fan of my Facebook page commented on the link I posted of the original article by Michelle Malkin. They said something that I believe should be shared.

If one can actually consider intolerance of those opposed to the expansion of human rights to those that should already have them to be bigotry, particularly when those fighting against human rights have a habit of literally bullying, bashing, and beating those they oppose, then by Poseidon’s watery beard, I’ll wear THAT particular bigotry badge proudly.

Of course, in my experience it is by far mostly the prejudiced, hateful, anti-human rights crowd that call their opposition bigots for opposing their bigotry, so forgive me it I can’t properly express the amount of fucks I don’t give regarding their opinion of people who do actually stand for things like equality.

Superior Morals to Christianity and the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule, as it is called, is commonly coined as saying, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The actual Biblical verse this comes from is Matthew 7:12, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” Christians believe it should be the way on which we should base our lives on in order to be more Christ-like. The maxim, or basic moral principle, of the Golden Rule is said to be foundation of Christian morals and is claimed, falsely, to be the cornerstone of Western morality. While a variation of the Golden Rule can be found in most world religions, it is not something that is moral or should be used to base our morality on.

There are better ways in which to formulate our maxims and live our lives. Dan Barker, author of Godless and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), liked to call the Golden Rule the “Bronze Guideline” for the problems that he saw with it. Among those, the obvious mistake of making it a positive declaration. What if you are a masochist? Instead of saying “do unto others” we could say, “Do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you.”

A different maxim to replace the Golden Rule could be Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, which states, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” While the Golden Rule is a matter of preference, taste, or situation, the categorical imperative is, just that, a universal law of morals founded on reason instead of preference. While I do not personally ascribe to the categorical imperative of Kant, I still somewhat prefer it to the Golden Rule. However, that is like me saying that I prefer the Broncos to the Cowboys when I simply do not care for either team or football in general.

The moral system that I personally adhere to is “Daniel-ism.” I follow what I personally feel is the best choice. Sure I may try to apply different kinds of maxims and philosophies to my choices and actions, such as applying utilitarian ethics to some things or even Kantian to others, but I do not hold to one philosophy or ideology and have that dictate my life and who I am or who I want to be. I believe this is what every human being on the planet adheres to, only replace “Daniel” with their own name.

However, if I had to find a name or source of what does best to describe my morals, I would have to say the Wiccan Rede. When I was going through my deconversion, I studied many other religions, as most people do. For most of that time I studied different Pagan beliefs, including Wicca. Mainly because it just interested me. Now the Wiccan Rede states, “And Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Wilt.” Basically, do whatever you want as long as you do not harm anyone in the process. When I first found this, I thought it was a great way to express how I had already felt about what my morals were.

I will admit, it does sound somewhat libertarian-ish, and although I am not a libertarian, I latched onto this maxim for its appeal to what I felt at the time. Although there are certain cases I can think of right off the top of my head where the Wiccan Rede does not apply to my life or my morals, but the same can be said of the Golden Rule and other maxims, I would still say that this is far more suitable to today and our way of life than anything Christianity has come out with in the 2000 years it has had so far, such as the Golden Rule.

Whether it be the Wiccan Rede, the categorical imperative, or the greatest-happiness principle, they are all superior to the Golden Rule and Christianity in general, which not only contradicts itself entirely at every moment it can, but also preaches murder, hatred, and suppression of others, including your own family. This is in no way moral or good.

Throughout history, Christianity and Christians have been behind nearly every major atrocity since its genesis (not to be confused with Genesis the book). The Crusades, the Witch Hunts, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust all stemmed from so-called Christian morality and trying to do God’s will. How can it be considered moral to support the killing of gays, supposed witches, disobedient children, people who work on the wrong day of the week, women who aren’t virgins on their wedding nights, people of other faiths or of no faith, and the children and infants of parents of different faiths, among plenty of others?

How is that moral? How is that good? The morality of Christianity is disgusting and evil. And yet, a person is considered a good person today if they are a church-going Christian and a God-fearing man (or woman).

If those were the morals on which Western civilisation were founded we would all be dead a thousand times over from wars, genocides, and nuclear holocausts. If people today still followed those laws, I would have been executed so many times. Most people, whether or not they are atheists, would be too. There is a place where these kinds of laws are still enforced, and it is called the Middle East.

Biden Takes Credit For Moon Landing

Despite Vice President Joe Biden having a pretty bad case of foot-in-mouth syndrome, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has a terminal case of it. With so many things that the left has jumped on and the right has just facepalmed over what their presumptive presidential candidate has said, we were all kind of waiting for someone in a really high position to take a shot at it during the election. Biden is our man, and I do not think that I could be more proud of our vice president right now.

For background. In 2008, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” for the New York Times. In it he explained how the government should not bailout GM or the other car companies and that they should instead, what else, go bankrupt. However, he also said that a “managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs…rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.”

Now, he was kind of right. Kind of. The government did perform a managed bankruptcy, but they also combined it with the taxpayer funded bailouts. Mitt Romney is now taking credit for the success of the Obama Administration managing to keep GM and others afloat, even though members of the administration have said that, while they knew of Romney’s op-ed, it was not even in the back of their minds that they should do what he suggested. They had already been planning on a managed bankruptcy, but that it would not have worked without the combination of the bailout, which is correct.

So, following Mitt Romney trying to take some credit where it is not due, Vice President Joe Biden, while talking to crowds at a car dealership in the swing state of Ohio on Thursday, said, “I’ll take a lot of credit for a man having landed on the moon, because although I was in school, I rooted for it.”

Finally, some jokes in politics by the politicians that make fun of stupid politicians when they rightfully deserve it.

Ex-Gay Irony: Bigots Calling Others Bigots

This is probably the most ironic thing I have ever seen.

The Montgomery School District in Maryland occasionally passes out fliers from non-profit organisations to it students with report cards. Superintendent Joshua Starr called a recent flier “disgusting” and the efforts of the group itself “reprehensible and deplorable.” The source of the flier is an “ex-gay” organisation by the name of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), which is a group for people who claim they have changed their sexual orientation from gay/bi to straight, and they have recently filed a complaint against the superintendent over what they call “hate speech.”

The complaint goes like this, “Starr does not respect diversity and is creating an unsafe school environment. Superintendent Starr cannot be allowed to use his official position to display hate against any group of people because he disagrees with their sexual orientation. Starr’s flagrant violation of the Nondiscrimination Policy demonstrates that he is a prime candidate to receive ex-gay tolerance training and diversity education.”

I almost had a brain aneurysm when I read that. I thought this was a joke at first. Turns out, it’s not. Seriously. Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays is a real organisation that is really going after someone for speaking out against their religiously motivated pseudo-science that was targeted at vulnerable, scared kids and teens who may be questioning their sexual orientation or may be being bullied and harassed for it.

PFOX tries to claim that it is not an “ex-gay ministry,” which tries to turn gay people straight through controversial and ineffective methods of so-called therapy, but on the PFOX website it has an entire section of its Resources page dedicated to religion. As well, it offers daily prayers, which are extremely Christian in nature, in order to help those who are “tired of the gay life.”

Now, despite the American Medical Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Counseling Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, among others, all saying that being gay is not a choice and that such therapy is actually dangerous to the individual receiving it, as it can cause things such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, many people do still believe that one can change their sexual orientation and actively try to do so. PFOX likes to call it “self-determination.”

I am glad that states like California are putting forth legislation, like SB 1172, which would regulate “ex-gay ministries” by forcing them to lay out the dangers of the therapy and make it so that anyone under the age of 18 cannot receive these kinds of “counseling,” even if their parents try to force them to.

Pop Police in Public Schools

Some irony before you read this. I was writing this while drinking a Pepsi.

In recent years, bans in public schools on carbonated drinks have been put into place in several places across the country on school lunches and vending machines containing pop (it’s pop to me, if anyone calls it soda I will murder them) to make sure that kids drink healthier things. California became the first to implement any sort of a ban by banning pop in all grade schools in 2003. The Faulkton School District in South Dakota recently made it so that students had to dispose of all carbonated drinks before even entering the building.

These measures are taken in order to reduce childhood obesity, as it is on the rise in the United States with about one out of every three persons under the age of 18 either overweight or obese. However, these efforts run into many problems. Many school districts are reluctant to have these bans, because drink sales do bring in a lot of money for the schools, which is increasingly more important these days. This is understandable. With conservatives threatening public education more and more everyday, finding revenue wherever it can be found could mean the difference to a teacher’s job.

Most bans on pop have been ineffective anyway. The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that students in schools that have bans on pop are just as likely to drink other sugary drinks, such as fruit juices or sports drinks, as students in schools with no bans. This is similar to how schools that teach abstinence-only sexual education have students who have sex just as much as students who are taught actual sexual education. With pop gone, what else are kids going to drink? Water?! Don’t be ridiculous!

This gives schools less and less incentive to ban pop. However, some things are necessary for the health of children and the betterment of society. I would go one step further and ban all sugary drinks from all public schools (K-12). Not just pop, but things like sports drinks, lemonade, and other fruit juices which have just as much, if not more, sugar than most pops do. This prevents them from going around the ban and just having a Gatorade instead of a Coke (I don’t see why anyone would want a Coke in the first place though), and it actually does what the pop bans were intended for, giving kids a healthier diet so as to reduce childhood obesity in America.

In fact, let’s go another step further and ban junk food. That would severely help cut down on the consumption of processed garbage that contributes to more health problems in children. Another step just for the hell of it, ban all sugary drinks and junk food from even being allowed in public schools, similar to the restrictions put in place by the Faulkton School District.

It may sound like a “nanny-state,” because it is (not that there is anything wrong with that). Children, even teenagers, are not mentally developed enough to make their own decisions and understand the full consequences of them. Someone might say, “So the government should make those decisions for them and not their parents?” Yes, because parents cannot look out for their children when they are at school. Most parents today cannot look out for them even when they are at home, because most people are divorced and/or have jobs.

I have no problem with schools making kids eat their broccoli and drink water instead of Doritos and 67 grams of sugar in one bottle of Minute Maid. I have no problem with the government looking out for our best interests, which helps them, as they will no longer have to cover the costs of hospitals who have uninsured, obese children being treated for heart problems and diabetes that are meant for people in their forties and fifties.

Yes, banning these kinds of drinks and foods could hurt the schools if these things are no longer being sold, but if conservatives would stop sending more funding to the Pentagon and the military that should instead go to social programmes like food stamps and schools, we would not have to worry about school districts having to fire hundreds of teachers because their budgets could not afford it. Banning sugary drinks and junk food in schools will help prevent childhood obesity, which is great in it of itself (for one reason, we will no longer have to look at fat children). This in turn prevents unnecessary and expensive medical treatments, which are either extremely expensive for the middle class who can barely afford them or too expensive for the poor who simply cannot pay and the bill is sent to us taxpayers.

46% Of Americans Under 28 Are Atheists?

The site Skeptic Money recently released a post about a study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), which is affiliated with the University of Chicago. The study is called “Belief About God Across Time and Country,” and it details people from across many different nations and if they are certain that a god exists. Skeptic Money’s post on the study is short (at about seven sentences) and not so sweet, as it presents fallacious reasoning about what an atheist is.

At the top (or bottom) of the list in the study is East Germany with a whopping 0% under the age of 28 saying that they are certain that a god exists or not. The United States is over half at 53.8% of respondents under the age of 28 saying they were certain that a god exists. This is bad news for us in the United States’ irreligious population but great news for Europe’s (fuckers).

I digress though. The author of the post had this to say:

If the person says yes [to are they certain that God exists] then they are a theist (the belief that at least one deity exists).  If they say they don’t know, or are not sure etc… then they are an atheist.  If you are not sure if god exists then you cannot have a belief in that deity.  Therefore, you are an atheist!

This new report says that only 54% of Americans under the age of 28 are “Certain God Exists”.  That means that 46% are NOT sure that god exists.  If you aren’t certain that god even exists then you ARE an atheist!

This is just flat-out false.

One does not have to be certain that a god exists in order to be a theist. Being uncertain, however small of doubt there may be, does not make someone an atheist. Sure, some amount of doubt might someday years down the road turn some into atheists, but simply because they are not certain does not mean that they do not believe or are not theists.

If the same logic is applied to atheism, one could easily say that in order to be an atheist one must be certain that a god does not exist and that any kind of admittance that one is not sure means that they are a theist. We would be quick to call this ignorant and downright stupid, because it is.

This kind of definition of atheist is a strawman in order to get more numbers for the atheist demographic, and it is a terrible attempt at that. A similar tactic is also used by people who think that one is either an atheist or a theist in order to get agnostics on their side, even though agnosticism is its own separate category.

I am sure that the majority of those 46% of people still believe in a god and would resent anyone who dare call them an atheist. If anything is counterproductive to the atheist/secular movement, calling someone something that they clearly are not or do not identify with definitely is.